We only have so much time on this earth and if we are always on the go, we miss out on opportunities. We must slow down, check in and upgrade our direction to align our actions with our values.
We often continue to pursue goals and live beliefs from our past that no longer align with our values. The goal or belief may have made sense at the time, but continuing to pursue something we have outgrown ends up hurting us. We might believe that we need a promotion. We try our best and end up falling short of our goal. We made this pact with ourselves and now we are eating more shit pies than ever.
When we slow down and step back, we realize that we don’t really want that promotion. We’ve been sabotaging ourselves the whole time. What we really wanted was more time with family or time to write that book. We don't take this time to listen to what we want because we are so focused on our immediate goal that we lose focus on our bigger picture purpose. It’s hard making the time to recalibrate our lives. How often do we do it? What do we use to help us?
A common calibration time is at the end of the year. Most people like to look back on their lives and decide to make new shit pies that they promise to eat, but this is our biggest mistake. We need to calibrate our lives on a more regular basis, so that we don’t continue eating shit pies. No person can look back on their whole year and remember everything that they need to improve, especially from the first half of the year. It's this lack of remembering increases our chances of doing things that don't energize us.
We often don’t see that our lack of energy is due to lack of alignment around our actions and values, but when we dig a little deeper we understand what we really want. If we regularly make time to understand how our daily actions affect our larger goals then we can make small adjustments on a regular basis. At the very least we should be calibrating weekly, monthly, and yearly, but daily can be very powerful too. By reviewing our day, week and month we notice what we did well, what we can improve, what opportunities we missed, and how we can snag these opportunities next time.
The product of slowing down gives us time to reflect - we can process, calibrate and celebrate. We process our thoughts and emotions to understand ourselves. We use this understanding to calibrate our future choices so they are more aligned with our values. Then we make time to celebrate our hard work, not just the results.
When we calibrate our actions in this way we make sure our actions support our larger mission, which energizes us and helps us stay focused on what matters to us. You have what you need in your life to be successful, make more income doing things you are passionate about, connect with people you love and do things you care about, but only if you are intentional in making it happen. Get the Rate Your Day Routine one page guide and learn how to process your day and take back the narrative of your own story.
