What is Most Important to You?

They say you can tell what's most important to people just by walking into their house.

What is most prominent when you walk in? The TV (as the picture above illustrates, the size of the screen doesn't always determine the size of the priority)? Bookshelves? A family Bible? Perhaps a comfortable sitting area? Perhaps its artwork on the wall, or family pictures. A piano, a china cabinet, or a computer desk.

Closets are a close second. Plenty of shoe storage space? Is it well-organized, or a place where clothes end up hung up only by chance?

And of course their checkbook. Where does all the money go, regardless of how much there is?

All these show the world, and reinforce to ourselves, what we are really about, what choices we really care to make. When the television is the easiest thing to access, its likely pretty high on the list of priorities. This isn't a post to beat any of us up - heck, my family has a TV in the living room, and in all the bedrooms. It's a pretty important part of our lives.

Instead of beating ourselves up over the 500 DVDs that line our living room walls while the Wii Fit sits idly by in the bottom drawer of the entertainment center, can we take a moment to refocus? After all, if you're journaling one moment about changing your life in the fast-coming new year - spending an hour a day exercising, making time to finally write your book, and spending more quality time with the kids - couldn't you reinforce those decisions by changing your environment? Leaving your living space the way it is lends itself to creating the same results you've been getting.

If your DVD's are put in a room out of the way (except, of course, for those Richard Simmons work-out video's), your family games are prominently placed in your living room, and your workspace is void of distracting paraphernalia, do you suppose that would make a difference?

If you are saving for a car or a house, does your checkbook betray you? If you added up the money spent in drive-through's, at movie theatres (even though you have 500 dvd's at home), and the wine of the month club, how much closer to your goal would you be? Amazing how even in the tightest of times, we are able to find money for what's really important, even if we would swear an oath in court denying these things are important at all!

Instead of waiting for the New Year, start taking some inventory. If an archeologist went through your household 1000 years from now, what would they determine to be the most important parts of your life? Of course, even if you're a dedicated exercise nut, you may run the risk of being seen as a Richard Simmons devotee - but isn't that better than being caught with the DVD's of every season of the Roseanne, ER, and Star Trek? But enough about me....

2010 belongs to the champions...The Champions of Choice!