Ep80_Priority_full
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Adam Gragg: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Decide Your Legacy podcast. I'm your host, Adam Gragg. I was in Florence about two weeks ago, Florence, Italy, and I was working out in the basement and the guy was down there with me, he was Australian, and we got the talking really nice guy and he said he was fascinated by American politics.

And I said, yeah, the wealthiest nation in the world has a lot of internal problems. [00:01:00] Although, you know, I don't get into politics too much, but anyway, I just made a comment. It was kind of banter. And then he said, well, you know, in Australia, I'm not sure if he said Australia, but in my view, wealth is measured differently.

And one of the things he said is, I measure wealth by how well a country prioritizes its elderly. And it really got me thinking. I started thinking, what did he mean by that? Oh my gosh, I never really thought about things that way. And then I started to reflect and really have thought about that interaction a number of times.

What do we prioritize? How do we make the right things a priority? Today we're gonna be talking about making yourself a priority. Where we put our time, our treasure and our talents is what we're making a priority in our lives.

So if you found this podcast helpful and you haven't already done so, subscribe so that you'll never miss another podcast episode. Pull out your phone, take 15 seconds, give us a rating and review wherever you get your podcast content. Apple, Spotify takes 15 seconds. It helps the podcast to grow organically so that it can reach more people and help more [00:02:00] people.

I wanna share a couple of risks I've taken recently, and I share these with you because I want you, my listeners to take risks. Not much is more important to good mental health than facing your fears. Taking some action and not much is more damaging to your mental health than playing it safe, staying in your box, living in your bubble.

So one thing I did is that I was really struggling on Friday after having a conversation with some family members that was, Bothering to me and I was wallowing in it. I was letting it stick. It was Friday night, Friday evening, and so I decided to call a buddy. It was late. I didn't wanna wake him up. I didn't want to interfere with anything he was doing with his family or his wife, but I called him anyway and I got it out and I talked it through and it helped me probably is what helped me fall asleep that night.

It was a risk. And it worked. I went to a college graduation with somebody that I don't know very well, and I didn't know anybody at this actual event. I was kind of talking, listening to my inner roommate telling me not to go, but I went, met some new people, watched a great [00:03:00] sunset. It was in the evening.

Had a great time. I'm glad I went. So, I'm Adam Gragg. I'm a legacy coach. I'm a speaker. I'm a mental health professional for almost 25 years, and my life purpose is to help people and organizations find transformational clarity, the kind of clarity that propels them forward to face their biggest fears that are holding them back so that they can live and leave their desired legacy.

I talk about things. In a simple fashion that you could describe him to your six year old and your child's gonna understand. Simple is good. Keep it simple. I'm also a fellow traveler, I believe I struggle with the stuff I talk about.

I talk about it for me first and foremost, because I forget I leak. I forget what I talk about. I listen to my own podcast cuz I need to be reminded of what I'm talking about here and I challenge you. To not just listen as a listener and a consumer, but listen as a teacher. So think about something from the day that you can teach to somebody else in the next 24 hours, cuz that makes it stick.

We learn at a much higher level. When we teach something just like we learn at a higher level, when [00:04:00] we journal about something or we write something physically, pen to paper, it becomes clearer. This is the podcast that you do not just listen to. So let's go ahead and start with an action. What do you prioritize the most in your life?

Where do you put your time? Where do you put your treasures, your money? Where do you invest your talents, the giftings that you have? What are you prioritizing? I want you to write that down somewhere in your journal right now or speak it into your phone, and I want you to think about that as we go through this.

Podcast because it may shift for you as we talk about this. How do you decide on what you're gonna prioritize? Write something down there as well. What do you Just go and do it by emotion, what you feel like if you're suffering. If you're in pain, you just go out and buy a bottle of wine. You just go and say no to the world and hide out in your house, or do you stay to a schedule and implement some healthy self-care activities into your life?

What do you do that helps you choose and what actions do you take that help you prioritize? why do [00:05:00] people struggle with prioritization? We're really talking about some self-care here. How do we make ourselves a top priority in our lives? So one thing people do is they justify and rationalize. They don't have time for self-care.

