The Right to Be One of Your Own Priorities

Article 3: The Right to Be One of Your Own Priorities

Reclaiming a Place in the Decisions That Shape Your Life

By J.Michelle

People often describe self-care as though it were a private luxury added after the real work is complete. For a person whose days are organized around other people’s requests, however, the omission of personal needs is not neutral. It shapes what becomes possible, what remains postponed, and whose priorities define the schedule.

Choosing a priority is therefore an act of interpretation. It asks what deserves limited attention and why. The answer may include family, work, treatment, or a relationship, but it must also permit the individual to appear in the decision.

The workbook as a decision architecture

The Nirva Life priorities page offers six movements: choose goals, set priorities, choose activities, prioritize those activities, schedule, and implement. Its A-E categories distinguish Must Do, Should Do, Would Be Nice to Do, Delegate, and Eliminate.

These categories become more useful when treated as analytic questions rather than moral rankings. What is genuinely necessary? What is important but deferrable? What could be shared? What persists only because no one has questioned it?

A personal need may belong in Must Do even if no external authority recognizes it. Eating, attending treatment, protecting sleep, or creating a safe transition between responsibilities can be prerequisites for every other obligation. Conversely, an optional request may remain optional even when someone else expresses urgency.

Agency and competing motives

A person does not need perfectly independent motives to make a self-directed decision. A request can matter and still conflict with available energy. Approval can feel important while not being the only relevant consideration.

The question is not whether another person’s needs count. It is whether the individual’s needs have been excluded from the calculation. Consider someone who fears that declining an optional request will jeopardize a relationship. The planning question becomes whether that fear has displaced consideration of the person’s own needs. This is an example to examine in context, not a diagnosis or a conclusion about the relationship.

Acceptance and commitment therapy provides a related clinical literature on psychological flexibility. A 2025 meta-analysis found improvements in depression and flexibility, but the certainty of evidence differed by outcome and the findings do not validate NIRVA or the workbook categories. [1]

From priority to action

Once a priority is selected, it must be translated into an observable activity. “Become healthier” is too diffuse to guide a decision. “Arrange transportation to the appointment” identifies a sequence that can be supported, delegated, or modified.

Scheduling should be treated as an experiment. If the time repeatedly fails, the appropriate conclusion may concern the schedule, the size of the task, or the support available. It need not become a verdict on discipline.

Evidence

The cited peer-reviewed journal publications fall within September 27, 2023–September 27, 2026, based on first online publication. Recent reviews can synthesize older studies. This is a targeted evidence review.

Citation Boundary

The priorities page is a Nirva Life workbook tool, not a validated instrument. The clinical evidence cited here concerns acceptance and commitment therapy, not the page or the NIRVA Method. The proposed use is educational planning rather than treatment.

Disclosure: This is Nirva Life educational content discussing its own developing tools. These applications do not establish clinical efficacy of the NIRVA Method or its workbook.

References

1. Zou Y, Wang R, Xiong X, et al. (2025). Effects of acceptance and commitment therapy on negative emotions, automatic thoughts and psychological flexibility for depression and its acceptability: a meta-analysis. BMC Psychiatry, 25, 602. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-025-07067-w