What’s most important to you?

Have you lost sight of things that are most important to you?

Whenever I ask my clients what’s most important to them, they invariably say, “family and friends”. However, their life often does not align with their values. They are too busy working and doing other things that take up their time.

In fact, family and friends become somewhat of a burden. People would complain how annoyed they feel when their kids or partner want attention or how they try to avoid their parents’ phone calls because they’re too needy. Some people even find going out with friends a chore. Everything becomes a time suck. They feel depleted, unhappy, and overstretched.

It’s interesting to me that the very thing we value the most in life, i.e., family and friends, become the very thing we resent the most—what we don’t have time for.

Where have we gone wrong?

Most of us believe that to feel better means we need to “balance” our life more. But you see, this is not possible because life is always fluctuating and thus, impeding demands are everchanging. So, balancing our life is NOT the key to feeling better. All it means is that we are trying to keep more balls in the air, which results in greater stress and depletion.

What we really need to do is prioritize our life; to choose what really matters to us. It is the misalignment and gap between our professed values (what we proclaim to be important) versus our lived values (what we actually do), that lead to burnout and depression. The bigger the gap, the worse we feel. This misalignment is often masked in complaints, as seen above.

When we prioritize (instead of balance), we are bridging the gap between our professed values and lived values. The result is a sense of integrity, happiness, and peace. It may mean letting go of certain opportunities, scaling back on work, saying no to “good things” (a party, additional kids’ activities, etc.), and do less “stuff” that sucks our time.

The goal is to make room for what’s most important to you—to align your professed values with your lived values.

We all have a limited amount of time on earth. How will you spend it? Will you prioritize what you value the most in life (relationships) or fill it with busyness that causes you to resent those who you care about the most. Your choice.