Summer 2005 "Setting Your Priorities"

ur newsletter will promote principles of personal success for women. These ideas will illustrate success in the working world, in interpersonal relationships, and in developing self esteem and confidence. Each member will bring special knowledge about attaining personal goals and adding a sense of discovery and excitement to women's lives.

	"...let me describe what thoughts used to occur in my head over and over and keep me up all night: 'Well, work has to come first - without that, we have no money for anything. After that, the kids and their schooling and activities must come next ...and so I'll just have to concentrate on those things, everything else is too much.' However, I soon found that I was exhausted and getting sick a lot from overwork."
	"...we never let work rule our lives. Phil, a physician, never had a demanding private practice caring for patients; he always worked in hospital laboratories. I did a lot of freelancing in between full-time jobs. I am convinced that the strong relationship we have with our children today is due to the fact that they know how important they were to us because we gave them a lot of time and attention in their formative years."
	"There are several recurring themes that I see in self-sabotage. One of them is to set so many priorities at once, that you end up frittering your time away, picking up one thing, then jumping to the next, then following up with a third, and pretty soon you've got all these projects in the works, none near completion, and you burn out because you're overwhelmed with marshalling the minutiae of so many details of different important goals."
	"Values are the "black box navigational system" that keeps redirecting our focus and helping us maintain our sense of life-purpose. In turn, our priorities become the guidance system to reaching our goals, hopes, and dreams. As we make choices about what we are choosing to spend our time and energy on, when we begin to drift away from our values and life-purpose, it is the values that can redirect our priorities."
	"I don't think setting priorities is a big deal. I think doing what we say we're going to do is by far the greater challenge. In my experience, about 90% of people don't really do what they say they're going to do. And that problem gets them into a raft of trouble."

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Janet L. Hall, owner of Alternative Wellness Center in Albuquerque, is a Certified Kinesiologist, Certified Herbalist and Emotional Facilitator. Her success and reputation for helping others have brought her clients worldwide. She is a consulting Kinesiologist and nutritional counselor for various organizations; a facilitator for Life Change Integrations; a health and well-being author for various websites and magazines; and teaches and facilitates kinesiology, herbal and emotional courses. A member of Energy Kinesiologists of the U.S. and the American Herbalists Guild, she has also appeared on public stations KNME-TV/Channel 5 and KUNM Radio, 89.9-FM. If you wish to comment on this article, or if you would like a life empowerment & change integration to increase the enjoyment of your journey, contact Janet at (505) 294-WELL (9355), or e-mail her at .

re you like most of us who have had trouble setting priorities in the past? If you are, you are among many! Setting priorities can be difficult. How can you truly know what is of primary importance among all the things you "must" get done?

     Well, as one who was suddenly a non-working, disabled, single parent and widow, I had to learn to set priorities and learn fast!

     It's one thing to determine when bills and paperwork are due and prioritize them in your work arena, but when your personal life and family must be worked in with it all as well, it is a whole other "ballgame," so to speak!

     I've been told that sharing my experience has helped many other single parents, as well as those with overwhelming responsibilities. Many married women must live as though they are single parents if they do not have a partner who shares the marital responsibilities. So, I hope that giving you a glimpse of my responsibilities and the struggle I had prioritizing them will help you, too.

     When my husband passed away, we did not even have enough money for his funeral; my father gave it to us. Recovering from a disability, I had to get myself to school and find a job fast. As I healed myself with alternative medicine, I realized I had a great love for it and decided to enter that field. Later, I found that being a natural health practitioner with many clients, a business owner, teacher, and author is a feat to juggle all in itself! Then add to that load being a single mom, solely caring for three children, a home and yard, vehicle, and animals.

     To this, add the responsibilities of trying to finish school, seeing to the children's spirituality, their schooling, and making sure they had activities such as sports and creative exploration with art and music, as well as memorable vacations. Oh, and there's more: caring for aging parents and yes, what about the grandchildren?! As grandmothers, ours is a very important role in the lives of our grandchildren. Our own self-care is something we can't let go of either, as well as healthy relationships with those around us. Where would you start to prioritize all of that?