I don't have time for it. I'm too busy. I have kids, I have commitments. I gotta make money. I gotta pay the bills. So we justify, we rationalize, we minimize it, we act like it. It's not really that important. We act like it's not a necessity yet. I've seen over and over again that people don't know when they're lacking self-care, but they sure know.

Well, they don't necessarily know in the moment when they're neglecting it, but they know after a while because they're, everything's gonna be crying out, saying, take care of me. You're neglecting me eventually, and it's a crisis. At that point, it becomes something that's urgent. And critical and important in that moment, and so you have to deal with it, you know, like a significant health issue or a marriage crisis or a crisis with one of your kids or a financial crisis because you're not prioritizing the right things.

We, another problem is we prioritize others' expectations of us [00:06:00] and not what we truly know we need to take care of. That is a core need for us. So it's all about other people and that can actually be a selfish activity that's very much centered around our image and how other people perceive us. Another thing was we can lack faith that living a balanced life and self-care and all this stuff that is required of living in loving ourselves.

It is impossible. So we act like it's really not possible. No one can live that way. I can't prioritize myself. We also believe that it's selfish often to prioritize ourself and we can get that mixed up. And I'm gonna talk about that in a second. The difference between selfishness and selflessness, and. We just get stressed out.

So we get consumed by our anxiety. We get in this tunnel vision, and we don't see anything else outside of focusing on that thing that we think we need to focus on to keep us safe, to preserve our image or to help us feel like we're making enough money or to help us feel like our relationships are gonna be okay.

So we're focusing so much that we're not seeing the big picture, which involves our [00:07:00] self-care. So it's all centered around this, and we can justify it and say it's about helping other people, but really truly it's about us. And I'm gonna show you and talk to you about the difference. So we confuse.

Selfish versus selfless. Selfish. My definition of that means that you're doing something to preserve your image, your reputation, to get accolades, to get praise. And it may be very difficult to identify that. And it's hard sometimes to have the self-awareness that our motive truly, in doing this activity isn't to help others truly.

It may be a mixed motive, it may partially be that, but the primary motivation is that it's somehow by me helping other people, it's gonna fix me in some way or it's gonna make my life. Better in some way. So that is a selfish act, but it's confused because we can be taught growing up that we shouldn't take care of any.

We should focus on other people's needs. We should do other things, do things for other people, and that's a good, healthy thing to do. When the motive is right, when we're at, when it comes from a place of generosity, when it comes from a place of [00:08:00] joy, when we're a cheerful giver, then that. Becomes a selfless act self and then hyphen less.

So less of self. Selfish means being more consumed with ourselves. More focused on how we feel, more focused on our, whatever we believe our need is at the moment. More focused on our feeling, our thoughts, and what this, what our psyche is telling us, our inner roommate is telling us. And a good way of thinking about it is when we're selfless.

You're doing it because you're less concerned with yourself, your worries, your problems, your issues, and your motivation is to become better so that you can help other people. So, And it's getting you away from your worries. It's taking you into a state of less self so that you're not consumed by this other junk going on in your head and emotionally, and you're able to give.

So you're doing something others could perceive as being selfish, but who cares what they think their mo, they don't know. Your motives. Your motives is, is to refresh yourself so you're better to give back to your family, [00:09:00] to your community, to your business, to your company, to your employer, to your friends.

That's a selfless act. I like to even think about it as if you're a world worldly minded person, you're focusing in a selfish manner, believing that the solution to your problems is somehow focused externally. So I, I help this person, or I get this level of praise, or I, my reputation gets to this certain level, and then, then things are gonna go okay for me.

But a spiritually minded person is someone who truly believes that. Their problems are not gonna be solved externally, but they're gonna be solved internally. They're gonna look inside, they're gonna get closer to God, they're gonna get closer spiritual, they're gonna get to know themselves better, and that's how it's gonna solve their problems.

And that's a selfless act cuz it's less self, less focusing on yourself in an unhealthy manner. So, If you're neglecting your self-care, here are three things that you can do to get back on track. Three things that help [00:10:00] me, that'll help you. So number one. Change your mindset. Okay. And have faith rather than fear.

