I have journaled almost daily, since I was a kid. For my fourteenth birthday I was gifted a home-made journal by my best friend — it had all the best pictures cut out of a magazine and was titled The Fourteen Magazine.
Ooh, that's a problematic cover model. I did check, however and not only was there a John Stamos poster in the centre, she'd also written me a horoscope. What a champion friend.
And so writing became how I interrogated myself, my feelings, etc. It's also where I often wrote some pretty atrocious fan-fiction, but let's leave that alone 🙂
Not being able to write for over a year, created a big gap in self analysis for me. Before you ask, a) 'writing' electronically does not work the same way for me, and b) I couldn't type for a long time either.
That gap in self analysis was exacerbated by our recent shared experience with the existential threat of the pandemic. And, following a long and distressing decline, my father died. And I was (seemingly suddenly) in my mid forties. I then realised I really needed to sit down and do a big chunk of 'what is important to me' thinking.
So, of course, the first thing I did, was to google "how do I work out what's important to me", and a lot of the source material for what I'm going to share below came from the first result, which was this article. Note that I haven't read anything else on that site, and I have no idea if it's particularly legit. But I found it helpful.
Based on that list of '10 things", I put together a programme of self analysis that I thought would work for me. I'm not going to share where I got to, because that's private, but I thought I'd share the programme that I found helpful.
I scheduled a daily task for each of these, and yes, I occasionally skipped a day, or did a few tasks in one super session, but all in all, I had 45 days of tasks and I completed them in about 60 days.
Session One
Take the 18 items from the article (listed below) and force rank them, based on almost nothing. Don't overthink it, you'll have plenty of time for that.
- family
- friends
- income
- independence
- influence and power
- health and fitness
- leisure or relaxation
- personal growth
- prestige or status
- professional growth
- rewarding work
- romantic relationship
- security
- spirituality or faith
- the place you live
- using your talents
- wealth and savings
- your impact on society
Sessions 2 – 19
Spend at least one session on each of the 18 areas. Do two sessions if you find you need it. Interrogate what defines each and what each means to you. This definition is your definition. Your definition of, personal growth, for example, may be different to mine for any and this may be true of all of these. You might even find you need to change or rename one of the areas to make it a better label for what you've described. You can add items if you want. I nearly deleted an item, but in the end kept it — it was just consistently ranked at the bottom. And the session defining it did not take long. Change force-ranking as you go, if you think you should, but you'll have plenty of chances later.
Session 20
Review your force ranking based on your greater understanding of each area. The article suggests that you can have items at the same rank, but I'm a fan of force ranking — I think it forces you to really dive into how and why you might prioritise things the way you do. But this is your programme, you do you!
Sessions 21 to 45
Spend two sessions on each of the following questions. After you do a deep dive on each question, spend a separate session reviewing your force ranking.
- Consider the most important people in your life
- Identify what you enjoy doing most
- Think about your qualities and what you're good at
- Look at how you spend your time
- Pay attention to what you think about
- Think about the part of your life you want to be better in
- Consider how you want to describe yourself to others
- Reflect on when you were last happy
On your last force-ranking session
This is one of the sessions above, but I wanted to talk a little about the temporal aspect of this. For most of these activities, you are likely talking from the perspective of what you value now and in the past, based on your circumstances, behaviours and preferences. That's important, but it's not necessarily binding. You can end up with a list of prioritised values that are absolutely real for you, but that do not necessarily line up with how you have been living your life. And that's okay, things change, circumstances change — but make sure that you are reflecting reality in your list, make sure it is yours.
So where did I end up?
I did this because I wanted somewhat of a framework for making decisions about my life, rather than my usual (and historically very successful) approach of just saying yes to almost anything.
I now have an explored and prioritised list of 'things' to help me think about what I want my life to look like. There are still 18. Some have been renamed or remodelled based on what worked for me. The ranking for some was a surprise to me.
The next steps seem like the harder ones — actually doing something about it 🙂