5th Post in My Weekly Series on Living with Cancer.

Cancer has a way of changing one’s life priorities!

In my Op-Ed in the Chicago Tribune sixteen months ago, readers reacted most positively to the following thought.

“Cancer ravaged me physically but cured my small mental stresses. I asked myself if I was happier before cancer, and the answer was ‘not much.’ Before cancer, I found many reasons to be unhappy — stagnant business, family arguments, unfriendly neighbors, traffic jams. It took a tragedy to realize that I was wasting energy on things that were either unimportant or uncontrollable.”

Since the publication of the Op-Ed, I have taken this framework of “Importance and Controllability” to identify three top priority things in my life. They are:

1.      Securing my family’s future the best I can
2.      Creating memories with family and friends
3.      Living with a purpose

I hope this framework can help you distinguish the vital from the trivial in your life, just like it has helped me.