Have you ever asked yourself ‘What are the priorities in my life right now?’, have they ever changed, will they in the future and can you have more than one?
Let’s take a look at why it’s important and how we can straighten them up to move forward with our health goals.
Firstly, let’s look at a few different scenarios regarding prioritisation. An office worker may prioritize financial gain by working long hours, take on more responsibilities or simply work harder than others. Another may prioritise their social life, merely seeing the working hours as a means of funding nights out and social events.
In many cases some people may prioritise two things equally, for example committing to regular gym sessions before work, then working long hours to stay head of their career (prioritising fitness & financial gain).
Over time this could change, for example; an expecting mother may focus on moving away from career advancement and towards preparing care for her newborn. It’s important to ask ‘is career advancement still on the list or just on hold until the newborn reaches a certain age?’
This aspect is extremely important as life is always going to get in the way, and priorities will change. When such events occur, consider what’s important now and what will need to be prioritized in the future.
Lets take a look at priorities in terms of health; but first we need to assess how important they are. Ask yourself the following questions:
1. How important is a healthy diet on a scale of 1 -10? (1 being not at all and 10 being extremely important)
2. How important is regular physical activity on a scale of 1-10? For both of these let’s say you answered 8/10 but it doesn’t reflect your current lifestyle. In others words you think that a healthy diet and exercise are really important, but you currently eat junk food and are relatively sedentary.
So how do we sync the importance of regular exercise and healthy eating to match our current lifestyle?
The key is to PRIORITISE IT, make it part of your everyday life and visualize exactly what it is you want to achieve. If something is on the forefront of your mind, you will start to naturally seek out the opportunities to carry out certain behaviours. To start this process you need to link your priorities to related actions.
For example to be physically active you might start with small steps such as, walking a certain distance during lunch breaks or deciding to take the stairs instead of the lift.If you’re looking at improving your diet you can start off with choosing one day a week where you could cook a healthy meal from scratch or buy a variety of fruits for you to have during the working week.
Over time these small steps will require less focus as you mentally prioritise them with added importance and eventually it becomes part of your lifestyle. This will only happen if you initially make a conscious effort to work towards it.
