You might remember the rocks, pebbles, sand story from last time. If you haven’t read it read this 1st https://www.healgrowtransform.com.au/changing-mindsets/best-time-management-tool-for-making-you-happy/ or this won’t make sense.
I promised I’d tell you the psychological reasons for making room for rocks first and why we get caught up in the smaller things instead.
Firstly, we tend to get caught in pebbles and sand because they tend to be smaller than rocks and we can get them done, tick them off, and get a nice little boost of dopamine. Dopamine is a feel good hormone and each pebble or grain of sand we finish releases a nice little burst. The problem with this is when our brain feels good like that, it wants to keep getting the bursts so it will want us to keep doing pebbles and sand.
Then to add to the reward, we feel busy, which is unfortunately a badge of honour in today’s society.
The other reason we don’t put our rocks first is that they can bring up uncomfortable feelings. If you place spending time with your kids as a rock and your culture at work is to stay back and be busy, you might fear being judged by your peers.
If you value time for your spiritual practice you might feel guilty taking that time away from your family.
If your rock is making a business work you might come up against fears of failure. Or fears of success (2 sides of the same coin).
We’re made to move away from pain and towards pleasure so you can see how guilt and fear might propel us away from the things that are actually important to us.
The trick with this is to recognise that these feelings might arise and get on with the important things anyway. The pleasure we experience from doing them, the satisfaction, and the sense of accomplishment will wipe away the uncomfortable feelings, give us a bigger dopamine rush and make putting the rocks first more and more appealing.