Your Values Don't Matter...

why boundaries matter more than beliefs

Imagine being a 17-year-old basketball superstar—with every major basketball program in the country trying to recruit you.

Shane Battier was that kid.

He could have been swept up in the moment—but he wasn’t.

“I was recruited in the late 90s. It was just a s@!# show. You have coaches calling in every hour of the night just trying to find you. I wanted my time. I didn’t want to be tied down or distracted from my schoolwork and my basketball. So, I have my list of six schools—Michigan, Michigan State, Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, and Kentucky. And I went by alphabetical order and every Monday night I said, Coach K, your window is from 8:00 to 8:15. I will be there and I will be all yours. Coach Izzo, you’re from 8:15 to 8:30 and I went down the list. The coaches appreciated it, they liked it because they knew I was going to be there. They knew they didn’t have to talk about nonsense and they moved on. It was a win-win.

I’ll never forget, Rick Pitino at Kentucky called me outside of his window one time. He called me from Yankee stadium and said, “yeah we’re at the world series, I’m in Steinbrenner’s box and I just want to holler at you and you know, just connect and see how you’re doing.” It’s like a Wednesday night and I said, “coach, man it’s great to hear from you, thank you for calling, you know, have fun, go Yankees. I’ll talk to you later.”

I hung up, I said, “mom, take Kentucky off the list. That guy doesn’t respect my rules, he’s not going to respect me if I go there, take him off. So Kentucky was off after one phone call.”

(Shane Battier)

One phone call.

All it took was one phone call for Shane to know that he wouldn’t want to play for that coach.

He went on to win an NCAA Championship… at Duke University.

I’m in awe of this story. At 17, he had the self respect and self awareness to know two things:

1. This is my non-negotiable—”don’t call me outside of the allocated times.”

2. Anyone who steps outside of this rule doesn’t actually respect me and will never respect me so I will not place myself in a situation where I have to wrestle with that tension in the future.

What are your non-negotiables?

I could ask you what your values are, and you’d probably tell me all the right things—honesty, fairness, kindness, responsibility.

But here’s the thing: values in a vacuum mean nothing.

It’s easy to value honesty until being honest makes you look bad.

It’s easy to value boundaries until someone important crosses them.

Non-negotiables are different. They turn your values into actions. They test your values in the real world, where pressure and convenience collide.

A non-negotiable says: “This belief matters so much that when the heat’s on, I will always/never do this.”

Here’s an example from my own life that I’m not proud of.

Earlier in my career, my boss asked me a question about a task I hadn’t done.

I got flustered and lied.

Oh man—I remember feeling sick almost instantly.

For several days after that, I thought about what I had given up in that moment. Was I the type of person who would trade honesty for image?

I was devastated.

After that experience I decided that no matter what, I would never intentionally deceive someone to preserve my own image. Instead of just saying, “I value honesty,” I turned it into a non-negotiable, a tangible act that I resolved to always adhere to regardless of the pressure. I would rather have someone else think less of me than have to face the knowledge that I am actually less because of my inability to honor my values.

Here’s why this matters so much:

It’s rarely the big decisions that define us. It’s the little ones.

• One drink when you don’t drink?

• One Sunday working when you swore to keep it sacred?

• One lie to keep the peace?

Will those moments wreck your life? No.

But they chip away at something more important—the respect you have for yourself.

And here’s where the research backs it up:

Cognitive dissonance theory says that when our actions don’t align with our self-image, it creates mental discomfort. We can either change the action, or slowly change how we see ourselves.

You become what you repeatedly tolerate.

Every time I read Shane’s story, my respect for that 17-year-old grows.

Not because he drew a line.

Because he held it.

He understood something that many of us struggle with:

When someone crosses a non-negotiable, it’s not just about them. It’s about you.

It’s about who you’re becoming and what you think of yourself.

How about you? What’s one value you say you care about?

What would happen if you turned it into a non-negotiable?

• Not just I value honesty, but I never lie to make myself look good.

• Not just I value family time, but I never miss dinner with my kids for work.

But here’s the harder question:

Do you respect yourself enough to hold that line?

Because that’s what non-negotiables are really about.

Keep Asking,

Kyle