Kathy Caprino: Work You Love - EP 10 - How Do I Honor My Priorities When Others Need Me?

Foreign hi, I'm Kathy Caprino and welcome to my video blog work you love. I'm thrilled you're here. Today we're taking a question from Jody all about how do I honor my priorities when other people in my life need me? So Jody asks this Kathy, I really appreciate your Forbes post successful people the 8 seconds self limiting behaviors they avoid and have read it numerous times. I struggle with one of these behaviors in particular, honoring other people's priorities over my own. I'm just not sure how to avoid this. For instance, I have to make money to take care of my family and I have to be there for my kids as they are still not independent adults. And I have to sometimes stay late for a boss that needs something done in the morning. How do I do this stuff that I need to while maintaining my own priorities? How can I address my wants before my children's needs? Fantastic question. And again, I think this is on almost every professional's mind at some point or the other. So I want to share some things about what I mean about honoring your priorities. So here's the deal. Honoring your priorities doesn't mean that you're selfish. Doesn't mean that you're focused only on you and only on what you want. It means this. Successful people, people that are creating and achieving what they want to in life, they're being and doing what they want. They know exactly what matters most to them, what they'll give up everything for. And they honor those priorities by aligning their choices and actions and thinking to support those priorities. So let me give you just a concrete example of that from my personal life and you can read more about this in my book Breakdown Breakthrough if you're interested. I had an 18 year corporate career and through much of it my kids were little. And I knew this that if I looked out 30 years, I did not want to live with the regret that I was not the parent or the mother that I longed to be. That would be too demoralizing, too painful. I didn't want to live with that. I knew that I wanted to be the kind of mother that's in the fabric of my children's lives. Supporting them, seeing the milestones, that's what I wanted. And for that to happen, I knew that my career or being a fully contributive professional was going to take a lower rating ranking on my priority list. And I was okay with that. So I made decisions around that. I didn't go for certain promotions, I didn't travel as much as I could have. I didn't go for the CEO track. And I was truly good with that because that was my priority, to be the mother that I wanted to be. But now that they're 16 and 19 and pretty well launched, I certainly still want to be there for them. But now's my time to focus incredibly strongly on my career. I'm a CEO of my own business, I run my own business and, and being the contributive professional I long to in the way that I long to, that's my top priority now. So that's what I mean about honoring your priorities. You're going to know what matters most to you in the right timing of your life and you're going to align with that in your thinking and your actions. The second thing I want to share with you is if you've given up everything for others, I believe you're honoring the wrong priority. So let me give you another concrete example of what I'm talking about. I spent five years as a marriage and family therapist and got a lot of training in that. And I saw couples and families, many of them in a very dysfunctional state. And what I saw and learned from that was there is something called perfectionistic over functioning. And interestingly, in my coaching of over 10,000 women in 10 years, I see almost every woman I work with. Every high achieving woman is a perfectionistic over functioner. What do I mean? They're doing more than is necessary, more than is appropriate, more than is healthy and they're trying to get an A in everything. Well, it's not possible. And in fact over functioning cripples the people around you. It cripples your children, it cripples your staff, your assistant, your spouse. If you're over functioning, they're under functioning. So what you need to look at is where am I doing too much? Where is this unhealthy? And you know what? You know where I, I know I still have a 16 year old at home and I'm still doing a little too much in certain areas. You know exactly where you're doing more than is necessary, appropriate and healthy. It's time to stop. It's time to look at what do I need to delegate? What does my child need to do that I'm not letting him do because I think I have to do it all. That's not a priority. Giving yourself over completely, in fact cripples the independence of the people around you. The third thing I want to share is don't mistake utter selflessness and depleting your mind, body and spirit for the sake of others. As generosity or good parenting. It isn't. It isn't. So let me give you another example in my personal life. In the last four years of my corporate existence, I had something called tracheitis. I was sick every three months with an infection of the trachea. It was so painful, so debilitating. Burning pain, couldn't speak, coughing all night, couldn't get out of bed. And finally, I got the right kind of help. And two energy healers said, wow, what are you doing for a living? Because it's not authentic. You're not speaking truth here. And can I tell you, from the day I was laid off from this corporate job right after 9 11, I have not had tracheitis since. I've had other things, sure, but not an infection of the trachea. So what I learned from that is I really hated that line of work. I hated the toxicity. I hated who I was. But I thought I had to keep doing it. I was making a lot of money. My family needed it. I thought I had to give of myself in that way. What? Well, if this resonates with you, I want you to realize this is a mistake. If you're depleting your mind, body and spirit, it's time to change directions. Absolutely. You don't need to feel sick and exhausted and drained every day in order to be who you want to be for others. So here's kind of the core theme of this video and a tweetable for you. Honoring your priorities means knowing what matters most to you in life and boldly living from that knowledge every single day. I hope that's helpful again. Read my book Breakdown Breakthrough for more information, and I hope to see you next week. Thanks so much.