Ep 167: The Importance of Prioritizing Yourself (and How to Do That)

It's about having the clarity , self-confidence and unstoppable belief to go after and get everything you want . If you'll come with me , I'll show you how Well . Hello friends , I hope you had an amazing week . Today I want to talk about how good you are at prioritizing yourself .

Do you put yourself first or do you put others and other people's expectations of you first ?

And I will just say that was probably triggering for some of you , because I think when we talk about prioritizing ourselves to many of us , especially women generalizing , because it's probably some men too , but I do think in general , women are taught by society , at least women of my generation , so Gen Xers and older are taught to put others first .

You think about it like I'm not a mother , I don't have children , but it is that whole thing , a woman's role in society in general . And granted , our roles have evolved . We are business owners , we are powerful career women , we are many things in our life beyond just caregivers .

But that caregiver thing , I think , is at the center of what it means to be a woman . Even if I can speak to that , even if we don't have children , we still kind of live in that way . When you think about putting yourself first , it feels selfish or narcissistic , or for many of us it feels wrong .

I mean , on one level , intellectually , you might be able to get there and say , oh , I have to put my oxygen mask on first . That's the plane thing . The plane's going down and I have people next to me that I love or anyone next to me . I want to help them . So I can't help them before I help myself . So we get it right .

But usually we don't do it and I think there are many deep reasons for that and I want to talk about that today , about what's getting in the way of you coming first , of you taking proper care of you , because you may be ambitious , there may be lots of things that you still want to go do , like me , but you are not going to be able to do those to the

fullest if you are not well tended to , if you're not well cared for . I think what did they say ?

I'm going to get this wrong , but in general , they talk about aging and specifically , I'm always very interested in makeup and skincare and all of that stuff , and I think they say , up to the age of 40 , you have the face you were born with , and then , 40 and beyond , you have the face and the skin , or whatever , of the culmination of how you've cared for

yourself . It's kind of the same thing . It's like , yeah , as we age , from here for a midlife , as we age , our life and the things that are possible for us , I think , are going to get narrower and narrower and narrower , depending on our health , mental health , physical health , vitality that we want to have .

So this isn't just about taking care of your body or taking care of you nutritionally or anything like that . It's everything , and we have , over the course of our life , cultivated habits on ourselves and how we stack up versus the other priorities in our life , and I feel like , as women , a lot of us come second or third or last , right .

So I want to talk about that today because , if that's you , if you feel triggered by what I just said , that you need to come before everyone else in your life , or of me saying some of the things that I shared just in the past couple of minutes . If that triggered you , I invite you to listen to the rest of this podcast .

And , as we go through , I want you to think about you and your daily life , day in , day out . Your average day , your average week , your average month , and I want you to think about what percent of that time , if that day is a pie , what percent of that pie is spent caring for you in whatever way .

So that gets to personal health care habits , the grooming stuff it gets to what percent of the time do you spend putting yourself together for the day ? Or do you just run around in the morning taking care of everyone else and kind of walk out the door a little bit ragged ?

It's like if you work outside the home or even inside the home , how much of the time is spent doing the things you need to do for that job that you have and how much of it is spent on the things that are important to you , that feed you and nurture you ?

And even when you think about who you are and the things that you want in your life , how much of a priority is that is knowing those things ?

Because I have to tell you as a life coach , whether I'm talking to someone early career , early to mid career , mid career or even approaching kind of a big pivot in their things , sort of a retirement of some , a retirement of sorts even if it's not a proper retirement , like officially , like to go fishing or whatever .

It's like to leave one thing and pivot into something else that might be more of a passion at a later stage of career . Almost every single person starts by saying I have no idea what I want , we don't know ourselves , and that is the beginning of not prioritizing ourselves .

And in this episode I want to talk about why that is and I want to talk about some ways to undo it . Obviously , this podcast focuses on career and life and midlife , but this particular topic , this spans the generations .

So if you are Gen Z or Gen Alpha , the very beginning of your journey , there's probably a very good percentage of you that have not learned the habits around prioritizing yourself and I can tell you if that has been indoctrinated in you through your family of origin and the experiences of your early life .

I promise you , as you get into your career , as you start to climb the ladder , as you have a relationship , as you have , potentially , a family of your own , it will only get worse , just trust me on that little thing .