So that's number one. Have faith rather than fear. And something that I show clients frequently, and I'm gonna link in the show notes here to a video of me just drawing out this diagram, it's hope versus fear, or faith versus fear, faith versus anxiety. And it's a cycle that I draw.

So anxiety and fear focus primarily on what can go wrong, what people think of me, what. The danger is, and then it puts us in a state of being closed, closed to opportunities, closed to people, closed off to the world. And then that creates a cycle where we see more things and we feel more fear, we feel more anxiety, which leads to more of that focusing and hyper vigilance on what could go wrong, and it leads to more closed off.

Selfishness we're closed off from the world and people faith hope That [00:11:00] mindset, it leads to seeing and being oriented towards the opportunity and the potential and what could go right and how I could learn if it even goes wrong. And it leads us to having an orientation of being open. So we're opening ourselves up to the world into opportunities, and we're willing to take risks, and we're willing to fail, and we're willing to succeed, and we're willing to let go of the outcome and it leads to another cycle, which is much, much better.

And nothing was more powerful than fear, except in anxiety, except hope. And faith in love. I mean, those are more powerful if you let them sink in and overtake you, and you can focus on those things. Consistently. Sometimes I will just focus on a inspire, an inspiring quote, and I'll journal about it and try to focus, although I struggled greatly with that and I have pretty much my whole life.

Yes, I have undiagnosed, probably undiagnosed A D H D. But if I can channel my energy and I have to put pen to paper, and then I write out [00:12:00] what this quote is, or the scripture verse, and I try to meditate on it and even write out examples of it in my life and how it is exemplified in other people's lives.

So having faith, for example, trusting. That it's gonna work out, trusting that if I live a balanced life and I take care of myself, it's all gonna work out. Even though in p it doesn't feel like it's gonna all work out because it feels like that I have limited time and resources and I have to be very, I have to be guarded with those ti time and those resources.

Yet in reality, that faith helps me to see that I can let go and I don't have to control it. I don't, I can. Have faith that it somehow miraculously is all gonna work out and I'm gonna have the time for all those otherness, all those other priorities as well, because I'm putting in and pouring into myself, I.

And faith requires intuition. It requires trusting that still small voice inside that is gonna be talking to you and telling you [00:13:00] that this is something you should invest your time into and this is something you should not invest your time into. So there are situations in my life where I've gotten too much advice from too many different.

Sources of information, so people, books, experts, everything. And then if I don't trust my intuition, which I give cre, I give the ability to override these other experts because that's me. And that's more powerful and wiser, and I view it as. Something that's coming from a place, a spiritual place that's giving me some direction.

If I'm in tune with that and I prioritize that, it's often in line with a lot of my friends' opinions. It's often in line with, in a, in alignment with wise people, but sometimes it's not, and I wanna trust that, and that's the opposite of anxiety. Is going to be trusting. It's gonna be trusting yourself, trusting your gut, not in a selfish way, in a selfless way, cuz often trusting your intuition means doing something that's gonna be scary.

It's gonna mean doing something that's gonna be reaching out to somebody and helping somebody, or taking a risk that [00:14:00] you wouldn't have taken before, or seeing an opportunity where you wouldn't have seen it before. But you're starting to see all these little miracles and these little opportunities in your life.

So that's number one. Have faith. Have faith. Number two, be disciplined. Let me break that down for you. So a, a disciple is somebody who has a mentor or somebody that's further along in their journey, and you can think of it in a spiritual context. You know, Jesus had his 12 disciples, but you can be a disciple.

In a situation where, okay, I am looking up and following this person or this way of life, or this philosophy. All right. So being disciplined means that you are finding structures in your life that are helping you to stay on track and moving the direction that you know is right, and it may know, and hopefully, you know, it's intuitively the right direction to head in, but.

Deciding in the first place to have faith is not enough alone. You have to take action. I mean, that's [00:15:00] insight. That I'm gonna trust. It's all gonna work out, but it should lead, hopefully it will lead. That faith will lead to taking some kind of an action. So we, we keep commitments to ourselves and we're very strategic about how we make those commitments.

