Mitch: Day 1 - Why Priorities Matter

Day 1: Make a list of your top 4-5 important things. What's most important to you? What do you value most? What 4-5 things do you most want to do in your life? Simplifying starts with these priorities, as you are trying to make room in your life so you have more time for these things.

Well, here we are - day 1 of 72 on a journey to "simplify our lives". I use quotes because this journey is really so much more than that. It's a journey to create the meaning you want for your life, and the means to develop the tools to create and sustain the life you want to lead. Now that may seem outlandish because, let's be honest, there's very little on that list that isn't common sense. Several are simply other ways of phrasing aphorisms that we've heard thousands of times. But one key thing I hope to explore with this project is to peel off a layer of these seemingly innocuous exercises and expose how powerful and transformative they can be on our lives.

A lot of the concepts covered in these 72 Ideas are part of an adventure of self-discovery that I began sometime ago. When I started, back in my early twenties, I had no idea that my life even needed simplifying. I was young, in college, managing a record store, surrounded by good friends and living with a girlfriend. To the me at the time, it seemed like nothing could be better.

The reality was that my life had been an emotional roller-coaster of my own making for quite a while. Relationships have never come easy for me, and the ups and, predominantly, downs of love had shaped my view of the world, and of myself. Much of my self-esteem hinged on whether or not some particular girl was interested in me or not, with the remainder hanging on the approval of my friends and co-workers. And then, one day, my girlfriend tells me she wants us to do this six day course called the Art of Living.

The course centered around advice on how to get the most out of life through a handful of principles and a focus on breathing exercises. At the time I had no idea that the Art of Living Foundation was a highly respected international organization with an impressive track record for dramatically changing people's lives for the better, so I was naively convinced that it was just some ridiculously expensive New-Age support group for lonely hippies. But, not wanting to disappoint my girlfriend, I obliged.

What I experienced there changed my life forever, even if I didn't realize it at the time.

Sure, it reads like a typical mopey antihero driven plot from your average young adult fiction, indie film, or even a Hollywood blockbuster these days. Directionless nobody suddenly finds him/herself with the power to change the world. But I'd posit that there's a reason we bond to those kinds of characters. The truth is that they're not not a far cry from how most of us feel in our own lives. Lost. Wishing for something to happen, whether its the lottery, or super powers, or an alien invasion. Some of us would take just about anything if it would break us out of a rut of making sure our boss is happy so that we can keep our jobs and our stable incomes to support our families and pay for our rent and our escapes from the daily grind. If we work hard we might even get a promotion or a raise to tell us we're on the right track, even if the hours we work come at the expense of our families, our friends, and ourselves. And when we do get time to focus on those relationships, we compromise daily to keep everything on an even keel out of the fear that we might be rejected or abandoned.

The real struggle, however, is within ourselves. Often we have this ideal in our heads of the person we could be if we had just made the right decisions and if other people or circumstances hadn't gotten in the way. And what's worse is we spend every day watching our ideals get bigger and bigger and our real lives slink further and further away until we just stop trying, or at least put on a good show of pretending that we're content with where we're at. And as if that wasn't enough, we have parents, motivational speakers, hometown nobody turned rising star television programs and even the Pilgrimatic American Dream all telling us that if we just tried harder to reach those ideals then we could do it. But if we can't do it, well, then it must be because we're just not good enough, or we're too lazy, or because we just didn't care enough to deserve it.

What they don't tell you is that every bit of the whole process is a lie. Every step being just one deeper into a quagmire of self-deception that most people never find their way out of. And nobody tells you not to go in there because they're so deep into the quagmire themselves they don't know any other way.

But there is a way out.

In fact, the first step out of that morass is one you can take today, and it's the first idea of these 72. The first step is that YOU get to decide what your life gets to be about.

NOT your parents.

NOT your family.

NOT your friends.

NOT your spouse.

NOT your children.

NOT your boss.

NOT your health.

NOT your finances.

NOT your government.

NOT your culture.

NOT your religion.

YOU.

