What to Focus On When Everything Feels Important
Published: 9th Aug 2026| The Healing Rebel Podcast, Episode 250
What matters to you right now?
That’s the question. And it’s a bigger one than it sounds.
Most of the women I work with have a long list of things that feel important. Health, work, relationships, kids, parents, home, finances, creativity, growth, community. All of it feels essential. All of it feels urgent. All of it is quietly demanding attention.
And that’s the problem. When everything is important, nothing gets your proper attention. Where the attention goes, the energy flows. If your attention is scattered across 15 things, so is your energy. So is your progress. So is your sense of forward movement.
I’m Jen Wilson, The Healing Rebel, and this episode is about how to work out what deserves your attention right now.
Listen on your favourite platform:
[Spotify] [Apple Podcasts] [Amazon Music]
What sparked this episode
I was listening to a podcast where a woman had just found out she was pregnant, and all her plans for the next year had to shift. Her direction changed overnight, not because she chose it, but because life gave her new information.
It reminded me of December 2016. I’d just written and published my book. I had plans for it. I was going to launch it, promote it, build a whole thing around it.
Then I got diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. Every plan I had for that book got shelved. I barely spoke about the book for the next 10 years.
Life reorganises your priorities whether you’re ready or not. Sometimes it’s a diagnosis. Sometimes it’s a pregnancy. Sometimes it’s a bereavement or a relationship ending or a job disappearing. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get to reorganise them yourself, on your own terms, before life does it for you.
This episode is about that second option.
The Wheel of Life, done properly
In life coaching, there’s a tool called the Wheel of Life, I call it the Wheel of Happiness in my book. It’s a circle divided into sections, each one representing a different area of your life, and you rate each section out of 10.
Zero is absolute despair. Ten is couldn’t be any better.
The standard version has headings like health, money, work, relationships, fun, and spirituality. And I have a problem with those headings, because they’re too vague to be useful.
Relationships? Which relationships? My relationship with my mum is different from my relationship with my partner is different from my relationship with my business collaborators is different from my relationships with my clients.
Health? Which health? My physical health. My mental health. My gut health. My hormonal health. My spiritual health. My relationship with rest. All of these things are health.
In the version of the Wheel of Life I include in my book, the headings are blank. You fill them in yourself with the categories that matter to you, in the language that’s meaningful to you. That’s what makes the tool useful.
What the exercise gives you
When you sit down and rate your life across the categories that matter to you, a few things become obvious.
Some areas of your life are going well. Better than you’d have guessed if you were just running on autopilot.
Some areas are properly struggling. You knew this on some level, but you hadn’t looked at it directly.
Some areas you thought were fine turn out to have quiet problems you’d been ignoring.
And, crucially, you start to see which areas are pulling all your energy at the expense of the ones that need it most.
If your business is running at 9/10 but your health is at 3/10, and you’re pouring more energy into the business, the business will keep running but your health will keep dropping. That’s not sustainable. That ends in burnout, illness, or both.
Why trying to fix everything is a fast track to burnout
You cannot get every area of your life to 10 out of 10 at the same time. If you try, you’ll lie to yourself about at least half of it, and you’ll run yourself into the ground pursuing the other half.
The point of the exercise isn’t to perfect everything. The point is to notice where your attention needs to shift so the areas that are struggling can start recovering.
If your health is struggling and all your energy is going into your business, your health will keep deteriorating. You might need to take the foot off the pedal with the business for a while and divert some of that energy back into your health, so that you eventually have the energy to put into the business properly again.
If your relationship is falling apart and you’re too busy to look at it, six months, a year, ten years later, you’re still in the same relationship with the same problems and nothing has changed. Except you’re older and more tired.
The pause matters. The stopping and looking matters. Otherwise you just keep trundling forward, and the thing that was quietly bothering you keeps quietly bothering you until it isn’t quiet any more.
Why knowing something isn’t the same as doing it
I’m in therapy at the moment with my friend Jean Fenwick (who’s been on the podcast a couple of times). And a lot of what we’re working through is stuff I already know. Stuff I wrote about in my book. Stuff I could quote back to you word for word.
Knowing it doesn’t mean I’ve integrated it. Knowing it doesn’t mean I’ve done the work with it. Knowing something intellectually and putting it into practice in your own life are two very different things, and that’s why external support matters.
