- All The Joyful Things
- Posts
- January 16, 2024
Hello friends,
While I really like how SMART goals can help me develop and stick to a plan, sometimes I get frustrated when things don’t go as I pictured. That is why I think it is helpful to take a few minutes and think about what are your priorities.
There are some days when you do have to chose, when your energy level or health or time means it just isn’t possible to do everything you were hoping to. I think reflecting on our priorities and the motivation behind our goals can help us make decisions in those moments that we are happy with, even when we might be disappointed that things didn’t go as we planned.
Take 5-15 minutes and write about
What are your priorities?
My number one priority is my health. I need to be precious and careful with my energy. In some ways I feel lucky that my body is now so expressive when it comes to my health. I struggle with mindfulness and delayed gratification, so feeling immediate consequences for choices that impact my health makes it a lot easier to make choices that are better for me, whether they are choices about what I eat or how much pressure I put myself under or what I spend my day doing.
My second priority is my arts practice. I have not been prioritizing this in my actions as much as I’d like. I need to think about what I can shift to make my feelings about this priority line up with my actions. That being said, I am making progress here too. Perhaps I’m falling into a bit of a productivity/ambition trap, where I am conflating feeling like I am not achieving enough in this category with thinking I’m not doing enough. I do think it is a bit of both though. I want to spend more time and energy on this. I can clean and tidy when I’m tired, but I can’t write effectively when I’m tired.
Why is it so hard to have our actions line up with our priorities? I suspect once again that the solution has to do with more mindfulness.
I hope reflecting on your priorities and how to be flexible with them allows you to have more patience and compassion with yourself. Just because the path doesn't look like how you picture doesn't mean you aren't making progress.
Your friend,
Laura