     Now, let me describe what thoughts used to occur in my head over and over and keep me up all night: "Well, work has to come first - without that, we have no money for anything. After that, the kids and their schooling and activities must come next ...and so I'll just have to concentrate on those things, everything else is too much." However, I soon found that I was exhausted and getting sick a lot from overwork. The house was unkempt, my parents and grandchildren didn't see me at all, and my children were unhappy because I worked so much.

     So, I began to juggle priorities again. This time I vowed to put the children first because their happiness was so very important to me, and to cut down on work so that I could be with them more and see to the house. But within a short time, there was not enough money, the kids were somewhat happier, but I wasn't. Because I was not caring for myself and taking time to have healthy adult relationships, life felt monotonous and lonely. Along with that, I soon realized that I was going to have to go back to school for a degree to be able to continue in my line of work. Now what?

     So, it was back to the drawing board. Night after night, week after week, month after month, I kept trying to decide what I would try next to figure out my priorities. I kept thinking I must have them in the wrong order, or selected the wrong ones, or something. My frustration level was at an all-time high. I had exhausted myself and had become quite angry!

     My brother called me one night to see how I was doing, and I began to cry and lament, "It's just not possible to do all that a single parent has to do! I hate my overwhelming life!" He very quietly said, "If you believe that... that it isn't possible, it won't be. And, if you feel life is overwhelming, it will be. What do you want to do about that?"

     My first reaction was to get angrier. "You just don't know what its like! You don't even have kids!" He went on to explain calmly that my belief was stopping me from seeing what was possible. I couldn't see any other way, because I believed there was only one way of going about it - and it still wouldn't be possible anyway. I also believed that somehow I was incapable of setting my priorities wisely. That conversation changed our lives. I came to understand from the rest of our conversation that priorities could be juggled moment to moment, day by day, week by week, month by month and so on.

     Here's what I learned: I had to spend a certain amount of time each day on all of my top priorities, which I determined to be:

1. Me: Without self-care, and my own spirituality, I could not keep myself healthy and okay. Therefore, my children would not be okay, and I would be in no shape to work. This had to come first or nothing else could.
    

2. Kids: The children had already lost their father and would have problems from that to deal with - along with the normal growing-up stuff. It was so very important to me that I raise healthy, happy children regardless of what had just happened to us.
    

3. Work: Without working to support us, I would not be able to put food on the table, have a stable environment in which to raise children, and keep myself in good health.

     As long as I could schedule some time each day for those three priorities, they could all be juggled accordingly. Each day the time period could be altered and something different accomplished. On some days my self-care might be a 5-minute period of "quiet time" with a cup of tea to keep me going. Once a month, it might be going out with a friend for dinner and a movie. Perhaps another day of the week - it could be a massage or exercise time.

     For the children, on one day it might mean that I would single out one child (rotating them all) and give that one child my time, attention and pampering for a two- to three-hour period (which they just loved!); on another day, it could mean a family check-in meeting for about a half-hour to ask how all of them were doing and to see who needed what.

     I began to develop a support team around me for certain things such as extracurricular activities, which are carefully scheduled in moderation. For example, I began sending my children with other mothers who were taking their kids to such functions, or with neighbors, family or friends

     Work and my schooling were combined to fit into my schedule. My classes were booked first (one class per semester was all I could handle), and then my clients were booked around them. The problem I had with e-mail and paperwork stacking up, with no time to attend to it, was resolved by prioritizing it all immediately as it came in and filing it every other morning for a half-hour period before my first client. Also, I found I could work with wonderful people who are flexible, such as Jane Blume, who kindly waited for this article to be turned in a few days past the due date.

     I decided I could visit my aging parents one Sunday per month, with the hope that my siblings would rotate their visits as well. My grandchildren could spend the night with me one weekend night approximately twice a month. The house could be kept up in short, small spurts in the early morning and before bedtime. I could get by with taking our van to be washed twice a month. At any time any of these things could be delayed, depending on the circumstances that might arise. That's the beauty of realizing that priorities can and will shift.