So we have to , just wherever we are in our life's journey , we have to just decide that we want to undo some of the things that the world has taught us about our place in the world right especially , I think , if we're women , but again , probably applies to men too .

Before I get into the meat of the episode , I just want to share a quote from Socrates obviously a wise man from back in the day , and what he said I thought was interesting .

Many of us have heard the quote from Socrates on you know , knowing thyself , but a lot of times I think we don't see the full quote and they think it's very revealing and especially pertinent to this topic . His quote is know thyself , for once we know ourselves , we may learn how to care for ourselves . That is worth hearing again , so I'll do it again .

The quote is know thyself , for once we know ourselves , we may learn how to care for ourselves . So obviously this idea of caring for ourselves has been relevant for millennia , you know , for many , many , many generations upon generations . We as people generally think about ourselves as a lower priority than the caring for others around us .

And I also think most of us don't know ourselves . We know the us , that the world creates for us or assigns to us the identities that others label us as , or even that we label ourselves as because of the world around us . We're a boss , we're a fill in the blank of your career , we're an accountant or a doctor , we're a brand strategist .

Whatever we are , we are maybe a mother , we are a son or a daughter , we are a wife or a husband right , we are those things . And when we see ourselves as those things , we as a person get de prioritized because our role becomes fulfilling that label .

We want to succeed in our career , so we work on becoming the best boss or we work on performing at the highest level in our career . We want to be a good mother , if we are a mother , so we put everyone first . We put our children first . We put we want to be a good wife , so we put our partner first .

We want to be a good son or daughter , so we sometimes give up the things that we want to do to make sure that , especially as our parents age , that they're cared for , like . I just went through a lot of that I've shared on previous podcast when both of my parents got sick over the past year and a half .

So these are the things that we do and , by the way , those aren't bad things Like we definitely want to show up in the roles that we have in our life , but the problem is that I think most of us because these are the roles that we play and those roles are important to us we put those roles and how we show up in those roles way above ourself , and that

might be triggering for people . So I just want to say I'm not saying stop caring about everyone else and only care about yourself . I'm not saying that . Some of you might have heard that . That is not what I'm saying . I am saying , though , that life has seasons and when those roles end and eventually they are going to end and we're left with ourself .

A lot of times , I think we do not know who we are or what we want , and I would say , just judging from my experience coaching , there are people who are 21 who do not know what they want . There are people who are 39 who are unhappy on the career path . They're at entering midlife and have no idea what they want .

There are people in their mid 50s longing for a second act in their career , want to start a business , but have no idea what they want .

And there are people still that I'm hearing from in my DMs who , even if you go back to some of my earlier podcast episodes from earlier this year we were talking about their word of the year and the things they want to accomplish they're telling me they do not know what they want to do with their year .

We do not put ourselves first and we don't put ourselves first , I believe , because of the societal expectations that are placed on us , especially as women , because we want to succeed at the things that society is telling us are our role .

We put those roles first and showing up in those roles first , and we put ourselves last and that is why we don't eat right , that is why we don't exercise the way we should , that is why we do not take proper care of ourselves with our health screenings , any part of our physical care .

When was the last time like you did all of the little habits that you enjoy , like your nails , your hair ? How good are you at putting yourself first ?

Like if we were sitting together having coffee , and I asked you that question and said , hey , on a scale of 1 to 10 , in your average day , in your average week , in your average month , how good are you at putting yourself and your needs and your self-care first ? What would you say on a scale of 1 to 10 ?

With one being you really suck at it and 10 being you're fantastic at it , you take great care of yourself . Where would you put yourself ? So , whatever that answer was , I just want to say I think a lot of us probably not all , but many of us in general are probably less than five on that scale .

We take care , maybe at a 10 , of other people , maybe at a 10 in how we show up in our job or our business , but for our self and our future , a lot of times , unfortunately , the answer is very low on the scale . I think today , like especially in self-help circles , we talk a lot about self-care through a lot of different prisms .

Right , we talk about our morning habits , we talk about the different aspects of caring for our bodies and stuff like that . But I want to talk about why we don't practice these things on a regular basis . Why do we take second or third or maybe even last place in our lives and everything else , from our family to our relationships to our career come first .

Right , if you think about it , it doesn't even make sense , because who's the person that has to show up and do the roles that society assigns to us ?

