Clarifying Priorities

0:10 - Hey, Kimberly. Welcome back.

0:12 - Hey, Pepper.

0:13 - Welcome back to extra shot of leadership. What is going on over there?

0:16 - Happy 2023.

0:18 - Happy. Can you believe it? Yeah, it's been a while.

0:21 - It has, it has. But I am like, I am loving this year. Ready for it.

0:26 - What are you loving about this year?

0:27 - Everything.

0:28 - Everything? Yeah, everything. You love every lot of energy. Today I'm loaded. I love it when you come in hot like that on these recordings. So I'm all ready to jump into this conversation. I want to talk a little bit about how are you so ready for 2023. I got to tell you, I'm struggling a little bit. I'm starting to figure out, okay, so how do I snap back into it? This whole new you, new year? Or is it new Year, new you, it doesn't even matter. But that whole thing, I'm like, oh, brother, like, gag me out. Like, come on, man.

1:04 - Yeah, it's like the same thing. They say the same thing every year, every year.

1:07 - And I'm kind of like second song, second verse, first song, second verse. You can hear me. I'm a little bit of a mess this year.

1:16 - Can it really be a new you every year? I mean, come on. What was wrong with the last I had?

1:21 - What was wrong with me? Like, three weeks ago? Yeah. Why all of a sudden I turn this one day and I got to be new you? But I do want to hear a little bit about you and how you are rocking it. I see the energy. I feel the energy. And I'm like, what have you done this year to say I'm in it, I'm ready, I'm charged, I'm going.

1:49 - Well, I think I got to go back to what I did last year. So it was something I did. It started last year because I was I was in the mode kind of like what you're talking about, like, oh, my goodness. This short break for Christmas and the holidays is just not going to be enough. I'm not going to be able to kick it in gear and watch turn.

2:11 - This into a longer vacation. Four weeks.

2:14 - Tired. I'm just going to tell you, I was tapped out. I was tired. I had no bandwidth left and I had no passion. It was I was running on empty. But, you know, somewhere in January, I decided I was going to go get a personal trainer. So I'm not going to wait till New Year. I'm going to get me a personal trainer. I'm going to start right now because I just knew my body needed something different, so I did that. But what really helped me is I did get to take a nice long break between the holidays, right, christmas and New Year's, which a much longer break than I normally take. And I did like a 180 and a reset.

2:51 - In your break time.

2:53 - In my break time, I reset and in in my brain, I reset is what I'm telling you. So I just really started thinking about my priorities, and in that short period of time, in two weeks, I got my priorities straight, and it was a game changer for me. So it's like, what really matters to me? And those are at the top of my list. And now that I'm focused on those, I'm giving attention to those. I'm giving my time to those. Everything else is falling in order. It's incredible.

3:27 - So how did you do that?

3:29 - How did I get them in the right order?

3:30 - Well, I'm just so curious. It's like you did a reset during your holiday, and you got clarity around what your priorities are. And I'm certain we'll get to this, but I am certain everything kind of trickles down from there. You're feeling good, you're leading your team, kind of everything's rocking on all cylinders, and you're just like, yes, this feels good this year. So you said during your break, you stepped back, you reset, you prioritized. What did you do? What are you journaling? Are you reading? Are you talking to your husband? I don't know. Smoking mushrooms? What are you doing?

4:08 - No, but that might be something I tried. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. No. So, yeah, let me because it wasn't just one thing. You know me. I'm going to go all in.

4:16 - I know.

4:17 - So I got to do several things at one time. All right, so I hired the personal trainer. So I'm in the gym three days a week with him, with the trainer. And I'm in the gym another three days a week on my own.

4:27 - So you're doing six days a week?

4:28 - Six days a week. Right. It could be because I was tired. So now my energy is getting up.

4:33 - Right.

4:33 - And now I'm starting to see results, and now I'm motivated. Right. So that was one thing, because one of my it's not my number one priority. One of my priorities was my health.

4:42 - All right.

4:43 - My number one priority.

4:44 - Pretty consistent. I think we've talked about that year over year. I love that.

4:48 - Yeah. But my other priority is my husband and our relationship, because last year was so busy, and we're both going in different directions, and we both have different priorities. We were not a priority for each other, I would say.

5:01 - Sure.

5:02 - And so over that holiday, over that, there's literally 14 days. Have you ever had 14 days off of work?

5:08 - I did have 14 days, and it's lovely. Incredible. Yeah, incredible.

