Do You Know What’s More Important?
Social Connections? Money? Health?
In last week’s blog, Why It’s So Important to Know What’s Important, How to Understand Our Self Control and Our Choices we talked about how we plan to choose one thing but often don’t stick to that plan. Self-control can be a challenge, so to achieve better outcomes clients often sign commitment contracts. These contracts hold us accountable and result in better outcomes, but first we must admit that we need help with self-discipline.
How do we get self-control under control? First, we need to embrace that our plans to choose one thing over another often don’t match. In general, people tend to be overly optimistic about their future plans. Studies show that we may want to eat an apple, but when faced with an immediate choice, 70% of us choose chocolate. We also plan to go to the gym, eat healthier and intend on continuing our morning yoga routine. In fact, studies indicate that if a person plans to go to the gym 4 times/week they only actually go 1/week. Commitment Contacts help us achieve what we plan, especially when they align with our vision of our future self. How do we tap into that vision? We ask Ebenezer Scrooge.
If we want to know what’s truly important to us, we can take lessons from Ebenezer Scrooge from Dicken’s classic Christmas Carol. It took 3 visits from ghosts to convince Ebenezer that change was in order. In addition, the ghost with the biggest impact was the 3rd and final ghost, the one that resembled the Grim Reaper.
Ebenezer Scrooge invested most of his attention and efforts into his love of money. While there is nothing wrong with frugality or savings, Scrooge allowed that focus to negatively impact his life. It took a visit from a few ghosts to change his perspective. Ebenezer inspired me. If Ebenezer could change his vision for his future, then why can’t we? We can and we should before we too get visited by a few friendly ghosts.
Picture Credit: Prawny – Pixaby
Dr. Sean Young, author of Stick with It, A Scientifically Proven Process for Changing Your Life for Good, tells us that researchers have a litany of data proving what’s most important to us. The top 3 are our health, social connections and money. How would you rank their importance?
The Top 3
Social Connections
Picture credit: Clker free – Pixaby
Money
Picture Credit – Geralt – Pixaby
Health
Picture Credit – Mcvec – Pixaby
The key take-away from this study is clear. Money is only so important and generally it’s less important than our health and social connections.
Studies also show that people have a sense of well-being and achieved happiness when their salary range is from 70-75K. Other studies report numbers a bit higher at 95K, but the 20K difference isn’t the determining factor. The message is obvious. Money doesn’t buy happiness, it’s only a contributing dynamic and if we have enough to live comfortably, we seem satisfied. In some cases, more is not more, it’s simply more. In other words, a salary above those numbers has less impact on our overall happiness than one would expect.
On the other hand, social connections and health rank higher in importance. Social connections are critical. We are programmed to be social creatures and far too often find ourselves craving face to face social connection. Technology is a nice adjunct, but a virtual hug can never replace the real thing.
The old saying Health is Wealth is so true. No amount of money can buy our health. We cannot control genetic pre-dispositions or diseases anymore than we can control unexpected diagnoses. But we can take care of the luxury vehicle we call our body, our mind and spirit. We have a long journey in this thing called life and we need to treat ourselves like the luxury models we are. We are worth the premium fuel.
Invest in yourself, your body, mind and spirit. If you don’t think you’re important enough, think again.
Determining what’s important may seem like a no-brainer. If that’s the case, then why don’t we do what we plan to do? Why don’t we save more money? Why don’t we commit to getting together with friends? And lastly, why can’t we discipline ourselves to the self-commitment it takes to treat ourselves and our health, like the precious jewel it is?
I believe this has to do with discipline, commitment and consequence, but not just any consequence, negative consequences. When Ebenezer Scrooge saw into his future, it was grim. When we peer into our future, what do we see? Are we too afraid to look? We shouldn’t be, because looking ahead has its benefits. I don’t mean to steal from today or not live in the moment. Looking ahead steadies us and helps us stick with our plans.