For example, if somebody doesn't have a budget, and if somebody establishes a budget, they get everything down on paper. This is how much I make, this is how much I have after taxes, and this is where it all goes. And then they can do a zero based budget, which means they spend it all on paper. So everything is allocated to a category.

There's no fluff. Cuz if you have that fluff, then you're gonna waste it. So you plug it in. You know if there's a hundred dollars extra after you do your budget, you put that into savings, or you put that into retirement, or you put that into your kid's college fund. When I see people, Live, and I've always found it takes three months to live on a budget for people who have not lived on a budget before.

And it takes, we use the word discipline to describe that. If we're dis disciplined in following our budget and then not straying from it for that [00:16:00] long of a period of time, then we're starting to establish some real habits. And you will feel as if you've gotten a raise and you'll feel as if you have the potential to start building wealth once you've stayed consistent with that budget for that period of time.

And that's a promise because I've never seen it fail when people are disciplined with some area of their life. Disciplined with their exercise schedule, not to a perfectionistic level, but to a consistent level. So they're not working out at all now and they go to working out twice a week and then three times a week, then four times a week, then five times a week.

But they're doing it consistently and they're eating healthy and they're changing things in their life. Stress-wise, so that they're maintaining a lower level of stress and their metabolism is changing, and all these different aspects of their health are improving and they stay disciplined to it, which means they keep that promise to themselves.

You know, 70% of the time make it a seven on a scale, one to 10, hopefully even more 80% of the time, but they're not beating themselves up when they fall off of it. But obviously, if you're gonna keep a budget, you can't just [00:17:00] say, oh, well I fell off and I spent $2,000 extra on my budget. I mean, that's not gonna actually work.

But if you spent $10 extra on groceries and you make it up in another area cuz you spend $10 less in entertainment. You know, it doesn't have to be perfect, but your goal and your direction should be heading towards massive change and massive discipline and massive consistency with extra grace and tremendous amount of grace and forgiveness for yourself when you fall off track.

Yet giving yourself grace is gonna give you, give you the ability and the freedom to get back on track. So to do that with your time, for example, does the same exact thing. So you can do a time budget and you say, this is where I spend now all 168 hours of my time. This is where it goes. You know, this amount of time goes to sleep and this amount of time goes to work and this amount of time goes to my kids and my wife, and you just make some kind of good.

Guesstimates about that time during the week. You can specifically, you know, chart it out at the end of every day, how you spent your time. It takes a couple weeks to get [00:18:00] a good assessment of how you're spending your time. And you may be very surprised. I've seen people do this for me and they realize that they thought they were working 40 hours a week and they were working 65.

Kid you not, we can misjudge that much because the power of rationalization and the power of minimization is so incredibly strong. It becomes this psychological power. It's, you know, confirmation bias, a cognitive distortion. It has the elements of cognitive dissonance. I mean, you can look all that stuff up on your own, but it's very powerful.

And we can lie to ourselves, not intentionally, but we. Have to do some kind of concrete assessment, and I would suggest you can do it on a spreadsheet, you could do it in a journal, but somewhere that it's in writing or in type form. And then what you'll find is if you start allocating your time intentionally based on what you value the most and treasure the most, which should be you.

Yourself as far as you know, you know it as far as you should love your neighbor as yourself. I mean, you making yourself a [00:19:00] priority is a majorly big issue, significant issue. And once you start, Allocating that time and then living according to it. So I'm gonna work out at this time in the morning.

I'm gonna go to bed at this time. And you stay disciplined by doing it. You're keeping that promise to yourself. What you're gonna find is that, okay, you scheduled in some fun and maybe you scheduled in playing golf or hitting golf balls after work, or you scheduled in some time to do some. Do some reading.

Are you scheduled in some time to hang out with your friends? Are you scheduled in some time for a hobby that you're really passionate about, like knitting or learning about some new skill? And then you find that as you stay true to keeping these commitments to yourself, so you do get up on time, that you're gonna find that you get a raise With time, it's gonna feel like you have extra time every day.

