Prioritize

It doesn’t matter whether you have all the time in the world or none, whether you are running a family, a business, a career, a household, or just yourself, your life is full of the things you choose to do everyday.  BTW, not making a choice is a choice. Just sayin’.  In each day we have things to do and get done and we prioritize those things.  They may get reprioritized on us due to external forces, but that’s a good thing.  It means we’re connected with the rest of the world and not islands just talking to ourselves.  Yay!

We are prioritization specialists handling more activities than our ancestors ever dreamed would happen in a lifetime let alone a day.  We do more, know more, have access to more than ever in history.  To navigate this we’ve become manifestation, time navigating, prioritization experts.  The interesting things about this is that we rarely utilize these skills for our own benefit other than to keep us from collapsing under the weight of all the doing.  The majority of us don’t use these gifts to create the life we desire.  We don’t build in what is best or even good for us and make everyone and everything else more important and more relevant.  No wonder things don’t look so good for us on any given day and we come to accept scraps of time and attention as our due.

So turn that around.  I hear from mom’s that complain their lives have become focused solely on their children, then their career (if they maintain one), and then their husband/significant other, and then themselves which never happens because there’s never any time left over.  What I point out is that this is not a law of physics that having children means the children take over life.  In fact, there is evidence in my own family that this doesn’t need to be the case.  I have family members who were single mom’s who refused to be stuck at home all the time and dependent on the good will of others.  They got up every day, took the kids with them everywhere they needed to go, continued with their lives, and both they and the children survived just fine.  They are amazing people, to be sure, but also, they prioritized things in a way that meant they continued to have their life and not crumble under the needs of others.

Can’t get to the gym because of the kid’s schedule?  Find a gym that provides daycare and take them with you or if they’re older get them involved in going to the gym.  Make it a family affair.  Can’t find any time for creativity?  Make it mandatory and the rest of the family will either find other things to do or join you appropriately in the activity.  It’s amazing how flexible human beings can be when they meet up with a strong boundary.  Reprioritize so that you come first and things will start moving in that direction.  I mean, you’ve already tried it the other way so you can always go back to being last…