Prioritising and making sure you put first things first
How easy do you find it to work out what your priorities are? Prioritising and making sure your are putting first things first is not always as easy or simple to work out as you think it would be.
Of course your children and partner are the key players in your life, but sometimes we can find ourselves in conflict with what we want to do and what we have to do. Lots of stuff pulling at our time which leaves us feeling muddled, stressed and maybe a little unfulfilled in certain areas of our life.
Worse than that we can start feeling resentful that actually the stuff pulling at our time is all about what needs to be done rather than the things we aspire to do either in our home or work-life.
This can lead to internal conflicts between our home life, work or any longer term goals or ambitions we may aspire to. And if we are not careful we can feel like we are never managing to complete any of our goals or aspirations. Instead we are just constantly fire fighting.
Why this can turn into failure
This can then often lead to a sense of feeling overwhelmed, even that we are a bit of a failure which is of course absolute rubbish. After all how can someone be a failure at anything they are trying to achieve if they have not thought through any defined goals as to what, when and how they are going achieve them.
Work out what your goals are
If this strikes a bit of cord with you then try doing the following. Write down in your diary or record in your electronic calendar your goals, or aspirations if the word goals feels you with dread.
Make them realistic and work out the actions and time you will need to achieve them. Do these goals sit well with your personal priorities in your life? It is important that they do – because if your priorities and goals or aspirations are not in alignment and heading metaphorically in the the same direction you are unlikely to achieve them.
Once you are happy that your goals are realistic – and you know what actions you need to take to achieve them this can then become your master plan of where you want to head in life.
Circumstances and priorities can change
Your circumstances or priorities may change, but having a master plan is like having a map when you go on a long car journey. If you don’t know where you are going or when you are likely to get there you are probably going to get lost or just go round in circles.
Defining your goals will help you to prioritise what is the most important thing you need to do right now. Writing them down somewhere you can review them will really help to stop the muddled thinking, a great deal of guilt and sharpen your focus on what you want to achieve given your personal circumstances.
Your goals will act as a guide, a check that you are on the right road and help you take a long-term view of situations rather than focusing just on the here and now and help you work out on a day-to-day basis exactly what your priorities are right now.
