Someone asked me the other day: "How am I supposed to know what to value most?"

They weren't asking about training. They were asking about everything. Work. Family. Relationships. Goals. They'd heard the phrase "know your priorities" enough times that it had stopped meaning anything.

It's a question that shows up in other forms too. You've heard it in the gym. You've probably said it yourself. "I'd die for this." "This sport is everything to me." "I'd sacrifice anything to hit that number."

The problem is, most people have no idea if that's actually true.

There's a way to find out.

I was told this years ago by someone older than me, at a point in my life where I was too stubborn to know I needed the guidance.

Picture a plank. About 12 inches wide. However long you want. And it will not break.

Now put it on the ground.

What would you walk across it for? Five dollars? Sure. Almost anyone would. Your family? Of course. A personal record squat? A business deal? To save your own life? To save someone else's? To get content for your social media?

Write that list. Get honest about it.

Now lift the plank three feet off the ground.

Same question. What makes the list now? What fell off?

Ten feet. Twenty. Forty.

A hundred feet.

A hundred feet in a storm.

At ground level, almost everything makes the list. The plank is on the floor. The risk is nothing. You'll cross it for five bucks, a dare, or because someone's watching.

That's not value. That's convenience.

Three feet up, things start thinning out. The Instagram post is gone. A few of the business goals disappear. You're still comfortable enough to be brave, but you're not stupid. You start to weigh things.

Ten feet changes the conversation. This is where the "I'd die for this" crowd starts showing their hand. Some of them cross. Most find an excuse not to.

At twenty feet, you're asking yourself what really matters. Not what sounds good. Not what you've told people. What actually matters to you, right now, when the wind is picking up, and the plank is narrowing.

At forty feet, the list is short. Family. Real relationships. A small number of goals that have roots deep enough to hold.

At a hundred feet, in a storm?

Strength sports breed a particular kind of language. You hear it everywhere. At meets. In training halls. Online.

"I'd die for this total."

"This sport is my life."

"I'll sacrifice anything to get to the platform."

And some people mean it. A few actually train in a way that could kill them, and they know it, and they're at peace with it. But here's a question worth sitting with: if someone says they'd sacrifice anything for the sport, and their family pays the price of that sacrifice while they chase the platform, who actually sacrificed for it?

This isn't a judgment. It's the plank doing its job.

The thing you say you'd die for and the thing you'd actually cross a plank for at a hundred feet in a storm are sometimes the same thing. Often, they're not. That gap is important. It's not a character flaw. It's information. It tells you where your real values are and where the performance of values is covering for something else.

There's a pattern that runs through serious lifters, serious competitors, serious business builders. Everything becomes blast mode. One thing goes to max height on the plank, and everything else gets demoted to whatever it takes to get back to blast.

Work, family, sleep, relationships. These become the crap you deal with between sessions. The stuff that keeps the lights on so you can get back to what actually matters.

And for a while, that works. You get stronger. You build something. You hit the numbers.

But blast as a lifestyle creates a specific kind of blindness. You stop seeing the things you've decided are dust. You stop noticing what's actually on fire while you're hitting PRs.

The plank thought experiment is good medicine here, because it forces you to separate what you say matters from what you'd actually risk something for. When you run down the list honestly, a lot of things that got demoted to dust turn out to deserve a much higher place on the plank. And some things you've been treating like life-or-death turn out to be three-foot decisions at most.

That's not failure. That's clarity.

Here's what people misread about this exercise: it isn't about fear.

Fear is what you feel at a height. The plank doesn't care about your fear. It cares about what overrides the fear.

When you'd cross a hundred-foot plank for something, it means that thing is worth more to you than your own comfort, your own safety, your own survival instinct. That's not a small thing. That's the clearest signal you have of what actually matters.

It also works in reverse. When something falls off the list at three feet, that's a signal too. Not that it's worthless, but that it doesn't carry the weight you've been assigning it. You might love training. You might love your business. But if you wouldn't cross a hundred-foot plank for it in a storm, then calling it everything is probably dishonest. And dishonest self-assessment is how lifters plateau, how businesses stall, and how relationships collapse without anyone seeing it coming.

One thing worth saying clearly: knowing what you'd cross the plank for at a hundred feet doesn't mean that's your priority every moment of every day.

Real priorities are situational. They live in the moment you're in.

If you're in the middle of a training set, your job is to be in that set. Not thinking about your mortgage. Not replaying a conversation from the morning. Not planning your next business move. The lift is your priority.

If you're sitting with your family, they're the priority. Fully. Not halfway while you're scrolling through programming notes.

The plank helps you understand which things in your life deserve to be crossed at height, so that when those moments arrive, you recognize them. You don't mistake a three-foot decision for a hundred-foot one. You don't blow your energy on things that would never survive the storm.

The athlete who knows their values clearly doesn't have to think about them. They just act from them. The same is true in business and in life.

Go somewhere quiet. Pull out something to write on.

Draw the plank. Put it on the ground. Start writing down what you'd cross it for. Don't filter yet. Let the list get long.

Then lift it three feet. Cross off what falls off.

Keep going. Ten feet. Twenty. Forty. A hundred.

Now add the storm.

What's left is real. That's your list.

Look at how you've been spending your time, your energy, your attention. Look at the decisions you've made in the last six months. Look at what you've been blasting for and what you've let collect dust.

Does what you've been living match the list?

If it does, good. Keep building.

If it doesn't, you've got work to do. And unlike some problems in life, this one comes with a clear next step. You know what the plank says matters. Now the question is whether you're willing to organize your actions around it.

That's the harder exercise. But it starts with being honest about the height.

The original question was: "How am I supposed to know what to value most?"

The honest answer is: you already know. The plank just shows you what you've been pretending not to.

Maybe the better question isn't what you'd die for. That's easy to say. It costs nothing.

The question that costs something is: how high are you willing to go for it?

Because that's the one you have to live with.

If this hit something, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you want more like this, the elitefts education library and Table Talk Podcast are where the real conversations happen.