Priorities - Are your Actions in Alignment?

We live in a world where we want everything at once, often without putting in the work, and our initial reaction is to complain when we don’t have said thing. Interestingly, we’re often not even aware that our actions don’t align with our priorities, and this is usually due to a lack of clarity around our priorities in the first place. In order to be clear about our priorities, we need to really be honest with ourselves about the time and effort we’re willing to put in for each competing priority.  Conversely, there is another end of the priorities spectrum, where we’re willing to sacrifice everything for one goal and the other areas of our lives suffer. For long-term success and happiness, I don’t believe in either approach: putting all our proverbial priority-eggs in one basket or having such scattered and unclear priorities that we don’t accomplish anything.

This topic has been swirling around my head since my Crossfit competition a few weeks ago, as I was frustrated about my performance in a particular movement (toes to bar). Upon reflection and a conversation with a friend, I realized that felt the same way about several other movements I don’t excel at. My initial reaction has been to play the victim and relish in my inability to be successful right off the bat, but when I reflected on the consistent work and effort I had put in to improve upon these skills and movements, it was dismal.  This dismal effort is fine if improving upon these skills isn’t a priority for me, but then I need to accept the outcome. I can’t have it both ways.

I lived on the opposite end of the spectrum with my food and body obsession for years, as I sacrificed almost every other area of my life as a result. My priority was my appearance and my subconscious self-obsession, and this was accurately reflected when looking at the other areas of my life. I isolated myself from friends and family, I turned down parties and other social occasions in favor of my strict regimen, and I neglected my health, even when my body was showing me clear signs of desperation.  My relationships, my happiness and growth as a person, my health, and my life experiences all suffered as a result of my body obsession. I’m not here to tell anyone that living their life in this way is wrong, and in some professions or in preparation for competitions these sacrifices may be necessary, but prioritizing my life in this way wasn’t right for me. And it took a long time to arrive at this conclusion.

It’s really easy to float through life without any clear picture of what is actually important to us, but this can also be very chaotic and unfulfilling, as our actions, mindset, and lives as a whole will be a reflection of this. We say we want to improve our health and lose some weight, but we actually prefer wings and beer every night in lieu of the gym and healthy meals. We say we want to be in a committed relationship, but we’re not willing to make the effort and put ourselves out there. We say we want to improve our toes to bar or double-unders (personal tidbit here), but we’re not staying after class to practice. We say we want to save money to travel, but frivolously spend our money on things we don’t need. We say we want to free ourselves of our food and body obsession, but we’re not willing to accept that our bodies may change as a result. To be clear, none of these priorities is incorrect, and they’ll ebb and flow throughout our lives, but we need to solidify what is actually important enough to act on. And then we must accept what we’re sacrificing as a result.

In order to effectively determine our priorities and how we can align our actions accordingly, I recommend the following:

1.     Make a list of everything that is important to you and any related goals. Be as detailed as possible here. For example, instead of saying “relationships” or “my performance in the gym,” list the relationships that are most important to you or the specific movements/skills you want to improve.

2.     Rank priorities in order of most important to least. This is your initial gut reaction of what you feel is most important, so don’t feel the need to edit right now; that will come later.

3.     Detail the sacrifices required for each priority: these will evolve as you continue to invest in this action or goal, so they’re based on the information we have today. Many of the sacrifices required will only come to light once we begin acting in greater alignment with our priorities and goals, so this information is based on our current assumptions.

4.     Note which priorities are conflicting (i.e. wanting to party but also wanting to lose weight and improve performance in the gym), and rank the conflicting priorities in order of importance. The results of this exercise will likely prompt you to rearrange the list you created in Step 2. Ensure the information gathered in this step is consistent with your listing in Step 2.

5.     Take an inventory of where you’re currently spending your time, and list your priorities accordingly. For example, if I invest most of my free time in socializing with friends and don’t spend any time practicing a hobby I want to improve, then I will list socializing at the top of my list and my hobby at the bottom. Honesty is key here, and bullshitting ourselves won’t do us any favors.

6.     Identify the gaps between what we truly want to prioritize (our list from step 2) and where we’re spending our time (step 5). Everyone, myself included, is surprised by the dissonance between our actions and priorities when we finally utilize some awareness, so you should expect there to be some misalignment.  We may even find that we spend a lot of time and energy on things that aren’t on our list of priorities at all.  Just consider it a starting point!

