Name: Who Is The Person That You Are Going To Make A Priority This Year? | Mel Robbins
Uploaded: 2024-05-29T02:42:06.000Z
Duration: 12 min 36 s
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You have written in about this sentence, about this idea, more than any single thing in the history of the Mel Robbins podcast.

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I said, I am trying to be more intentional about spending the time that I have with my son, Oakley, before I become an empty nester.

And it was like, I don't know what is going on.

I don't know if we're all just so freaking busy that we've lost sight of how fast time is slipping through our fingers.

But it's very clear that you feel the same sense of urgency around time that I do.

And there are seven things that I have done this year that have really helped me prioritize the time that I have with Oakley.

The first thing that you need to do is you gotta say it's a priority.

I said last year, it is a priority in my life this year to spend as much time as I can with Oakley because I've already missed out on too much.

It is a priority for me to spend as much time as I can with our son, Oakley, before he leaves for college because I've already missed out on too much.

I know that that ice cube has melted and I was not there for it, but I'm gonna be there now.

And I wanna break down this statement because this is the first step.

It's kind of obvious, but there's two parts.

And I want you to stop and think right now as you're listening, who is it for you?

If you could pick one person that was your priority this year to make sure that you make the most of the time that you have with them this year, who is it?

Oakley's graduating from high school, but there's another one.

And when I think about my dad being 80 years old, both my grandfathers were dead by this time.

Like I have this sense that the time is slipping through my hands and we're not gonna get it back.

Who's the person that you wanna make a priority this year?

They moved on, they have a big job or whatever, and every time you pick up the phone and call them, you're like, we should get together, we should get together, but you never make plans.

That time just keeps passing and you realize, oh my gosh,

I haven't seen my grandmother in three years.

I mean, she lives halfway across the country and she's in a retirement home, or maybe it's your siblings.

There's someone in your life that needs to become a priority.

And I wanna talk about the second part of that sentence, because the second part of the sentence is just important as the first part where you say, it is a priority for me to spend more time with this person.

The second part of the sentence that I said is, because I've already missed out on too much.

This is the recognition of the water and the puddle that the melting ice cube is sitting in.

This is the part of the relationship where you left the room while the ice cube was on the counter and time passed and you come back and holy cow, you realize there's a lot that I missed out on.

And it's so important for you to let yourself feel this second piece.

What have I missed out on by allowing myself to be too busy?

And I really want you to drop in and feel this because it's important and it's uncomfortable.

And there's a reason why, and I wanna unpack this a little bit.

It's because when you think about all the things that you missed out on, you're of course gonna feel bad.

But I wanna explain what that feeling is, that tension, that time that has passed, the things that you missed out on, like the things that I've missed out on with our son.

And the thing that's beautiful about grief is that grief is just all the love that you have for a person that you haven't expressed or you didn't get a chance to express.

And I want you to sit with that for just a second and really think about what have you missed out on?

And it's a powerful motivational force when you really tap into that, wow,

I'm kind of bummed that this happened because I really love this person.

I feel that way about my parents all the time.

And I have a lot of grief about how much of my life has gone by without seeing them all the time.

And it's important for you to feel this because it is a motivational force to get you to wake up and take this seriously.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And when I sit in the grief of what I've missed out on, for me, there's a lot.

I mean, boy, particularly with our daughters, because if I think back,

I was the only breadwinner in our household when our daughters were in middle school and high school.

I mean, I was responsible for earning the money.

And the thing is, is it wasn't just to pay the bills.

I felt this extraordinary amount of pressure to keep working, not to slow down.

I felt like I had zero freedom to say no to anything, to have any boundaries with work whatsoever.

I was gone while that ice cube was melting.

Because somebody needed to pay the lacrosse fee.

Somebody needed to pay for the eighth grade

Washington DC field trip that so many public high school students go on.

I miss my daughter Sawyer's entire varsity lacrosse season.

I miss the majority of our daughter Kendall's varsity field games.

And there was a time even not so long ago when I was living separately from Oakley and Chris, because they had moved up to Southern Vermont and it was in the middle of the pandemic and I had to stay in Boston in order to keep the company afloat.

So I also missed out on like two and a half years of living with Oakley and Chris and being part of his day-to-day high school, even though it was mostly remote.

And I bet if you're a working parent or a working grandparent, or you're really busy in your job and you never see your parents, you're probably nodding along, right?

If you're that grandparent who lives really far away from your kids and you don't get to just show up at the soccer games, you're like, yeah, I feel this Mel.

If you're the parent that has been like just slugging away, trying to pay the bills, my God, like it's, what are you gonna do?

And you're probably thinking about this and you're also thinking about how it relates to your parents as they're getting older.

And the reason why I want you to think about these things that you missed out on from a place of grief is so that you tap into the love that you have for people.

I don't want you to feel guilty about what you needed to do because it's not gonna make you wanna change if all you're doing is making yourself wrong.

And besides, if you're making yourself wrong about what you did in the past, is that gonna change it?

No, but when you reframe this feeling as grief that it's just the love like that you didn't get to express physically, it will fuel the motivation that you have to change and to wake up right now and to start to take this seriously.

In fact, research says that grief and regret can be really good when you use it to motivate yourself to change behavior in the future.

I want you to have right now the person or the two people that you're really gonna prioritize this year.

And then I want you to just sit just for a minute with that grief.

I want you to think about the things that you weren't there for, the things that maybe you missed out on because you got really busy or you had a ton of stuff that you needed to do or life just happened.

It's okay, but now what are we gonna do about it?

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Who Is The Person That You Are Going To Make A Priority This Year? | Mel Robbins

episode

prioritize

realize

force