5:13 - So we have 14 days together, and we just reconnected. And we said no to a lot of things, like to invitations from other people to do other things, and we just stuck together, and we went on a little trip together to Nashville. We went spent some time in Nashville, and we just did activities together, and that has ignited our marriage, our relationship. We love each other, but we enjoy talking to each other, and we love that about a lot of different things. And I'll give you this. So you know he's a bodybuilder, right?

5:46 - Yep.

5:47 - So fitness is very important to him.

5:49 - Yeah.

5:49 - Well, now that I'm in the gym and I'm all interested and excited right now, we have something else in common. To talk about it. The more we talk about it, the more motivated I get. So that's two things, right? So now I'm really motivated because I got two big priorities going in the right direction.

6:05 - What I love about this conversation is a couple of things. I always love listening to you and how you approach the new year and what you're thinking about and how you prioritize and just how you get clarity. Right. I think for me, sometimes I can get stuck in gaining clarity and really getting dialed in on what matters. So I always love listening to you, and you're like, all right, here I am, pepper. And these are the things that are my priorities. The one thing that I just get excited about for you when I watch you and I'm listening to you right now is just this whole piece of I am combining the things that really matter to me. And what I really love is work is not on that list for you.

6:53 - Yeah. So let's talk about that, because let me tell you what's at the top of my list, right? My health, my marriage and my husband, our relationship, my family and friends right up there at the top. My home way up there at the top. A home that feels good when you walk into it. It's clean, it's organized, it's functional, like all of those things. And it looks nice. I like for it to look nice. I'd like to have people over. And then you got a designer over there. No.

7:21 - Somebody's coming in.

7:22 - Well, I have had help in the past, right. But I've kind of figured out what I need to do on my own. So those really are at the top of my list. And work really does work is important, but it falls below all of those things. Here's the trick. This is like the secret sauce right here. Now that I have all of those other priorities in the right space, and my house is clean and my drawers are organized and I'm feeling good, my fitness is in place, my husband and I just can't stand to hardly be away from each other. My brain is firing on all eight cylinders, and when I hit work, the eight and a half 9 hours that I give work look way different than the eight and a half 9 hours I gave when I was just stinking exhausted.

8:14 - Sure. I can only imagine. Right? And maybe your priorities were in sync, were out of sync. I mean, certainly maybe your health wasn't the priority towards last year.

8:24 - Let me tell you, for the last ten years, my priorities have been out of sync. Yeah. Work was like my identity. Work came first, and I tried to give everything I had to work, and the leftovers went to all that other stuff. But now that those other things are right, so let me just give you an example. So let's just say last year, November, somebody was going to put something across my desk and want me to review it. I'm just like, it looks good to me.

8:52 - Yeah, your brain is not quite in it.

8:54 - I could not engage, and I could only go in for so far, and I could only pay attention for so long. But now somebody slides something across the desk. I mean, my red pin is out. And I'm excited. I'm interested in listening to them. I'm interested in connecting with them. And this reset for me and getting my priorities straight. Because you think about it, you're going to spend one third of your day at work. The other two thirds are not at work. So it shouldn't really be like it's the most important thing. It's one of the things. And it's not even one third of a whole week. So I give attention where it needs to be, but that just boils over into my work, where when I'm here, I'm giving you 100%, and that 100% looks way better than last year's. 100%, certainly.

9:45 - Man, I can see that. Right. I can see how what you're doing in the off hours trickles down to what happens and how you show up here day to day so I can see exactly what you're doing and the impacts of that. I mean, one of the things that I've been paying attention to in my feeds and different social media things is there's this one study out there that says just 20 minutes of walking and kind of what's going on? In people's brains and how, you know, you can see the, the person's brain who's sitting versus the person who is walking and the activity that's going on in their brain. And there's a lot I mean, there's ted talks about it just the importance of emotion and movement and what that does to how your brain is engaged.

10:30 - Yes, and you could have told me that 100 times last year. I was too tired to hear it. But it's so true. It really doesn't have to be three or 4 hours in the gym, 20 minutes in the gym, and you're just pumped. And what's really cool is, in this job, we need to be very creative.

10:49 - Very. Yeah.

10:50 - And your creativity is just off the charts. Firing. What about this? What about that? What about this? And I really feel like I can see when I have conversations with my people, they sound different. I'm motivating now. I'm motivating them. They're like, Whoa, again, what's she smoking this morning?

11:08 - Well, it's that whole thing of when I think about who you're following in terms of your leader and who you're engaging with. We all want to be around that leader who's got energy. Right. The one who's a little bit of a firecracker, who's got ideas and who brings this light into the room versus the EOR, or the person who maybe is not as energetic or not as lit, so to speak, in terms of what they're bringing day to day.

11:37 - Sure.

