Want To Be Happy? Put Your Family First
“Put your family first and reap the rewards.”
In the last post, you compared your most important priorities (where your heart really wants you to spend your time) to your daily life (where you actually spend time). The idea was to plot out what you want from your life versus what you actually get from your life. The more of a mismatch, the less happy you’ll be – mismatched priorities are a happiness vacuum. Think about why . . . your heart isn’t getting what it wants, and it drives your happiness. So now that you know yourself a little better, how can you act on this information? Here are three pieces of advice:
#1 – Put Your Family / Faith / Morality First
I have spoken to hundreds of thousands of people over the past fifteen years. In my talks, I dive deeply into priorities and how to structure a Top Ten list of priorities. It’s a compelling conversation every time. This is where people listen and engage most intently. I find that most everyone I see – after spending some time pondering their top priorities – places with Family / Faith / morality first on the list. People of faith tend to put that first and family second. Others put family first and other people in their lives second. Many separate their spouse from their kids on the list not wanting to short-change either. I am a big fan of that. My top three are: (1) Faith, (2) Spouse, (3) Kids.
Why? Mostly because this is where my best memories come from. In fact, if I look back at my 20 best memories, the vast majority come from my faith and family. How about you?
Let’s call this consensus the “wisdom of crowds.” Regardless, when this many people make a claim, it must mean something. So . . . as you ponder the ordering of your chart, please strongly consider putting these critical priorities first. If you are not a person of faith, I have found it’s important to have something to take that spot – a deep and consistent moral philosophy or ethical code so to speak. Make a place for that instead.
#2 – Put Your Career / Education Just Lower
There is a lot to unpack here so read this carefully. The people I meet who are really successful in their careers AND happy tell me that their job / education matter . . . just not more than their family / faith / moral code. This is a critically important point. You can place work or school in the third or fourth spot and still be amazing at what you do for a living. You can still get great grades. Recall that priorities are not time spent on anything, necessarily. Rather, priorities are where you place your best energy or what you do first. For example, I love my job, but I make time to have dinner with my family every evening possible. That experience is just more important to me. My best energy goes to my family and my fourth best energy goes to my carer. And it works well that way. I have been successful at my career thus far even placing my job fourth. My bosses haven’t always loved this, but that’s a topic for tomorrow’s post.
#3 – Some Stuff Must Go
One more thing. Just because I gave you ten spots in the chart does not mean that you’ll get to all of these lower priorities all that often. As life gets busy, perhaps you will only get to the first four or five. And that’s okay. You MUST get to those at the top. The rest will fall into place when you get more organized or have more time. Make sure also to let go of as many things as you can that don’t make the list. This will free up time and mental bandwidth for your top priorities.
The next post will talk about how putting your family first can (will) cost you professionally.
The Moral of this Story: Put your family first and see how much happier you are!
P.S.: Here’s the chart from the last post. Start here if you missed that.
More soon,
Corey
- Check out COREYSPEAKS.COM for more on popular keynote speaker Corey Ciocchetti. Corey has keynotes on happiness, integrity, ethical leadership, ethical decision-making, morale, stress reduction, and professionalism. Corey has spoken in 44 states and over 250 cities since 2007.
- Check out Corey’s other cool ethics blog posts on LEADERSHIP and HAPPINESS – you won’t regret it.
- Corey’s new book, INSPIRE INTEGRITY: CHASE AN AUTHENTIC LIFE is available now!
