2631: Deadly Serious: Are You Protecting What Matters Most?

[upbeat music] What are you deadly serious about? Deadly serious, because you can't be deadly serious about everything because you will burn yourself out, you will become exhausting to be around, and eventually you will completely lose perspective.

But there are some things, some things definitely deserve your full attention.

Some things deserve your best thinking.

Some things deserve your absolute complete presence.

The trick, it's not becoming more intense.

The trick is identifying what actually matters.

And here's a spoiler alert, those things that really matter, that actually matter, those are your meaningful few.

Those are the handful of things that matter most across the six different areas of life, and those are, of course, family, community, wellbeing, your career, your finances, your personal development, and your peace of mind.

Those are your meaningful few.

The meaningful few, those are the things that matter, and then you look at those six areas and you figure out what those things are.

Once you know what those things are, it's imperative that we treat them like they do matter.

What got me thinking about this was a conversation I recently had with a manager at a financial services firm.

His job is recruiting, developing, and leading new financial advisors, and that is deadly serious work.

It's not because every interview, every person he interviews is life or death.

It's not because every conversation has to feel like it's this super heavy thing, but because what's actually happening is incredibly important.

He's talking with people who are considering changing their careers, making a big change.

He's thinking about talking with people who are thinking about their futures, which of course is them, but it's also their spouses and their children, and it's their personal finances, and it is their identity, how they see themselves.

So a bad decision by other party, it doesn't just cost someone a paycheck, it can cost literally years.

It can put undue strain on a marriage.

It can delay different dreams.

It can certainly hurt the candidate.

It hurt the candidate's family.

And all of that stuff demands you take it seriously.

Then I realized that something, that the manager actually isn't just hiring people, he is helping people to determine whether the opportunity he's talking about is the right vehicle for the life that they really want.

So he gets to ask, "What do you actually want? What kind of life are you really trying to build? What matters most to you?" And then, then the next question there is, "Can the career that I'm offering, can it help you to get there?" So you can map this onto any different arena.