Make the Most Important the Most Important

If I could turn back time, I would tell myself to pick about five specific areas in life which are the most important to me. And I’d tell myself to fully-invest my time, energy, efforts and focus into those five areas.

Being spread thin, being scattered or frantic, trying to know everything, trying to keep up with everything, trying to change everything, being distracted, overwhelmed, and fearful, wasted a lot of my time. I can say for certain, narrowing-in on a few areas which matter to me changed my life and fostered inner-peace, integrity, surety, security, and contentment.

Here are some examples of general areas to invest in:

relationships, values, health, learning, religion, career, hobbies, home, contentment, research, advocacy, clubs, organizations, things, relaxation.

From the general areas, I am specific. In the areas which matter to me, I specify which and what type—i.e. which and what type of relationship, health, learning, and so on.

Almost everyone has at least one relationship which is important and/or significant. Ideally, that specific relationship should be on the list of five most-important areas. I wrote an article called Purpose: Loyalty & Devotion which is an example of what fully-invested looks like in a relationship. Though, sometimes we’re in relationships which are challenging—yet, the relationship is still significant. In those cases, being fully-invested looks differently, as described in my article called Maintaining Challenging Relationships.

When picking five of the most-important areas, it’s helpful to understand that there is one common denominator in all five areas: you. Any investment we make is an investment made in ourselves as well. We always carry with us what we learn from all of our five most-important areas. While investing in one of the five areas, we become that much better of a person; which, in turn, benefits the other four areas as well.

Among our five most-important areas, there should always be win-win scenarios with all whom are involved in our lives; making sure of this is a crucial part of our investments. Actions speak louder than words.

Making the most important the most important, makes decision-making extremely easy. We can ask ourselves, “Does this choice benefit my five most-important areas?” If yes, do it. If not, don’t do it.

Even the mundane feels more bearable because we can see how each action that we take (or decline, if it’s irrelevant to what matters), is an investment in what we, ourselves, determined is important to us.

“You get those mundane things right, those things you do every day. You concentrate on them and you make them pristine. It’s like you got 80% of your life put together. These little things that are right in front of us, they’re not little.”
-Jordan Peterson

We learn to trust and count on ourselves because we clearly know what really matters; and we put all of ourselves into that. We’re intentional. Our actions back up our heart and soul.

Others know where we stand. So, we won’t attract those who aren’t in-line with what matters to us—or they won’t stick around for long.

Contrary to what we might think, limiting ourselves to investing in five most-importance areas, instead of limiting ourselves, actually expands our creativity, energy, and interests. It’s much like having 4,000,000 penny investments into several random businesses, versus putting $40,000 into one business that we believe in and care about. We’re naturally-motivated to work hard, stay focused, and be creative when we put all our attention onto just a few areas. We have a lot of time and contemplative, reflective space, to come up with ways to make those few areas, including ourselves, much better. We have more patience to listen to and brainstorm with our most-important people.

"Something that's ‘everything’ lacks limitation… There are advantages to not being able to do things. If you had everything you wanted at every moment at your fingertips, then there's nothing. There's no story. It's like Superman being able to bounce hydrogen bombs off of him. The whole series died because he didn't have any flaws. There's no story without limitation.“
— Jordan Peterson

Be your best. Make the most important, the most important.

Do you need coaching? Please contact me. I’d love to help you.