Volume Control
At his 2024 season-ending press conference, Oklahoma City Thunder GM Sam Presti compared the orchestration of a team to the controlling of a mixing board. When producing music, for effect, some sounds need to be softened, some amplified. If all the instruments and voices are at an eleven out of ten, the final product is just noise. Presti spoke specifically about Thunder forward Lou Dort’s willingness to “turn down the volume” - to do less, to “refine” his game rather than “expand” it so that younger players around him had space to become. He said the upside-down gift was that Dort got better because of the downshift. The younger players’ games blossomed given room to root, explore and rise while Dort’s sharpened as his focus tapered to specific skills. The final product was music to everyone’s ears.
But volume control isn’t always as easy as it sounds. And noise is everywhere.
It seems now, more than ever (though it’s probably not all that much different than it has ever been), that people are at odds. Everyone is yelling. At one another, about something, in places and in ways that make it hard to hear. Boisterous discord is often the soundtrack playing in the background of our lives.
While annoying (and often debilitating), external chaos is escapable. We do have the ability to walk away. We can turn the radio dial, mute the TV, choose a different, more palatable voice. The tougher mix to manage is the babbling of the loud talker who lives inside our heads.
Poor internal volume control can cut us at the knees.
We all have an inner critic. A sneaky, stubborn distortionist who makes her living on the scraps of our greatest fears and tiniest stumbles – our feats and finest days. At best, this know-it-all is only partially informed. She excels at finding gaps, inventing sinkholes, and weaving misshapen expectations based on faulty intel. She’s a sniper and a case-maker super skilled at the art of persuasion.
But her real forte lies in yapping over everybody else.
“You’re going to fall again,” she needles.
“You showed so much promise early. Why can’t you do it anymore?” she shouts.
Pounding on your forehead, she repeats, “Nobody will read it.”
“People will laugh,” she screams so loudly that your ears begin to ring.
“Watch out! You’re ahead,” she warns as she eggs on the doubter in you. “What made you think you could be here? Doing this. In front of them.”
Though she be little, she is loud.
She’s also an experienced tactician. One who sometimes starts blaring out of nowhere, like the commercials that come in at a ten though the TV volume control is set at three. Without warning “HAVE IT YOUR WAY” comes screeching through the speakers knocking you off the sofa, spooking the dog, waking the baby, sending everyone within earshot scrambling for the remote. The creative inner critic comes piped in at a different decibel demanding to be heard.
At other times we invite her, though we’re not always aware that we do. Once in, she lies in wait for the perfect time to pounce. Like this past Saturday when at the end of a road trip, I turned into my driveway with “Sweet Home Alabama” ricochetting off the windows of my car. I had hardly noticed the music’s gradual crescendo from sing-along steady to full -blown concert thump as I cruised. When I pulled into the garage (lost in dashboard drumming, air-guitar riffs and high school lyrics burned into my brain,) I shifted the gear to “Park” and turned the engine off. Completely oblivious to the magnitude of my chariot’s roar, I grabbed my bag and went inside still humming Lynard Skynard under my breath.
On Sunday morning when I jumped into the car and automatically pressed the brake while pushing “Start,” “Should I Stay or Should I Go…Da-dada-da-da-dada-da” jolted me like a James Bond ejector seat catapulting me toward the sun roof of the car.. I almost tore up the dash clawing for the radio dial. As the Clash violently assaulted my senses, all I could think about was turning down the sound. Though I like the song, I wasn’t ready for the piercing guitar chords nor the ear-popping pace. It bombarded me and left me frayed.
The volume had to be controlled.
Learning to use the fader switch on the console in our brain is how we extract the parts that are essential to hear. The voice within us doesn’t need to disappear – we need her. She gives us important information. But sometimes she needs to play smaller to help us be bigger.
P.S. The Loud Family