The One Thing: Identifying Your Most Important Priority

This is episode 297 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider. Welcome. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast. I am here with you on a cloudy, rainy, kind of gross spring day. It's like transitioning into the summer, but not quite there. Not a warm, rainy day, but that cool, wet spring rain. And it kind of reminds me of. It gives me the feeling of needing to be a little more focused. It gives me the feeling that I have to try a little bit harder because I personally find that on these types of days, I don't low and do my work or have the same level of energy as I do on a sunny, bright, high cloud kind of day. So today is one of those days and I think it's a perfect day for this topic. Today's topic is the one thing, the one thing that I think will be so important to have massive impact in your life. The one thing is the thing that if you focused on this one thing, it really helps everything in your whole life fall together now or come together, be in congruency. The thing about this is that it's. It's almost a little too simplistic. And yet that's the beauty of it, because it's the thing that we tend to do, which is complexify, focus on too many things, multitask as achievers, as leaders. There's a lot on our plates. And when that happens, we tend to keep focusing on so much that we're neglecting. The one thing that we may not realize is the most important thing to, to focus on. We also will tend to allow other people who are very important in our lives to bring their urgency into our lives. So that even if we know what the one thing is that is most important, we tend to focus on what somebody else wants instead of what we know is going to be so critical for our lives. So let me dive into this, just give you a little bit of context here. I have been aware of this concept for many, many years and it comes from a lot of people in the professional development world and people who are looking for professional growth, personal development world as well. People are looking for what their goals are. So. So I don't know where this originally stems from. I've looked at it through a number of people. Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, Jim Rohn. However, I'm not sure where the origin was, but the, the concept was this, that if Someone was hiring in a business and they had someone being interviewed. And I've been interviewed a number of times, and I've done a lot of interviews, not only for my business, but also helping other companies filter through who their, their candidates are. And then also in, in management scenarios where we're all working together as a panel to interview other people. So in these scenarios, this concept is that you ask the person, what is your goal? What do you want to have in your life in the next five, one year, five years, 10 years? And they can split it up into thirds on a piece of paper and they can write down, I want these things next one year, I want this in my life in the next five years, I want to accomplish these things in the next 10 years. And they write them down. Things like, I want to be mortgage free, I want to drive this type of car, I want to be at this level in my career, whatever they are in that one year, five year tenure. And then the idea is to say this is to go, okay, you've got this list of five things in the five year range. If you had a magic wand and you could make only one of those things, just one, make one of those things come true, which one would it be? And then they circle that one, and then they focus on that one thing. Because chances are, if they're trying to focus on the five or 10 things that they've listed, that's what becomes the thing that dilutes their energy, the thing that spreads them too thin, the thing that drains them too much. Whereas if they're focused on the one thing, chances are those other three things, five things, 10 things are more likely or will happen because the one thing is the thing that is most important. And so that question of, okay, there's all them right in front of you. You have a magic wand, you can make one of them happen, and that's it. And that usually has the person dive into the concept of which is most important in my life and actually see other things there as well at the same time and realize that that one thing could have impact on all those things. So let's double down, let's go for that one thing. That's the kind of thing that it is. So what we want to do today is really go through how to identify which thing is the one thing for you which is the most important. And the reason I say this is because it's become very apparent in my life. And it will change for you in your life. Depending on what stage of life are most people who are 20 years old, they may have a greater focus on perhaps career or mission than they would on their relationships or theirselves. Or maybe it's the vice versa. Maybe they have most of their focus on themselves and they're not even focused on what they want to do for their living. And they're not in a relationship, so they don't care. So they know what they want. They're focused on having fun, being with the friends. That's it. So for you, depending on what stage of your life you're in, this is going to indicate what might be most important for you right now. This context of going through an illness. For me, I thought health was very important. For me, the illness put me in a situation. This thing called Graves disease put me in a situation where, where my health became number one really, really fast. Because I could not work unless I'd had a number of things attending to my health. I could not even