85 | ¿Urgente o Prioritario? Descubre el Secreto para Liberarte del Estrés

The telephone doesn't stop ringing, the emails accumulate, the work pressures us with unwavering dates, anxiety, stress, exhaustion, so it's the price of wanting to respond to so many emergencies. But really, are people all those things that we do well? The two large sources of collective neurosis of our society model. The culture of the company and the culture of the important. But there's a tremendous drug that is generated in our great superrenals, which is adrenaline. It's that unconscious addiction that we have to live exited and that the current society has prophesied a lot. There is a direct relationship between deficit of self-esteem and need to answer the demand. You don't have to lose the fear of antipathy, because you can't please everyone. And in my life I have been shown that when you have tried to please everyone, or when you have tried to please everyone, you end up paying a very important health price. Welcome, welcome to a new, I hope you had known it before. Nothing is so urgent. Life sometimes haunts us with urgency. Everything seems to require our immediate attention. The telephone doesn't stop ringing, the emails accumulate, the work pressures us with unwavering dates, and how many people get up or run, eat, work, work against the clock. Anxiety, stress, exhaustion, so it's the price of wanting to respond to so many emergencies. But they really are urgent, all those things that they do us good. It won't be that many times we create false emergencies and we let ourselves be caught in an abhorrage of unnecessary pressures. Maybe the time has come to stop, to breathe, where I'm going to ask ourselves, what I'm doing right now really cannot wait. To reconnect with calm, prioritize what matters, give time to what needs to be done, live more slowly and obviously, we can decide that not everything is as exciting as it seems, because in the end, perhaps, or just very few things, are really urgent. The question would be, are we prepared to decelerate and find peace? Let's reflect together on this with our dear friends and teachers, Antoni Bolinches and Frances Miralles. Hello, Antoni, how are you? Hello, Alex. Well, keeping in mind the subject, no problem in which you start speaking French. Nothing is urgent. I love it, I love it. I love you, I'm a fan of yours. You're my favorite Chichi Chichi. Dear Frances, how would you address the subject after this magnificent intervention? I would start, dear friends, by seeing what is the definition that Stephen Covey makes of the word "urgent". Not the etymological one, but the sense it has. He tells us that "urgent" is what is important for another person, but not for you. Look at the starting point. So, I believe that many times we are affected by urgent emergencies that totally mark our agenda, and they can even take us to very risky decisions. I'm going to give you a practical example. A while ago, a friend of mine told me that she was going to buy a flat, because she is already an old woman, where you have to have a place where you fall dead, as vulgarly said. And she had visited a furniture agency where they had urged her to buy as much as before, before the perspective that prices can increase, they can double, if you don't buy now, you won't be able to. So, this transmitted a huge stress to my friend, because besides, the type of flat she needed for her family does not have the capital to be able to buy it, not even 20% of what she needed, and that put her in an absolute state of emergency. I told her, "Hey, who knows what's going to happen in two years, in five, in seven, in ten, with the real estate world. The trend is always going up, but there are also falls. So, don't let yourself be taken by the urgency of the seller, that perhaps for that seller or seller it is urgent to charge the commission, but perhaps you can wait a year or two. And the things, besides you, Alex, who has been in a great school for economists and entrepreneurs, the important investments that are made with haste are dangerous. I mean, Warren Buffett wouldn't do it. So, I want to pass the ball to you to what extent, my question is, to what extent, when something seems urgent to us, is our urgency, or is it a third person? I would start the debate here. Antoni. Well, yes, a good way of situating the issue and of starting the debate, which in our case is never a debate, it is always an exchange of points of view, which luckily are conflicting. And that's why I'm going to do my intervention in relation to the two strong ideas that you have just launched. Alex has already said, prioritizing what matters, prioritizing what matters. Notice that the big difference between living the urgent as a priority or the priority as an urgency, leads us from stress and dissatisfaction to personal realization. When we prioritize something, we are deciding. We are making a transaction between ourselves and ourselves and the others. Therefore, prioritizing removes the urgency, because it generates a category in the intervention process. And that fits in with what you just said, your French. For whom is urgent? That question is essential, because that takes us to the other big essential question. Why is urgent? And almost always the why depends on who. If that urgency is from a person that we value, we estimate, it can generate a benefit, a reward or we have a special respect, what is urgent for him becomes urgent for us. When should we go into the category in which we should consider, if we have to prioritize, because the priority that we have with respect to the solution or the satisfaction of that demand is to be compatible with other priorities, with other goals, with other needs. Notice that this in the field of love is