Members Only Post #109 – What Are Your Priorities?

Most people use the first month of the new year to sit back and take stock of their lives and what they’re doing with them. Granted for most people it’s too little too late and they’ll never go more than few weeks with whatever new changes they’ve thought up. But its still a phenomenon and something to think about. Taking stock of our lives is something we should be doing throughout the year. We should always be thinking about what we’re doing with our time, which is what makes up our lives, and what that says about us.

Many people spend their lives saying they want to do this or that, or that X or Y is very important to them. Yet when you look at how they spend their time, none of this holds true. For example let’s take a guy who says he wants to be a writer, a full time writer. Well if you want to be a full time write then there are things you should be doing everyday, for example reading and writing. Yet when we look at this fellow’s time we see that little if any is spent writing or reading. While much of that time is taken up by eating, drinking, working, sleeping and the like.

His free time is spent watching TV, surfing social media, or doing other unproductive things. Then he complains that he can never find the time and later in life he’ll say that he never had a chance to become a writer. And so on and so forth, we’ve all seen and heard the story before. And hopefully take steps so that we don’t end up there. But there’s another part to that story, one that doesn’t get talked about as much.

The Relationship Between Time & Priority

We all have things we want to achieve, or at least should. Good, worthy goals help to ennoble a life and drive us to be all that we can be. Not that goals themselves are the purpose of life, you need to stop and smell the roses along the way. But they are a crucial part of a good and productive life. You probably have a goal that you want to accomplish right now. And if not then get one right away, even if it’s a bit fuzzy at first, though eventually you’ll want to flesh it out and make it more specific. Maybe you want to lose weight, say 30 pounds. Or maybe you want to get a girlfriend as you’re luck with women has been great lately.

Or a million other things. We all have goals and those goals reflect our priorities the things that we want in life. Which brings me to my next point. While having a goal, any goal, is better than none and something you should do throughout life, you also need to look at your goals and analyze them. To see what they say about your priorities and if that’s something that you want to be said about you. For example for awhile my focus was on making X amount of money. Yet I soon say that making X amount of money didn’t matter as much as I thought it did.

It was more of an ego statement than anything else. Instead I turned my focus on making enough money to live comfortably while maximizing my time freedom. So while having a goal of making more money is great, putting it under the microscope and refining it, is even better. My priority went from making money for the sake of making money to making money for a great purpose, the freeing up of my time and therefore freedom. So it’s not just about being productive, it’s about being productive for the right things.

High Level Living

What I’m getting at is think about your goals and what they say about you, what they reflect about your priorities. As long as you’re being honest you’ll be good. But take time to not just reflect on things you’d like to change and new goals you’re going to make. But what those goals are and what they say about you and if that’s what you want for life. So we’re going a level deeper here. Don’t get me wrong having any goal you’re striving for is better than none, but for the highest level living, I’ll explain that in a second, you should look at why you have the goals you have and if they’re worth it.

And by high level living I simply mean living the life you want and being happy. That could be living in a small cabin with your family or it could be being a big mogul in a high rise. More likely the former than the latter but everyone has their own thing that makes them happy in this life. And you may discover that things change, that what was once tempting not just tastes rotten or that what you always wanted was there for a reason and is a deep, true, and good part of you. That’s something you have to figure out.

So think, think about the goals that you have and what you want to accomplish. What is your life adding up to? What do you think about that? How does it make you feel? Seriously, think about these things. They’re important, you only have one life and you can never get your time back. What do you want at the end of the day. What will make you happy? Content? Feel like you’re in the right spot doing the right thing for you? Things to think about and to take seriously. It’s not just about chasing the next goal, realize why that goal is important and if that’s a good thing. Above all else, take time to think about your life and where’s it headed. And how you feel about that.