What Does Your Calendar Say About You?

There’s a saying, “If you want to know your priorities, don’t listen to what you say but rather look at your calendar and checkbook.” Clearly, this quote was pre-ATM debit and people using credit cards as if it was cash, but you get the drift.

So often I hear people say, “my family comes first,” but I wonder if I were to take a sneak peak into those two C’s whether or not they would confirm that statement to be true.

I know that wasn’t the case when I was first married. As a matter of fact, that wasn’t the case for the first 5 years or so of my marriage.

If you’d asked me at that time what my priority was, I would have told you without hesitation it was my family. But if you’d looked at my calendar, you would have seen my priority was clearly my work. My husband, five siblings, parents and other immediate family members would have to send up smoke signals to get my attention. It’s not because I didn’t love them and it’s not because they weren’t the most important thing in the world to me. I simply hadn’t yet learned how to align what I said and believed was most important in my life and what proved true based on how I spent my time.

Over the past 5 days, since my father was rushed to the hospital and I received a text message from my sister saying, “Dad is on life support,” I’ve enjoyed spending all week with my family. Albeit at a hospital much of the time, it’s been wonderful. And when I return home each night, Keith is there looking forward to me walking through the door.

My workload has’t changed; I still have a ton to do each day. I just manage it better. As I’m writing this, I’m thinking about the manuscript I have due to my publisher in two weeks, book chapters due to my editor almost daily, and the work I need to do in relation to my business. But I’m not stressed because I know the thing that is most important is taken care of: family.

With everything going on, I could stop doing the things around the house Keith is accustomed to me doing. He would understand and wouldn’t complain in the least. As a matter of fact, he’d simply do each of the things in addition to what he usually does (we’re a shared chores household ). But he is my priority, taking care of our home is my priority.

Question: What does “family first” mean to you?

Until Monday…make it a great day!

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Fawn Weaver

Founder at Happy Wives Club

Fawn Weaver is the USA Today and New York Times bestselling author of Happy Wives Club: One Woman's Worldwide Search for the Secrets of a Great Marriage, adopting the same name as the Club she founded in 2010. The Happy Wives Club community has grown to include more than 1 million women in over 110 countries around the world. She’s an investor in real estate, tech sector and lifestyle brands. When she’s not writing or working, she's happily doting over her husband of twelve years, Keith (and sometimes manages to do all three simultaneously).