     I informed my children and everyone else in my life that we would try hard to adhere to the schedule but, if at any given time, something we had planned was not going to work out because I needed more rest or some other priority needed to be juggled, I would let them know, and it would be rescheduled. Anything that needed to be dropped from our lives, if it was not a critical item, was indeed dropped.

     Get the picture? This way, I could feel free, not overwhelmed, and be sure that the children and I could have a great life no matter what! Today I continue to juggle priorities as they change and the need arises.

     I hope this helps you to set your priorities. It can be done - and yes, by you! Open yourself to any possibility and rotate your responsibilities. My children and I are living proof it works! If you have any questions, or need suggestions, e-mail me at  or visit my website at www.ucanriseabove.com.

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n one of the speeches that I give, "Promote Yourself the Professional Way," I suggest that each of us should have a professional and personal mission that we can articulate.

     I say this for two reasons:

1. We all have (I hope!) a personal and a professional life, and ideally they should be "in synch" with one another.
    

2. Our lives have become increasingly busy and complicated. Therefore, if we understand what our personal and professional missions are, we can say "yes" to activities that advance these missions - and "no" to those that will not.

     I know from personal experience that it's all too easy to get distracted, or to do things that are contrary to stated values and priorities. When my daughter, Kathy, was a year old, I decided to go back to school to pursue graduate work in communications. While I wanted opportunities to get out of the house, she was a very high priority for Phil and me, and so I decided to take only one course each quarter.

     I hired a babysitter to stay with Kathy while I was in class, and I did my homework at night after she fell asleep. This arrangement worked well for the first six months or so. When she was 18 months of age, I took a course that required me to do a complicated research project to analyze a successful public information campaign. To meet the course demands, I asked Kathy's babysitter to increase her time with us to a few hours each day. Kathy didn't like this arrangement at all. She didn't need many words to tell me how she felt; her crying and fussing communicated her message very clearly.

     I didn't take such a demanding course again. As a matter of fact, when I became pregnant with her brother, Arthur, I took 18 months off from school. When I finally went back, I continued with my one-course routine.

     When Arthur started first grade at the age of six, I went to work full time at a public radio station. He was definitely not happy with the babysitting arrangements (a young, single mom and her daughter picked him up from school each day), but I made it a point to get home every night between 5:30 and 6 p.m. Because both Phil and I were working, having dinner with the family became an important - nay - a critical priority, and it remained so until Kathy and Arthur went off to college.

     While we both did interesting things, we never let work rule our lives. Phil, a physician, never had a demanding private practice caring for patients; he always worked in hospital laboratories. I did a lot of freelancing in between full-time jobs. I am convinced that the strong relationship we have with our children today is due to the fact that they know how important they were to us because we gave them a lot of time and attention in their formative years.

     I didn't fully pursue the opportunity to own and run my own public relations business until Arthur left home. Now that I know how demanding a business can be, I truly admire people with young families who become entrepreneurs. I know it can't be easy. I'm not sure that I could have done it, and I have never regretted the path that I chose to take.

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Carol Akright, Certified Financial Planner and Certified Kinesionics Practitioner, is an investment manager, financial strategist, and pioneer in applying kinesiology to help people identify and fund their life dreams. A financial advisor for twenty years, she is author of FUNDING YOUR DREAMS GENERATION TO GENERATION (Advisor Press, 2004) and of numerous financial articles. Creator of the national PBS series, FUNDING YOUR DREAMS, she is a frequent guest on radio and TV. Ms. Akright is the founder of TOTAL FINANCIAL HEALTH, a wholistic program in dreamfunding and wealth creation. She can be reached at Associated Securities Corp., (505) 897-1970.

re you a list maker? Do you set priorities at different times in your life about what you need to do, and by certain target dates, and then you either don’t meet the deadlines, or you even forget entirely - weeks later---that you made a list at all?

     If so, you’re not alone. The reason this happens is that we all have underlying beliefs and emotional blocks that cause us to “fail” in prioritizing and fulfilling our goals and deadlines. In other words, we sabotage the very priorities that we say, or write, that we want.

