What Matters To You?

I was recently left a bit breathless by a very arresting blog post by Peter Bregman called “Don’t Regret Working Too Hard.”  The springboard was an article suggesting that as people near the end of their lives, their two most common regrets are not having lived a life true to themselves, and having worked too hard.  From this, Bregman suggests that one might address – or perhaps prevent - these regrets by figuring out what really matters to us, and trying to spend time working on those things, rather than on things that are not meaningful to us.
 

As a CEO, Bregman took his post in a different direction than I can as a small business owner with no employees, but his chief point still brought me up short.

So the question is, what matters to you?

That is a critically important question to explore.

After all, I don’t want to spend any time – now or later – regretting that I worked too hard, or regretting that I missed out somehow on being my best self, doing what I most wanted to do.  And for me, it isn’t so much about working too many hours, but rather, working on projects I don’t value.

On one level, this idea is reaffirming to me, because I’m aware that I started down this path of owning my own business for precisely this reason.  I became aware that what really matters to me is having a work life that isn’t so alienated from my “non-work” life.  Having more autonomy, more control over the texture and quality of my days.  Being my own boss, reaping all the fruits of my own labor rather than primarily enriching others. 

So in that respect, I am indeed spending my time working on what matters to me, and that is a gratifying thing to realize.
 

My challenge going forward is to never stop asking myself what matters most to me, and to continue to find ways to spend my time doing just that.

What matters most to you?