How do I Discover my Top 5 priorities?
Priorities: Uncover your Top 5
Why Defining your Top Priorities is Important:
Defining your true top priorities can be life changing. You may be wondering “How?” When you become aware of what truly matters to you, it helps you make important decisions, shows you why you are unhappy in certain areas of your life, and empowers you with self-knowledge and deeper insight. This self- knowledge reveals where you need to change in order to find more fulfillment. Learning what is at the top of your list will make life so much easier. It will help clarify situations by reflecting on your deepest belief system. Where are you putting most of your effort and energy? Is it congruent with your belief system? If a person goes against their deepest priorities; it cannot bring inner happiness and fulfillment because they are going against the grain of their true nature. Knowing your top 5 priorities is a powerful personal growth tool and decision compass.
Has someone else’s priorities influenced you to change?
Each person is a unique human being with an innate nature all of their own. As we get older, we often become out of touch with who we essentially are inside. As children, we are directed to what is right and wrong, what is expected of us and what is considered success. For example, I once had a client who was an amazing athlete. He excelled in many sports. But his family were immigrants and they emphasized making money to live. Therefore, his success in sports was meaningless to them. Their priority was that each member of the family that was old enough should provide for the family. But in evoking this value, they denied his true personality of being a physical competitor. Their priority kept them from seeing the larger picture. This young man ended up getting a sports scholarship to college which increased his earning power tenfold. Luckily, this student followed his dreams. Consequently, this example illustrates how outside pressures can reshape our perspective and discourage us from following our true inner self to appease someone else’s priorities. In the long run,if we go against our grain, we become discontented in life.
Therefore, defining our top 5 priorities in life can help us see where we should be putting our time and effort. It shows us if we have become too focused on one goal and let others slide. It helps us make important decisions that will bring balance and gives us an empowering direction for our life.
When we have misidentified our priories to fit someone else’s needs or the expectation of society; it can cause costly errors in judgment, countless hours of misery and needless worry. I will give you an example from my own life. Before I went to college, I wanted to become a teacher. But everyone I talked to said. “Oh, no, don’t go into teaching. There are no jobs”. So instead, I got my degree in business because there will always be jobs in business. Unfortunately, business was just a job not a career or a passion. My heart belonged to teaching and I have long regretted that decision.
In article 2 of this series, we will give you a list of Priorities and a method for picking out your Top 5.
Resources:
If you find you need someone to help you in this process, you can go to my website at www.supporttalk.com and make an appointment to have me help you. If you would like more information on this subject, you can check into books like Priorities by Elizabeth Stuart-Grimes or The Priority List by David Menasche.
If you have found this article helpful, check out other articles by this author, Define your Values, Focus your Life!, Empower Yourself to Move Forward in Life…..Starting Today, Empowerment, Discover your Potential