Recently, I was on stage with a man who felt very stuck with regards to prioritizing himself or prioritizing his partner. It was this interaction that made me aware that so many people don’t understand something critical about prioritization. Something that could be life-changing for them if they did. This is going to be a bit of a mind twister. But let’s look at a blind spot that most people have when it comes to prioritization.
Let’s start with two examples. In our first example, Ryan is in a relationship with Megan. Megan has a deep need to be prioritized by the man in her life. She needs certain things from Ryan in the relationship too and Ryan is struggling with this. He feels like when he tries to meet these needs Megan has, he is losing autonomy and is losing himself. He doesn’t know what to do because they are at an impasse. Megan wants to be Ryan’s priority. And when he is asked: Is Megan YOUR Priority? He likes to answer yes. The thing is, he has already unknowingly exposed the fact that Megan is not actually his priority. And her needs being met is NOT one of his needs. How has be exposed this? Because when something actually is YOUR priority, you don’t feel like prioritizing your own priority takes anything away from yourself. Rather, it is experienced as the opposite, as being totally aligned with your own best interests. When something is YOUR need, you don’t feel like meeting that need takes away from yourself. Rather, you feel like you are meeting one of your own needs. This is why Megan cannot feel ok in the relationship. Ryan is coming at this relationship with Megan from the mentality of a little boy, rather than a man. Rather than coming into the relationship and actually making Megan his priority as a voluntary act, or being honest with her that he is not going to prioritize her, he came in and started to vacillate between wanting to please her and feeling controlled and like he is losing his autonomy by feeling like he needs to do what pleases her. When Ryan really gets that if something is actually HIS priority, by definition he could not feel like prioritizing it goes against himself, he is forced to admit that Megan is not his priority. That he has not taken positive ownership of her wellbeing. He also admitted that he had no interest in changing this and that he does not actually want to have to consider another person at this point in his life. He does see how if he were able to make her HIS priority, and make her needs being met one of HIS own needs, everything he would say and do would change, and so would his attitude.
In our second example, Jenny works at a company that is revolutionizing baby formula. The company is frequently getting attacked by organizations that produce and have stock in existing baby formulas. And one of the managers was stealing company money. Working for this company is not a typical 9-5 job. Many employees have quit already because so often, everyone had to scramble and work like crazy around the clock to answer to a crisis. Jenny caught wind of the fact that one of her colleagues, Justin was thinking about quitting, so she called him to figure out what was going on. During this call, Justin was getting very mad about how one of the current managers was pushing him too hard on a deadline and couldn’t respect that his weekend was off time. It made Justin upset that Jenny seemed ok with what he was so outraged by. Jenny explained that when her adopted brother was born premature, he did so badly on all of the formulas they tried that they had to try to make him a homemade formula. That this has led to the whole family learning about the corporate corruption, contamination and nutritional ignorance behind baby formulas. When she saw her brother thrive on homemade formula, she could not get the idea of all of these babies suffering and even dying because of the crap they are being fed. She joined the company because of how much this cause mattered to her personally. What Justin was seeing in Jenny is that the company doing well is HER priority. Which is why, when the company itself needs her, even after hours, she does not love having to scramble to do more work. But she doesn’t perceive it to take away from her or to be in competition with her needs. In seeing this, Justin felt guilty. He could see that he has not been acting from the mentality that the company succeeding is his priority nor that the wellbeing of the company was a need of his. Suddenly, the fed-up way his boss had been acting towards him made sense. Justin was not actually ok with this mentality. In fact, he had gotten really mad at other people in the company in the past acting like their vacation or their own financial opportunities mattered more that the company succeeding. Justin also came onto the team because he believed so much in the company mission. Justin took a deep look at himself and shifted his attitude. And once he was in the mentality of the company best interests being his best interest, the needs of the company being a need of his and the company wellbeing being one of his top priorities, he no longer felt like the company was taking away from him or opposing his own best interests.
When you grow up in dysfunctional family dynamics, which so many of us did, you learn that life is really a battle between yourself and others. Your own safety vs. other people. Your own needs vs. other people’s needs. Your best interests vs. the other person’s best interests. And when we grow up, this is how life feels and this is how relationships feel. Without really knowing it, we are subconsciously stuck in a fight for ourselves, against others. The way to end this fight is to take other things or other people in. Take them into yourself as a part of you to the degree that their needs being met is one of YOUR needs. Their safety is YOUR concern. Their best interests are a critical part of YOUR best interests. And regarding today’s conversation, they are YOUR priority. This works with things, not just people. It ends the mentality of self vs. other. So, to reiterate the truth: If you own something as YOUR priority, then by definition it doesn’t screw you in any way to prioritize that thing or to act in the best interests of that thing. The only question that remains is: Is (fill in the blank) your priority?
