What will you eat for breakfast in the morning?  Or is breakfast a meal you skip entirely (along with the thirty million other Americans who don’t eat a morning meal), because it isn’t a priority?

Actually, at the moment I’m not really thinking about breakfast.  I’m thinking about choices.  And when I think of choices, I automatically think of priorities.  Consciously or not, we all have them.

Suppose you’re having a great conversation with your teenager.  Your cell phone rings.  Is it more important to answer the phone or to continue your conversation?  What if their cell phone rings?  Same answer?  Or do you expect your teenager to have a different set of priorities from your own?

Suppose I arrive home from work and my wife wants to go out for dinner.  I’m a little tired and would rather eat at home.  (This has actually happened.)  Should my priority be to please my wife and go out to dinner, or to please myself and stay at home? Generally my priority is to please my wife, but would that change if we’ve eaten out for the past three nights?

For most of my life I’ve been a fervent member of the “live to eat” club. While eating breakfast, I started to think about what I was going to enjoy for lunch.  And then after that for dinner.  No wonder I weighed 207 pounds when I graduated high school, and even more as an adult.  A few years ago I changed my priorities.  Now I eat to live, and as a result I’ve lost more than fifty pounds.  Maintaining a more reasonable weight is easy because I never feel deprived.  I no longer think about when or where or even if I will be eating dinner tonight.

It is a given for me that my priorities always center around other people.  My wife is my number one priority, other family members my next priority, and close friends or business associates my third priority.  Of course, my priorities are also situational. If a close business associate is having a life-threatening surgery, helping them would be at the top of my list.

Years ago my brother consulted me about his finances.  I asked him, “What do you want to be doing in five years?”

He said, “I don’t know.”

“Do you have any financial goals?”

He thought for a moment.  “No, not really.”

In other words, he didn’t have clear and conscious financial priorities.  This is not uncommon.  If next Saturday I want to visit my daughter in San Jose and yet find myself in San Diego instead, it would indicate that my priorities were not clear and conscious.

Meanwhile, I would be happy to elaborate, but I have an appointment across town in forty minutes, and being there on time has now become my first priority.

Alan

I was introduced to Shakespeare in my ninth grade journalism class when we studied the play Julius Caesar.

I still remember the famous “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” oration by Brutus, but the speech that sticks most in my memory was the one spoken to Brutus by a nobleman.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

“The fault…is…in ourselves.”  Hmmm.

This means it makes no difference if the dog really did eat your homework.  You, and you alone, are responsible for your responsibilities.

I say this out of pragmatism, and not as a moral judgment. If other people, or dogs, are responsible for your life, then you have no power to make any changes, and your life is completely subject to the whims of other people (or to the plans of your dog).

Another way of looking at this:  you can change a great deal of what happens to you in your life, all by yourself.  You can lose or gain weight, wear formal or informal clothes, or binge watch TV shows all day and all night on Saturday.  You don’t need approval or permission from anyone else.

But if you would rather hand over control of your life to someone else, I would be happy to eat your homework.  No salt, please.

Alan

Last Sunday afternoon I enjoyed five hours with my family and friends at the Magic Castle in Hollywood.  Though I have visited the Magic Castle many times since it opened in 1963, last Sunday’s visit was special.  First, because we had two young children with us, enjoying magic for the very first time, and second because on weekends the “junior” magicians perform live in the three Magic Castle theaters.

On the “Close Up” stage a seventeen year old entertained us with his excellent (though not yet perfect) sleight-of-hand card and coin tricks.  I am always “fooled” by magic, and I hope to will always retain my sense of wonder.

This morning I read an obituary for Ricky Jay, a well-known magician who had frequently performed at the Magic Castle. One of Jay’s mentors was the famous magician Charlie Miller, who died in 1989 at the age of eighty.  Jay was quoted as saying, “Charlie was always trying to learn and refine and invent.  I don’t think he ever stopped thinking about it.  I think when Charlie finally died, he had the most famous classic 19^th century magic text on his night table.”

I call that dedication.  I also call it commitment. Charlie was committed to investing in himself.

During my business career I have invested in many other businesses.  At least eighty percent of those investments totally failed.  The last significant investment I made was more than ten years ago, and after (unexpectedly) investing more than four hundred hours of my own time, in addition to a substantial amount of money, I finally received my money back, together with a small profit.  But I will never recover the lost hours of my life.

My best investments have not been in dollars.  My best investments have been in my education in Accounting, Law, Psychology, and Professional Writing, in my business experience, and in time spent with my family both at home and traveling.

Vince Lombardi, one of the most successful football coaches ever, said, ”The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.”

I always want to perform better today than I did yesterday, and better tomorrow than today.  That is why every day I aim to learn more about myself and the world we live in.

Money is great.  The value of my time and life is greater.

I can sum up my thought in one short sentence.

Invest in yourself – it’s magic.

Alan