summarized in a word. I want to be the most important thing for you. But that importance is a priority that will never be an urgency. And the same thing that we could categorize in relation to love. We could categorize it with respect to social demands or personal needs. Who is able to differentiate the urgent from the priority, is growing as a person and for him things will be less urgent and his priorities will be clearer. Good, Toni. There are three great virtues of palading the present, which I think are the need to please compulsively, that many people have, and again they are good people, which is very linked to the difficulty of saying no, because behind that there is no feeling of guilt or that you are going to be bad or that you will feel bad for the other. I am also talking about behaviors of very empathetic people. And then there is a third key that I think is the one that contaminates the present and takes us to that false feeling of constant urgency. And it is the unconscious addiction. Normally, all addictive substances, all caffeine, caffeine, heroin, nicotine, enter our body either through inhalation or injection or through drinking. But there is a tremendous drug, tremendous, tremendous, tremendous, that is generated in our superrenal cells, which is adrenaline. And adrenaline, do not put it in your body, you create it in your body. And the feeling that I have had many times, because I have seen myself in these processes, and one is learning to manage them, although sometimes it is true that there are moments of centrifugation. But above all, when anxiety for pleasing others or giving answers to others goes ahead of what you really consider to be a priority. And that is why I was talking about the pleasure and the difficulty of saying no, because sometimes it is very difficult not to want to be bad with other people and want to please everyone. But in that sense, I think that the great verdict of disconnection with the present and of a certain focus is that unconscious addiction that we have to live exited. And that the current society has appropriated a lot. And that, therefore, and I do not know if it has happened to you, colleagues, but to observe behavior. I have seen this a lot in the corporate sphere. It is approaching the time to leave. And it always passes an urgency or passes an urgency of the last hour. And everyone comes running, and maybe that urgency is something as simple as that the boss did not want to get home to bathe the children and give them dinner. Literally. So it creates a problem for everyone to have to get agitated in that agitation. Let's see that we all have a lot of work, that we value a lot. And that, also, socially, it is very good to say that we go head on, right? I do not know what you think about that, Francis, for example, or Tony. Alex, I remember that when we met, in your first book you talked about an anecdote. Oh, yes, yes. I was looking for a company, someone shouted at you, it is urgent that it is urgent. Yes, the man was so... Yes, it was like Tony. He was so out of himself that he was giving blows to everyone. And a person Interpeloy told him, but hey, really, this is so urgent. And the man said, it is urgent that it is urgent. I get a lot of this anecdote. And we can counteract it with Jaemin's vision, the Korean monk, who has the famous book of what you can only see when you stop. He says, when you feel that you are in a frenzy situation, which is what happens when we are installed in the absence, it seems that the world is over, we have to solve it all today, and that everything depends on us. We are like Arles carrying the weight of the world. So what Jaemin proposes is, when you are in a situation like this, ask yourself, is that frenzy out of me, are things, or is it in my mind? He says, because perhaps the world is not slow or fast, the world is not urgent or stop being urgent. So, when we understand that it is the mind, the human brain, what gives it a connotation, we can turn off the urgency and say, well, we have to do this, right? Something will happen if this article, instead of delivering at 5 in the afternoon, delivers tomorrow at 8 in the morning, right? And then the urgency is off, and we go to a more reasonable and human time. -Antonio. -Very good, very good. Very good. Reflection. Look, hopefully we get to that more reasonable and human time. And do you know why? Because, precisely, while I was talking, the two great sources of the collective neurosis of our society model have come to mind. That precisely because we have not reached where you propose, Francis, the culture of the rush and the culture of the important. The sum of those two categories, artificial and artificial, because they are strengthened reciprocately, because it turns out that what is important generates the rush. What you said, who asks what he asks? Is it urgent that it is urgent? Translated to the level of subjective experience, it is who asks what he asks, and according to whom he asks, it is urgent. And when you believe it is urgent, if the one who asks, according to the status, the ranking or the organiogram, it turns out that it is important, we already have the neurosis of the urgency. When does this happen? Not yesterday, not tomorrow. And, also, many people compete precisely, in a way that is almost useful, I do not say useful, to satisfy, in a quick, urgent way, and as best as possible, the one who asks, the person who can help us, or that we value as important. Of course, a famous American journalist, Milton Rijman, said, "It is wonderful to be important, but it is still more important to be wonderful." That is very full. Maybe we should start changing the paradigm of what is important. It is important that it has more money, that it has more power, or