     The more I work with individuals on their money priorities, as their financial advisor, the more I see how this works. It becomes clear to me early on in the advisor/client relationship who has these blocks to prosperity and who does not. It saddens me how frequently we can sabotage our own success and not get what we want in life - whether it has to do with our money goals or other life dreams.

     There are several recurring themes that I see in self-sabotage. One of them is to set so many priorities at once, that you end up frittering your time away, picking up one thing, then jumping to the next, then following up with a third, and pretty soon you’ve got all these projects in the works, none near completion, and you burn out because you’re overwhelmed with marshalling the minutiae of so many details of different important goals. You juggle the best you can for awhile, and finally you end up chucking the goal/dream and saying, “Well, that wasn’t possible, I guess.”

     Another theme I’ve observed is opposite from the first. You focus so completely on one goal for such an extended period of time that other priority areas of your life suffer. Then you have to stop for a time, put out fires in the other arenas, and finally get back to that number one goal. Meanwhile, relationships suffer, be they business or personal, because the other folks in your life feel neglected. They know they are not your top priority.

     For example, to finish a credential I wanted, I was commuting for an hour three nights a week to classes in another town, then going to the gym on the other nights I was not in class. On one weekend day I realized I hadn’t spent a single weeknight in my husband’s company for three weeks! When I mentioned it to him, boy, did I get an earful of pent-up anger about how he was my “last priority.” In response, I rescheduled my workouts at the gym for mornings and stayed home the other weeknights.

     I mentioned in my last article about the life planning questions that should get us thinking about what our true priorities are. One part of that inquiry is to examine what the “shoulds” are in your life - what do you feel you “ought to” have, do, or be?

     For example, perhaps you feel that you “ought” to volunteer at your children’s school or in other community charitable causes during the week and spend your weekend days cleaning house, shopping for groceries, ironing clothes and cramming in a few visits with your friends.

     Meanwhile, all those weekend hours that you could spend going on outings with your children while they’re still living at home - or going on family nature outings with your husband and kids - never happen because you’ve prioritized all the busy work of life for your weekends. But what if you get your family to help with the household chores during the week - dividing up the tasks - see your friends for lunch on weekdays while your children are in school, and dedicate at least one complete weekend day totally to your family? What’s more, you can include your family in some of your charitable activities, so you can all contribute to your community - together!

     On a recent weekend I met with a group of women in a seminar called “Women, Meaning, and Money.” I was delighted to find that several women had really tackled head-on the way to not only set priorities in their lives, but also to check in weekly with themselves about how they are progressing to meet those priorities. I think their method is worth reporting. Here are the steps:

1. You decide what the priority areas of your life are for which you have goals you want to achieve. Some such areas would be: health, career, family, friends, personal development, spirituality, community, relationship with self, and leisure/fun. There might be others that you may want to add. Now: create what I will call a “Goals Notebook” to write in, with separate sections for each of your goal areas.
    

2. Next, you decide what the top three priorities are (important things to experience or achieve) in each of these areas. Write them in the appropriate section of your notebook. If there are target dates by which you want to accomplish these things, write those down, too.
    

3. Of all these areas, identify the top three you want to focus on this first week. (We don’t want you to feel overwhelmed as you start this process of prioritizing on paper.)
    

4. Write down what you want to do in each of these areas during the past week, and feel good about what you’ve completed that is important to you.
    

5. This Sunday, calendar those activities for the following week. Put time slots in your calendar to work on these three priorities. Be realistic about how much time you can devote to them. Don’t over-schedule yourself.
    

6. Then, the following Friday evening or Saturday morning, write down everything you did in those top three areas this past week in your notebook. These are your “successes.” Read through them, and feel good about what you’ve done on what is important to you.
    

7. Now look at all your areas again, and decide what one thing you want to work on in each of your areas in week number two. Again, calendar these tasks by Sunday for the following week.
    