So with a budget, I tell people that you're gonna feel like you got a. You're gonna feel like you got one to two months of a raise. If you stay consistent with this spending plan, you're not gonna know what to do with [00:20:00] yourself, cuz you're gonna be so shocked at how much money you used to waste because you weren't disciplined.

It's the same thing with your time, because every 15 minutes counts. And so as you plan in these self-care activities and you're very consistent with the time that you spend with your work and with your health and with your family and everything that you commit to. On paper on purpose, then you're gonna see that you have an extra couple hours in your day.

It's gonna feel like you got an extra couple hours. You're gonna be surprised at the end of the day, well, I have time to relax and enjoy this stuff, and I didn't even know that I, this was, that. This was possible. That's what discipline does. It's a miraculous thing. When you stay disciplined and it requires you to maintain boundaries, because what'll happen is all these other things will infringe upon that time that you've scheduled into your schedule that you're wanting to stay disciplined to, and then all of a sudden a crisis comes up and there can be legitimate crises that you have to go deal with.

Like my daughter ended up in the emergency room about a week and a half ago, and I had to go deal with that. And of course I was going to deal with that and thank God everything's okay and she's doing [00:21:00] well, but things happen. I mean, I've gotten hit and had so many stitches. I probably have been in the emergency room for stitches eight times in my life.

You know, I mean, it's something that's gonna happen. You gotta drop everything and go deal with it at that time. But those are exceptions. And as you prioritize the most important things, which if you haven't ever seen the four quadrants of time management model, I would highly recommend you check that out.

And I'm gonna link to a video that I actually did on this model in this podcast as well, which helps you to break down what tasks belong in the urgent and important category, which should be top priority. What tasks are important yet they're not urgent, so we gotta get 'em done, but they're not urgent.

Like our health, like our marriage, like relationships, like our self-care. They will become extremely urgent if we neglect them. And then what tasks are urgent? They feel urgent, but they're not important. What are, what are not urgent and not important? Like time wasters. And you can prioritize things that way.

And I would suggest that you prioritize your three top priorities for the next day, the night before. So you look and say, here's where I'm gonna focus tomorrow, and these things I want to get done. If I get these things done, then it's a successful day. [00:22:00] So you have your scheduled out time, you have your three top tasks, top priorities, and then you make that commitment to yourself and then you say no to other people.

Infringing upon that, which can make you feel if you have a negative core belief. Or a self-concept issue that, you know, if I say no, that's mean. Maybe you grew up in a church environment that said always drop everything to help people. Maybe it wasn't said vocally, but it was conveyed and there was a sense of judgment when people didn't say yes to helping someone move or didn't say yes to this volunteer project when you had other commitments.

So for example, you know, I had somebody that, well, it was a situation where there's a funeral with somebody that I would love to go to the funeral for. You know, I already have a commitment to go see family planned out, which I've had for months and months and months, and I feel as if that's, I. In this situation, something that I can't really say no to.

And I can send flowers and I can do everything, and it's not a huge deal, but we have to make those kinds of decisions. And those are hard sometimes. But if you're [00:23:00] interested, you can certainly do and check out an article that I wrote about how to make good decisions. That'll give you some ideas. On some really great tools on how to make good decisions, especially when they're difficult, cuz there are things that have gray area.

There are things that pull at you and make you feel like you're pulled in a bunch of different directions. Also, you're gonna have to say no in situations where people are gonna be let down and disappointed and they're gonna feel rejected. But when your motive is to do this self-care so you can be better to help other people, it's gonna be easier to say no.

Still uncomfortable, still awkward. But then that's when you say no to that voice and you tell yourself the truth. And you ask yourself the questions, you know, how am I reacting to this and why? And how is this connected to my childhood and or what is this? How is this connected to some negative core belief I have about myself?

Or some cognitive distortion that I believe in? And do the journaling so you can do the self-work. So you know, when the situations come you can say, no, I have a commitment. You don't even have to tell them what the commitment is. You don't have to. I mean, cuz you don't just need to justify self-care. I'm a hundred [00:24:00] percent committed, a hundred percent convinced of that.

So if you found this podcast helpful, hit the link to shatterproof yourself.