The first time I heard this idea I thought it sounded selfish. We're an integrated society, not a chain of islands. You can't just go around doing whatever you want; it's not what a civilized person does. Or is it? I worked at a job for six years that I was excruciatingly miserable at. I did it because I spent seven years of college tuition to do it, because I felt the next step in life was to work a real job. I did it to be respected by my girlfriend, my family and my peers. I never once did it for me because it was something I loved. I didn't even do a good job there because all I could focus on was how little I wanted to be there. I was depressed, which created problems with my health, with my relationships, and the whole thing just slipped into a downward spiral that affected everyone I cared about. A quagmire.

The truth is that it's your life and you deserve to live it focusing on the things that you're passionate about, not about the things others think should matter to you. When you spend time on the things in your life that engage you, you feel energized, excited, and full of passion. And that kind of passion is contagious! People love being around someone whose excited about life. It's inspiring. You are inspiring them to do more and better for themselves. And the more they do for themselves, the more those people will bring that passion to the community. Everybody wins! But when you resign yourself to spend all your time focusing on things that matter very little to you, then misery is all you reap for your efforts, and you do nothing more than drag others into the quagmire with you. Nobody wins.

Today is your chance to change that. These four or five things must be the mission statement for everything you WANT in your life, not everything you think SHOULD be in it. This may sound like an easy task, but choosing honestly what's right for you and walking the walk of making these items a priority is going to take courage, focus and discipline.

Luckily for us, the next 71 days are all about giving us the tools we need to create a habit out of our new priorities and take the first step of living OUR lives for US, allowing ourselves and the people around us to benefit from our happiness and our passion.

So without further ado, here are my Top Five, in order of precedence:

1. Quiet Reflection:

Making time to be alone in an environment with minimal sensory input to recharge and center myself. I tend to easily get overwhelmed by stimulus from my surroundings, whether it's tracking multiple conversations going on around me including the one I'm in, trying to interpret the endless array of non-verbal queues in a social situation, reacting to the receipt of an e-mail, or phone call, or text message, all while bombarded with the thoughts and emotions from my own body assaulting me from within. These things tend to pull me with a powerful current into the ocean's depths and I find myself struggling just the reach the surface and breath. I could do nothing better for myself than to make time to free myself from that current entirely and give myself the energy to swim back out there when the need arises.

2. The People I Love:

To always make time for my dearest friends and family and give them 100% of my focus. By doing quiet reflection, spending time with the people I care about ceases to simply blend in with the cacophony of stimulus that I let dominate my life. It changes social obligations into an opportunity to appreciate and focus my attention on the people I love instead of focusing my energy on simply getting through it and everything else during the day to make it to the next moment I have to be at peace. They deserve my energy, focus, and love, just as I deserve to be present enough to be blessed with theirs.

3. Self-Education:

Challenging myself every day to learn new things or have new experiences. I tend to find little joy in a day that doesn't end with me being at least a slight bit wiser or more knowledgeable than I was when I awoke. In addition, the more I'm aware of and the more I understand, the more I can gain perspective on my own situation as well as connect with others and be there for them.

4. Counseling Others:

Helping people gain a broader understanding of themselves and of difficult situations to give them power to take control of their own lives. We're all together in this big crazy world, and as much as it seems like our lives can be so different, I truly believe we all struggle with just a small handful of the same core issues that send us careening into all kinds of different challenges in life. If my experiences can help someone else shed light on their own situation and the choices available to them that they may not have otherwise realized, then my going through it was all worth it.

5. Immersion in Stories:

To partake daily in rich fictional stories to appreciate human interaction without the need to engage personally. I find people and relationships endlessly fascinating. But oftentimes the simple act of engaging is exhausting for me, especially with a larger group of people, so I tend to burn out long before my curiosity is ever satisfied. Reading a book, or watching a great movie or television show, or playing a video game with an immersive story, really helps me satisfy that need for human interaction without ending up overstimulated and burned out, and often gives me great insights into people I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Moreover, when you meet someone who's experienced that same story, even if you know very little about them otherwise, it can give you a tremendous amount of shared experience, as you've both been together with the same characters on the same journey.

Lastly, I want to thank everyone that made it to the end of this ridiculously long post for making the time to listen! I hope you can also make time to read the experiences of everyone else posting about their journey here. No doubt everyone will have a unique and valuable take on all this. And, of course, a special thanks to Christa Terry for organizing this and to Leo Babauta for making something so valuable so readily accessible!