Priorities and how to set them
- Jessica Jaye
- Oct 25
- 5 min read
Updated: Oct 28
Life is constantly pulling us in a million different directions. It’s challenging to stay focused when there are so many invitations and an abundance of stimulation. When I find myself feeling stressed, I make a list of my top three priorities. I use this list to support decision making and help me stay aligned with my goals.
How to figure out your priorities
Most recently, I returned to Pai, a town in Thailand that I fell in love with last year. Before coming back, I sat with myself and made a list of my top three priorities in order of importance. To understand what my priorities are, I dropped into a short meditation. I imagined different situations and noticed how my body reacted to each one. Swimming around in my internal world, I looked for what vibrated the highest and paid attention to the things that felt good. When I imagined myself sitting in the park making music with friends, I smiled softly to myself. When I imagined myself sitting by the river swinging from my hammock, I felt a rush of energy. When I imagined myself working on a piece of writing that paid me, everything inside lifted up. Scene after scene, I noticed my body’s reaction. When I opened my eyes again, I wrote down my top three priorities in order of importance.
That’s not to say that these are my priorities forever (although health, happiness, and freedom has been in the #1 position for 4 years), but in the present moment, this is my truth.
Creating Definition
After I wrote down my top three priorities, I decided to dig a little deeper to create some definition of each of these things. I felt like this was important so that I might better be able to make good choices when faced with confusion or conflict.
Priority 1: Health, happiness, and freedom
To support my health, happiness, and freedom, I will practice autonomy and only say yes when an invitation is calm and comfortable or enthusiastic. I choose to prioritize eating nutritious food that nourishes my body and will try to limit the amount of unhealthy options I indulge in. Additionally, I will regularly make space for yoga, meditation, singing, movement, and quiet time in nature. If my body or mind feels unwell, I will prioritize recovery above all things.
Priority 2: Financial Abundance & Work Opportunities
For the last few years, making money hasn’t been a priority to me. Most of the time, my #2 priority has been mental health and healing my PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). I’m satisfied with my progress and am excited to be available to shift my focus from mental health to financial abundance. It’s time to capitalize on financial opportunities, but not just any work. I’m focused on attracting opportunities that are fun and feel good. Prioritizing financial abundance means that I have regular work days. It means when given the choice between lunch with friends and a meeting with a potential co-facilitator, I choose the latter. I’ve entered a phase of trial and error. That means when someone invites me to do something I’m not sure about, I likely say yes to see how it feels. If it feels good or leads to other opportunities, I continue to invest my time and energy.
Something to note is that my teaching hours haven’t been full recently. I switched off of weekends and since my students are mostly adults, have seen a steady decline in lessons. At first, this was concerning me. If I’m prioritizing financial abundance, that means go where the money is, right? However, by maintaining my #1 priority and not adjusting my hours, new opportunities have risen. For example, I started volunteering to teach yoga at a local hostel. The owner of the hostel has a few other projects and when his team expressed the need to add a writer to the group, he thought of me and reached out.
Priority 3: Healthy Relationships and community
I decided that my third priority right now is my relationships and social life. Pai is notorious for having a million different things to do every day of the week. There’s spaces to party, to play, or to practice. From medicine music, to acro yoga, to an electric unicycle meet up, the possibilities are endless. That makes socializing easy and tempting. I intentionally put it in the #3 position because community is important to me and it’s a reason that I chose to live in Pai; however, it would be very easy to let it consume me. Prioritizing community means going out of my way to make meaningful connections with people that live here and actively inviting people to share space in an intentional way.
Other possible priorities
These three priorities are most present for me now. Here’s a list of a few other things you might want to prioritize: family, physical health, mental health, balance, professional advancement, peace, studies, adventure, being carefree, networking, building confidence, etc.
What you prioritize at any given time isn’t as significant as having the awareness and using that awareness to make intentional steps that support your goals.
Priorities in practice
Being aware of my priorities has helped me in my decision making. For example, when given the choice between going out on a work night and sleeping early, knowing that financial abundance is my #2 priority and spending time with friends #3 makes the decision simple. It makes it simple, but not easy. Sometimes, I definitely want to just go hang with my friends, but for now, until I feel more secure financially, it’s not the decision that I will make for myself.
Reassess when things shift
After writing this piece, I realize that I actually need to do a reassessment of my priorities. A few months ago, I started going on dates with a friend. Our connection is incredible, but it's taking space that I didn’t account for. Romantic life wasn’t something I was planning to prioritize, but now that he’s here, periodically, it leaves me confused. I’ve shifted my schedule more than a few times to make space for us to hang out and I know he’s done the same. I’m not sure where to place him. Does he fall into the #1 priority because he makes me happy? Or #3 because he’s part of the community? Is he a separate category in his own right?
Regardless, he’ll receive my time, attention, and energy, but it’s just a question of how much weight do I want romance to have in my life right now?
Final Thoughts
Reflection is a powerful tool that can help us simplify things. Deliberately meditating on life supports my ability to practice present awareness and make progress in the areas most important to me at any given time. That’s not to say that there aren’t exceptions, but the general rule is to use these priorities as a compass. It’s not always easy to maintain discipline around your priorities, but having awareness is a great first step towards progress and peaceful living.
Alright reader, that’s all for now. As always, thank you for reading and if you feel like you’re getting value from my content, please consider offering a small donation at Buy Me a Coffee or consider subscribing for more, exclusive, content! Thank you for your love and support!
Comments