Make Yourself a Priority in Your Own Life

When’s the last time you put yourself first? Lawyers have so many demands on our time, and with all we have going on, it’s so easy for us to forget about ourselves.

But if we’re going to take back control of our time, we have to make ourselves a priority.

Lightly edited transcript appears after the show notes.

Topics we explore

• a story about my own struggle with making myself a priority

• why making yourself a priority in your own life is so important

• a few tips to help you put yourself on your priority list. 

Resources mentioned

Lifestyle Freedom Starter Guide: https://www.rhothomas.com/start

Wealthyesque, Episode 6: How to Keep Work from Taking Over Your Life as a Lawyer: https://www.rhothomas.com/6 

Connect with me

The Wealthyesque Community: https://www.rhothomas.com/community

Social media: @iamrhothomas on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter

Email: hello@rhothomas.com

Lightly Edited Transcript

Hey friend! Welcome back to another episode of Wealthyesque.

I’m so excited that you joined me today because I know that you’re super busy and so for you to take a little time out of your day to spend with me means a lot.

Today I want to talk about making yourself a priority.

When’s the last time that you put yourself first? When’s the last time you practiced intentional self-care? It’s such an essential part of our lives, and so many of us overlook it.

If I asked you to list out your priorities, if you’re like most of us, you wouldn’t even put yourself on the list. You have everything and everyone else on your list but you.

I get it. That was me not too long ago. Truth be told, I still have to check myself sometimes, but I’m definitely making strides to do better.

So while you’re going through and trying to make sure that everyone else is taken care of and trying to do all the things, you have to prioritize yourself. Your life cannot revolve around everyone else.

In this profession, we have so many demands on our time. We’ve got the billable hours, and the meetings to discuss the meeting before the meeting, emails, client calls, the fire drills. Then, in our personal lives, we have even more demands with spouses, kids, extended family, friends, other commitments.

With all we have going on, it’s so easy for us to forget about ourselves. We go and go and go and give and give and give and completely neglect ourselves.

Friend, if you’re going to take back control of your time, you have to make yourself a priority.

So let’s talk about it. Today, I’m going to share

• a story about my own struggle with making myself a priority
• why making yourself a priority in your own life is so important and
• a few tips to help you put yourself on your priority list.

I’ve struggled to make myself a priority

Okay, story time.

When I had my first kid, I decided that I was going to make it into the office around 7 so that I could get all of my hours in and leave by 4 to get him from daycare. He was a baby baby at the time, and he was going to bed at like 7:30 at night, so I wanted to actually be able to spend time with him before then.

I would get up at the crack of dawn and basically throw on clothes, throw my hair in a bun, barely did makeup if any then went to get him up and get him dressed and run around and all.

My husband was a resident at the time, and there were a lot of nights where he was on call and had to spend the night at the hospital, so I was on my own a lot.

So anyway I’d get the baby up, feed him, get him dressed, got all the bags in the car, got him in the car, got out the door so I could get on the road because I’m in Atlanta, and if you don’t know, Atlanta is an hour from Atlanta. Traffic is awful, and I didn’t want to be caught in morning traffic, so I would get out the door early, and I usually made it to daycare in about 20 minutes or so.

After I would get him situated at daycare, maybe chat a bit with his teachers, and then I’d run on to the office. The office is around the corner from the daycare, which definitely makes things nice.

Once I got to the office, I would be in there, head down doing my work pretty much until it was time to go. Sometimes I would go out for lunch, but I typically ate at my desk.

Then, I’m running to pick him up again and head home through evening traffic, which was more like 30 minutes.

And I’d eat dinner with the family, bathtime and bedtime and then clean up the kitchen. Maybe hang out with my husband for a little while depending on his work schedule and then start getting ready for the next day and go to bed.

That was pretty much my day every day during the work week.

I wasn’t spending much time doing things that I enjoy. For example, I’m a girly girl.

I love fashion. I love shoes. I love makeup all of that and I wasn’t doing those things. I just wasn’t putting the time that I normally would put into myself because I was so concerned about getting my work done and billing these hours and spending time with my baby.

I also didn’t really do things on the weekend because I had all the mom guilt from being at work all week and so I wanted to be there at the house on the weekend so I could spend time with the baby. Plus, he was so little and literally depended on me for his nourishment, so there’s that.

My husband encouraged me to go out just because, to take time for myself or meet up with friends or things like that.

And I would go when there were events, like if somebody was celebrating something, but just to go meet a friend for lunch on a weekend? I wasn’t really doing that kind of thing.

I was hardly spending any time on myself, doing things just for myself, and it definitely took a toll on me. I was snappy and irritable and just felt tired.

I started to realize that I had become my kid’s mom as opposed to Rho who happened to have a kid. I had really lost myself, and it didn’t feel good at all.

Can you relate to that?

I started to regain some sense of myself as he got older, especially as he became less dependent on me.

But it really wasn’t until my second son was born and I had this feeling of just failing at life.

