Hey all, how are we?
What are your priorities? There is a question we hear often and in many different avenues of life. Our priorities can change on a daily basis and what we make a priority will be very different in our different worlds, home, work, family life, wellbeing etc.
Work is often about prioritising what is the most important, what has the nearest deadline, what will be the most efficient or make the most profit and what will benefit your company or customers the best. It’s almost simple in a work environment to prioritise these things as we learn our roles and often have someone telling us or setting out how we prioritise our workloads.
So what about at home? What is top of the list? Cleanliness, keeping up with the shopping so there is always fresh fruit and veg available, upkeep and DIY, having new furniture, being on trend with your interior design. This is all a much more grey area. Often it’s easier to let some of the things at home slip particularly when you are tired from work and other avenues of your life.
Obviously we need to eat and those mums out there know that we need to take responsibility for making sure our families eat healthily and that there is enough food for them (ha I hear you say if you have boys and constantly run out of everything like we do!) but how often do you find that you will not eat massively well at home as your priority is others and not your own wellbeing? I am guilty of this as are many of my lovely friends.
So about your wellbeing? Your own personal mindfulness? Is this a priority to you at all or do you do what lots of us do and put everyone else above ourselves on the list of priorities and then end up having a mini breakdown when it all gets a bit too much and we haven’t allowed any time for ourselves (this often happens to me in the supermarket!)
I was talking to a lovely friend of mine earlier about priorities. She was saying that there are people in her life who historically she has prioritised because she felt she needed to (some family members, some friends) and that she often found that the people she really wanted to spend her time with went further down the list as the ones she prioritised were the ones who moaned and made life a bit harder if she didn’t prioritise them.
This thought hit me quite hard when I realised I do that and have done for many years. We do so often give more attention to those that shout the loudest as opposed to those who genuinely deserve our time and effort (that can include ourselves!) my friend was saying that she has been making a conscious effort to prioritise her life in a fairer manner and that she was much happier for it.
She said she felt that she had more freedom when prioritising her personal life according to who she wanted to spend time with and put first instead of letting others dictate what she prioritised. She was spending more quality time with her children and not attending so many meet ups with friends who spent all their time moaning and she was making decisions based purely on the happiness of her own family unit.
It felt like a breath of fresh air to me, I am so guilty of prioritising things that in the grand scheme of things should come far down my list. We can still have these things on our list but further down. Would those people notice? Would they care? My friend thought not and felt that her taking more control over her own free time hadn’t been met with much argument as she was being more forthright and happier with her decisions.
I wonder how many of us if we wrote down our lists of priorities in all the areas of our lives would be shocked at how high some things that don’t actually matter all that much at all are. Some things will always remain high but surely we can give ourselves a break with others.
I’m going to try and do this myself this week and see if I can make any tweaks. Even if it’s swapping the order around slightly it could make a big difference!
My friend and I walked along the beach at Whitstable and it was so beautiful, it was a good day for clarity and purpose.
Enjoy your evening you lovely people.
Xx
tiredfromwhitstable 