A Mirror into a Person's Life One's lifestyle offers an objective and accurate reflection of his real life goals and priorities. To say it another way, what a person truly believes about life's priorities will dictate every conscious moment of his activities. Within the constraints of time, space, and personal abilities, whatever significant or mundane activity a person is engaged in at any moment is of all possible options the most important choice to him right then, regardless of what he may think or insist to the contrary. Recognizing this isn't a tool for personal guilt manipulation. It's simply helps provide an honest assessment of the degree to which our stated life priorities are in fact our priorities. Armed with that knowledge, we can then make appropriate lifestyle changes to better align the two.

Our Inescapable Interdependence None of us truly stands alone anywhere in life, and much of the success we experience over the years corporately and individually come through the very intricate and often complex networks of relationships that own responsibility for the quality & completion of their "piece." Consider, after all, the complex cooperative relationships required simply to create a mere pencil.   If even one person or organization fails at any significant level, the whole package could crumble.  We need each other.

Weighing Life's Priorities from the End Even with the hectic lifestyles which are an inherent part of the life package we experience, do your best to live all of your life (not just your work life) with the end in mind - Stephen Covey habit #2.  If, for example, you are blessed to live to a ripe old age, consider now the people and circumstances to whom/which you will then look back upon wishing you had given a higher priority.  Live your priorities now. My favorite book says, "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.'  Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away."  Life is all-too-brief and seldom offers opportunities for substantial do-overs.