And less time to things that are urgent but not important. If you can adjust your life around choosing the things that are mandatory and making the best of them. For some people, that's a health goal. Put your energy to the most important thing.
Welcome to Rules of Engagement. Today we are talking about choosing what gets your energy. What are your rules of engagement?
The biggest question possible is what are your rules of engagement? What, what's important? And less time to things that are urgent but not important. These daily choices about what gets our energy is what builds a life.
What's important to you and are you willing to act like it? Where do you choose for your energy to go? And is your life set up that way? If you can adjust your life around choosing the things that are mandatory and making the best of them.
There's a question that a mentor asked me when I was considering running for city council. The question was: What is the one thing that would make everything else easier or more possible? My answer was learning how to withstand other people's disappointment in me. It made it much easier for me to run.
What is the one place in your life that if it moved, if it shifted significantly, your whole life would shift? For some people, that's a health goal. Follow that instinct. Put your energy to the most important thing.
Every system is perfectly set up to get the results it's getting. There are things over which we don't have control. Where are you putting your energy? The answer is allowing yourself to earn money easily and well.
Sometimes we need to move slower to move faster. I'm sending you all my love and strength and support. Thank you for being the people of resolve. I hope that you have a great week.
Hey team, good morning. Sorry I'm getting a little bit of a late start. I was on the phone with insurance about medical reimbursement. So bless my heart. Welcome to Rules of Engagement. Glad that you are here. Today we are talking about choosing what gets your energy and I think this is a really interesting topic because I cannot choose what gets your energy. Right. I can, I can tell you how I prioritize what gets my energy and I'll do a little bit of that. But just a few things. Here I am not in my usual place because I was on the phone.
Etc, etc, because the first question I would ask you about how to choose what gets your energy is what are your rules of engagement? Morning Speak Wonder. We're talking about what, choosing what gets your energy. But the big question is I can't. I mean I can tell you what my rules of engagement are, but the biggest question possible is what are your rules of engagement? What, what's important? Right. And less time to things that are urgent but not important. And those things tend to insourceful our time.
Those things tend to get a lot of energy and for me they get a lot of energy because I am scared of the things that are important, whether they're urgent or not. I'm especially scared of the things that are important and not urgent because the churning energy of urgency. Gives me this, you know, at least it gives me a boost or at least it's a wind beneath my wings, that churning energy of urgency. But if it's important and not urgent, it is in very much danger of not happening unless I'm deliberate and intentional about it.
Unless I know what my rules of engagement are. So there's a writing project I'm working on just for me that I will be working on for months and it gets the first 25 minutes of work I do every day. Every day. I have not come across something so urgent in my life that I couldn't do that. 25 minutes first. I have a 25 minute focus mate session every work day. I just did it. That's one of the reasons I'm a little hasty getting here is I, you know, I just did it. Actually, I just did my second. But you, you get the point, right?
So the question is what are your rules of engagement? But the second question is and are you willing to allow yourself to abide by them? What's important to you? And are you willing to act like what's important to you is important to you? That's the second question. And. Because those answers might be different you might know what's important to you. You might know that family and rest and repair are important to you. And you have not set up your life to reflect that. So that's the second question, is you might know what you'd like to get, your energy.
Because I would say the things you choose, the thing you know, these daily choices about what gets our energy is what builds a life. And looking back, what will have gotten your energy? Is it work, work you don't love? Is it people, people you don't love, People who you do love, work you do. You know what I mean? Like, it's easy to get lost in that urgency of unimportant things, let alone important things so that we don't have to reflect on this is building my life one brick at a time. Is this the life I want to build?
And that's why I do so much review. That's why I have my retreat at the end of the year to be like, what is important to me? What do I want the shape of this year to be? I'm building in more review this year than I done in the past. More regular, like monthly, maybe weekly. I don't know what that looks like yet, but my goal for this year is to figure that out and implement a strategy to reflect it. So what are your rules of engagement? And are you willing to act like it? What's important to you and are you willing to act like it?
Where do you choose for your energy to go? And is your life set up that way? Because when you. When you know, because some of us struggle with we. I don't know. I don't exactly know what's important to me. I don't know where I want my energy to go. I just know where it is going. I know where it has to go. Because I'm a mom or I have a job, or I'm a dad or I'm a caretaker for an elder, elderly person, whatever. There are some things that are just in your life, and if you can adjust yourself around choosing that, that helps, right?
If you can adjust your life around choosing the things that are mandatory and making the best of them, then you have an idea of where your energy should go that way, too. There's a question that a mentor asked me. This must have been in 2002 or 2003, because I was considering running for city council and I didn't know if it made sense or not. And there's a whole bunch of things I did as part of that process and including having coffee with over 200 people, over 150. I think it was over 200, but it was certainly over 150 people asking them, people in my neighborhood, people in the political realm.
But this mentor asked me one question. She said, what is, as you contemplate this decision, what is the one thing that, if it changed, would make everything else easier or more possible? And my answer to that question at the time was learning how to withstand other people's disappointment in me, which, it turns out, stood me in great stead for many years. Still does to this day. Right. But I was particularly vulnerable to people, people being disappointed in me, even if it was things over which I had no control.
Right. And so I set up a bunch of practices. I talked to people about it. I noticed where that fear was running my life, and I worked on it. And it made it much easier for me to run for city council, for me to put myself out there, for me to put my ideas out there. That is always a useful question. But if you're deciding where your energy's going, one question might be, what is the one place in your life that if it moved, if it shifted significantly, your whole life would shift. For some people, that's a health goal.
