Fuzzy Targets

I am writing this week’s reading on the last Monday of 2021. This is the time of year coming off of Christmas that most people’s focus turns to celebrating the past year and planning and preparing for the New Year to come. I contend that there are very few people that have their upcoming year completely planned and are prepared to execute that plan. However, the people that I know that have this type of initiative to be that organized and focused are super successful in their respective fields of endeavor. At the other end of the spectrum are those of us that live day to day with little effort placed on future thinking or goal setting. The majority of us are somewhere in the middle. We have ideas, hopes and dreams, and maybe even goals for their upcoming year. Some of those are actually written down somewhere, but most exist in a fuzzy, loose framework between their ears. Fuzzy targets are hard to hit.

My hope for anyone reading this last blog of the year is that your next year be a little, to a lot better than last year, in the areas of your life that matter most to you. The first way to ensure that is going to be the case for you is to discover and clearly define your highest values. We all have differing opinions on what matters most to us. Here is an area where your opinion is the only opinion that counts. Take the time to sit down and actually write down the top 4-5 areas of your life that you care the most about. Even if you don’t have a written list of goals at the very least write down the words that describe what you value most. From this list all of your future decisions and actions can be directed to keep you moving in the direction of building a better life for yourself. If you don’t declare it, someone else will try to declare it for you. You can’t hire this one out to a contractor. You can hire all kinds of people to help you achieve the life you desire in alignment with your values, but only you know exactly what matters most to you.

The next simple step to do is to take an inventory of your time spent. Time is our most precious resource on earth. It is dwindling down every second. Eventually we will all run out of time. In a 24 hour day, where do you spend your time? We all spend time on basic survival like sleep, eating, and hygiene. After you account for those hours what is left? How many hours do you spend driving? How many hours do you spend watching TV or looking at a screen for entertainment? Now how much time is left? Based upon your top 4-5 values, how much time are you allocating the remainder of your day? It is not going to be an even split, but it will be very clear if you are spending large blocks of time on things that don’t align with your top values. This is where people get a little weak in the knees because they see that a lot of time is being spent on something that they don’t really value, other than the fact that they need it to survive. If you are working at a job or going to school that doesn’t line up with your top values, don’t panic. You always have a choice. Drastic changes in careers are not always the right move. Instead look for ways to bring more of what you value into the career path that you are on.

When people bring more of who they truly are, and what they truly value into a career or endeavor, authenticity happens. Authenticity is honesty, and everyone is attracted to honesty. No one likes fake, phony, and deception. This is the whole point behind the concept of values based decision making. In order to be satisfied and fulfilled in life, you have to be honest with yourself about what you really care about. When you are working and living in that place, you can’t help not to have a better life.

Health is a value that I know that means a lot to me. This makes it fun to go to my office because I know that I am helping other people to achieve better health. That in turn inspires me to take better care of my own health, which make me feel great physically, added to that, the psychological experience that I have is also great. This then leads me to want to write about ways to encourage other people to improve their health through natural ways that align with the chiropractic lifestyle. Thank you for participating in our mission of helping more families to become healthier through the power of chiropractic!