A therapist, a coach, a bodyworker, a mentor. Someone who can challenge your beliefs, ask you the question you haven’t been asking yourself, and make you hear yourself say things out loud so you can notice the madness in what you’ve been telling yourself.
I get that a lot. I say something to Jean and immediately hear how absurd it is. I couldn’t have got there on my own. That’s what external support does.
Confidence comes after competence
One of the things that came up in a recent therapy session with Jean was the reminder that confidence follows competence, not the other way around.
Which is a sentence I wrote in my book 10 years ago. And Jean was reflecting it back to me, and I sat there thinking, I know this. I wrote this. And here I am, still needing to be reminded of it.
You can’t have confidence about something you’ve never done. That’s not a personality flaw. That’s how confidence works. It builds through the reps.
Imposter syndrome is often just competence that hasn’t caught up with the position you’re in yet. It doesn’t mean you don’t belong. It means you’re new to the thing, and confidence will follow once you’ve done it enough times to trust yourself.
For me right now, what matters is doing the therapy work to release some old stories, some old insecurities that have been quietly putting blocks in my way. I could keep pushing on all the other things I’ve got going on. But until I move through this bit properly, the pushing won’t move me forward the way I want it to.
That’s what I mean by knowing what matters right now.
Frequently asked questions
How do I work out what to focus on when everything feels important?
Start with a stocktake. The Wheel of Life exercise (with your own headings, not generic ones) is a solid starting point. Rate each area of your life out of 10, notice what’s going well, notice what’s struggling, and choose one or two areas to shift your attention towards. You can’t fix everything at once.
Why do I keep feeling stuck even though I’m doing loads?
Because “doing loads” and “doing the right things” aren’t the same. Activity without direction burns you out without moving you forward. Taking a pause to look at where your energy is going, and whether it’s going towards what matters most, is often what breaks the stuck feeling.
What is the Wheel of Life exercise?
It’s a circle divided into sections, each representing an area of your life, which you rate from 0 to 10. It gives you a visual snapshot of where you are, so you can see where your attention needs to shift. My version leaves the section headings blank so you can name your own categories, because standard ones like “relationships” or “health” are too broad to be useful.
Why can’t I just fix everything at once?
Because your energy isn’t infinite, and your nervous system isn’t designed to be in constant activation across every area of your life. Trying to fix everything at once splits your focus, dilutes your energy, and burns you out before anything meaningful changes.
How do I know when I need external support?
If you know something intellectually but keep repeating the same patterns anyway, that’s usually a sign. External support (therapy, coaching, mentorship, bodywork) helps you see what you can’t see on your own, and helps you turn what you know into what you actually do.
What does “confidence follows competence” mean?
You can’t feel confident doing something you’ve never done. Confidence isn’t a personality trait or a mindset shift. It’s what builds up as you gain competence through practice. Imposter syndrome is often just competence catching up with your current position.
Want to start with something simple?
Download my free Lymphatic Drainage Self-Care Routine. A gentle, daily practice you can do in as little as one minute a day. A small daily rest for your nervous system.
[Download the free routine here]
Get the book
9 Rules to Sort Your Shit is turning 10 this December. It includes the Wheel of Life exercise mentioned in this episode, plus eight more chapters on values, boundaries, confidence, and how to move forward when you’re stuck.
The audiobook version is also on all major audio platforms if you’d rather listen than read.
Come in for a Reset or Recalibration
If you’re in or around Glasgow and you want protected, held time to properly take stock, I offer The Reset (90 minutes) and The Recalibration (3 hours) from my private home studio in Springburn, North Glasgow.
[The Reset (90 minutes, £85)] | [The Recalibration (3 hours, £197)]
Related episodes
- “How to Build Rest Into Your Business and Life”
- “Eldest Daughter Syndrome and Why Firstborn Daughters Burn Out”
- “Can You Really Self-Soothe? Or Do You Need Connection?”
About Jen:
Jen Wilson is The Healing Rebel, a holistic wellness practitioner with over 15 years in practice, supporting capable, responsible women over 40 who give to everyone and struggle to receive. Working from her private home studio in Springburn, North Glasgow, Jen offers The Reset, The Recalibration, Manual Lymphatic Drainage, Therapeutic Fascia Massage, Menopause Massage, Reiki, Reiki Drumming, and Sound Healing, plus online classes and an on-demand subscription library.
Find out more at iamjenwilson.com
