What if there was no secret but there was a question? Not just any question…Life’s Most Powerful Question: What’s Important Now?
– Brian R. Willis, Winning Mind Training Inc
W.I.N: What’s Important NOW?
Just three little words can make a world of difference. The question “What’s Important Now?” can serve as a guide to help us prioritize the choices and decisions we are faced with every day. It is a question that can help us overcome life’s challenges, obstacles and roadblocks…one choice at a time.
If you are feeling overwhelmed, asking yourself this question—and being honest with your answer—can be a game-changer.
I first heard about the “What’s Important Now” question from Brian Willis, a retired police officer and Founder of Winning Mind Training, through which Brian trains law enforcement officers all over the world. He is also a mentor of mine. Brian first heard about the question while reading the book, Winning Every Day; The Game Plan for Success, by the Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz. Coach Holtz would constantly remind his players to ask themselves this important question multiple times throughout their day.
“There is a powerful lesson to be learned from ‘Coach’ for all of us,” explains Brian. “Every day during our personal and professional lives we are faced with a number of critical choices and decisions.”
Now, not all choices may not seem critical—such as choosing to binge-watch a show on Netflix (again) instead of reading to our kids—but over time they certainly have an impact.
If you continually ask yourself, “What’s Important Now?” you won’t waste time on the trivial.
– Lou Holtz, Winning Every Day; The Game Plan for Success
In fact, our responses to the choices—the decisions we choose to make, consciously or unconsciously—can have a lasting impact on ourselves, the people we love, our health, our relationships, our careers, our finances and the trajectory of our lives.
If our lives—and perhaps the lives of our loved ones—aren’t headed in a direction we like, at some point we’re going to have to look at the decisions we are making, day in and day out. Which is why Brian suggests we ask ourselves ‘What’s Important NOW?’ multiple times throughout the day. “The simple act of stopping a moment to ask this question causes us to pause briefly while our mind imagines the potential impact of the choices we have—and almost immediately brings to mind the most desirable choice.”
“When I say most desirable, I do not mean the choice that will give us the most immediate gratification,” Brian explains. “I mean the choice that will have the most positive impact for us in our lives, based on the foreseeable future. This one powerful question allows us to prioritize decisions, choices, actions, and events in our personal and professional lives.”
The reason I choose to regularly ask myself the W.I.N. question is because it helps me prioritize my day on a task by task basis. If I am feeling overwhelmed with the sheer volume of work that “needs” to get accomplished, I find taking a moment to step back and ask myself what is really important to get done that day, then I’m better able to shuffle my tasks accordingly.
Choices are our game plan’s bricks and mortar. Everything that happens to us is the result of the choices we make. You choose to act or procrastinate, believe or doubt, help or hinder, succeed or fail.
– Lou Holtz, Winning Every Day; The Game Plan for Success
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Previously Published on Pink Gazelle
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