"Everything In Moderation, Including Moderation"

We've all heard it, everyone preaches it, but who can say they really practice it?
Moderation.

It seems simple.  As long as we don't over indulge ourselves in one activity, food/drink, or individual we are practicing moderation... right?  Well yes, but it's much more complicated than that.  How often do we find ourselves obsessed with something?  Whether it's something new, some goal we are working toward, something we love, or someone we desire to be or be with all of the time, it's easy to let something that we are so fixated on consume us completely.

In my opinion, moderation starts with a list of priorities.  What are you going to give the most attention in your life?  Your work?  Your family?  Your faith?  Your friends?

Then you continue to work down from there.  But what happens when that new opportunity opens up at work and you have to stay all day and all night for the next 6 months and have to miss dinners with your family and friends or keeping in touch with the ones you care about?  Or when you have that favorite food or drink that you just cannot go a day without having but it really is hurting your body and keeping you from being in the shape you'd like to be in?  This is where moderation comes in.

It is important that we pursue our dream positions in our careers and that we enjoy the things we love in life, but we can't let these things exhaust us of all of our energy.  When it comes down to it, our careers or any materialistic item that we love or love to consume, won't do us any good when we're laying on our death bed (some of those things might even put us there).           

The list of priorities that I try my best to stick by goes like this:
      1.  My faith and God
      2.  Family and Friends/Relationships
      3.  My goals and dreams

That's not to say though, that I don't ever get distracted.  There are many times when I put my friends first and kind of forget about God, or even put my goals before my social life.  And sometimes we do have to make sacrifices, but it's important that we always have something that we keep as a priority.  As long as you have some general basis of morals or faith to guide you, I believe that having a healthy balance in the other of your life areas will come.  Of course, effort and discipline will always be necessary and something we need to be consciously applying, but as long as we don't forget the important, intangible things like love in relationships and faith in whatever it is we believe in, being able to balance and apply moderation in every other aspect of our lives will come.

So have that something you're passionate about.  Work for it.  Crush it.  But don't forget what really matters and who really matters.  Make sure that what you love doesn't take over who you are.  In the end, your accomplishments won't be worth it if you have no one to share them with, you won't be able to surround yourself by good people if you don't have a basic set of morals behind you, and after this world is all said and done, your faith/beliefs is all you've got.  If you can find a way to balance, prioritize, and use moderation in these areas, I think that is the key to being happy in life.  

1 Corinthians 9:25