- Mahatma Gandhi said,
"Happiness is when what you think,
"what you say and what you do are all in harmony."
To achieve this state of alignment means spending your time
on things that matter
to you and minimizing your time on things that don't matter.
I'm Dr. Tracey Marks,
a psychiatrist and I make mental health education videos.
How do you know what matters?
If someone said, "What are you about?
"What are your values?"
Would you be able to tell them?
You probably wouldn't if you hadn't already thought
about this and it's not because you don't have any values,
there are things that matter to you.
But if you're like many people, they're not top of mind.
When you haven't clarified them in your head,
it's easy to spend your time buried in tasks
and responsibilities that you don't really care about.
You can unintentionally do a poor job
of things because your heart really isn't in it.
Also, when you aren't anchored by your values,
you're more vulnerable to worry
about other people's opinions and expectations of you.
So knowing your values helps you care less
about others values and opinions.
And the goal isn't to be indifferent
to other people's opinions,
is to have their opinions mean less.
There's always things though, that you have to do
whether you want to do them or not.
Paying bills, doing chores, homework, et cetera.
Getting to happy
doesn't mean you let these things go.
What it means is that you keep your eyes focused
on the things that are meaningful
and spend as much time as you can on these things.
The satisfaction that you get from the time spent
in that space can compensate for the time
doing the things that are not meaningful.
Knowing what matters most to you can also inform
your decisions about what kind of career you pursue,
what activities you volunteer for and what you say no to.
Time is an asset that is fixed
and you can't borrow more of it.
So how you spend it says a lot about you and your values.
So let's do some introspection,
so you can be more aware of what you value most.
Here are 10 common domains that people value.
Family relationships, marriage and romantic relationships,
parenting, friendships and social life, career and work,
education and personal growth,
recreation and leisure, spirituality, community
and citizenship and health.
Let's look at each one and I'll give you some prompts
to help you determine how important these are to you.
I would suggest you writing them down and workshopping
them on your own.
First, family relationships.
These are blood relations and do not include your spouse.
Ask yourself what kind of relationships
do you wanna have with your family?
How much contact do you wanna have with them?
What kind of daughter, sister or aunt do you wanna be?
Next, marriage or close romantic relationships.
What kind of partner do you wanna be
in the relationship that you're in?
Do you feel connected to your partner?
And if not, what do you think is missing?
Is it time spent together?
Quality of the conversation?
If you're not in a relationship,
do you wanna have a partner or are you fine
having friends that you spend time with?
Do you want or need to be married?
If yes, what are you doing to get there?
How long will you stay in a relationship
without making a formal commitment?
Parenting.
This is a little different from the family value.
That was about the relationship.
This is about you as a parent or your desire to be a parent.
If you have children,
how involved do you wanna be in your children's lives?
Are you happy with what they would say about you
if someone asked?
If you don't have children,
how important is it to you to be a parent?
Would you eliminate potential partner
because they didn't have the same priority?
If you never had a partner or had fertility problems,
would you adopt so that you could be a parent
whether you had a partner or not?
Friendships and social life.
How important is it to you to have friends?
What kinds of friendships do you wanna have?
People to do fun things with, versus people
that you can call if you need help?
What kinds of things do you want to do to keep
the friendship going?
Send text messages, meetups, trips together
or see each other only at work and school?
Career and employment.
What kind of work matters to you?
How much time do you wanna spend in it?
How important is it to you to rise
to the top of an organization versus working
for yourself, where success is measured by profit
and not by a position?
Educational and personal growth.
How do you wanna grow as a person?
Does it matter to you whether you learn
any new skills over time?
How important is it to you to improve as a person?
Recreation and leisure.
What do you do for enjoyment?
What relaxes you?
How much of a priority is it to set aside time
for leisure versus only indulging
when you have some spare time?
Spirituality.
What kind of reasons do you wanna have with God, nature,
or any higher power?
How much do your spiritual beliefs affect
your relationships?
Do the people close to you need to believe similarly?
Community and citizenship.
How do you want to contribute to your community?
How far do you want your influence to reach?
How important is it for you to leave a legacy
behind that benefits others?
And then health and wellbeing.
How much effort do you put into optimizing your health?
How much time you spend on health-promoting activities?
Once you think through these different domains, take
a step back and rate the top five areas
to figure out which are the most important.
Think about how much time
and energy you spend in each of them.
Another way to figure this out is to ask yourself
when did you feel the most fulfilled?
You may have a few events that come to your mind.
Then, which of these domains were involved in those events?
Here's an example.
Let's say I feel the most fulfilled
when I visit my family on vacation
and we just sit around and talk.
Three domains that that covers is family,
spirituality, and leisure.
I also feel super satisfied when people tell me
that these videos have helped them understand themselves
or understand someone close to them.
That covers career and community.
My desire to leave a legacy of helping people understand
and embrace mental health has shaped what kind of work I do.
I wouldn't be able to do this if I was employed
by a large hospital as a medical director, working Monday
through Friday from eight to six.
In fact, some organizations won't allow you to engage
in activities outside of the company.
So I know I would not be happy working
in that kind of environment because it would keep me
from doing the other things that make me happy.
But here's an even better example of how focusing
on my community value has helped me be less affected
by negative feedback.
I mentioned earlier that not knowing what you stand
for can get you caught up in trying to please others.
I started on YouTube in 2008 and I had a couple
of false starts with posting videos
because I got scared away by people making mean comments.
Racial slurs, comments about my personal appearance,
you name it.
This was before you had to be logged in to comment,
so it was easy to hide behind those comments.
So I finally decided in 2018, 10 years later,
to thicken up my skin and push forward making videos
no matter what mean people said.
Over time, I saw
that I was achieving a goal that I set out to accomplish.
So now, I'm more easily tuned out
the anti psychiatry comments
or personal attacks because those opinions don't matter
because they don't come close to measuring
up to what I'm doing on a grander scale.
And you can have the same resolve.
Get tuned in to what matters to you
then take a look at how you're spending your time,
what kinds of things you think or worry
about, then start trimming away the chaff,
the weeds, the unimportant minutiae that dim your light.
Thanks for watching.
See you next time.