it is important that we all accept that, as beings, we are different, but similar, with the same rights and obligations. And therefore, with the right of everyone to satisfy the basic needs, then, perhaps we would prioritize the right, because the right would not be urgent, it would be the natural right of what needs to be satisfied, because in our moral, ethical and behavioral categories, we consider that it should be so. Therefore, hopefully, as you from France, hopefully the culture of urgency disappears, it becomes, as Alex proposes in the culture of priorities, and that that priority does not mark the demand of those who ask, but the ethics of what should be satisfied. And in this line, dear Tony, if we look inside, we try to understand the reasons that we create false emergencies, and we are left with anxiety, because I think that nobody discusses that there are really urgent situations, and that there are really situations that deserve an agile and immediate, resolute response, but in the immense majority of cases, we would make an inventory as an exercise, not how many situations of urgency we had this week, and how many were really urgent at a certain distance, we would realize that the source is born of internal insecurity. First, the fear of defrauding others if we do not respond immediately to their demands, because how many people we have loved, or we want to appear to be very efficient and successful. There is another critical issue, which is self-esteem and the need for approval. We feel that we must demonstrate our value, satisfying expectations constantly. The other issue would be perfectionism, the despised perfectionism, which we dedicate a chapter to. We think that everything we do must be perfect, and that takes us perhaps to the obsession and to pure excess. And I also insist that addiction to stress is the difficulty to set limits, which is very, very, very linked to the inability to prioritize, if we do not distinguish between what is really acute, everything will seem absolutely priority, and that can lead us, as a final symptom, to an unorganized life. Because the one who does not plan well will always be against the law, trying to compensate for the lack of order. Therefore, here there would be two issues that can arise, which are, on the one hand, the lack of self-esteem, which leads to complacency, and the lack of structure, which leads to disorganization. I think that if a person works in himself, the ability to be valued will be much easier to set limits, that is to say, that not, and not to like each other's expectations. And on the other hand, if a person is able to organize himself, not only will he organize his life well, but he will allow people around him to go down to the level of anxiety and stress, because he can organize and prioritize them, even his own tasks, if he is in command. Dear Francis, following with this wheel dynamic that we do, to go bringing ideas. Well, by collecting your proposal, dear Alex, I think it would be very useful to make a list of situations that are authentically urgent. And it happens to me a couple. If the house is burning, it is urgent that we leave it. Of course. If an old man falls down the street and has to attend it, it is urgent, it is assistance. And let's continue with the list of things that if we do not, before 30 seconds, may have very adverse consequences. And we are going to see that in reality there are very few. It is urgent to breathe. It is urgent to breathe, perhaps the most urgent of all. It is urgent to breathe. So once we determine what is vital, what is really urgent, what situations, all the other is relative. And I think that here the appropriate verb would be to relativize. That is to say, well, because also something that happens, and that Alex, I'm sure he has heard it more than once, and Antoni is also the collision of emergencies. There are different people, each with an emergency, that compete. And then it is when you say, "I don't give a life." Let's imagine that there are three patients who want to visit with Antoni, tomorrow at four in the afternoon. There is a competition between three emergencies, and there is Antoni where he has to say, "Well, to establish that order of priorities." Or in life itself, right? Sometimes for us it can be urgent to take care of our body, to do an intellectual work, to attend to that friend, to talk to our son. So here I think that it is required a clear mind, and not to be so optimistic with the agenda, and to learn to take time. I have learned, for example, with the issue of emails, which for me is a drama, because it seems that the emails seem to create, each email that appears appears three, while the answers are written three times. They are like spores, they are like spores. Exactly. So, I don't know what book, I mean, that idea, I thought, let's get used to not answering real-time emails. I mean, let's say they are accumulated throughout the day, let's say they are accumulated throughout the day, so at night I am going to mark the 15 priorities, I am going to answer them, the rest I am going to keep a folder, if I get them right, if not, I always say, "If it is very important, they will send it to me." And that gives me some peace. I don't know, if you have any personal method of emergency management. In my case, I have, well, sorry, Toni, answer quickly. No, no, no, no. The system is not urgent, so much so. The R&D technique, to solve the mess, that is, the one that really... I also look at the email in the middle of the day and at night, and when I get an email with an urgent one, I already lift a chair and put a flag on it, because normally, the one who sends an urgent email, in the immense middle of the cases, is to pay attention, to pay attention, but I think it is a