When we don’t feel like we have any real choices, we can’t set priorities. Everything becomes urgent. It’s a race to survive each day, managing difficult people and situations. Then we collapse into bed at night, exhausted, but glad we made it through, only to wake up and do it all again tomorrow.
I get itchy around my neck just thinking about those days. That was my life, until about five years ago when it all began to change. As I became healthier, gazing inward and owning responsibility for what was mine and letting go of what didn’t belong to me, options opened up that I’d never had before.
Do I want to be in a relationship with this person? Should I speak up in this meeting or is it better to stay quiet? Can I quit this committee if it’s sucking the life out of me, even if they want me to stay?
These kinds of choices didn’t exist for me before, because I was living for other people and not for myself. If a person asked me to do something, my answer was yes, otherwise they might be upset. I believed that my number one goal in life was to be universally adored. The problem was that I did my best to do what everyone else wanted from me and I still ran into a shitload of problems.
Realizing in my counsellor’s office that I could make decisions based on what was right for me completely changed my life. It was pure oxygen where before I was gasping for air. Sure, I had to endure the agony of disappointing others, making a few enemies and learning how to exist in emotional mess, but the price I paid was worth it a million times over because now I had actual choices to make.
After a few years of practicing healthy decision making (and the hard part of communicating it to less-than-enthusiastic people), now I find I’ve graduated to setting priorities. This involves taking an honest look at everything I give my time to and then figuring out what should stay and what must go. This is not easy, for any of us, but it must be done if you are trying to succeed at something.
For most of my life, I pursued the immature fantasy of “having it all”. Now I know that this is impossible and therefore not a worthy goal. I must choose what to invest in. Equally important, I must decide what to let go of. It aches in the centre of my being when I adjust my priorities and discard something I truly love, but in order to pursue my highest goals, these decisions need to be made.
In the last few years, I’ve learned that self-care must come higher on my priority list. This involves rest, leisure, fun, food, exercise and time with friends. For everything to have its place, some activities and relationships can stay and a few must go. I’ve come to understand that this is healthy and mature, albeit painful and scary.
Setting priorities is about assessing risk and reward. What works for a time may not serve us forever, so we have to check in regularly and re-evaluate. I know I still have a lot to learn in this area, but knowing that I have choices is the key to arranging and maintaining my own priorities.
