I met a man who grew up as the child of missionaries in Africa. This fellow lived and played with the natives and went to school with them. He recounted that each morning as soon as the sun was up, all the children in the village would run out to the makeshift soccer field and immerse themselves in their game. When it was time to go to school, they would take turns going into the classroom to study their lessons. As soon as school was out for lunch or the afternoon, they would dash back onto the field and play until they couldn't see the ball anymore.

In that village soccer was the real deal and everything else fit around it. Those kids had their priority, and they were true to it.

The eternal soccer game reminds me of one of my favorite aphorisms: The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

What Is Most Important To You?

You have something that is most important to you. Perhaps it is creating a business success, or maintaining a loving relationship, or experiencing physical vitality and well being, or simply living in a state of joy. But do you do what is important to you in proportion to how much you value it? Or do you let it recede to a back burner until you finish less important things first?

It seems that there is always something you have to do before you can do what you want to do. This is “the tyranny of the urgent.” That is why Stephen Covey brilliantly suggests, “Do what is important, not what is urgent.” Such advice may fly in the face of the fearful mind, but it makes perfect sense to everyone who has walked the way of greatness and contribution.

Conquering "The Tyranny Of The Urgent"

You will not conquer the tyranny of the urgent by engaging in meanwhile menial tasks in hope of one day clearing your plate. You will overthrow the tyrant only by doing what is important now. Instead of just wishing or waiting for the opportunity to do the main thing, you need to do the main thing.

Let’s say, for example, that you decide your main thing is inner peace. Author Hugh Prather likens the process of maintaining inner peace to holding an infant throughout a day. If you had an infant or were entrusted with one, you would give that child your first priority as you moved through your day. If you went into the city and you heard a loud horn honk, you would not drop the child. If someone insulted you, you would not put the baby aside to punch that person. If you saw a fantastically attractive man or woman, you would not abandon the infant to pursue the hottie. The child would come first, and everything else second. When achieving and enjoying your main thing is more important to you than all the other stuff attractions or distractions, your main thing is the prize you shall own.

What Brings You Life?

I saw a man wearing a t-shirt that declared, "Baseball is life. All else is details." Like this fellow, each of us chooses something that brings us life, and all else becomes details. I encourage you to stay with what brings you life, and let the details be just that.

Great artists, inventors, and world-change-agents do not bear greater gifts than anyone else; they just live truer to the gifts they have. You, too, have powerful gifts and contributions to offer; you just have to let them be more important than trivial tasks or obligations that do not add to your joy, but diminish it.

Several years ago I was a member of Netflix's service that mailed me DVDs upon request. When I logged onto my Netflix account, I saw a list of movies I had ordered but had not yet been shipped. If I learned of a movie that I wanted to see before waiting for it to work its way up through the queue, I could click on a box entitled, “Move to top of queue.” Then it became number one on the list, and all the other selections moved down the list. So it is with your main thing. At any moment you can click on “Move to top of queue,” and the universe will deliver that experience to you before the other ones you would like to do or believe you have to do.

Many of us are setting out on new projects and adventures. We begin jobs or projects, and may change residence. The outset of a journey is the time to set your intention. If you are going an a thousand mile trip, one degree of direction change at the outset can make a difference of a hundred miles where you end up. Now would be the perfect time to decide to play in the big game rather than the little one.

Busy Playing The Big Game

Is life a grand soccer game that you interrupt briefly for work, or is it a terrible onerous task that you interrupt occasionally for play? It will be whatever you make it.

You could ask the kids in the village their opinion, but you may have to wait for your response. They are busy playing the big game.

*subtitles by InnerSelf
©2011 Alan Cohen. All Rights Reserved.

Book by this Author

A Course in Miracles Made Easy: Mastering the Journey from Fear to Love
by Alan Cohen.

A Course in Miracles Made Easy is the Rosetta stone that will render the Course in Miracles understandable and relatable; and, most importantly, generate practical, healing results in the lives of students. This unique reader-friendly guide will serve longtime students of the Course, as well as those seeking to acquaint themselves with the program.

Click here for more info and/or to order this book

About The Author

Alan Cohen is the author of the bestselling A Course in Miracles Made Easy and the inspirational book, Soul and Destiny. The Coaching Room offers Live Coaching online with Alan, Thursdays, 11 am Pacific time, 

For information on this program and Alan’s other books, recordings, and trainings, visit AlanCohen.com

More books by this author
  

Watch Alan Cohen videos (interviews and more)

More books by Alan Cohen

at InnerSelf Market and Amazon