John Asked…
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A dear reader and friend in my coaching community, John, asked, “Carolyn, how do you balance healthy self-interest with the need to be fully present for those you care about?”
The question surfaced after I shared with him how privileged I felt to have my family visit for two weeks in Lake Tahoe—the paradise I call home. At the same time, I felt conflicted because while they were on vacation, I was still working, parenting, training, maintaining a home, and upholding all the other responsibilities of everyday life. I often felt like I was short-changing my family by not joining them for the kinds of activities we usually engage in when on holiday.
Somehow, wherever I was, I felt I should be somewhere else.
When I shared this with John, he reminded me that this conflicted state is the constant and everyday reality for many people. And then came his powerful question.
In response, I have a few strategies to share—with John and you—not because I’ve figured it all out perfectly (as evidenced by the experience I shared above), but because, for the most part, I’ve figured it out sufficiently to have shifted the overall feeling of my life from one of chasing and doing to one of being and receiving.
The shifts I’ve made—and continue to reinforce daily—are both mental and tactical.
The most profound shift is related to my mindset.
- I do the necessary work to redefine success, which, for so long in my life, meant doing, creating, and having more, but now it means doing, having, and creating less but better.
- I’ve shifted from trying to please as many people as possible to pleasing a few at a time but showing up fully present.
- I constantly remind myself of the advice I give to the young women I coach when they express a desire to “have it all” in life: “You can have it all. Just not all at the same time.”
But many of us don’t even know what the “all” is that we want. This lack of clarity can lead us to chase hollow goals rather than pursue those goals that align with our life values. The work of determining what matters most is a fundamental pillar of living a purpose-driven and fulfilling life, and if you haven’t done that work yet, you can begin here.
Once you’ve done the basic—and arguably most important—work, you’ve probably already removed certain commitments from your calendar. Even so, most of us are blessed with extraordinarily full lives that require consistent deposits into at least four essential buckets. For me, those four Life Buckets are: Parenting, Coaching, Relationships, and Health/Wellness.
Anything that doesn’t count as a deposit into one of these buckets becomes a Gracious No in my life, and must in yours as well.
But how do you balance the rest?
The next step—after determining what we are letting go of or saying yes to sparingly—is deciding on our non-starters.
These are the events that go in your calendar and get honored unless there’s a full-on emergency.
For me, non-starters include client sessions, doctor appointments, and any events, invitations, or dates I’ve already said “yes” to.
This step crucially serves as a forcing function for several other productivity and, frankly, “being a good person” practices. When I know that once something goes into my calendar, I have to honor it even if, closer to the date, I don’t feel like doing so, I’m forced to:
- Think twice (or ten times) before saying yes to an invitation.
- Choose my clients carefully, knowing we will be living on each other’s calendars for many months.
- Build my life (and my character) based on my goals, not my feelings.
- Become a ruthless prioritizer.
This last practice, ruthless prioritizing, is the one most of us trip over. We believe that prioritizing means acknowledging that one thing is more important than others. In essence, this definition is true, but when it comes to using prioritization as a life integration tool, I define it differently.
I invite you to examine all your Life Buckets and the actions they include. We start with the assumption that you’re not spending even one minute of your day taking actions that don’t count as a deposit in at least one of your Life Buckets.
You’ll find that everything is a priority, but not all at the same time, and not all equally.
The goal is that, over time (not overnight), you will have plenty of time, within a week, if not every single day, to focus your attention and actions on making deposits into these buckets.
Please understand that if you live a life “by design” as I invite you to do through these practices, you will very rarely have to deal with urgent situations. Those amongst us who seem to just go from putting out one fire to another are not using this system. They are using the opposite system: yes to everything, the more the better, busy means productive, and I need to be needed. And the biggest lie: exhaustion means I’m a good person!
But sometimes, regardless of how consciously we manage our time, the important can still become urgent, and this is when we need to have a clear understanding of our priorities. To get there, we must answer the question:
“If out of all the things/people that matter to you (these will be the contents of your Life Buckets), you were limited to only five things (on the metaphorical Titanic), what would you take with you?”
This exercise will quickly identify the order of your priorities.
The key is not to intellectualize the practice. Let yourself, and your heart, decide the order of your priorities, and don’t judge yourself if your dog shows up higher on the list than some other things/people that “should” be your priority.
And this, my friends, is why I won’t be sharing my list with you. But you are welcome to share yours with me. No judgement.
Now that you have an honest understanding of what your priorities are vs. what society tells you they should be, you have a framework for how to make decisions when you're faced with an urgent situation. You will prioritize in the order you have identified ahead of time, knowing that there is always a trade-off.
That, of course, is life.
