There are so many things we can want in life - success, achieving a qualification, career development, financial security, feeling happy, positive relationships with others……….the list is endless and can feel quite mind boggling.

Do you ever ask yourself “What’s important to me in my life?”

I have learned that if I don’t ask myself this question at regular intervals, I start to very quickly get caught up in other people’s issues, or start to feel totally frustrated that I just don’t have enough time or energy to achieve everything I want to do. Or, I start projects that I actually don’t have the right or enough skills to achieve or complete. And following this, I become demoralised as I realise I am getting nowhere with my great exciting ideas and plans!

Can you relate to any of these examples? I certainly don’t enjoy feeling like or experiencing any of them. Life begins to feel like a fast moving seesaw with no balancing axis in the middle. And it’s definitely not a healthy way to live - emotionally, psychologically and physically.

So, here is an exercise I take myself through whenever I realise I am back on that seesaw. You might find this helpful as well, to regain and maintain balance whilst you are moving through your life and deciding what it is you want that life to be.

Firstly:

I compile a list of all the things I want in my life. What goes into my list will depend on which junction I am at at the time. I find it useful to structure my list into various categories. For example, Health, Financial, Home, Relationships, Career, etc. Then I just write down everything I want under each category.

Secondly:

It is the next step that makes or breaks this exercise - the reality check.

Working through the list again, decide against each item how important it is in your life (see, I’m expecting you think this will be a useful exercise and that you have or are in the process of compiling your own!). You might find it useful to apply a grading scale to help you decide the level of importance, e.g., 1= extremely important, 5= minor importance.

As you complete this part of the exercise, you may even find some items can be struck off your list altogether, as they just aren’t as important as you first thought. I can tell you, it certainly makes the prospect of achieving all those things you want in life a lot less daunting and out of reach, as your list becomes more manageable.

For this exercise to work, you need to be really honest with and realistic about yourself. If there are any things on your list that are important but not necessarily right now, then transfer these to a separate list, a place where you can revisit them at a later time and start setting some longer-term goals and action steps around them. See, your list has become that much more manageable again. The other part of being realistic is being honest that the items you have on your list are actually within your abilities to achieve. There’s no problem with wanting to earn a million dollars in a year - are you in a position to achieve this? Have you got a plan in place? How will you do this?

A want list is your starting point. Asking “what’s important?” helps you to then establish the priorities and identify the things that will make a difference for you and are realistic. Prioritising as an exercise is a helpful method for focusing on what is really important and where you are going to direct your time and energy to get the best results.

There is much more to creating the life you want, of course. This is one idea of many that might just prompt you to explore other strategies and ideas for how you can make changes or keep working on the things that you want in life.

Asking the question “What’s Important?” is a core theme in my e-book “Dare To Be You and Create the Life You Want”. Click here for a preview of the Introductory Chapter and visit my Positively Shopping Guide to purchase your own copy.

 If you asked someone who is pretty significant in your life to describe you, what do you think they would say? Do you think you let them really know you, for them to be able to come up with an accurate description? How about if I asked you to describe yourself? Could you? What would you say? What would you focus on?

Human beings are so complex and multi-faceted. I think this task (of describing ourselves) can be quite difficult for a lot of us. Having said that, making a conscious effort to really get to know ourselves can open many positive doors to feelings and experiences we never dreamed of.

Here’s what I mean. I recently helped a colleague recognise their style of time management - yes, we have our own styles of managing use of time - and how they could use parts of this to their advantage; for example, become more organized and a better planner, as well as then change other aspects of their time management habits.

The most satisfying outcome from our conversations was the colleague’s relief that their time management skills were pretty normal and a reflection of their natural learning style and personality. By reducing the separation between the self (our personality, values, etc) and the tasks or concepts we come in contact with in our daily life, you can find a situation becomes less daunting or less difficult because you know why you behave or respond to that situation more clearly now.

Maybe that’s not the best example, but I want to focus on practical, everyday things that really don’t seem to have much obvious connection to our self-knowledge and the importance of knowing ourselves, but in actual fact do.

If you know why you find yourself rushing to complete a task or project when in reality you had at least four weeks say to complete this task, you can feel much calmer about this, because you know the task will get done. Your learning style dictates that you work best when under a time pressure. For others of us, completing a task step by step over the period of time available is what will work best. One isn’t better than the other - unless of course you experience a great deal of stress by leaving things to the last minute and would like to change this.

You see, I have accepted that my most productive time on a project or task occurs when I leave things to the last minute. I don’t do this with everything in my life, but quite often! Other people would panic and be in complete stress mode if they approached tasks this way, because it is not their style.

Get to know who you are, what your preferences are, how you tend to deal with people or approach problems. We are all different afterall, and knowing who we are can make a huge difference in our lives.

My Card Game “Positive Thinking” is a fantastic and fun way for you to get to know yourself and review your thinking about who you are and where you want to be in life. Read more about this fabulous product…….