Which Way Are You Turning The Knob?

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Which way are you turning it? (Photo: Kevin Dooley)

Showers seem to be a place where I do a lot of my thinking and I often have many real­iza­tions under falling water – it’s totally zen for me. What’s not often though, is the shower itself that’s the source of wisdom – usually it’s just the insane amount of time I’m just letting the water flow over me. Today was different, as the simple every-day water faucet knobs of my shower lead me to little new perspec­tive on classic wisdom.

There’s thou­sands of vari­a­tions of shower knobs out there, and I’m sure you’ve encoun­tered a few that totally baffled you. You know, you go to a friend’s house in some crazy loft and they have to give you an entire course on how to work the damned thing. It’s like some sort of Rube Goldberg Machine.

Anyways, let’s stick with the classic double-knober that let’s you control both the hot and cold water indi­vid­u­ally. With this setup, there can be unlim­ited vari­a­tions of the two that get you the same temper­a­ture, some being more energy effi­cient than others (espe­cially if you take long ones).

Well, I do tend to take lengthy showers, as it’s almost a medi­ta­tion for me, and today was no excep­tion. So when the water starts getting a bit cooler after awhile, one can either turn up the amount of hot water, or turn down the amount of cold water, to get back to the warm temper­a­ture from before. So, the little kid inside of me starts having a little fun, turning them both at the same time – and then it hit me:

What if I was the hot water, and the cold water was other people?

I quickly tried to make this not seem like I was on some sort of bad hippy acid trip, and started to make some useful sense out of it:

I have the choice to either turn myself up to get what I want, or to turn others down.

If this was a conver­sa­tion, I’d totally Zen Monk you and let you figure this out on your own… but I’ll explain how this prac­ti­cally applies in everyday life, since I don’t have that wonderful pleasure.

Here’s an example: Sometimes when people have the inten­tion to make them­selves look better, they’ll make fun of others (turning others down). It’s easy, common, and full of instant (hollow) gratification.

Deep inside they know there’s another option they have that would make them­selves look better, and that’s to become a better, more successful person (turning them­selves up). Both arrive at the same temper­a­ture, but one does it by turning himself up, and the other by turning others down (and in this case turning your­self up is harder, yet more rewarding).

There are also other times when it’s good to do the total oppo­site. If you’re playing acoustic guitar in a small room, it would usually be easier to just (liter­ally) “turn everyone down”, than to mic the guitar and crank up the amp trying to over-power the audience.

Notice how you can apply this to so many prac­tical things:

• making more money, or spending less (finan­cial abundance)
• focus on adding value to your product, or how your competitor sucks (better product)
• taking more medi­cine, or eating less junk food (being healthy)

One’s not inher­ently good, bad, or better than the other (hot’s not better than cold, up’s not better than down): it’s all about contrast and balance. You just need to be aware you always have a choice between which knob you’re turning which way.

Remember not all knobs are created equal, and not all showers have the same water pres­sure – so once you know what you really want, be sure to chose that perfect combi­na­tion that you know is right for you.