God’s Strategic Planning Course for Healing

Prioritize

Up to this point, you have looked in a mirror and seen who you are, what made you the way you are and the resources you have available to you. Now it’s time to decide which problems to work on first. How, do I do that? Maybe, Mr. Pareto has the answer.

Vilfredo Pareto was an 18th century economist that came up with the 80/20 rule. This rule can be applied to anything you can think of and some of the time it is perfectly accurate. For example, in some cases, 80% of all crime is done by 20% of the population; 80% of wealth belongs to 20% of the people; 80% of your problems are caused by 20% of events in your life. This is a general rule and will vary slightly city-to-city, country-to-country, etc. In this course, the only purpose of the 80/20 rule is for you to identify the root problems that you have and work on them first.

Okay, now how do I do this? Well, first you must prioritize your list of the issues that you identified earlier. You do this by weighting all of them by low, medium, medium-high and high. Of course low being the issue that effects you the least and high being the issue that effects you the most.

You might end up with two highs, that’s okay. For example, you might have several that bother you the most and you put a high next to all of them. If you are having a problem doing this, start with the one that bothers you the most and put a high by it and put a low next to the one that bothers you the least.

Next, put low, medium, medium-high, or high next to the rest in relation to these. You might discover that some of the newest events effect you more than some of the effects that happened in the past. This is normal because you have dealt with the past effects. The problem is you might have used an unhealthy defense mechanism to deal with it.

What you will learn, in this course, is how to deal with all your past and present events in a positive manner. Here is my prioritized list of issues.

PRIORITY PEOPLE/THING HOW IT MADE ME FEEL

High Alcoholic dad that beat my mom. Anger, Fearfully, Depressed, Helpless, Horror

Medium Parents couldn’t afford to buy us clothes, shoes, and haircuts while I was in grade school. Shameful, Hurt, Anxiety

Medium-High Abusive stepdad that beat my brother and me. Fearful, Anger, Depressed, Shameful, Never Good Enough, Hate

High Kids bullied me at school. Fearful, Shameful, Anxiety, low self-esteem

Medium I intentionally hurt a lot of people from a little child through high school. Shameful, Disgusted

High Joined the military and spent 27 difficult years serving our country. Fearful, Depressed, Anxiety

High Had an alcoholic wife. After 16-years went through a horrible custody battle. She died of Cirrhosis in January 2019. Depressed, Fearful, Anxiety, Helpless, Shameful

High Lived from credit card to credit card while paying-off the debt I owed to lawyers. Fearful, Depressed, Anxiety, Hopeless, Shameful

Medium-High Ex-wife caused me to raise kids by myself. Anger, Resentment, Anxiety, Fearful

High Lived in Biloxi Mississippi during Hurricane Katrina (The eye of the storm hit us). I’d never seen such death and destruction. Depression, Anxiety, Horror

Low Abused by police. Admitted to a medical facility for suicidal idealization. Fearful, Depressed, Angry, Shameful, Hopeless, Helpless

Medium-High Work caused me to have two spinal surgeries, fusion, scoliosis and chronic pain. Depression, Anxiety, Fearful, Hopeless

Medium I emotionally hurt my ex-wives and stepchildren by getting drunk and acting stupid. Depressed, Shameful, Sad, Disgust

High I emotionally hurt my own children by getting drunk and acting stupid. Depressed, Shameful, Sad, Disgust

High Had a fiancée die of cancer after being her sole caregiver for three years. She had no family. Depressed, Helpless, Anxiety, Fearful

Medium I had a large debt paying for holistic cancer treatments in Mexico and Arizona for my fiancée. Anxiety, Depression

High I failed Jesus over-and-over again. Depressed, Shameful, Sad, Disgust

Medium My family discouraged me from taking care of my fiancée. They didn’t feel I should be so burdened because they love me. Discouraged

Medium-High My pastor and people I were close with didn’t reach out to me when I was at my all-time low taking care of my fiancée. Disgust, Hurt, Angry, resentment

You might have looked at my list of priorities and felt that I should have rated one area higher than another. That’s because we are all different and we handle the same things in different ways. We might have partially healed from an event that makes it a low effect. We cannot compare ourselves to anyone else because God made us unique. We are made for the specific purpose that God designed us for before we were even born (Jeremiah 1:5, Ephesians 2:10).

You should try to get your list down to about 20% of all your problems. This is so that you can focus on what bothers you the most first, and then address your lesser problems later. You might not get this number to exactly 20% of your problems, and that’s okay. Just keep re-assessing your list until you get to the amount you feel that you need to work on first.

If you have too many High problems just do the procedure, on the high problems, again using this same technique. Just list them using your first instinct. First, pick the one thing you feel effected you the most (high) then pick one that is low. Next, list the rest of them, just as you did in the beginning. I’ve listed my new prioritized high issues below.