Companies like Merrill Lynch use a technique called self-intervention (I think they borrowed this idea from Dickens, modeling it after Ebenezer himself). Kidding aside, much of this work comes from psychologist, Hal Hershfield. He focuses on how we think about time, its impact on our emotions, judgements and decisions. He studied at Stanford and thought focused on the psychology of long-term decision making and the impact of time in our lives. The concentration primarily focused on Americans living longer and saving less money.
Let’s make this a bit more realistic with a futuristic vision of ourselves. Let’s say you want to save more money, invest in your 401K, IRA, Roth, or build that emergency fund.
Studies have proven that when we “plan” for those types of financial goals and associate our picture with the goals we will have 1 of 2 outcomes. A simplified synopsis follows.
Future View: Our Aged Version Positively Impacts Financial Savings
Group 1 – used a current day picture of themselves linking it to their planned savings goals
Group 2 – used an aged version of themselves (aka: self-intervention), linking it to their planned savings goals
Outcome: The people who viewed themselves as older saved more money. They stuck with their savings plans.
I’ll call this the Ebenezer Scrooge Effect. The group saw themselves nearing retirement and having more money was more important to them. The reality of their “tomorrow” which was their long- term goal, became their current reality. The result, the second group was more successful establishing financial goals and following through with their savings plans.
This concept can be applied to other aspects of our lives. Health, relationships, hobbies, volunteering. If we all see our futuristic self, will we be happy with the choices we made? Will we be happy with the investment of time, effort and energy into those choices?
Visiting Our Future Self, Importance Charts and Commitment Contracts
Photography by Catkin – Pixaby
Visiting Our Future Self: (aka: The Ebenezer Journey)
The coaching model uses many tools, to include vision boards. Vision boards help us envision the future we desire. We see our tomorrow, and we visualize our success. In many ways visiting your future self is very similar to using vision boards, but visiting our future is also different.
We want to see our futuristic self as successful, a person achieving their goals. Imagining our future self requires us to take a deeper dive into the consequences of not achieving those goals. A common question that coaches often us is:
“Where do you see yourself in 3 to 5 years “if” you make this change?” Afterwards, we ask the client to imagine themselves 3 to 5 years from now if they don’t make the changes required for the desired outcomes?”
If we viewed our aged self, time slipping by us, would we make different choices? If we looked into our aging eyes and body and our not so great savings, would we alter our behavior? Is seeing the ghost of our future enough for us to make our necessary changes? I don’t think so….
I’m certain if we were visited by ghosts, we might be more inclined to make choose differently. But, realistically, most of us don’t get visited by the ghosts of our future. So, if left to our own devices are we doomed? No, I don’t believe that either. I think we all need to spend time understanding what’s important to us. We can just say it’s health, family, friends and money or we can really do something. But how?
Above all, I believe we need to practice what’s important to us. To clarify, we tend to be fickle when it comes to importance. One day we choose one priority over another. The next day that same priority is replaced with something more important. How do we handle that shift? We practice importance in order to realize what’s most important and that’s where importance charts come in.
Importance Charts:
I’m a firm believer in writing things down, because writing helps cement our plans. It’s a commitment, of sort, to ourselves. Dr. Young suggests selecting 2 things that are most important to us. Next, we focus on doing those things each day over the course of 1 week.
The Twist: Switch it Up.
Once you decide on the most important thing, stick to that focus for 3 to 4 days. On day 4 (mid- week), switch up your 2nd most important thing, making it your 1st priority. Practice the 2nd thing first and your 1st priority second.
How to Create an Importance Chart:
- Pick 2 things that are truly important to you.
- Use two methods to fuel and re-fuel that importance.
- Community – Remember the blog about the importance and influence of community? Make Lasting Change By Using 6 Community Building Techniques.
These 6 techniques help build a community of influence and that community helps you create lasting change.
- Visit your future self – The Ebenezer Scrooge Effect is effective. If you went to bed and the ghost of your future took you on a trip, what would you see? Did the important things on your list make the cut? Had you invested in those things over time?