We are , and if we're depleted and not cared for and not healthy and not feeling energetic or vibrant or strong mentally or physically , we're not going to be able to fulfill those roles , especially as we get older , right ? So this isn't just about having better habits although that's part of it , but it is . It goes much deeper than that .

It's not just about scheduling time for self-care . It goes much deeper

. This is about moving from the belief that keeps you indebted to other people's priorities for you and for the roles that you play , and instead focusing on your priorities , not the priorities of others . And this requires you to first believe that you matter , that putting yourself first enables you to fully show up for the roles that you play in your life .

I know we know this intellectually , but we don't practice it . And I think we don't practice it because , at the deepest level , many of us , especially women , believe that we don't matter , or that we matter less than the care that we would give to others or the other roles that we play .

So that's what I want to talk about today , and it's deep , deep stuff . Again , it's why I started this business , because I believe that every single thing , everything in our life that isn't going the way we want it to go , if you peel away the layers , there are limiting mindsets around it . There are at the core of our essence .

It gets to how we see ourselves and what we believe our worth is . And that is why my business focuses on self-image and identity work , because if we focus or settle for the identities that society gives us , we are never going to live the fullest life , the life that we really could live or that we want to live .

The first thing that has to happen is you have to change what you believe about prioritizing yourself . You can't see putting yourself first as wrong , and you may not have even thought about it before . You know what I mean .

You may be like well , intellectually , you may say , well , I know , it's not wrong to take care of myself , but if you're not doing it , there's something in there that's causing you to not do it , and it usually is that we place a higher value on the people that we need to show up for or the roles that we need to show up for and we don't think about .

Well , we can't really show up as our best there with our children or spouse or our work , if we're not first strong and fully cared for right . So I just don't think we're taught this . A lot of us , as women , learned this by watching people around us as we were growing up .

And I don't know about you and I'm definitely not criticizing , because I had a wonderful mother , but she cared for us and everyone , but she didn't spend hardly any time caring for herself and that makes me sad to think about . She was a wonderful mother wonderful , but I don't know that she put herself in what she wanted first . She had four kids , right .

So she was a sad old mother . So probably not a lot of time to do it and not of an era where that was even talked about , right . It was about putting yourself last , really , and saying , well , I've got to do these things and you do have to . You know you have children .

Our job is to care for the children if we have them , but there's little ways , little spaces of time that could be carved out to take care of yourself , and that is a shift in mindset .

You know , you have to believe that you're important and that you matter and that you care about showing up for the roles that you have in your life , but you have to first believe that you are the one that has to be fed first before you handle the care and the feeding of those around you . So in the roles , the other roles that you play .

So that's a shift in mindset and that is much easier said than done , because I don't think , if you were not raised to believe that you matter , that you're amazing , that you're good enough , if you believe in your essence and I think most of us do these days . You see it all over social media .

All the anger , all of the snipes at celebrities , at the regular person when they post , that hate that is directed outward , is coming from how they feel about themselves . It is a mirror of how they feel about themselves , period .

It is everywhere this fundamental belief that we don't matter , that we're not good enough , and so some of us shrink down and some of us lash out . I just I believe that that is a trend and one of society's biggest problems which is coming from what A feeling of not enough , right ? I think it's just the biggest human level problem that exists .

So that has to come first . That is deep , deep self image work .

That is what we do here and , if this is something of interest to you , I am getting ready to launch the next iteration of next level , which is my monthly membership , and I encourage you to go to my website , the purposefulcareercom forward slash next level , and just check it out and sign up for the waitlist , because it is coming in a couple of months and it

is where , for a very affordable monthly fee , you can start to do this work and fix those deep , deep beliefs you have about your place in the world and the degree to which you think you matter .

A lot of us look for the mattering and the feeling of being good enough from others and I can promise you others cannot give it to you your spouse , your friends , your parents . No one can give you that feeling except yourself . You have to believe that you matter , agnostic of anyone else , and when you believe that everything in your life improves .

So number one is shifting your mindset and believing that you are worth it , you're good enough and that you matter . You come first . So that's number one . Number two you know we all have these beliefs that we are dealing with . Some people have a louder inner critic .

Some people don't have as active of an inner critic , but a lot of that gets into what we learned growing up , right In our family of origin . The perfectionism habits , the imposter syndrome stuff . All of the things that we believe about what's possible for us come from the things that we learned in our family of origin right .

