If you’ve been here for a while, you know that I’m a big believer in the power of word choices. Not necessarily what we say to others, but what we say to ourselves.
Why?
Because words have meaning, meaning becomes a narrative and narratives become our reality.
In the last post on gratitude, I talked about the simple shift of ONE word:
I HAVE to –> I GET to
Just making that shift of one word immediately makes you more grateful.
I’ve got another one and it stems from a virtual training I was listening to on goal achievement this week.
Time –> Priorities
In the training, we were divided into breakout rooms to discuss how we could achieve our goals better moving forward. I was shocked by the number of people that responded with:
“I just need to manage my time better.”
I wholeheartedly disagree. You don’t need to manage your TIME better; you need to manage your PRIORITIES better.
(I do, too, for the record! None of us is perfect at this.)
Time is going to go by either way. It’s finite. Don’t we all want to receive maximum value from our time here on earth?
You do that by managing priorities, not time.
I’ll go deeper on this concept next week, but for now, I’ll challenge you to use the following Outperforming phrase ONCE over the next week:
“This (or that) is not a priority for me right now.”
It’s simple. Say it to yourself or say it out loud. But sort of like “get to” makes you feel more grateful, using the word “priority” makes you more conscious and empowered by the value you’re receiving from time.
The Norm will say, “I don’t have enough time,” wishing that someday the Time Fairy will magically appear and sprinkle them with 26 hours in a day or 175 hours in a week.
This scarcity mindset around time does little for helping us live our best life.
We all have plenty of time…for our priorities.
I’ll sign off with one caveat—please use this phrase wisely. If your boss asks you to finish a project or your wife asks you to take out the trash, it might not be in your best interest to say, “sorry, that’s not a priority for me right now” 🙂
Just use it once, personally or professionally, in something where you feel like you’re getting little value.
Keep Outperforming,
