How to know why you make the decisions you do
Hi guys! Welcome to episode 194 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! Thanks for being here. It really means a lot to me that you’re here and it inspires me to keep going knowing that you look forward to these episodes each Monday and Friday. Sometimes that’s all it takes, isn’t it…just a little 10 minute thought tweak to help set the tone for the day.
Anyway, I appreciate you…ok so this last week I was feeling myself beginning to get overwhelmed. Let me put it another way…I was allowing the thoughts in my head to create a feeling of overwhelment. I looked that word up… because I wasn’t sure it is an actual word, and it turns out it isn’t….but Urban dictionary did have it so Im gonna to say that counts because I want to use that word. So I was allowing myself to feel overwhelmed.
And I know enough to know that when I allow those feelings, it’s downhill from there. Because what good does it do to just keep playing over and over in your head all the things you need to do but you’re worried it’s not going to get done and then you just keep piling on more and more things and what if this happens or what if that happens…we create so many problems for ourselves just in our heads and most of it never happens. So I realized I was doing this so I asked a fellow life coach student to help me work through it, and I’m glad I did.
She helped me see that we each have this one life and we get to decide what’s important to us. We get to set our own priorities and honestly I hadn’t taken a good look at my priorities lately.
She suggested really understanding the top 3 things….because every decision we make revolves around those. That was really good advice for me at the time. When you know your priorities you will see why you do the things you do and you’ll be able to decide if that’s working for you or not.
So I set about figuring out my top 3 priorities in life. They have changed over time. I have actually specifically changed them, I did that at a Tony Robbins seminar a few years ago and it changed a lot for me.
For me my relationships are the top priority. My husband, my family, my friends. This has been consistently number 1 for me. What’s interesting though is my 2nd and third priorities have switched back and forth. Currently, my health is number 2 and my career is number 3. When I was at the Tony Robbins seminar, I changed my number two priority to my health and pushed my career to number 3. That was a pretty conscious decision at the time. I have to tell you, my health since I did that has been better than it ever has been. But my career took a little bit of a hit.
In rediscovering my top 3 priorities and their rankings, everything made so much sense over the last couple years. The decisions I would make that I would beat myself up for, were exactly in line with my priorities. For example, My husband wants to grab dinner and I know I should be working on something for work, it’s a no brainer, I go to dinner because my relationships come first. Sometimes I’ll even skip a workout because I want to grab coffee with a friend. But I generally don’t skip my workouts for work and I certainly don’t let work get in the way of my social life, even if I have to rush something. My little sister calls in the middle of the day while I’m trying to get work done…more than likely I will answer and 30 minutes later, I’m trying to remember what I was doing before the call. Isn’t that interesting? If you think about your priorities right now, what are they? Can you see how every decision you make comes from the things that you’ve set as most important?
When I was doing self coaching through my thoughts of feeling overwhelmed, I realized that one of the problems I’ve created for myself is the thought that I cannot be wildly successful at my business when my career is number 3 on my priority list. This was a subtle thought, but boy I realized that it isn’t serving me at all.
What do I do though? The first obvious thought is well I have to rearrange my priorities. But, Am I gonna rearrange my priorities so that my career is number 1 or 2? No way. That isn’t an option for me. And then it hit me, I’ve been lazy in my thinking. I don’t have to sacrifice my relationships or my health to be wildly successful in my business. That’s just a thought I had. Society tells you you have to sacrifice and work 80 hours a week to be successful but I don’t buy that.
I just have to be more intentional. It’s been very easy for me to get my health where I want it and my relationships are very important to me so that comes naturally, but my career is number 3 which is pretty high on the totem pole of life. We have a big buffet to choose from in our world today and if we aren’t being intentional about it, we are probably spending a lot of time feeling overwhelmed, like I was last week.
My overwhelment, there’s that non-word again…it was coming from my thoughts. And when I really break it down, I exercise no more than one hour a day and my nutrition takes a little time too because I generally make one or two really big salads a day at my house, that takes time. So now I only have 22 hours left in the day, of which I sleep 8…and I do sleep 8 a night, 7 is ok but 8 is better so that leaves me with 14 hours left in the day. Let’s say I devote 4 hours to spend time with my husband and friends per day. That still leaves me with 10 hours per day to work on my business.
When I broke that down for myself, I realized I just haven’t been intentional. Feeling overwhelmed was causing me to distract myself with things nowhere near my priority list. The reason I was feeling overwhelmed is because I was telling myself I don’t know what to do next or I don’t know how to do the things I ultimately want to do so I just distract myself with noise, noise that doesn’t matter to me at all. Distractions are what our mind uses to retreat. I looked that word up too. Retreat means backing away from something difficult. So If I don’t know how to do something, I’ve been retreating to social media. I didn’t realize how much I was doing that. If we retreat every time something gets hard, we will always be on the outside looking in, wishing we were in the game and wondering why we’re not. When I really break it down it’s obvious It’s not that I don’t have time it’s that I haven’t been intentional with my time.
Being intentional about our life takes a little bit of getting used to, but I’m willing to lean in when something gets difficult, not retreat. Im committed that when one of my top 3 priorities is in my presence, nothing else will matter. But it takes me being intentional about my time for these things as well. During my workout times, I’m completely present with my workout. During my time with my family and friends, I am committed to be completely present with them as well. It hurts my heart to see people on their phones throughout dinner or at coffee with a friend…You’re telling that person or those people that they come second to whatever it is on your phone. You aren’t being malicious. I know that but you aren’t being intentional either, it’s lazy thinking, we have to call it what it is and I’m calling myself out too, and it doesn’t feel good. It’s kind of embarrassing because I talk a lot about distractions on my podcast and I feel like it’s been a daily struggle but now that I understand it’s just lazy thinking that makes me want to distract myself. And maybe you enjoy being on social media, then set time for that separately from your top 3 priorities. Set specific times for social media, that way you don’t have fomo. For those of you who don’t know that means fear of missing out.
We’ve gotten lazy with our minds and I say that knowing full well I’ve been guilty of it as well. But I’m waking up and I can’t wait to see what comes from that.
My challenge to you this week is to define and write down your top 3 priorities. You’ll know because it’s the things you put before everything else. It will help you understand every decision you make. Once you have your top 3, commit to being fully present when any of those 3 are in your presence. Everything else comes second to those 3, just try it for a week and if you feel yourself being drawn to distractions because something is difficult or uncomfortable don’t retreat, lean into it. I’m guessing you’ll be glad you did! I love you guys and I’ll talk to you in a few days!