7.     Develop an action plan: Oftentimes, simply bringing awareness to the lack of alignment between our actions and goals is a sufficient impetus for change, but the more detailed we can be, the better. For each priority, determine your plan of action that is tailored to you and your lifestyle. You may only have 10-15 minutes after your Crossfit or yoga class to work on skills, while someone else has a full hour. This is about finding what works best for YOU, not your friend.

8.     Modify based on real-time data and feedback. Determine whether you truly want to spend your time and energy differently based on feedback from implementing your plan. This will become clearer once you start spending your time and energy on the items at the top of your list, as you may find that you don’t in fact want to sacrifice for said priority/goal.  And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s a great thing to discover the difference between what we think we want and what we actually want.

Using myself and my priorities as an example, I told myself a few months ago that I wanted to buckle down and focus on improving my double-unders. This has been a loose goal of mine ever since joining crossfit, but it crept up on my list of priorities when I realized there was a chance I would be required to do them (or at least attempt to) during the team competition I recently completed in. I decided to spend 10 minutes before or after class working on this movement, but I wasn’t willing to spend any additional time.  I became more comfortable with them as a result, but I still have a long way to go.  Would I have seen greater improvement had I spent 30 minutes a day working on them? Absolutely. But I decided to accept the outcome of 10 minutes a few times per week, as other priorities like work and my relationships are more important right now. I had to adjust my expectations according to my priorities and actions, and it really made the end result quite easy to accept.  Would I have liked to see this movement improve drastically? Yes. Would I have been willing to experience greater improvement at the expense of my work and relationships? No. Acting like the victim and complaining about my marginal improvements doesn’t serve me, and conversely, expecting myself to be great at everything doesn’t either.  We all have to pick our choose our priority battles.

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

-       Mahatma Gandhi

I wholeheartedly believe in these words, and if we really tune in and bring awareness to the alignment (or lack thereof) of our thoughts, words, and actions, we can identify where and when we need to adjust. Deep down, we know when one of these elements is out of alignment, but we usually resort to pushing through and succumbing to what is expected of us, the pressure of perfection, popular opinion, or the victim mentality. And that can dangerously become our normal; our baseline. But that’s a passive way of showing up in this world, and we can be much more impactful when we assume responsibility and take action. Do you need to show yourself some grace and stop expecting yourself to excel at everything? Or do you need to stop blaming the outside world for your own lack of responsibility and action?  It's likely a combination of both. Regardless of the circumstance, I have found that realigning actions with priorities results in significantly less stress.

This isn’t intended to make us feel like failures, but rather it can provide a great sense of relief when we finally admit what isn’t really a priority for us. I have found that life is so much more enjoyable when my priorities, actions, and thoughts are in alignment. And we might discover that some of the things we thought we wanted to prioritize aren’t really worth the sacrifices. Everyone wants the six-pack, but are we really willing to sacrifice all the things it takes to get one? There isn’t a right or wrong answer, but it’s important to find the right answer for you.

The Myth of Perfection and How to Challenge our Fear of Failure

Within the last month, I have experienced a few public moments of failure that sent me into a tailspin of self-doubt and a serious ego-trip. One was in a team CrossFit competition a few weeks ago when I didn’t perform as well as I had anticipated during one of the movements. The other was last week, when I made a few mistakes during a presentation to business leaders in my corporate job. Now that I’ve had some time to process those events and talk to a few people about my reactions to them, I’m able to reflect on these opportunities for growth and more clearly understand my responses to them.

It has also become quite clear that we all struggle with this on some level.  After divulging my own stories, several of my friends and family members have subsequently shared their own about the need to be perceived as perfect, and most of them revealed that they either avoid the situations altogether or they self-sabotage so they don’t have to publicly display their “imperfection.”  For example, one friend purposely performed poorly during soccer tryouts her senior year of high school, because the stakes were so much higher, and she didn’t want to fail according to the higher standard.  She would rather not play at all than have to demonstrate that she wasn’t the best. Another is currently afraid to quit a job she hates, because the people in her social circle might view her as a failure in the difficult industry she’s in.  Another avoids asking out the girls he’s interested in, because he assumes he’ll be perceived as just another guy hitting on them and will be rejected. Another is hustling so hard to achieve the perfect body and can’t reveal that to others, because she needs her self-image to be perceived as confident and effortless. All of us are plagued by the need to be perceived as perfect in some way.