I was telling my therapist that I wasn’t the wife I wanted to be or the mom I wanted to be or the lawyer I wanted to be, and she asked me that pivotal question: What about the “you” you want to be?

Working through that question is when I really started looking at how to make myself a priority. Because the snappiness and the impatience and the just overall down feeling was not the “me” I wanted to be at all.

It’s hard to show up for everybody and everything else when you aren’t showing up for yourself. If you’re just pouring out for everybody and not taking the time to refill, there’s nothing left to pour. You can’t pour from an empty cup, friend.

I had to learn to practice self-care more regularly, more intentionally, and to make it a priority. And it has done a world of good for me. I know how important it is.

So that’s a bit of my story, a kinda condensed version of it anyway.

Why is making yourself a priority important?

Now let’s get into why making yourself a priority is so important.

I think a lot of times people feel like doing things for themselves is selfish or indulgent, and that’s just not the case at all. We have so much shame around doing things for ourselves.

“Who am I to do this thing?”

“This feels frivolous.”

“This isn’t productive, so I shouldn’t be doing it.”

I don’t know where this whole idea that we have to sacrifice ourselves and our well-being and always put ourselves on the back burner came from, but I truly believe that we make time for what’s important to us.

The fact that so many of us don’t make time for ourselves is telling. The thing you need to ask yourself is how important are you to you? The way you spend your time can give you some insight.

Putting ourselves first is essential to showing up as our best selves, and it’s best for everyone around us.

When you are always spending your time focused on everyone else and everyone else’s priorities then you have no time for your own priorities and what’s important to you. And that leads to feelings of unfulfillment and even resentment.

We make the choice to elevate other people’s wants and needs above our own.

We are all adults here. We can make decisions for our own lives without someone giving us permission to do so.

If you truly feel you need permission, go look in the mirror. Now tell yourself, “I give you permission to take care of yourself.” The end.

Time is our only finite resource. We legit will never get this time back, and we spend it focused on everyone else and what everyone else thinks and what everyone else wants for our lives and never look at what we want or what we need.

2020 has shown us how short and unpredictable life is, and I don’t want to look back at the end of my life and have regrets for the time I spent doing things I didn’t want to do or for the things that I didn’t do because I was worried about somebody else.

I don’t want to have regrets. I want to make it to heaven and feel like I have given this life all I could.

Back in the day when we were still taking flights, the flight attendants always said to put our oxygen mask on before helping anyone else with theirs, and I think that’s an important way to live our lives as well.

We can’t run around giving everyone else the oxygen they need and never putting on our own oxygen mask. We can’t run around sustaining everybody else and neglecting ourselves.

It doesn’t work that way. Life doesn’t work that way. You end up burned out, resentful, unhappy, unfulfilled. It’s just not a way to live.

We make a lot of excuses for why we can’t do things for ourselves. We’re too busy. We don’t have childcare. We don’t have time.

I believe these excuses really stem from a feeling that we are less valuable than all the other people and things that are taking over our thoughts, our time, our lives.

We somehow feel that we don’t deserve our own time. We don’t deserve to do things that make us feel good, that make us feel whole, just because.

You are worthy. You are valuable. Your wants and needs are just as important as your spouse’s, your kids’, the partners’, the clients’, anyone else whose needs you’re putting above your own.

How many times have you snapped at your spouse and kids because of all of the stress that you’re feeling from all your obligations in life?

Think about how things would change if you had a little buffer against all the irritating things, the crazy things, the stressful things that happen each day.

When we take time for ourselves we create that buffer. Things don’t feel as overwhelming. You feel more patient, calmer, more balanced. Things are more manageable.

We have to reframe the way we think about self care. It’s not a selfish act. It’s not some indulgent, luxurious thing.

It is a necessity. It’s an integral part of maintaining your well-being, of you being the person that you need to be and showing up as fully as you need to show up.

You will be a better spouse. A better parent. A better lawyer. A better friend.

And if we can take care of ourselves and stop getting into all of the negative limiting beliefs about why we can’t, why we shouldn’t, or the excuses that we make up…

If we get out of that and actually allow ourselves to show up the way that we need to show up for ourselves–the way that we show up for the rest of the world–then we will see major changes in our lives.

The way that we’re interacting with the people around us. The way that we view different things that happen in life. The way that we react to different things that happen.

That’s not to say that practicing self-care is some magic pill, and you’ll never get irritated or you’ll never struggle or anything like that. I definitely still struggle at times and I get impatient at times and all of that.

But from practicing putting myself first and making sure that I fill my cup before I’m pouring everything out to everyone else, I am much more patient. I’m calmer. I’m less irritable.

There are a lot of benefits and positive things that come from taking time for yourself.

The most successful people recognize how important self-care is, and I want you to be successful, friend, so go ahead and start making time for yourself, as well.

Tips on how to make yourself a priority

So now let’s get into a few tips on how to make yourself a priority.