So once you fix the self identity work , the self image in number one , it's much easier to start to build new , more positive , more empowering neural pathways and to put the inner critic on mute . You know , to quiet it down , to calm it down a little bit . It's easier to do once that self image stuff gets stronger .

But you do have to address both things because the things that we think and the things that we believe , that stem , you know , from the origins of our life .

They're there and those are habitual patterns of thought that you know neuroscience would tell us has become a very strong neural pathway in our brain and it gets triggered and that those thoughts come up on . Doing that requires awareness that those things are there and it requires an intentional shift on your part to start believing and thinking something new .

And when you practice that again and again and again , that new empowering thought to replace the limiting one that you have , it starts to become a stronger neural pathway . And that is a practice you can develop in your life .

But I do believe that the first thing you have to do is address what's at the root of it , which is your self image and self identity . But then we can get into addressing sort of the enabling , limiting beliefs that surround that less than optimal self image that you might have , right .

So that is also something that we work on in my membership and it is really really important work . So that's number two . Number three is you have to stop prioritizing the expectations that society has for you on your roles , the roles that you play .

We let other people tell us what we should be doing and who we should be , and that those things come first , as we were talking about earlier in this episode , and you have to say that , okay , well , if I want to be a good wife and I want to be a good parent and I want to be a good boss or leader or business owner or employee , I want to perform at

my highest level .

And you have to sort of reorient yourself to say and in order to do that , it isn't just about putting that stuff first I had to put myself first , so I'm at my best , so I have the strongest mindset , so I have the strongest self-belief , so I have the strongest enabling thoughts every day , so that I care for myself , so that I'm physically strong , you know ,

and that I'm mentally strong , and then I can show up for those roles . Those roles actually get easier to excel at because we're strong If we're depleted . And we put everyone else first and we always come last , we're depleted . How great is your effort even going to be ? It's a struggle , right , you're on the struggle bus . It's just really , really difficult

. And so I would say we have to reorient and stop listening to the things that got indoctrinated in us about the roles that we play and what it means to play those in a powerful way , and we have to say I want to excel at these roles that I've chosen in my life .

You know my relationships , my work , all of that but I believe we have to get to a place where it's like I matter and I'm undoing these limiting beliefs that I have , and I come first . So forget the expectations that say do all these other things first . That's what it means to be successful or to do it well . No , you have to say no .

No , I believe that I have to be strong , and so I come first , and then , when I'm fed after I'm fed in all respects , I will then show up for these roles and I will do it in a more powerful way , probably a less draining way , and I'll do it in a more stellar way . I'll be better at it , right ?

So stop letting people tell you , either overtly or through their actions or the things they say to you , that you have to do a certain thing first and that that's more important than anything else .

You decide what your priorities are , and if you put yourself first and you're fed and cared for first , you can be assured that you are at your strongest to tackle those roles in the most powerful way , right ? So that's number three Read about the expectations of others . Focus on your own expectations of yourself and put yourself first at the heart of it .

Number four allow yourself to know yourself . It's kind of like what Socrates said you have to know yourself before you can really care for yourself in the most optimal way , and I think it would be a shame although it is true for many of us to wait until the roles you played in the earlier part of your life are done .

I think it would be a shame to wait for the kids to grow up and leave the home , or for you know the bulk of your career is over , to really get clear on who you are and what you're passionate about and what you want . Don't wait for that . If you have lost touch with what you really enjoy or what you're passionate about , that needs to be a priority .

You know , as part of the self-image work , I think , reconnecting to the things that you really care about . What do you love ? Have you forgotten that ? Like , let's figure that out again and let's not wait until you're 75 or 85 . You know , like , let's do it now . It doesn't matter if you're 25 , 45 , 65 or 85 . Let's do it right now , today .

Let's start working on believing that we matter and putting ourselves first , but , even more , allowing us to know ourselves . Who are we now , and has that shifted over time ? What do we care about ? What are we passionate about ? What do we want to spend our time on when we have a free minute .

You know what do we want to do Really with our careers and our next act ? And let's start preparing for that . Allow yourself to know yourself .