I really don’t enjoy not being good at things, and I don’t know anyone who does. So many of us have been programmed to believe that we must be perfect or we’re not enough.  Based on my conversations with others, the reason behind this commonly held belief varies based on each person’s specific upbringing, but the responses are very similar. We’re all ashamed to be seen as less than perfect, and our initial reaction is to avoid situations that might reveal our shortcomings.

Using my own recent experiences as examples, I had no interest in competing in the team CrossFit competition, because I knew there would be movements in the workouts I don’t do well and some I simply can’t do.  In regards to my presentation, I have never been a fan of public speaking, and I have never sought out an opportunity to do so. Despite receiving positive feedback after most of my presentations and public speaking engagements, I always get nervous before, and I can’t stand the idea of others potentially seeing those nerves (they usually can’t, but last week they did). Maintaining an image of limited shortcomings seems preferable to actually living my life and experiencing “failure.”  At least this is the mindset I had until a few years ago, and it clearly still needs a lot more work.

Now that the initial sting of publicly displaying a few of my many weaknesses (“opportunities for development,” as we call them in the workplace) has worn off, I am able to understand that my initial reaction of never wanting to put myself in those situations again is not the right approach. In fact, it’s a terrible one. Rather, we can all do the following when faced with these situations:

1.     Talk about our fears, insecurities, shortcomings, stories of rejection, etc. with people we trust. We connect with these parts of each other, not images of perfection. It simply doesn’t exist, so how can anyone resonate with it?  As Brene Brown states, shame needs secrecy and silence to survive, so simply saying these things out loud is immensely helpful. Every time I have shared my personal struggles and fears around failure, the other person has a very similar story, and they certainly have experienced almost identical feelings. One of the great benefits of talking openly about insecurities is the ability for other people to connect with us in a deeper way, and it might be the invitation they’ve been looking for to openly discuss their own struggles too. 

2.     Consider the worst-case scenario: when we’re faced with a situation where failure is an option, think of the worst-case scenario. Imagine yourself failing, being rejected, showing embarrassment, whatever the case may be. And ask yourself if you can survive. I usually get a pit in my stomach at the thought of one of those outcomes, but yes, I will always survive. Chances are you will too.

3.     Intentionally put ourselves into more situations that will require us to face these fears: Once we have determined that we will in fact survive the situation, we need to force ourselves to do the thing that may result in failure. This has been the biggest game-changer for me, because acting in spite of our fears reinforces the belief in ourselves that we can do the things we’re afraid of. Especially when I fail and get right back at it. This creates a positive feedback loop, and the momentum is huge!  It’s a great way to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. 

Staying in our comfort zones and our neat little boxes of what we excel at makes for a really boring and stale life. It's the easy way out, it protects our egos, and it's comfortable, but it's also a sure way to keep us stagnant without any growth.  We'll never reach the level of success we ultimately want if we're paralyzed by our fear of failure or if we don’t know how to continue moving forward despite those outcomes. Additionally, we're doing everyone else around us a serious disservice if we're not willing to show our flaws and the reality of simply being human.  We can't connect with each other's images of perfection, because they're simply not real.

Imagine what would be possible if we all collectively dropped our need to be perceived as perfect. We can’t control others, but we can commit to shattering our own perfected image. A life of imperfect adventure sounds like a hell of a lot more fun to me.

Falling in Love with the Process – The Long Game

Whenever we begin a new endeavor related to health, fitness, career, relationships, or personal development, it’s so easy to simply focus on the point of “arrival” and where we believe we need to be.  Having a goal in mind is certainly important, but the process along the way is where the magic happens.  This is where we grow and learn about ourselves, about others, identify our strengths and areas for improvement, and learn how to pivot when things don’t go according to plan.  Which is usually the case. After all, we don’t actually have control over the end result, only our actions and our attitudes.

If we really think about it, the end goal or point of arrival is an arbitrary concept we have in our minds, and we feel as though the work will suddenly cease to exist once we get there.  “If I can just get there, then everything in my life will fall into place.” We work hard to lose weight and get the body we’ve always wanted, and then what?  We have to continue to put in the work to maintain it.  We want the promotion or to start your own business?  Once we get it, we have to work just as hard, if not harder, to stay there.  We want the dream relationship or family?  We have to consistently put in the work to grow together and independently while navigating curveballs in life.  We want to cultivate new meaningful friendships?  We have to continue to show up and put in the effort once the relationships have been established.  If we’re not in love with the process, which is actually where we spend 99.9% of our time in life, then we’re going to be constantly disappointed and focused on the next best thing.

