From the Humanist Health News Network REHUNO Health we set up a place of exchange where we find a new look at daily life based on experiential and existential psychology (the Psychology of New Humanism), which gives some concrete proposals of personal work to reach a full sense of our existence and a life free of unnecessary suffering.
It is not, therefore, a therapeutic psychology, nor does it deal with any pathology, but is aimed at anyone who wants to understand themselves and have the tools, if they so wish, to initiate a positive change in their lives.
Psychological well-being is undoubtedly one of the foundations of integral health, which is why it is an aspect that needs to be addressed. We invite you to put these proposals into practice and also to contact us and tell us about your experience. Write to us!
By Jordi Jiménez
From time to time, it is a good idea to review our priorities to see if we are really using our time and energy in proportion to those priorities. If not, we will surely feel that something is not right in our daily life, even if we do not know what it is. Reviewing our priorities can reveal the reason for this misalignment.
We can do a practical exercise. On a sheet of paper, we write down all those aspects that interest us and in which we occupy ourselves in our daily lives. Friends, studies (if that is the case), partner, other relationships, family, children, hobbies, projects, other activities… each one of us should write down everything that we are or would like to dedicate ourselves to. You can make more or less categories, depending on your circumstances.
What is the most important thing for me at the moment?
Afterward, the list should be prioritized according to the following question: What is the most important thing for me at the moment? In many cases we will have to make several lists, changing the order of some elements and others, until this order of priorities fits us well, and we feel it is true and interesting. If we are in doubt about two items, we can ask ourselves, by discarding them, why would it happen if I remove one of them and what would happen if I remove the other? What feels like a greater loss is what comes first in the scale of priorities.
Once I have done this, and not before, I make another list of how much time I spend each week on each activity. How much time do I devote to friends, how much to studies (if any), how much to my partner, family, hobbies, projects, etc? We can exclude from this list the time dedicated to work (if I work) since it is something on which our survival depends and perhaps, we cannot modify that time dedicated, although it is also interesting if we include it and see the great disproportion that there may be between the time dedicated to it and my real priorities. In any case, I write down an approximate amount of time for each weekly activity, or perhaps daily if I do a lot of things every day. From this will come another list ordered from most to least time spent on each activity. It doesn’t matter if the time scale is weekly or daily because the important thing will be the order of these activities, that is, what I am spending more time on and what I am spending less time on in general.
By comparing these two lists (priorities and time spent), I will be able to see the source of some of the disappointments or disappointments in my daily life, since I will find things that are a priority for me to which I am not devoting much time, and others that are not, to which I am devoting too much time. If we leave aside the time dedicated to work, we can try to organize the rest of the time we actually dedicate to the different activities so that the order of our priorities and our aspirations fits in. It will be an advance in the criterion of reality and a step towards a more conscious and, above all, coherent life.
Those disconnections that we feel are nothing more than registers of contradiction, since we are doing things that we do not feel or think are important. By making all this clear we will gain coherence and feel stronger, happier, and at peace with ourselves and the world.
We would like to read and respond to your comments on the practice proposed in this article, you can write to us at: rehuno.salud@gmail.com
