4 Things You Should Never Leave To Chance

I'm guessing the start of my 2012 is like yours.  The horizon holds an abundance of opportunity in life, love and career.  Potential is ripe for the taking.  And while it won't be a year without challenges, the obstacles make victory even sweeter.

Conquering the free world is admirable but this week I was reminded to put first things first.  Being a committed husband, a loving brother and a supportive son are all tasks that take time.  And, interestingly enough, time is also the one resource that tends to be in extremely limited supply while conquering the world.  Only took me 30 years to figure that out - genius.

Whether it's by design or destiny, there are critical things I believe we shouldn't leave to chance.  There are responsibilities, duties and even habits that must become an intentional part of daily, weekly and monthly priorities.  For me, these 4 things are:

1. My relationship with my Creator
2. My purpose for being created
3. My responsibility as a husband
4. My vision for the first 3

A conversation with my wife convinced me that I should have a vision for each of these priorities.  No different from the strategic visions I've authored for brands and clients, a vision for my priorities would provide self-inflected guidelines for deciding how, when and why to spend my time.  I'm thinking it should include the following:

• Define what we believe and who we serve.
• What's important and what's not.
• How we budget our time, money and energy.
• How to argue and how to analyze.
• Love inputs that yield life outputs.
• Solidify what true success look like.
• Thoughts on the legacy, values & traditions we want to create.

Love is too important to leave to chance.  It's certainly not the sexiest conversation but it's likely the most vital.  So I'm going to power down the laptop and the cellphone for the next 2 days.  My to-do list will be waiting for me when I finish talking to my wife about the items above.  She's much too precious and pretty to leave to chance.

Hopefully we'll walk away with something worth sharing, protecting and celebrating.  A vision.