Like, you know, if I lost 70 pounds, it would make my. It would be possible to have my this dream come true or that dream come true. It would help me get my type 2 diabetes under better control. That may be one thing. For other people, it might be my fear of abandonment is so big that if I were to effectively deal with it and where it came from, it would be more possible for me to find and have a partner. Or it would make my marriage go way better because I'm. I'm an avoidant attacher, and it would help me be more relaxed in the relationship I do have.
Whatever it is for you, what is the one thing? And often when I ask people this question, you know, something came to your mind like this, that. Follow that instinct. It may or may not be 100% correct. That might be the number two thing, masking the number one thing. But follow that instinct. Whatever it was that came to mind is probably worth following that instinct, but that will help tell you where to put the energy, because put your energy to the most important thing. And the most important thing is probably the thing that will move your life most.
If it changed, you know, or if it morphed, transformed, whatever. So when it comes to choosing what gets your energy, what are your rules of engagement? Are you allowing to. Are you allowing yourself to act like what's important to you is important to you. Are you allowing yourself to choose the things in your life that are mandatory so that you can have a more flexible relationship with them and a more joyful relationship with them? What's the one thing that if it shifted in your life, everything else in your life would change?
What's that first domino and everything else after it would fall right for? I don't know what the answer to that question for me right now is. Yes, I do. It's allowing myself to earn money really easily and well. And so I've been working on that for quite some time. But the other thing I would note in guideline number three of mine, every system is perfectly set up to get the results it's getting. This is a little bit of a hard truth. I'm not trying to be harsh, but if you look around your life, your life is perfectly set up to get the results that you're getting, which means your.
Your system is set up for your energy to go to the things in your system that you don't care for. Let that sink in a little bit. If every system is perfectly set up to get the results it's getting, what that means is you're putting input into that system. That means your energy. You're putting energy into the things in that system that are leading to the results you don't like. That's true in my life. It's true in everybody's life. If I. There are things over which we don't have control. Right? I know I'm talking to a lot of people from Minnesota here.
There's a lot about your civic life dynamic right now that you don't have control over. You have control over how you respond to it, what. What you choose to do in response to it, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not here to say, oh, if you're feeling crummy right now because of what's happening in Minnesota, that's just you, right? But I would say within that, where are you putting your energy? You know, for me, I have a unique relationship with the city of Minneapolis. This time has been. I have my own relationship to what's happening right now.
I curate very carefully. I have not been curating. I was about to tell you a lie. I have not been curating as carefully as I would like. How much information I get. I've been allowing myself to get the flood of information for a host of reasons, and I'm pulling back a little bit, but not a lot. It is useful for me to know what's going on. And it's okay for me to be uncomfortable because that information helps guide how I'm responding and who I'm. How I'm supporting, the people I'm supporting, who are there on the ground.
Truth is. Yeah, I know. Truth is sometimes uncomfortable. I agree. I'm not trying to blame people for things beyond their control. I am trying to invite you to see where you're putting energy into as a response to the things that you can and cannot control, but the systems in your life. You know, if I. For a long time, I wanted to earn more money and I wasn't willing to take a look at why that is a fraught situation for me. I mean, I can earn money. What I mean is enough money and why I relied on partnerships and things like that for that to be my reality over time, which I don't want to have be true anymore.
Well, I was putting a lot of energy into things that weren't about earning money, you know, And I was. Because I was scared. Because I was scared to pull back the veil and see what it would take for me to really become the person who easily and magnetically earns real money. That's still hard, but I am applying that every day and I am learning a lot about myself as a result. And it turns out a whole bunch of things in my life already are changing as a result of just doing that process. I'm not yet earning the money that I would choose to earn that I do choose to earn.
Not yet, but I know I'm doing the work to get there. That was a little complicated there at the end. I guess I wanted to make two points. Profound truth. Two things are true. Every system is perfectly set up to get the results it's getting, which includes the systems in our own lives. And the energy we're putting in. There is the energy that we're getting back in our own lives. And there are things beyond our control that it doesn't matter what energy we put or put into it. The circumstances of our reality will be the same, except we get to choose how we respond to what reality is placing before us.
We do get to choose how we put our energy to what the universe is placing in front of us. Am I going to be resentful and overwhelmed maybe for a while? Or am I going to feel energized and more connected as a result of working with other people to get a different outcome than the one I'm currently getting, etc. You see? You see that even inside places, we don't have choice. We have some choice. We have some choice. So choosing where your energy goes the thing I will leave you with two things. I'll leave you with one.
Work harder is rarely the correct answer. For some people it is. But I think if you're motivated to be here on this app, the idea of just work harder and it'll solve your problems, not the thing I do. Actually, part of my solution is to create my capacity to work and use that. But I can only I'm creating capacity to do the work I love, not trying to create capacity to go back to ways of working that did not foster my highest good. The last thing, sometimes we need to move slower to move faster. Sometimes we need to move slower to move faster.
And that is an energy question. Because that urgency question that, oh my God, I have to get this done. Faster, faster, faster. That is not always the right answer either. Sometimes we have to breathe in, slow down, take some reflection time, make some real decisions about how we want to move forward and the support we need to support the choice to move forward and then start moving a little more quickly again. So, Cadre, I know a lot of you are in Minnesota. I'm sending you all my love and strength and support.
Thank you for being the people of resolve. I know that we are as Minnesotans, and I'm a Minnesotan for life wherever I am. Thank you for acting like the people of resolve that you are. Even if it feels like you don't know what to do, it matters whatever you're figuring out to do. So thank you. I hope that you have a great week. I hope that this upcoming week is even better than the last and I'll see it in the app. Sa.
