19 March 2008 ~ 4 Comments

Dr. Phil, The Aquarium, And Success

So I was watching a little Dr. Phil on Monday.  Hey…don’t judge.  T.D. Jakes was on and they were talking about the Eliot Spitzer scandal in New York.  T.D. Jakes said something pretty simple, pretty common sense, yet pretty profound I thought.  The loose paraphrase was:

We succeed in the area’s of life that we devote our time.  Often the private life is neglected in pursuit of public success.  So while someone may be a public success, they become a private failure.

Like I said, simple, but profound in my head.  The ability to so easily be a "success" in the public eye, but to "fail" in the areas of family and personal life.

That being said, it also felt like confirmation in a way to how I had spent the earlier portion of that day.  It’s Easter week.  There is a LOT to do.  We have a huge Easter Egg Drop on Saturday.  We’ve never done that before.  We didn’t have a whole lot planned out for our service, and the stuff that was planned still had plenty of footwork to be done.  Plenty of justification to go to work on my day off.

Instead, I spent the morning at the aquarium in Monterey with Rachel and Caleb.  I was out of town for a good portion of the past 2 weekends and hadn’t been able to spend quality time with my family in a while.  I didn’t get anything done in preparation for Easter, but it was the best way I could have used that Monday, my day off.  I want to always be spending time on my "private" life, not allowing it to suffer for the sake of "public success."  And not to mention, I love my family and those hours spent with them, although Caleb can definitely wear us out at times, filled me up and gave me the ability to run the rest of the week hard.

So what are you doing to balance your personal life with your work or "public" life, especially on a week where it would be easy to forget?

Oh yeah, and here are a few pics from the aquarium.  I love watching Caleb get excited and scream in awe of the animals!

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