8. At the end of the first month, go back and do three things:
    

   1. Re-read your month of successes in all the areas. Look how much you’ve accomplished!
       

   2. Assess whether or not you’ve over-scheduled or under-scheduled yourself (i.e., in the latter case, you could have done more with your priorities but didn’t schedule the time), or did you guess right about the hours you have available to work on your prioritized goals?
       

   3. Make adjustments in your priorities and practice for the next month, with the goal of feeling more satisfied about the progress you want to make.

     I asked these women what benefits they received from writing in their Goals Notebooks. They answered that they stayed more on task because they knew they had to write down what they had accomplished at the end of the week, and they didn’t want to have a blank page in the areas they had set as priorities for that week. It would be like breaking a promise to themselves about matters that are important to them.

     Secondly, one woman said she realized how much she was short-changing her family and her relationship with herself, just after the first week, when she had nothing to fill in for those two areas. (She had had an especially tough week at work and had “overspent” her time on the career page.)

     Third, another woman mentioned that by the end of the first week, she realized she needed to have a “date-with-self” night, during which she would take herself out to dinner and then do something fun just for herself. She said how amazing it felt to make herself that much of a priority!

     Finally, all three women said that they loved the “check-ins” each Friday, because they realized that step by step, day by day, they were making the time and effort to accomplish their most important life goals; and that by keeping track of all the areas of importance, they feel they are living a balanced life, where all the life categories that are part of their prime aspirations are getting attention.

     It was interesting to note that two of the women had started this method of prioritizing after listening to the Tony Robbins tape series titled, “The Time of Your Life.” I was so impressed with what they said about how they had benefited from the tapes, that I ordered them myself. If you like this way of learning—listening to tapes—it might be a timely program to explore. And there are many other books about setting goals and managing time that might also be helpful. I figure that if I learn one good idea from someone else, it’s time and money well spent.

     Good luck setting your priorities in the coming months!

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Shelby Smith-Sanclare, Ph.D. is a Business and Personal Coach who works with individuals and organizations to break preconceived patterns and create new and innovative ways to blaze ahead in their strategic thinking, decision making, and action taking. She brings experience and training in the fields of research, training, strategic planning, environmental design, organizational management, and business consulting. Shelby is a CoachU graduate and a member of the International Coach Federation. She has lived abroad working with both locals and expatriates in making business and personal life choices. Contact her at (505) 237-2005, or email her at .

etting priorities is easy. I bet you can name what is most important in your life with ease.

     My question for you is this: Do you have trouble keeping your priorities-keeping them straight as various pressures of daily life demand you shift them? At the end of a week, month, or year, do you find that what you thought were your priorities are far different from the actual activities you engaged in? If I'm honest with myself, and I try to be, I can see that several things seem to happen:

     First, more specific priorities tend to naturally shift around depending upon where we are in our lives, whereas the more categorical, value-based ones generally persist throughout. What takes precedence at any one point in life may not stay in the same position on the list.

     As an example, a specific priority for me would be my daughter. As a single mom, she was Number One for a good number of years, and most of the decisions I made and how I set my other priorities were based on her needs. As she grew and gained more independence, she wasn't always Number One, but she was high on my top five priorities list until she finished college and was living on her own. She is grown, married, and has children of her own now, and I no longer base my other priorities on her. However, she, along with other family members, remains on the high five in the "Family" category of priorities.

     Second, priorities that aren't based on our values tend to be far more fluid and more easily forgotten in the lifetime of things. Unfortunately, it is these less value-based priorities that tend to be the catalyst that shifts our focus away from what is truly important for us and toward where we direct our daily energies. We awake one day to find that what we wanted to do with our lives isn't what we are doing and realize that our day-to-day priorities have clearly shifted. We have unconsciously made decisions and set priorities that are more based on pressures and demands from the world around us and are not reflective of our values.

     Values are the "black box navigational system" that keeps redirecting our focus and helping us maintain our sense of life-purpose. In turn, our priorities become the guidance system to reaching our goals, hopes, and dreams. As we make choices about what we are choosing to spend our time and energy on, when we begin to drift away from our values and life-purpose, it is the values that can redirect our priorities. Unfortunately it is far easier to drift along responding to outside pressures than to keep on track by setting and maintaining definite and conscious priorities. By not frequently checking our decision making with our values-based priorities, we wake up and discover that we are not anywhere near where we want to be with our lives.

