Have you ever think about what are your priorities in life?  Most of us did not realise what are our priorities in life only until the last moment where everything is too late.

Actually, most of us know what we need and what we should do in life but we all fall into the biggest trap of all time and that is the rat race. We spend hours and hours of our life doing what our bosses have planned for us to do, what the government is encouraging us to do, what all our peers are doing and seldom do we stop and think, is it really what we want? If putting in a simple math equation, we are all simply trading our freedom and own priorities in life for the comfort and security of doing things planned by someone else whom we believe are better than us. We start to do things without thinking, if we start thinking, we are all thinking for someone else and seldom we spare any thoughts for our own priorities in life, that maybe we actually knew what are they. We wake in the morning, go to office on time, do our work and after office hours, went back home for the day. Sometimes we meet our friends for dinner, we look forward to the occasional yearly overseas vacations, etc.. Sometimes we hate the bosses and the jobs and we switch jobs, switch industry, maybe some of us will start our own businesses.

All these are perfectly fine, if they fall within your own definition of what your life should be and if they are not, maybe you should relook into your priorities.

The triangle here shows what I believe my priorites in life should be. The most important is at the top and the least important is at the bottom.

Survival

This is a no brainer. Survival is the most important priority in life. They are oxygen, water and food. Without means for survival, you wouldnt have any life to think about priorities.

Health and Family*

Health is everything. It is easy to sit in front of a computer in an air conditioned room talking about how important health is. One will only know how important health is when they personally experienced it. Without health, you will be a burden to people around you, you will not be able to do much thing. If you are born healthy, cherish the greatest gift. And yes, without health, no amount of money can compensate you for what you lose in life.

Family and spouses are the one who will be there for you regardless of what happen. The bond between all of your family members are the strength that overcome all difficulties. However there are people who do not have a good family and they are only there in life to make life miserable. One cannot choose what family he or she is born into, but they can choose the way they lead their life.

These two are two of the most important priorities in life and yet these two are the most easily neglectable elements in everyone’s lives. We came home from work every day and sit down in front of our computer immdediately without exercising nor talking with our family members. Losing these 2 aspects could create a real inbalance in our lives and we could need to spend more time trying to recover them when we realise the problems than maintaing them.

Money & Friends

Money is the simply some token that enable someone the rights to own some commodities in this huge economy. It is a honest reflection. Money is indeed important in the world now. Money talks.  Without money, nothing move. But fundementally, money cannot replace health and family. Period.

Some of us are lucky to have a couple of good friends who are willing to go through shit with you just because you are their friends. Most of the “friends” are just people who we invite over at wedding dinners, meet up over meals and go for movies maybe. IT is not that these friends are not good, but due to the way we lead our lives now, we just do not have the correct formula to build up the necessary bonds between everyone. But friends cannot compete with family (except for those without good families), the bonds are usually more fragile as compared to family bonds. But still friends are important in lives for connection & social networking. Usually when you are in trouble, you will not want to seek friends for help first, sometimes friends also do not want to be found at these times.

Personal Aspirations & Dreams

One should have their own aspirations and dreams, while the factors on top are the fundemental aspects of life, having a dream or goal define one’s blueprint in life. This will asnwer the question “why are we living for”? Without aspirations and dreams, one could just lead their daily lives without motivations and maybe sometimes get excitied by rewards given by someone else when you have fulfiled what they require you to do in their plans. You can still be a worker, a chef, a business owner, a pilot. The key point is if that is your own masterplan or your own aspiration for your own life. Take control.

Jobs

It is important to disassociate jobs with money. Jobs are simply doing things planned by your boss and in return he give you the monetary rewards. Money is important but not the job. Think really hard, is it really a must to have jobs to earn money? Just simply do a search in Google and you find a lot of people same like us who earn money without having a daily job. However, if your aspirations is to belong to a certain job trade and position than the job will move one level higher to your personal aspiration importance. Ironically, this is the point where many of us pay the most attention to, spent the most time of our lives on, neglecting health, family, aspirations and friends.