It is very wise to be clear about your priorities and make sure that you attend to them. So much time, effort and energy can be wasted if you spend time on lesser matters and lose sight of the most important. It makes sense that the big, important issues need to come first. However, there is also much to be gained from appreciating the little things. The two ideas are not incompatible.
It is perfectly possible to focus primarily on the main issues you face, while also setting aside some time for the things that, at first view, may not seem to matter much, but which can actually be of great importance and value. What I am talking about is taking the opportunity to take a step back, relax and, in a sense, ‘smell the roses’. It is very easy to get so caught up with the big issues that we lose sight of other aspects of our lives, the little things that can being satisfaction, joy and hope.
This is an important part of self-care. If we are constantly focused on moving forward and therefore looking directly ahead, we may miss important and useful things that are not immediately in front of us. It is important to be focused, of course, but there is a difference between being focused and being blinkered and too narrowly concentrated. For example, how many people have been so intensely focused on their career or business that they miss out on watching their children grow up? How many people lose sight of their interests and hobbies because they are wedded to their strong sense of needing to move forward all the time? I remember one man telling me he had recently attended a concert for the first time in years and he had come away from it in tears and with mixed feelings. They were partly tears of joy because he had enjoyed the music so much, he had found it so uplifting at a time when he very much needed his spirits raising. But, in part, they were tears of sadness, because the experience made him realise that, despite his immense love of music, he had spent very little time in recent years listening to it or getting the benefits of it, because he had been so focused on making a success of his career. He realised he had let go of something that mattered to him a great deal because he had become too narrowly focused on his career.
An important part of this is our idea of success. What does success mean to you? If it is purely career success, then what are you missing out on? Of course, this is not to say that career success is not a noble and worthwhile goal to pursue, but allowing it to be all encompassing at the expense of other important matters and thereby, in the process, failing to ‘smell the roses’ is potentially very problematic.
This is partly about work-life balance, but it is also broader than this. It is about building in the flexibility to our lives to be able to pursue important goals, but also, at the same time, giving yourself time and space to savour the various things that seem small, but which can have a big impact on our quality of life.
Do you know what those small but significant things are in your life? Are you making sure that you are keeping them in mind and not letting them drift? Are you managing to get that balance right?