- Track by Journaling – Track your progress. Journaling is a great way to reflect and track. You pick your method, either use the old-fashion pen to paper technique or a digital product of your choice.
Journaling is important because we all have days where things don’t go as planned. We try to honor our commitments to ourselves and others. We try to so what’s most important, but life can get in the way. If you document what’s happening, you’ll catch trends, convict yourself about habits and learn how to build back up plans. You’ll also be learning about what’s truly most important to you along the way.
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Sean Young, PhD, author of Stick with I, A Scientifically Proven Process for Changing Your Life for Good, shares his research on how best to Stick with It for lasting change. My blog series delves into his research and provides you with a synopsis of best practices that get results.
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Quick recap from this blog series:
There are 3 Key Types of Behaviors: The A, B, Cs
Automatic, Burning and Common
SCIENCE – is an acronym to remember how we can Stick with It.
S – Stands for Step Ladders – see my blog for details about climbing 1 rung
at a time.
C – Community – influences our behavior and helps us achieve lasting
Change.
I – Important – the things that we do must be important to us. Generally
those things fall into 3 categories – Money, Social Connections & Health
What’s Next? And check out these resources:
Stay tuned for the next series where I’ll discuss the first “E” in SCIENCE. In the meantime, if you are interested in a commitment contract, check out my online fillable form. It’s quick, easy and painless to take a look at the types of contracts that help us reach our goals. You can also visit my website and contact me. Just let me know you are curious about commitment contracts. We can set up a quick discovery call. Twenty minutes might be the first step to your positive change, and 20 minutes is on the house, free of charge.
An example of a General Commitment Contract can be found here. Page 2 includes a template of what I use when a client wants to focus on exercise.
In the meantime, if you are interested in understanding what’s really important to you, try taking the free assessment, Kintsugi Connect. I created this assessment to help clients understand the 3 dimensional impact of health, work, and life. Also, I coupled my approach with Conative Science and you can read more about that on my website.
In the meantime, keep in mind the importance of Importance Charts. They are a great tool. These charts help you decide what’s most important to you by setting a structure for you to share priorities. Midweek you shift focus and make priority number 2 your key priority. The outline below summarizes the steps:
- Establish 2 key priorities
- Priority 1 as your key focus Sunday – Wednesday.
- Priority 2 is a secondary focus Sunday – Wednesday.
- The Switch
- Shift Priorities on Thursday
- Priority 1 becomes Priority 2
- Priority 2 becomes Priority 1
- Monitor your progress and set- backs
- Notice how you feel when you shift priorities
Dr. Young and Silvia Barcellos (Why It’s So Important to Know What’s Important, How to Understand Our Self Control and Our Choices) both offer insights into how we can reach long term goals and achieve lasting change. Science proves that commitment and subsequent consequences play a huge role in our success. Science also proves that understanding our behaviors and tendencies leads to better outcomes.
But before we commit to contracts, we must know what’s truly most important to us. It’s reasonable to spend time understanding your vision and your views of your future self. It’s also important for you to know what areas of focus are most important to you. Far too often, we want to achieve too much, far too soon. Using importance charts helps us achieve by helping us hone focus.
Join me next week when we talk about the first “E” in the acronym SCIENCE. We’ll be talking about making change EASY!
About the Author: Kimberly Sheldahl is a former executive, turned Kolbe Certified™ Consultant who is also an Integrative Health Coach. She is passionate about the integration of productivity and well-being. She is the host of BOOM Baby BOOM, a T.V. show/podcast which will begin airing on Transformation TV in May. Kim is the #1 Best Selling Author of Hack Into OZ, Get the Most Out of Life, available on Amazon, and her course, IMPACT will also be released in late May. The modules include science backed data on building happiness, self-belief (efficacy), self-control (regulation), building habits, and staying motivated. While she’s building her pre-order page, let her know if you are interested in the course. It will sale for $97 on her membership site and she’s offering 3 easy payments. In the meantime, Connect & Follow Kim @:
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