have conversations with my family. I would be lying in bed, I would be isolating myself, I would be focusing on only what I could eat, only how I needed to rest. I couldn't be social. Everything else took a backseat to my health because my health had been taken from me by this illness. So that's how I understood how important it was to me. But here's what I didn't get. And this really blew my mind. Because when my health was taken from me, I knew that I wasn't going to take on new clients. I knew that I was. I would stop working with clients who did not light me up because they had to be completely in alignment with some or all of my values. And I had to be aligned with what they were up to, with their values or the company mission or the company core values from forward facing and internal. So I'm in this situation where I'm saying no to certain things that were offered to me, I'm saying no to new clients. And I've. I've actually rejected a client or two and not renewed a client or two. So in my mind I'm bracing myself for a decrease in revenue for my company. And yet what I found is when I stayed really aligned with only who I wanted to work with and I made sure that, that I could provide my best service to who I was working with, then what I found was that my revenue was actually a little bit more than the previous year. And it blew my mind. It blew my mind because the one thing I was focused on in all of 2023 was my health. And the reason that I kept working at all because I was told by the doctors, do not keep working. Take time off, at least six months. I only kept what would light me up and I could serve in the top level way. And I knew that if I stopped working completely because I love what I do so much, it's not a job to me. It's my mission. It's my purpose in life to do what I do, to serve who I serve. Because I knew that if I stopped that would do a disservice to my health. Then I only kept what I knew would serve my health. And working and working with particular companies and particular humans, that is what kept serving my health. And that is how I still ended up making the same or more in revenue for my company than I would have had I stopped working or than I did the year before when I wasn't with this illness. So it blew my mind to see that, okay, I focused only on my health. I made decisions that were always conducive to improving my situation with the illness that I had. And yet that spread over into other categories of life, called career mission, other categories of life, also called relationships. Because what I also discovered is that the things I was tolerating in my most important relationship called my marriage, the things I was tolerating, some of them weren't serving my health. And I had to stop behaving in certain ways in my relationship and tolerating certain things in my relationship. And by doing that, that was serving my health. Even though it was uncomfortable at first, even though there was friction at first, I knew that these certain behaviors I could not perpetuate and certain instances I could not tolerate in my relationship. So it blew my mind to see that the one thing called focusing on my health was having this carryover effect into my relationships, into my purpose and my mission, so into my clients, into my family, it was affecting everything. And that I describe this because that is the point of this podcast, for you to be able to discover the one thing in your life right now which may be a different thing than 10 years ago, five years ago, one year ago, but the one thing that's most important right now for you to focus on, for you to put more of your energy on, because it's going to impact positively everything else around you. So that question becomes, how the heck do I know what that one thing is? Especially if 10 years ago or five years ago, or for the last five years, you've been focusing on something that was most important to you for, from five or 10 years ago. Because I can tell you this I always said my health was really important, but it became a completely different ball game when I got sick. And that is how I changed so many things across so many areas of life because they were affecting my health and I hadn't seen it fully before. So to discover, I'm going to give you three things today to really discover how to identify the one thing for you. Because if you don't identify and focus and take action massively in this one area, you're going to see how it bleeds other areas of your life out, how you end up doing a disservice for yourself and those you serve by not giving the attention this one thing needs. So how do we discover what this one thing is? So first and foremost, you're going to already have a feeling of what it is. You're going to go, oh, you know, if I had to listen in and get really quiet, get quiet with yourself and go, okay, dear, what do you need? What do you really, really need? What do you really desire? What do you know in your heart, in your soul of souls is the thing that's most important right now, and it's probably not getting the attention it deserves. What is it? Answer that question and there's going to be probably a one word answer that comes up. We did this on a coaching call. It was a power up this morning with some of our mastermind team members, our empowered team members. And in the chat after I presented a little bit about the one thing, I said, hey, what is it? What comes to you? And we put it in the context of this week and in this, in this season of time. What is it for you that's most important right now? And out came the answers. They knew right away. They knew what it was for a couple people. It was healthy, definitely health. And we