Are You Living Your Priorities?

1.  What is the most important area of your life now, the area in which you want to spend the largest amount of your emotional energy (i.e., the energy that it takes to plan, prepare, and follow through)?

• Is this your work life? Are you building a career or finishing school and need to concentrate on this?
• Is it your family, a new relationship, or managing your home?
• Is it another personal goal that is most important now?
• Are you happy about how you spend your emotional energy?
• Do you need to adjust it?
• If you do, where could you spend less emotional time?
• Where do you want to spend more emotional time?

2.  Where do you spend most of your physical energy? Is this at work, at home, in school, or on hobbies?

• Is this satisfying for you, or do you need to make a change here? What could you do with less physical energy and what could you do with more?
• How much energy, both emotional and physical, have you allotted for your own personal relaxation, hobbies, or friends?

3.  Remember what you did last weekend. (If for some reason that was not a representative weekend, think of another recent one.) Write down your major activities and how much money and time they took.

• Was this a good balance for you?
• If you could change this weekend, what changes would you make, keeping in mind the responsibilities that you have?
• What is your most important free-time activity? Is it seeing friends, reading, cooking, skiing, something else?
• How much of your time do you allow for this? Is it enough?

4.  If you realize that you are not spending time the way you would like to, ask yourself:

• What gets in the way?
• Is there a belief that you should not take care of yourself or you don’t deserve to have your priorities honored?
• Do you feel selfish or unentitled if you do?
• Is this an internalized voice you can identify?
• Are you unsure of what you would like to do? When you ask yourself, what do you hear?
• Can you hear your resilient voice speaking and guiding you?
• Are there too many demands on you? Why is this?
• Can you use your resilient voice to change these?
• Is there something stopping you? Can you identify whose voice this is?
• Does this need an adjustment? What would you have to give up to have more time for your priorities? What would happen if you did?
• Does your life represent your values, your goals? Why or why not? What changes need to occur to bring your life into line with your values?

Remember that your priorities are important enough for you to work to achieve them. Remember, that they will change at different points in your life and you should be ready to make the changes you need to accommodate them.