I’ve read and listened to this concept SO many times, but it didn’t really click for me until I found myself wrapped up in starting my own business and needing to reach a certain level of success by X amount of time. And then it dawned on me: what happens when I get there?  I still have to show up in the same way I am now, with hard work and dedication.  Additionally, what am I supposed to do with all of my time until I reach that point, whenever it may be?  Am I going to be ungrateful for my life now until I reach that point, waiting for the days to tick by?  Hell no.  I’m going to focus on what I can do today and learn as much as I can about my work and myself and enjoy the shit out of the process along the way. 

This concept applies so distinctly to goals with our bodies.  We get so attached to reaching a certain aesthetic, only to realize that nothing outside of looking different has actually changed. And now we’re tasked with maintaining a body we may have obtained through hatred, loneliness, low self-esteem, or any other negative emotion. If we’re making changes to our bodies via a miserable process, mentally or physically, then not only are we not going to be able to maintain the results, but we’re going to be just as miserable internally, if not more so, once it’s all said and done. A better approach that is more sustainable and enjoyable is as follows:

1.     Identify what you want to learn and/or gain throughout the process: These items should not be related to anything outside of our control or based on an outcome (i.e. opinions of others, fitting into a dress size, achieving a PR at the gym, etc.) Rather, these need to be intrinsic motivators or factors we enjoy about the actual process. Examples include learning more about our relationship with food, making ourselves uncomfortable in workouts and pushing last limiting beliefs, demonstrating self-respect by putting our well-being first, or simply committing to a challenge.

2.     Detail why the items in Step One are important: becoming clear on the benefits we will experience as a result of the items in Step One is important, otherwise we won’t be able to connect the short-term discomfort we’re bound to experience to the long-term benefits. For example, if I am journaling and practicing awareness with my eating habits because I want to improve and gain a better understanding of my relationship with food, then I will clearly explain via journaling why increasing my awareness of this relationship is important to me. In my case, I wanted to improve my relationship with food because I wanted to free up my time and energy for things I find more important in my life.  Essentially, I wanted freedom from the obsession, and that became my north star when I started to experience doubt, laziness, or discomfort during the process.

3.     Detach from the Outcome: While striving for a specific outcome can certainly be motivating, the outcome is usually outside of our realm of control.  And failing to achieve said outcome can be a source of frustration, self-criticism, and eventually giving up.  We can only control our mindset and our efforts through action, so there is great freedom is letting the rest go. By releasing the outcome and simply focusing on the process, we remove any reason for “giving up,” as we can’t actually fail when the process never ends and we continue to put one foot in front of the other.

4.     Revisit Steps One and Two Over and Over Again: We need to remind ourselves why the process is important to us. It’s easy to lose sight of what we gain throughout the process, as changes and shifts are usually small and often unnoticeable, in addition to them being downright unenjoyable at times.  The process is where the growth happens, and in my experience, growth is uncomfortable 90% of the time (Jessie statistics). So, we need to constantly revisit the details in Steps One and Two.

5.     Re-do Steps One and Two When Goals and Priorities Shift: What we want to learn and gain throughout a particular process is inevitably going to shift at some point. This can be due to shift in priorities, changing interests, or simply needing an additional challenge after experiencing sufficient growth. When motivation starts to wane, even after revisiting the details of Steps One and Two, then it might be time to revise those details.

This mindset is relevant to aspects of life, including physical or aesthetic goals, relationships, career, and personal development.  Want to develop a better relationship with food and your body image?  Or build muscle?  Or work on your relationship with a friend or family member?  Or get promoted at work? Or improve something about yourself? All of these things take time, and the moment we achieve them is simply that: a brief moment in time.  And then we’re on to chasing the next shiny object.  We can’t neglect the journey while in pursuit of our dreams, or we’re essentially missing out on life itself.  While it’s still very much a work in progress for me, I’ve experienced a huge sense of relief and so much more enjoyment from the moment I decided to start relaxing into the process of life and focus on what I can control: my effort and my attitude.