Sunday Sharies 01.23.22

A QUOTE

"It’s your decisions, not your conditions, that shape the quality of your life."
– Tony Robbins, American author and motivational speaker

A QUESTION

Think about the last time you felt most like yourself. What were you doing?

A THOUGHT

There are tiny tradeoffs to almost everything we do.

All day (and night), we choose between desirable but incompatible options for how to spend our limited time, money, and energy. Sleep in or workout? Catch up with friends or watch TV? Cook at home or order takeout? Consider how, when our professional ego is under threat or family commitments pile up, we tend to swap out the things we need most under stress: meditation, exercise, and diet. We should pay attention to these default settings and get serious about what's essential, because these seemingly innocuous micro choices become us.

What do you really give a s*** about? If it's running a marathon, don't forfeit sleep for another round. If it's being a family man, don't take meetings after 5. If it's living healthy, don't keep M&Ms in the house.

Stay on track by writing down a collection of rules for what you will and won't trade off in pursuit of your intended self expression. Be concrete about what matters and in what sequence. Think of it as your "order of operations." Because the more often an option is de-prioritized, the less likely it will win out in the future against some other course of action.

We struggle to accept that investing in what's important requires a little sacrifice, a little discomfort. But it’s possible to organize options in such a way that, the next time you don’t want to make the tradeoff, you’ll still make it. That’s when you’ve got a value system working on your side.