New Year – Life Priorities

It is that time of year again.  As that clock ticks down toward midnight on New Years Eve we all get excited with feelings of hope for what the tomorrow will bring.  It brings a chance for a fresh start.

So many people decide to make changes in their lives. Some have small changes and others have huge changes they want to make.  Resolutions fly around everywhere.

Unfortunately, within a few days or weeks, most of those resolutions have been given up.  Many people that choose not to make resolutions for the new year probably do not because they feel they have failed at resolutions so many times in the past.

This year, instead of making resolutions or giving up on resolutions, I challenge you to try something new that may help you really make those changes.  There is not one method or system that will work for everyone.  But there are a few simple things that everyone can do that will help them to figure out and successfully implement their individual plans for personal improvement.

The first thing each and every one of us can do is to determine our true priorities and write them down.

Priorities

When we talk about setting our priorities, what we mean is that we are identifying the things that matter most to us.  We are identifying the small number of things that we want to focus on. A priority is simply an item that will get our attention. A focus item.

Because we can have a different focus or priority set for the hour, day, week, or much longer, we can have all kinds of priorities. Time to get more specific.

Life Priorities

When we think to ourselves that we need to get our priorities straight, it is because we have spent too much time with our focus on things that do not really matter and little time on the things that matter most to us.  Our everyday priorities do not match what we hold dear in the big picture.

The things that should have the most importance in the big picture for you are the things that you live for most. To keep from talking in circles and getting all of us confused I will call them Life Priorities.

Take a moment to list your life priorities. You may have only one, you may have a lot.  Only you can decide.  Once you have them down, try to rank them in order of importance to you.

Everyone’s list will look a little different and they will all evolve and change over time.  Right now my list includes God, my immediate family, my extended family and friends, and then personal expression and creativity. I am at a point in my life where I am very family and home oriented, but also need a personal outlet (which ultimately benefits all of us).

Clarification

Now look at your list and see if you can be more specific. Other things in my life fall far behind the above items at the moment or are merely things that are done to benefit my real priorities. Some of the things on your list may actually be functions to bigger priorities, too. For example, my career is important to me, but only because it helps provide for my family and it is a way to express myself creatively. I do not include it in my life priorities.  In my twenties if someone had asked me to list my priorities, career would have been high on my list. Looking back with hopefully wiser eyes a career was a way to achieve personal independence and to seek (and be secure in) my identity.  Personal independence and identity would have been more true answers at that time in my life.

Usually the reason our normal day to day priorities do not match our true life priorities is because we take time to manage our day to day activities without ever thinking about their intended role. Let me take the career example above again. If I considered career as a life priority instead of a function to them, I would be more likely to sacrifice things that are really important to me in the name of my career.  It would be easy for me to take a promotion or that big job for career advancement. By defining the real purpose career fulfills to my life priorities I am more equipped to make matching career decisions. I can determine if the additional income is helping to support the needs of my family or if there is a higher cost not worth the additional financial gains. In my twenties I could have given thought about if the promotion would help me be any more financially independent.  I could have asked myself if it would help me develop my identity or would the time demands prevent me from exploring my other interests. And if career had been on my life priority list equally or above family,  that would have helped make the decisions, too.

Be True To Yourself

One last thing. It is important that you are honest with yourself when making your list.  Do not write down items based on the standards of others or what you think your priorities should be.  Write down the things that are genuinely most important to you.

And now that you have them all written down, ranked and clarified, consider writing them again on a pretty piece of paper and adding it to your planner or putting somewhere you will see it often.

Want to share your priorities in the comments? I would love to get to know each of you better.

photo credit: Changed priorities ahead sign by Redver