Stop shutting that part of yourself off Very , very important fallout of some of the kind of work that we do in my membership and finally , this is one that I committed to a long time ago , but I hope you do too and that is keep growing . You know , like , keep learning . I consider myself a lifelong learner and I consider myself now a creator .

It took a while for me to get there , but that is who I am . I want to always be giving back . I want to always be contributing . I want to always be using the things that I've learned to help others who are at various stages of their journey .

I think that is a really important thing to me , and in order to do that , I need to keep growing right and to keep learning and to keep pushing myself to find new , creative ways of putting myself out there in service of others . And I would say , for you . I would ask yourself , like how have you invested in your learning journey ?

Do you read , do you invest time in areas of your life that you're passionate about or where you feel like you need to step up your game ? Are you investing in self-improvement Because you're worth it ?

You know the membership that I do only requires 15 minutes a day and 30 minutes a week spending time on a lesson , but the dividends that pays in your life are exponential the shifts reconnecting to your passion , believing maybe for the first time in your life that you matter , that you come first , that you are important .

You know , investing in your growth and your self-improvement , in making you your most powerful , most actualized self . This is your life , you know , and you want it . Enjoy it to the fullest . And I think you can't do that if you just stop right . And I feel like so much of our society is loud and intrusive .

You know Social media can be a place where you connect with movements and things of passion to you . Like I love , I subscribed to all kinds of home decor things and I've discovered all kinds of little beauty brands and things that feed me a little bit and I try to focus my attention there .

But the second that I venture out and start scrolling through my random feed and not connecting with purpose into those that I know are going to fill me . You see all the back and forth and the hate and the , and it just starts to bring you down .

So I feel like the modern society if we're not careful , we have so much coming at us , we have to protect our time and our attention to make space for our own growth . Decide that you want to invest in you in whatever way is meaningful to you , and that is why I started my business and why I started my membership . I do not focus mostly on one-on-ones .

I only take a handful because I only have so much time for that . My focus really is on the membership and right now I'm in a 2.0 kind of up leveling phase . But the doors will open again in a couple of months and I encourage you to consider next level .

It is affordable , it is $49 a month and it will feed you and transform you really from the inside out . You start all the way in with who you believe you are and start to work on getting rid of negative aspects of that self-image .

Start to purposefully build a new one and a new identity and , in the process , ridding yourself of all of those old limiting beliefs and mindset patterns that might have grown up in your life .

Start to quiet down that inner critic , calm it down , soothe it a bit , so that you can build new , empowering neural pathways that lead you in the direction that you want to go Towards the actualized , prioritized self that you deserve to be . So that is what I wanted to talk about today in terms of prioritizing yourself .

I think if this has triggered you , or if you look at your own life and you feel a knowing that you just are not stacking up in your priorities , your prioritization list , at the level that you deserve or that you want , that is something you have the power to change , starting today .

But you will need to get into the heart of what is causing you not to do that , and that is deep self-image and self-identity work . So , if that's of interest to you , I encourage you to go to thepurposefulcareercom forward slash next level and sign up for the waiting list .

Doors are going to open in a couple months , so I'll probably start reaching out via email to folks on the waiting list in about a month , and I encourage you to go do that . And until then , I encourage you to stay connected to me on Instagram , if you're not already .

We have a growing community over there and I'm posting once or twice a week on the issues that we talk about in the podcast and on other related things that have to do with just living your best life and your best , most actualized life , and that is what you deserve .

So thanks for tuning in today , and if you're a regular follower of this podcast , I so appreciate you showing up every week , and I really encourage you . If this episode was of interest and you think about other people in your life who you think you know may not be giving themselves the attention they deserve , I encourage you to share this with them .

Send them to my Instagram and have them click on the link in my bio and there's a link to the podcast and by clicking on that they will get into the most current episode , and that is this one .

I hope you share it , email it to someone that you love and invite them into the community , because we all deserve to live our best , most actualized life , and in doing that , we are showing up as our best for everyone else that we know , love and care about . So with that , I will leave you till next time . Make it a great week .

My friends , do you have a life coach ? If not , I'd be so honored to be your coach . I've created a virtual coaching program and monthly membership called Next Level . Inside we take the material you hear on this podcast , study it and then apply it . Join me at thepurposefulcareercom backslash next level . Don't forget the purposefulcareercom backslash next level .

Join me and together we'll make your career and life everything you dream of . We'll see you there .