1. Make a list of all the activities that you’d like to do that would refill your cup. Don’t edit yourself. We have this tendency to discount ideas before we even get a chance to really consider them because we don’t think they’ll work or we think they’re too silly.

Put it all down. Anything that comes to mind. Even things that seem out of reach.

Then order that list with things that you most want to do at the top. This way when you’re trying to figure out what you should do, you already have a go-to list.

2. Put yourself on your calendar before anything else. We allow everybody to fill our calendars with all of their stuff, and then we try to jam our stuff in the spots that are left over.

No, put yourself on the calendar first.

You’re the priority. You are number one, so as you’re preparing for your weeks, block out the time for yourself.

Select one or two things from your list and schedule them. Me time in the morning, a hobby that you want to do, breaks you’re going to take during the workday. Put it all on the calendar.

That way when competing things come up you’ve already got that time blocked off.

Now this doesn’t work if you don’t stand by it, so you can’t be moving your stuff around or canceling your stuff or treating your stuff like it’s not a real appointment.

When I have myself on my calendar, that is my time. That’s an appointment, so if somebody wants to schedule something during that time, I decline it because I already have something on my calendar.

3. Get an accountability partner. I haven’t tried this tip in this area yet, in the area of making yourself a priority. But having someone who will hold you to making time for yourself and who you can hold accountable will be really helpful if you struggle with this.

It’s really easy for us to make excuses for why we can’t do the self-care thing we planned, why we’ve got so much going on so it’s not going to work out today.

“I’m just too tired.”

“I’m too busy.”

“I’m too…” whatever excuse we make up for ourselves.

This needs to be somebody who you know is going to hold you accountable, somebody that you can share your struggles with, somebody who will keep you on track and who you can keep on track.

You don’t want somebody who’s going to allow you to slack and scrimp on your self-care because as we’ve already discussed it’s important.

4. Get up earlier to take time for yourself before you get your day started. So many of us get up and immediately hit the ground running. We get up and we’re getting dressed and we’re getting everyone ready and we’ve got to get the kids off here and get to work and it’s just a hot mess.

What if you get up a little bit earlier and have some time to ease into your day? To do something just for you.

I’ve mentioned before that I read my Bible and study in the mornings and meditate sometimes and just have general quiet time.

Having a 3-year-old and 18-month-old, it’s tough to have quiet time in my house.

Getting up a little earlier before my husband, before my kids, the house is quiet, and it’s just me with God and my thoughts. It has been such a game changer for me, so I highly encourage you to try it.

And you don’t have to go from waking up at 8 to waking up at 5. Maybe wake up 15 minutes earlier and increase it by another 15 minutes each week until you get to the time that you want to wake up.

Getting up earlier has really set the tone for my day, and I think it allows me to be more patient with my kids. It allows me to feel less frazzled, more calm, all of that.

It’s such a simple practice, but it has made a world of difference, and I highly, highly recommend it.

5. Say “no” to things that you don’t want to do. A lot of times we are unhappy because we’re doing things we don’t want to do trying not to disappoint some other person.

But why is that other person’s happiness more valuable than yours? Why are this person’s feelings more important than your own?

I say this all the time, but “No.” is a complete sentence. It’s very clear that in saying yes to things that we don’t want to say yes to because we don’t want to disappoint another person we’re implicitly elevating this person’s thoughts, opinions, feelings, whatever above our own. I think that’s a dangerous place to be so say “no” and stand by your “no.”

And if you need some tips on setting boundaries at work specifically and making decisions for your life in the workplace head back to episode 6. There are some tips in there about setting boundaries for your job.

Let’s recap:

If you’re struggling with making yourself a priority, you’re not alone. I’ve been there and still struggle from time to time, as do many people.

There is no shame in making ourselves a priority and doing things that refill our cup. It’s not a luxury. It’s a necessity.

We have to put our oxygen mask on before we can help anyone else with theirs.

Practicing self-care helps us show up as our best selves. It’s best for not only ourselves but also everyone around us.

A few tips to make yourself a priority in your own life:

1. Make a list of all the activities that you’d like to do that would refill your cup.

2. Put yourself on your calendar before anything else.

3. Get an accountability partner.

4. Get up earlier to take time for yourself before you get your day started.

5. Say “no” to things that you don’t want to do.

Okay, that’s it for this episode. I’d love for you to join me over in our private Facebook community, The Wealthyesque Community. Let’s chat more about how we can make ourselves a priority in our own lives. Head to rhothomas.com/community.

If you got value from today’s episode, please share with a friend you think would also find it useful. If you share on social media, don’t forget to tag me @iamrhothomas on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

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As we close out friend, I pray that you recognize your value. God doesn’t make extras, and he doesn’t make mistakes. You are worthy.

I pray that you will show up for yourself the way you show up for everyone else in your world and stop feeling shame around doing things to take care of yourself.

And as always, I pray that you will continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth, and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve.

Talk to you later.