     Another factor that contributes to drift is balance. When we place total emphasis on one area in our lives, our priorities tend to cluster in that arena, and we attend to the other areas less. But just as we have more than one value, we also have more than one priority. Allow the choices about how you spend your time to be distributed among your values. Set priorities that will attend to all of them over a given period of time.

     An example might be when and how to set your spiritual, family, work, community, and personal priorities within your week and month. We've all heard the adage, "all work and no play..." and we know about setting ourselves low in the priorities, yet if we do not take care of ourselves, how can we be fully present to meet the needs of others? Spouses and parents who set all their priorities on work find the family drifting away from that cohesive bond that provides strength and resilience in times of difficulty or outside pressures.

     This same principle also works with business decisions and priority setting. The terminology may change, but the process doesn't. In working with "solopreneurs" and small businesses or leaders of groups within a larger organizations, I find the temptation to "put out fires" day after day and week after week tends to drift attention away from what is important to what is screaming loudest. Quality of performance dips, leadership lags, and soon the business has a gap between the intention and the outcome.

     So how do we recalibrate and get back on track setting priorities and achieving what we intended?

• Be clear about what our values are.
   

• Review our values and check to see if our priorities match them.
   

• Regularly check in with daily/weekly activities and ask if the choices we are making are in synch with the priorities we've set. If not, make new and conscious choices. This is not a time to be asleep at the wheel of our lives!
   

• Seek a balance among the priorities so that nothing of value slips from our decision making process.
   

• Be aware of what excuses we give ourselves to justify our drift from what is important. Re-set priorities that do not serve us.
   

• Don't judge; rather, be grateful for the opportunity to notice when we've slipped away from what is important and recommit to our priorities.
   

• Celebrate the small successes. These are the ones that build momentum and create a pattern of achievement.

     Setting and being consistent with keeping our priorities can help us achieve the abundantly rich and fulfilling lives we all deserve.

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Lenann McGookey Gardner is a Harvard M.B.A. and independent management consultant specializing in improving companies' sales and marketing results. She works with smaller businesses, as well as large companies, worldwide, and she also coaches individuals to higher levels of professional accomplishment and satisfaction.  Call Lenann at 505.828.1788 when you want to grow your sales by closing the most desirable, highest profit business. Lenann is a winner of the American Marketing Association/New Mexico's Professional Services "Marketer of the Year" award, and is profiled in the 2005 edition of Who's Who in America. Visit her on the Web at www.YouCanSell.com.

on't.

     Just don't bother to set your priorities.

     You did that already, didn't you?

     Maybe several times?

     Can you remember some of those "priorities lists"? I don't mean priorities for when you're going to do all the errands you have to do over the next week. I'm talking about life priorities. The stuff you want to do before you're 30, before you're 50, before you get married, before you DIE.

     Can you remember those lists?

     And why didn't you do all the things on those lists?

     If you're like me, you had the best intentions... but then you got caught up in the CURRENT: current events and current crises!

     I don't think setting priorities is a big deal. I think doing what we say we're going to do is by far the greater challenge.

     In my experience, about 90% of people don't really do what they say they're going to do. And that problem gets them into a raft of trouble.

     About 25 years ago I took a weekend class that changed my life. It was one of those “learn-about how-you-operate-in-the-world” self-actualization classes. I remember being in Los Angeles, in the ballroom of a big hotel, with about 250 other people.

     I'd gone to this class because my best friend insisted that I needed to. It really didn't interest me. And that was especially true on the first night of the class, when the instructor said, "Before we begin, it's important that we set the Ground Rules for the class. I have several Ground Rules here. I'm going to read them, one at a time, and then ask if there are any questions about each one. If there are questions, I'll answer them. Then I'll ask whether everyone agrees with the Ground Rule, and I'll ask you to signify your agreement with the Ground Rule by standing."

