“Don’t tell me what your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what they are.” ~James W. Frick, CEO of Founding.com~
It’s frustrating to have money but no time, or to have time with no money. We of course want both – if we are honest with ourselves – but life seems to often make us choose between these two extremes. Some of us, moreover, in the worst case scenario, have neither money nor time nor hope.
Because we spend so much of our time being busy or creating busyness, we pay scant attention to the philosophical questions which will mean so much to us after retirement when we become old, decrepit and loaded with time to reflect.
Many self-help books, such as the mega-best seller “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” are great reference guides for prioritizing what is important in our lives. That is, if we choose to crack the book.
If, intellectual understanding alone led to happiness and success, then I guess a lot more of us would be living the good, happy life we dreamed possible in our fairy-tale childhoods.
Why can’t we know what is important to us? Perhaps because too many of us follow the desire for money and security at any cost. Inside ourselves we feel like a landscape artist or a graphic designer, but outside ourselves we drive a milk truck or sell insurance or run a bank to pay our bills.
Our lives become excruciatingly painful because we settle for the millionth best without a second thought. The years will pass in low gear and the dreams die eventually, if we let them.
I fervently believe that you should “Do What You Love, And The Money Will Follow.” Discover what’s important to you before the clock stops ticking.
That may take guts to do, but would you rather be fifty percent of someone else’s dreams or one hundred percent of your own?
The choice is stark and formidable: to follow the leader and be drenched in regret and brain weeds OR to set priorities and march forward with a take-no-prisoners’ mindset leading most likely to sustainable success, profitability and rising self esteem.
So do whatever you have to do to discover your true value on this verdant, blue planet spinning through space and time. Put your priorities in order today and march with confidence.