were recognizing that as decade after decade in your 40s, suddenly health becomes more important because there's so many more aches and pains in your 50s, you realize that, oh, am I onto my second half of life? What does this look like? What do I want it to look like? And so on, where health might become more important. So a couple people are putting health and then other things came up too. One person had planning, planning, planning. It was so important for them at this stage in their game. So not only was it the one thing planning, maybe that was in the context of career mission, but then they realized that the one thing in their career mission was so important was planning. I came to a revelation like that in my career, in my business, if I was looking at the context of my business. What's one thing that's so important in my business? It was positive cash flow. And if I focused on that, it impacted everything else in my business. Then I could make progress with hiring somebody else. I could go and expand in another area. I could make sure that everybody got paid. It. It helped everything. It was the one thing in my business in the context of my business. You could do this as broadly as you'd like or as narrowly as you'd like, but I would suggest that you get clear on it. For you, for you in your life, what is it in your life? Some people wrote in their career mission. Other people wrote in their schedule. Other people wrote in taking action. So people, when I asked this, they knew they got clear really quickly. Okay, so let's take a look. Let's say you've identified that you've gone deep, you've asked your heart, you've gotten quiet, and you answer that, what is it? What's the one thing that I know needs my attention? And if I focus on it, it's going to impact everything else. And once you do that, you're going to do a step one with it. You're going to pain test it. And when I say pain test it, I mean, take a look at the example I gave with my health. If you got really sick, if health was your example, what would that mean to everything else in your life? You got really sick, unexpectedly sick, you can't do the things you normally do. That happened for me, and I can tell you that pain point was real. It meant, if I have three hours, I could work in the day, how do I make it happen? If I could only have the energy to work three hours in the day, and maybe it was only one hour at a time or 30 minutes at a time, how do I make it work? And that's what I did. But the thing was, is that until you're faced with that pain point, you don't truly realize what has to be done. You don't truly realize the pain that it feels like, what it really, really feels like. And that's what really woke me up to going, okay, health is number one. Health is number one right now, no matter what. And health. If I said health and I was talking to people about health, I couldn't stand the word health. I was like, ooh, you know, no, we're going for high performance, we're going for vitality, we're going for topnotch. That's how I always had my mindset, because health was so Far down on my priority list. I always wanted peak performance. I always wanted top vitality. I always wanted reps and winning medals in competition. That's what I focused on. I wasn't focused on health. I didn't even like the word health. And yet suddenly it became the biggest thing in my entire world in order for everything else that I loved, everything else important to me, to exist. So pain tested. If you sat there and you said, well, schedule's number one, well, remove it, it's out of your life, is it painful enough to really be the number one? Maybe, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But pain test it. Take it away. If schedule was your number one, put reverse, do the opposite. Complete chaos. Complete chaos. Add that in pain, test it. And if you find that that's one of the most painful things for you at this stage in your life right now, then maybe that is actually your one thing. Pain test it. Career mission. If you don't focus on that career or mission right now, what does that mean? Are you going to look at your life and go this? If you're going to look at your future self and you're going to feel like you did a disservice to your entire life by not focusing, focusing on your future, your career or mission, then you're probably on the right track. If you look at your future self and you see that you've not focused on your career mission, you've not fulfilled on whatever potential you wanted to do, then you know that that's the one thing you really want to work on. And if you are fulfilling what you want in that zone, it's going to positively affect other things. So pain test it. See what your life looks like and see what it's like in the future. If you didn't do that one thing and you neglected that one thing, and that one thing is just getting shoved aside over and over again. Okay, number two, you've pain tested it, now you're going to future test it. If you future test it, what does it look like on the flip side? On the positive, you've done this thing and you look at your future. If you've really focused on that schedule, you've really mastered your health, you've fulfilled what you wanted to in your career and mission. Future test it. What is the impact on that? How does it feel? What is that like for you? Future test it. Is it what you think it's going to be? Because if it's not, then as you visualize your future, if it's not, and you Realize, well, wait a second. Why am I focusing all my energy on this when really this isn't what's so important to me? This is future. Test it. Make sure that it's not something that you're about to focus on that isn't