Self-worth… A trail tip

Self-worth “the sense of one’s own value or worth as a person; self-esteem; self-respect.”, from Dictionary.com

I got a Franklin Covey Time Management System at work this past month and part of it focuses on life goals and priorities. Key to this; is understanding the four quadrants of time management.

1. Important – Urgent: emergencies; important meetings, deadlines, etc.
2. Important – Not Urgent; relationships, exercise, personal development, etc.
3. Not Important – Urgent; emails, interruptions, phone calls,
4. Not Important – Not Urgent; Time wasters, TV, etc.

The question of how do I see my self-worth comes into focus when I look at: “How much time do I spend on the Important – Not Urgent? Do I value myself enough to allocate the time to take care of myself?”

In hiking, it’s been said that the key to staying in shape in Colorado, is to hike 3 times a week, doing a total of 15 miles and 4,000 feet vertical weekly. Something that only take about 6 hours a week. Not a lot of time, but over a year it becomes 720 miles and 192,000 feet of vertical climbing. Yet how often do I not do this? [More than I care to admit.] We let other people or other activities take priority in our schedule and crowd out the hours in the day. Or we make excuses because we don’t want to feel the pain of a given hike. Having hiking buddies can be key to keeping this commitment. Take time to ask yourself: What is robbing your self-worth and preventing you from getting out to hike or exercise? Re-committing to your self-worth is one way to prevent from being robbed.

In our personal life, my self-worth becomes a balance struggle of personal/work, projects/family time, TV/book reading. In all cases, I need spend more time asking myself, where does this fit in with my self-worth. Am I spending the time on things that show I value my self-worth? Am I turning off the TV early enough to spend time reading or to get more sleep? Am I committing to relationships that will build me up or am I letting others drag me down?

In work, do I value myself enough to want to advance my career and stay current? Do I carve out time for taking online classes, read our company product releases, or research upcoming trends? At work, this is the hardest thing to do because so much of our days are filled with the Important – Urgent items. One way to overcome this, is to block out time on our schedules each day. It can start with 30 minutes a few times a week or an hour once a week. Granted, we will ALWAYS get the interruptions that overlap on our time, but we can start and work on adding more consistency.

How important are you to yourself? Do you value yourself and know the self-worth you have? Hiking, Relationships, Learning new skills are all important for our self-worth. And while they may not seem urgent at the time, I believe we need to start treating them as urgent because your and my Self-worth is key to living a successful healthy life.