11:37 - So people see you and they're like, whatever that is, let's bottle that up because I want some of that, too.

11:43 - Yeah. And this is the other thing I will say, is your team, people know when you're checking the boxes, they almost can see you checking the boxes when you're having this conversation. So you are reviewing something or they're trying to put something in front of you. And I'm, like, half engaged, my phone's going off, my watch is going off. Just things. And it's like, I am trying. But they can also see that you're not all there. Now I think that they can just see, like, I'm engaged, I'm interested, I'm in, and I'm here to brainstorm with you. If you want to brainstorm. Last year, if you needed me to brainstorm with you, I was going to take some extra coffee.

12:22 - Little rough. You have to have a little bit more support, more help to get to this.

12:26 - Yes.

12:27 - So you mentioned 14 days. Look, I don't have 14 days to get away from the office.

12:31 - Yeah.

12:32 - Do I need 14 days to reset? I need something, Kim. No, that what you did. So do I got to go into the gym and have quiet time? Do I need to get a journal? I'm not looking for a silver bullet here, but I am looking for a tip or two. Help me out. What can I do to kind of get it going? I'm third weekend at here already in January, and I'm looking for a little bit of energy.

12:55 - Yeah, listen, the 14 days were nice because my husband and I had that much time together, but no, it didn't take me 14 days to think about this and reset. It took me probably a day, and I just not even a day, but just a few hours, an early morning. So a weekend is coming. Right. Take some time on a weekend, on a Saturday or on a Sunday, sit in a quiet room and ask yourself, what really matters? What are the most important things in my life? And how much time and energy and effort am I putting into those things? And see then, right, then you can kind of look at work, right? Where does work fall in there? And is the balance right? If those things are really, really matter, it'll probably show up in your time and in your checkbook.

13:39 - Yeah, I love that. I was just going to say that. That's exactly right. They say, we'll tell you what really matters is when we pay attention to what you spend your money on?

13:47 - Open up your checkbook, because we can.

13:48 - Pay attention to the balance of your checkbook to see where is all the money going, because that's really what matters. At the end of the day, that's where you're spending your money and your time.

13:56 - Yeah.

13:56 - Did you like that? Where you're spending your money and your time?

13:59 - Yeah. There might be people, some people going, what's a checkbook? Right? It's all about the credit card. Open up a credit card statement, check it out. Where's your money going? Yeah, right? Is it going out to eat? Is it this or that? Because I can tell you where it's going right now. That trainer, he's living large.

14:15 - It's working for you.

14:16 - Yeah. And I don't even mind paying it. I just don't. I'm excited. I am so on fire, because I can see how that one change has just trickled into everything else.

14:29 - Fantastic. All right, so is there anything else that you're doing for you? It's sit in a quiet room, really ask yourself a couple of questions. What really matters? Where am I going to spend my time and energy?

14:42 - So then get your list, right? Get your one, number two, number three, number four, and five, and then figure out, so if those are my priorities, how am I going to put time and energy into them? What does that look like? If you don't know, go talk to someone. Go get some help. Google something up. Read something. Get some ideas. If you're not in your creative brain or space, go get some other ideas. But you've got to get if those are the priorities, you've got to get something on the list that you're adding to that you're putting into those banks. Right. Just think of it as jars. And how are you going to fill those up? So that would be the second thing. And then just start, right? People have like, oh, I'll start on Monday. Don't start on Monday. Just start right now. If your spouse is your number one thing and he'll be feeling a little disconnected, walk in the next room and go give them a big O hug and make it last for two minutes.

15:34 - Oh, man, I love how simple you're making. That simple. That's fantastic. Right?

15:37 - My family that if my family is really important, well, I don't have to plan a big O vacation. Just pick it up. Pick up the phone, call that family member, like, hey, what's going on? No. And they're like, what do you need? Nothing. I just want to chat. I don't spend time with you.

15:51 - I got to tell you, my kids rose to the priority of my list. I've been spending some time thinking about my own priorities and where I spend my time and where I should be spending my time. And, you know, as my kids are encroaching in on their teenage years, I'm like, you know what? I think I need to dial it in with my kids, and I see very quickly how things have changed. My relationship with them, the time I'm talking to them, the time they're talking to me, how much they seek me out. And it's very little things. I love that you said that was like, walk in the other room and give a hug. For me. It was like, I remember going home one day recently, and I thought, how am I going to engage with my daughter? Walked in the door and there was something that she's been working on. She's been working on a journal, creating her own little bullet journals, what she calls it. And I walked in the door and I was like, hey, show me your bullet journal. I want to see it. What's the latest? What if you done to it? What have you added to it? What are you writing in there? What's it doing for you? And I just remember her looking at me like, I'll be right backstairs. Here's my moment. I ran upstairs and brought me down the journal, and we just sat there for a good 1520 minutes looking at this thing together and just how quickly it creates that moment, right? It creates a moment where that we're there together and in her mind, her heart, whatever you want to call it, right? She is like, my mom is dialed in. My mom is here with me. So I love that it doesn't have to be you don't have to spend a lot of money. You don't have to go spend a trip. You don't have to do it. Little things.