     Whew! Why not just read off the whole list?

     Imagine my surprise when the first Ground Rule was, "There will be no smoking in the training room." "Are there any questions about Ground Rule Number One?" the instructor asked.

     Questions? What questions could there be? Very straightforward, wasn't it?

     The instructor peered at all 250 of us, apparently looking for questions. "No questions?" he asked. "OK, then, if you are willing to abide by Ground Rule Number One for the entire weekend class, please signify your agreement by standing."

     All 250 of us stood up.

     "You may be seated. Thank you. Ground Rule Number Two is, `There will be no eating in the training room.' Are there any questions?"

     Straightforward? No. There were questions about this one: "I have low blood sugar and always have something to eat with me. If I feel hypoglycemic, may I eat a snack?" "Do prescription pills count as eating?" "I didn't get to eat dinner before I came down here..."

     Every question got a patient answer. The instructor kept saying, "Are there any more questions about Ground Rule Number Two?" It took forever!

     And there were, I think, 13 Ground Rules! Two-and-a-half hours after the class began, we got to Ground Rule Number Thirteen, which the instructor announced this way: "You agree to return from all breaks on time. To help you, we will play this music." And then the theme from "2001: A Space Odyssey" began. It was a beautiful, soaring piece of music about three minutes long - and it ended with one l-o-n-g note. "You will be in the seat you're in now before that music ends. Are there any questions about Ground Rule Number Thirteen?"

     No questions, thank God. We all stood in agreement.

     "All right. It's time for our first break of the evening. It will be 15 minutes in duration."

     Relief! As we walked out into the lobby, there were lines for the bathrooms, coffee and food, and lots of conversations. I chose to speak with a fellow who was having coffee near me - a chiropractor who seemed interesting. I learned a few things about spinal health. And then we heard it: bum ... bum … bum ... ta da! (boom, boom, boom, boom...) - the 2001 music was beginning; it was time to get back into the training room. I tossed my Styrofoam coffee cup and walked back in, choosing exactly the right row - the rows of chairs, I noticed, were very precisely placed, and very close together - and counting my way down to the eighth chair, where I sat down.

     The other students were trooping in, too, pushing their way down the narrow chair rows, counting seats, moving toward the seats they had been sitting in - a lot of people, all moving at once.

     And suddenly, there it was: the l-o-n-g note signaling the end of the music. People were shuffling past me, and in all the other chair rows, rushing to get to their seats, crawling over other people. And the instructor said, in an incredibly loud voice, "Stop! Stop right there!"

     People kept moving. They were so close to those seats they'd been in ...

     "I said STOP. Right now! Stop exactly where you are!"

     Well, exactly where a lot of those folks were was directly in front of a seated student...very close in front of them, because those rows were so narrow. Imagine - someone's backside is directly in your face, and he's being told not to MOVE!

     "What are you doing?" the instructor asked. We just spent two-and-a-half hours agreeing on every single one of the Ground Rules - and the first chance you get, you violate one? What's your excuse?"

     The floodgates opened. "The bathroom was so busy." "I didn't have time to eat." "I had to call my kids."

     The instructor was having none of that. "Your word is worth NOTHING!" he thundered. "And if your word is no good, what do you have as a human being? NOTHING!"

     I learned that day to simply keep my agreements. I still do. And if I discover that, somehow, it won't be possible for me to keep an agreement I've made, I contact the person who will be affected by that before the deadline, in order to renegotiate the agreement. It's a way of life for me!

     Psychologists say that, if we’ll just write down what we want, or what we say we’re going to do, and then read what we wrote a couple of times a day, the chance that we’ll get that stuff, or do that stuff, increases greatly. Challenge yourself to do what you say you’re going to do - or don’t say it in the first place.

     And try sustaining your commitment to just one thing over a longish period of time. That’s even harder. But the results - the confidence and pride that comes from doing what you said you’re going to do, and continuing to do it as a person of real integrity - represents serious character-building, far more than any simple “setting priorities”-type of exercise you might want to undertake.

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