as important to you as something else. Okay, that's number two. Future Test it. Number three, Impact. Test it. Now, you've heard me allude to this as we've gone on through this podcast episode, and I'm alluding to the impact it has on the other areas of your life. If this is truly the one thing that's going to make a really big difference for you and you should be focusing on it, does it have a positive impact in other areas of your life? So, for instance, for me, I'm exploring getting back into horseback riding. I used to have horses, and I'm exploring this right now. It's actually one thing that's part of the health spectrum for me, part of the health focus. Because there were so many things that I wanted to do but I didn't do. And I didn't realize that things that brought me joy by neglecting things that brought me joy, I was costing my health. And I didn't realize that. I kept setting things aside that I really love setting experiences aside that I wanted to do for the sake of other things or other people and didn't realize that that was costing me in my health realm. So I'm building in horseback riding. But when I do this, does it have a positive impact on other areas? It's not obvious in the beginning when I think of that, well, I don't want a horseback ride because I don't have enough time and it's going to take away from my family. But then I think about it, no, let me experience horseback riding. What happens when I do that? I get up with purpose because it's going to take some planning, some time in order to go and get to a place and get on a horse and do all the things. So I get up with purpose. If I get up with purpose, looking forward to something I'm about to do, that has a positive impact on my husband, it has a positive impact on my family, and I feel good. That's how it impacts my health. That's how it impacts the my loved ones. But how could it possibly impact my career or my mission? I can tell you right now because I've experienced it. When I'm in something that's my purpose and my mission, I am very consumed with it. I love creating, I love Researching topics. I love helping clients. I can get all consumed with it. But guess what? When I get all consumed with it, I also am not filling my cup in other ways. So what happens when I do something like horseback riding or traveling and adventuring to a new place? I actually do my business and my mission. A better service because I'm more creative, I have more to offer. I'm more excited to come back to my clients if I've had a half a day break doing something on a Saturday or on a Friday morning by horseback riding or playing pickleball. And then when I dive into work, I'm more efficient, I'm more focused, I'm more energetic. I have way more to give to my clients and what I'm creating because my cup is so full. So this is the impact test. You want to know what does it really look like Instead of the lie, the story we tell ourselves. That sounds something like, I don't have time for that. I have so much on my plate. Sure, but you've got the same amount of time as everybody else. You get to choose what you do with it. And if you've devoted eight hours a day to work, but then you realize you're working another three or four in the evening and you're never getting to those other things that actually will have a positive impact on every area of your life, then you're doing yourself a disservice. So the one thing to really understand, if it's what you think it's going to be, make sure that you pain test it. What's it look like if this never happens? What does it look like for yourself now and in your future if this thing doesn't happen? What does it feel like if this thing doesn't happen? Focusing on your marriage, perhaps. Second thing, future test it. But future test it in that it's happened, you've focused on it, you've expanded on it, you've given to this particular one thing. What does that feel like? See yourself. See yourself having fulfilled on whatever it is, the option, optimal health, the expanded planning that you've never done before. Strategizing the relationship focus that you haven't done. See what it looks like when you've really focused on, focused your best energy on it. And then lastly, impact test it. Does it have impact? See yourself, who you are, how you are, how you feel, how you show up in all of the other areas of your life when you've fulfilled on this one thing. Just like the magic wand. If you had a magic wand, and this could be in existence right now, which would it be? That's the one thing. All right, if you have been struggling with the one thing thing, then use these three steps, test it out so that you can go forward on that one thing. Because there's only one thing that I want for you and that's for you to feel empowered in your life. These are the steps I'm giving you for that. So that you can keep serving your best life and then serve those that you care about and the missions that you're up to. So share this with someone else if you think that this will serve them. And have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your day and week. If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team Podcast, you'll love being on the Empowered Team. The Empowered Team is our group coaching and accountability program where we provide the tools, skills and community for you to grow your self mastery as a leader and optimize your results alongside other leaders. The Empowered Team runs year round to learn more about our leadership consulting for business and our Empowered Team Group coaching. Head to www.theempowered.ca empowered learn-more that's www.theempowered.ca empower-learn-more we can't wait for you to join us. Let's go.