The end of the year is coming. It’s that season where we are stretching to the finish line professionally – while simultaneously laying the ground work for what comes next. And our personal lives tend to get fuller too. Holiday celebrations and gatherings. Traveling and hosting. It is a time when we are naturally drawn to sprinting, adding on more responsibilities and generally pushing harder.
But today’s podcast challenges that way of being. It invites you to get clear on what matters most and then align your actions with these priorities. Particularly as we think about the short timeframe between now and the end of the year. We aren’t talking about a laundry list of priorities either. We are talking about what 1 or 2 or maybe 3 things that matter most. That’s it. And that’s enough.
Together, we examine why the time is right to be asking ourselves what matters most, we highlight what tends to get in our way and we offer questions to prompt your own best thinking on how to return to and honor your priorities. You are the only person who can answer what matters most to you. And when you do, you can rally the whole dang world to support you.
Ideas Shared
Why Does This Matter?
Headline: There is an extreme cost to not honoring the important. Glennon says it so well.
Our terrible memo is also why we stay busy with the trivial while the world our children will inherit crumbles. We obsess over our children’s snacks while they rehearse their own deaths in active-shooter drills at school. We agonize over their college prep while the earth melts around them. I cannot imagine that there has ever been a more overparented and underprotected generation. New memo: Here is your baby. Love her at home, at the polls, in the streets. Let everything happen to her. Be near.
-Glennon Doyle, Untamed
5 Big Culprits
These are the things that frequently get in our way of being able to honor what matters most:
- Fear
- Busyness
- Distractions
- Fitness
- Lack of Support
Vision Cycle
The PRS Vision Cycle is shared here as a way to ground the reflection questions that follow.
Reflection Questions
Get Clear
- What matters most by the end of 2022? (Or another meaningful time horizon.)
- Start with yourself: What matters most for me? My leadership? My wellbeing? My integrity? My SELF?
- Then consider the other systems you are a part of: What matters most for my team? My family? My organization? Etc.
Look Back
- What habits or patterns do I have on honoring what matters most?
- How are these habits or patterns working for me?
Right Now
- Am I honoring the thing that matters most right now?
- How is my current doing/seeing/saying/being/feeling aligned or not with what matters most?
Step Forward
- What’s 1 thing I can do today/this week to put me on the path of honoring what matters most?
- Bonus: What’s 1 way you can appreciate what you are doing right now? What’s 1 way that you can accelerate your path right now?
Go Beyond
- What else is possible?
- What is the next thing that could matter most as a result of honoring the present thing that matters most?
- What would help me see with fresh perspective?