Seven small steps take a giant leap in your mental health. You'll only get that through hitting this link and subscribing. You don't wanna miss that. So number three, the last thing is plan it into your schedule. So I try and have. Events planned every quarter that I'm looking forward to. I try, well, not try, I train.

I train to have events planned every quarter that I'm looking forward to. I train to have events planned every summer that I'm looking forward to. I train to have events planned every week that I'm looking forward to. I put it into my schedule. That I look at consistently. I train to look at it consistently.

My work week is planned, not perfectly, and if I plan it just myself, it's gonna stink. I have to have my admin help me with that, [00:25:00] honestly. So I'm going to California tomorrow to see family. This was planned months and months ago. I went to Italy. That was planned almost a year ago before we went. Those are wonderful because.

There are things you can anticipate with excitement, so it's excellent for your mental health, and it gives you this sense of creativity because you have this event in the future that you're saving for, that you're planning for, that you're dreaming about, that you're able to go to bed thinking about, and you'll surprise yourself in the way that gives you some relaxation as you just have this event ahead.

That is gonna be positive, where you're gonna make some memories. It could be challenging, could challenge you to get outta your comfort zone and get outta your box. But it's gonna be fun. You plan it into your life and that takes time to step back and self-reflect. So when I talk about planning it, it's gonna take this, I'm gonna step back from my life and take that half an hour on a Sunday evening and take that hour on a Saturday morning, [00:26:00] or take that one day every quarter to plan things out.

And it's gonna feel like an inconvenience. It's gonna feel like I don't have time. It's gonna feel, but again, feelings can lie to you. I'm gonna think about it as if I don't have time, I'm gonna think about it as if I can't put this in to my schedule or that it's a waste of time, or that it's not gonna actually help me, or it's not gonna change anything.

And that's that voice talking or psyche trying to talk us outta something that's good for us, but you make the time to plan it that. We'll make it more likely to actually occur. Sure, you're gonna have to fight and have boundaries with yourself to make sure it works. But if you plan it, it's much more likely to occur.

So there you have it. My three things right here, make making yourself a priority, making yourself a top priority, number one. Number one, have faith. Change your mindset. You can. Make this work in your life. You can take [00:27:00] care of yourself regardless of how you feel, regardless of how you think. It's what you're meant and made to do.

Be disciplined. Keep commitments to yourself. Follow through for yourself even before you follow through for other people, because I am convinced that you will not be helpful to other people unless you're following through with yourself. And your ability to love other people is directly related to your.

To how you're loving yourself and treating yourself and being kind to yourself and being good to yourself. And number three, you plan it into your schedule on paper, on purpose. You look at it, you focus on it. You take the time to prioritize it. Give yourself grace when you mess up. Stay consistent. Have me out to speak live or over zoom.

If you like this content, I wanna ask you. One thing here, as you think about this, you've identified some things in your life at the very beginning of this podcast that are your priorities, and they might have been some things that you've prioritized that you know probably should be lower down on your list.

So if you're gonna rate 'em, A B C [00:28:00] D or you're gonna rate 'em on a scale of one to 10, maybe there's been some shift there. So I want you to think about how are you gonna shift things so that you can make yourself a priority. Not in a selfish way, but in a selfless way to shift those that time and to make that that time, treasure and talent that you have more accessible to other people because you're giving it, cuz you're filling yourself up so that you can give it back to other people.

So, What are you gonna do? So what resonated with you most from the day? In the next 24 hours, I want you to talk about a concept and teach it to somebody else. Naturally. Take emotional, take an emotional risk based on something that you learned today. Remember my rule, 30% of transformational change is insight.

You've gained insight by listening to this podcast today. You gain insight by listening, by reading a great book, but 70% or more is action. Take some action based on something that you've learned today. Again, have me out to speak live or over zoom or engage with me or one of my legacy coaches. We'd love to walk [00:29:00] you through your legacy journey process one-on-one or in a group setting.

I'm gonna sign off the way I always do. Make it your mission to live the life. Now that you want to be remembered for 10 years after you're gone, you decide your legacy. No one else. No one else. I appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.