Years ago I read a church talk for a class assignment. A church talk is when someone has been asked to study a topic and then shares what they have learned with a specific group or congregation, one of the many church perks our church has. In this particular talk, “Seek Ye First”: Prophetic Counsel for Establishing Priorities in Our Lives” by C. Robert Linethere is an excerpt from Bro. Line’s talk (another church perk – we call each other Brother and Sister) this excerpt comes from Jeffery B. Holland…

After a Church Educational System (CES) fireside on February 5, 1999, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland gave additional counsel to CES faculty and guests who remained in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square. Among other things, he gave the following ranking of priorities we should seek to establish in our lives: (1) our physical and spiritual selves, (2) our spouses, (3) our children, (4) our Church callings, (5) our professional lives, and (6) our civic responsibilities. Elder Holland assured those assembled that this list is nothing new and that prior prophets have taught the same. In 1972, President Harold B. Lee counseled: “Most men do not set priorities to guide them in allocating their time and most men forget that the first priority should be to maintain their own spiritual and physical strength; then comes their family, then the Church and then their professions, and all need time.”[1]

This was a total game-changer for me. There is so much for us to do and learn in this life. It is so easy to get overwhelmed. Questions begin to arise – Which part do I tackle first? How can I be good at everything? Suzy is so perfect, how does she balance everything? Suzy is early to church, her children’s hair is Pinterest-worthy,  their clothes appear to be dry-cleaned plus their socks match. Suzy is also a blogger who makes meals even Gordon Ramsay himself would be jealous of. Suzy has a beautiful home, and husband, and well seems perfect. Why am I not like Suzy?

First of all, you probably don’t want to be Suzy. God or the powers that be did not want you to be Suzy, they wanted me to be Erin and you you, also NEWSFLASH Little Ms.Suzy is not perfect either or she would not be here. So let’s take the focus off Suzy and FOCUS on us. 

I feel there is so much pressure to “DO IT ALL” and if you don’t you are a big fat loser. There is so much good to do. I knew all my goo needed order or some type of system. I have observed this a lot, even I wholeheartedly confess in my own life it is super easy to get my priorities out of order, and after reading this church talk I had a very profound aha moment, if you are not sure what an aha moment is, here is Oprah explaining it for Merriam Webster. 

There must be a simple order to our priorities. There is absolutely no way we can be the best us if we are sleep-deprived, stuffing our faces with ding dongs, and watching Netflix all day. We have to take care of our physical selves, in order to take care of our other selves.

So I tweaked my priorities a little so that they would fit my life.

My priorities are as follows.

Physical

Spiritual

Family

Church Callings

Educational

Professional

Civic Responsibilities & Community Service

For some weird reason when I laid it out like this, it was less overwhelming.  I had been feeling very guilty because as hard as I try I often feel like it is never enough. There are people that need me to serve them and I am so pathetic because I have not sent 500 homemade afghans to Africa, and well the list goes on and on. This fear of not doing everything I should be doing, or even keeping up with little Ms. Suzy or the Jones or whoever was almost paralyzing. Horrible thoughts entered my mind, I am such a loser, I’m not good at anything, I am so terrible why even begin? This is where one might begin to sing,

”Nobody likes me, everybody hates me

I think I’ll go eat worms!

Big fat juicy ones

Eensie weensy squeensy ones

See how they wiggle and squirm!

Along this same line as a mother, I feel I was taking care of everyone else but myself. Note to self and everyone on the planet, do not do this. As a mom, it is so easy to feel you are selfish if you are taking care of yourself, but that is so the opposite, if you are NOT, I repeat NOT taking care of yourself, you are not properly caring for anyone. If you are hungry, or tired it is so much easier to be cranky. A friend once told me she had heard someone say if you aren’t getting everything done in the day, get up earlier. Right now my current schedule is that I get up at 4 am and try to go to bed at 10 pm. I am also getting better at periodic 10 or 15-minute cat naps or I like to call them pauses throughout the day. I have found the time in the morning when everyone is still asleep so precious to me, and I have stopped tyrannizing myself if I stay up a little later chatting with my children or whatever and say I don’t go to sleep until 11 pm then I get up at 5 am.

So I have known forever this is what I wanted to blog about, basically getting my priorities in order. I have done so much study in web design colors etc. and was wanting to use teal and navy because it is simply my favorite, one day I had another aha moment. There are seven priorities and seven colors in the rainbow. I never will forget one of my sweet little daughters asking me if I knew who Roy G. Biv was, and then refreshing my memory with the colors of the rainbow.

Red – Physical

Orange – Spiritual

Yellow – Family

Orange -Church Callings

Blue – Education

Indigo – Professional

Violet – Civic Responsibilities & Community Service

So I made a reminder.

I often feel as though we understand a word but after time the meanings fade, so I went and looked up what each word actually means to help me stay on target and better focused.

These are what I call messed-up rainbows. In the top ones, some priorities are missing. In the bottom row, the balance is a little askew. Sometimes we forget certain priorities, maybe because some are easier or more fun, and sometimes our focus is so set on one that we neglect the others. 🙂

Above is where I am currently – my “HOT MESS RAINBOW”! See how crazy it is, and it is constantly changing. Below is my “RAINBOW GOAL”. The rainbow I am striving for, is more balance, and less chaos.

This sounds like a complex system, but I assure you it is not. Once I started putting my priorities in order so many of the aspects of my life began to fall into place. I began color-coordinating my block schedule, my binders, in essence, my life. It is so easy to know if I see red I am working on bettering my physical self with nutrition, health, and exercise. I can see all these colors and know I am hitting all my priorities. Even though physical is the biggest color does not necessarily mean it takes more time, it is just to me the most important. I had shoved it way down my list, because of numerous reasons, and am regretting it now. I cannot even count the number of mothers I talk to who are so absorbed in their children that somewhere they forget themselves. Which is okay sometimes but when we neglect ourselves too much it is way harder almost near impossible to recover.

Remember these two things – Through Christ all things are possible…

This is the basic idea. Like all ideas challenges will arise. For example, finding the balance between family and professional or maybe education. You should get good grades to get a good job, but that may cut into family time and so on. The main idea concept is to try your best, and I will share simple solutions that will help. It is my hope and prayer that this system will work for you as it has for me, and you will see all the colors of the rainbow beautifying your life too.

You got this!

❤️ Erin Mollie

P.S. A fun thing I noticed is sometimes they are easily combined so you can tackle multiple colors at one time. For example, I have a daughter who loves hiking, so when she and I go hiking (red), one-on-one time is good family time (yellow), Red + Yellow = Orange, and Orange is spiritual, and I am 99.9999% I have never been on a hike that has not touched my spirit. Nature, the fresh air my soul can never escape the whole ambiance of God’s goodness, and there you have it I knocked out 3 colors at once, maybe more. Organizing my perspective helps me bring order to my life, squash the chaos, find balance and become a better me.