17:22 - Little things. Yeah. And here's the other thing. It's like, how do you know when your priorities are out of whack, right? Looking at your credit card statement or looking where you spend your time. But the other thing that was a real clue for me is that doing things like connecting with my family or connecting with my husband just felt like another task. I was just like, oh, I got just one more thing I got to do today. But now it's something like it's like, I look forward to it, I want to do it. And it's not a task. It is really like, something that fulfills me.

17:53 - Yeah. It's life. It's part of your life.

17:55 - Yeah.

17:55 - The other thing that is interesting is I haven't heard you say the word goal. I haven't heard you say the word goal today.

18:04 - No, I mean, I do have goals, sure. There's no doubt I'm hitting not a landmark birthday, but this year, but I'm hitting another birthday. Everybody has one, right? And I have a goal for what things are going to be like at that birthday. But I'm really not even focused on that long term thing. I'm focused on this week and today because there are some specific things I have to do today for this week to go well. Yeah. Gold Schmoles that's pretty tough coming from Leadership podcasts but you got to have them. You got to know what the long goal is. And the thing is, I'm not working for short term gains. I'm working for longterm term gains. But all these little things I'm doing every day, I know if I'm consistent, right? Yes. If I'm consistent in these things. And I feel so accomplished at the end of the day because I am consistent with them. And I'm like, where you go, girl?

18:59 - All right, so I want to know where's journaling fitting in in this.

19:02 - Listen, I started out thinking, all right, I'm going to journal this year because there was a time when things were kind of out of whack for me, and journal really helped get me back on track. But I know that I can only handle so many things new in my life at one time, and I am journaling, but it's not about like, hey, how am I feeling? Or what's on my mind today? It's not that I am keeping track of all my macros, all my calories, how much protein, fat, carbs, all of that. So that takes time, right, to keep up with that. And then I'm also tracking just like, how do I feel from day to day after my workouts, after spending time with my husband. It's like, how do I feel today? And I wish I would have journal last year, because you would see some very different words and adjectives on the journal this year than you would have seen last year.

19:56 - Is there a specific journal you're using, or have you made your own custom.

20:01 - 37 cent mead spiral notebook? Cheap? No, nothing fancy. You don't need anything fancy. Some people might it might make you feel good if you have a nice book to write in, but no, I don't. Do you or your journal? What are you doing?

20:17 - Listen, I started out this year with a new journal, and I'm like you. I am not good at the whole just writing. I need some structure to my journal. I found a journal, and it's called the five minute journal. It's quick. What I love about it is it gives me three questions in the morning, and it gives me two questions at night. And so it really is a five minute start out your day and a five minute close out your day, and it's fabulous.

20:45 - Oh, I want to see it.

20:46 - I'm digging this journal. I'll put it into our description so that if other people are interested, they can go check out that journal. Yeah, but I find that it's very quick, and it keeps me very focused right now that's what I'm looking for in this year is focus and clarity. And every day, you just kind of for me, I've been getting a little clearer and a little clearer around it's not just this one big thing, but you know what I'm dialing it in on X, Y, and Z relationships with these people. Right. Or my health in this area or my finances for the future, whatever it is, I'm getting real clear at dialing it in.

21:22 - I love that. I do want to see it. I may or may not use it, but I do want to see it because I'm like five minutes that I can do. And I think what would be really, really cool is to see what I'm thinking right now, see what I'm thinking in July, and see what I'm thinking at the end of the year. You're not going to be able to go backwards and kind of read it all. I think that'd be pretty cool because I think it's going to be an amazing year. It's going to be an amazing life period, but amazing year for me. Here's another thing I want to talk about, is this whole priorities thing, this getting clarity and priorities and all of that for me, with what's kind of happened over the last several weeks and a month for me, is really spilling over into my work. And so the whole priorities thing, I think we ought to have another conversation about how to get clarity and priorities at work. I just think that'd be cool.

22:10 - All right, that's the next episode. Those of you who are listening, happy New Year. Welcome to 2023. We hope that this has been helpful just to kind of think a little bit about how much energy are you bringing every day and can you dial it up a little bit then?

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