lack of education, because when it is not, it is a way of manipulating and directly the folder. R&D, solve, delegate or throw, that is, what is really important, it is solved immediately, what is delegate to the team, to the collaborator, to the provider, whoever it is, it is sent, and everything else is noise. And it is true that when you have the time and dedication and the courtesy of sending emails sometimes, there are people who respond to you and respond to you with much more petition or with much more text. Without realizing that in the world there are other human beings who interact with you, and that really the agendas are sometimes complex. So in that sense, that is why I was saying before, one has to lose the fear of falling antipatic, because you cannot please everyone, and in my life I have shown that when you have tried to please everyone, or I have tried to please everyone, you are paying a very important health price. To me, it was the health problems that led me to have a very clear idea of what is really important and what is really urgent. Well, you are taking out some questions that make it urgent to do a series of nuances. First, the importance of urgentness has a lot to do with knowledge. For example, in my case, when you know what an email is, then I will think if it is an urgent thing to answer it or not. Therefore, the ignorance is a trigger of the urgent. Once we know the issue about the issue of urgency, I think there are two very interesting issues. One has just taken out the French one. When you have said, we have to relativize. And relativizing involves putting and relating between different and diverse needs about which we have to start categorizing. And there we would have to have the theory of the priorities proposed by Alex. And the other with respect to the motivations that makes us consider urgent something. And as of last Alex has taken out the concept of self-esteem. And there we enter into the subjectivity of why some people consider that something is urgent. Depending on the importance of the subject that generates the demand or generates us the need to cover that demand. And there there is a direct relation between self-esteem deficit and the need to answer the demand. To the point that we could say that servility is no longer that the deficit of self-esteem to the service of a person that we consider in a superlative way and our desire to satisfy to feel a vicarious satisfaction to have something to do with that person. Notice to what extent our own fantasies our own problems and our own deficits influence to consider urgent a certain demand. But I have just related it with self-esteem but we could relate it with the self-concept. We three if we receive in these moments a demand of our good friend or the earth precisely because we consider it because we value it because it is a reference in our field we will have a supplementary motivation to attend it not because we have a deficit of self-esteem but yes because we estimate it not because we have a deficit of self-concept but yes because we value it and we enter into the great balance what I do since the mature adult who decides that I should do something or since my child needs recognition and evaluation once more the more mature we are the less urgency we have because most importantly somehow we equilate we value we analyze and we determine that is what the priority of the attention of demand or of the response of those who request from us that is why I just say that the best is the enemy of the good people have to do things in a sense in a balanced way in a socially understandable way and psychologically coherent when we achieve that we have much less urgency because we have clear our priorities and there obviously once again coincided with France and I also point it out so that I do not forget France if one day I will take your paper I would say I have to get out of here maybe I will go out running To close France any last contribution or idea? Yes, I would say against the urgency to promote the thought in the middle I have been reading the book the psychology of money and there is a chapter in which analyzes the success of Warren Buffett and says Warren Buffett has not had so much success or has such a good eye to know what company to bet on but because it is a man who does not care to wait for results for 30 years and then goes counter-current then the great advantage of not living in the urgent is that we will be wrong much less we will have really meditated decisions and the rhythm with which we will live will be the one we decide that is pushing us with haste Francis you have given me a joy I am going to erase from the list of my pending books one that I had put by title psychology of money therefore it is already written it is no longer written it is no longer urgent and there arises again what I was telling you when there is no knowledge there is no urgency absolutely and therefore perhaps I would stay from today's conversation dear friends and dear friends that there are facts that objectively require our prioritization our presence our resolution but in reality the movement of the urgent is more inside in the complacency in not organizing than in the thing itself if we had a more reflective look of what we have to live and what we are living surely we would not let ourselves step through so many false emergencies so again as I said although nothing changes if I change, everything changes including the urgency we send you a big hug and we continue in Plupo Jala to know what the cost of Plupo Jala is a space of depth and dialogue with us, with conferences with mutual encounters, with a magazine you can find all the information on the website of PlupoJala.com see you there if you want and we continue a big hug you