After school I’m not sure that anyone uses pie charts ever again.

A surprisingly powerful exercise I tried out the other day was to map out your source of self-worth in a pie chart. 

So this is a list of things I do, characteristics I have, that I think make me an OK human.

Then I compared the honest to god, actual list with what I thought it should be. 

It was a real eye opener.

Ideally I judge myself based upon my generosity, my intelligence, etc.

In reality , I spend way too much mental energy judging myself based upon how my house looks. 

In theory, I don’t care. In theory I’m cool and not uptight. In theory my value as a human being bears no relationship whatsoever to my house for god’s sake.

Yet it does.

In reality, I hate living in an untidy house. I feel like a slob.

The pie chart helped to show me that I was spending (wasting) way too much time on things that didn’t match my ideals.

This exercise was focused on my thinking but could be equally well used to compare your daily activities versus your ideal (within reason) day.

I know it sounds simple, but there was just something about the process of creating a pie chart that really highlighted the discrepancy in my thinking and actions.