Happy Holidays

Today’s Topic: Setting Priorities 

Your priorities come from your values. When you look at it another way, when you look at where you spend your time, that is what you value. The problem is that sometimes your time and your values don’t match. You may find yourself devoting time to things that don’t reflect your true values.

Your values are ideas that are important to you. Your values drive your life. When your decisions and actions don’t line up with your values, you feel disconnected, misaligned, and stressed.

For example, if family is a high value for you and you end up working 80 hours per week and don’t spend time with your family, you will some stress because you are disconnected from what you highly value.

When I reflect on my own life, I remember I had a disconnect when I was traveling a lot for work. I sometimes flew more than once with overnights in a week and I had little kids.  I felt I  was missing out on things in my kids lives. I realized it wasn’t worth it to me and I changed my career. I started my own company ten years ago to do what I loved and gain control over my schedule.

If you are struggling with setting priorities in your schedule, it’s likely connected to conflict with your values. 

Though there are many techniques, lists, quizzes, and tests out there to help you flush out your values (just google the word values), you can start doing the work using some journal questions:

What makes you happy? What makes you feel like you are living a life of purpose? If you strip away the every day busy-ness, what feels like it is most important?

Some examples of values are:

Family, Achievement, Self-Awareness, Spirituality, Freedom, Independence, Generosity, Learning, and Community.

If you start researching values, you can even find lists with over 400 values and then see what feels like you. Every value that you like and appreciate is obviously not your highest value. Your most important top three to ten values are where you want to set your priorities.

When you understand your values and how your time fits with your priorities, decision making becomes easier.

One of my regular questions I like to ask myself is, “Does this feel like me? Does this feel like the person I want to be?” If not, I don’t do it.

When I create marketing materials for my business, I ask the question, “Does this sound like me? Does this line up with my values?”

I also like the question, “How can I make this more fun and easy?”

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Note: Today is Day 12 of 12 Days of Christmas on my blog. This has become an annual tradition and I love doing it. . On December 23, I will be announcing a $50 Amazon gift card winner based on all of the comments on the blog between Dec 5 and Dec 17. You will be entered one time for each comment. You could be entered in the drawing up to 12 times.

I would love to hear your thoughts, please comment below.

Sheri Kaye Hoff

Coach, Trainer, and Author, Sheri Kaye Hoff, is a Business Coach known for inspiring massive action and a catalyst for personal and business growth, joy, and profits in a way that is fun, relaxing, and fulfilling, Sheri inspires people to do the work they love and make more money. Sheri helps business owners and professionals to relax into success. She uses both spiritual and practical techniques to obliterate blocks and create dramatic change. She is a business, leadership, happiness, and inner game expert. She has overcome nearly dying, and the loss of her brother at an early age. She has made it her life mission to discover the keys to happiness and success and then share them with her clients and community. Learn More About Sheri