Are Some Principles More Important Than Others? How Do You Choose Which Principle to Focus On?

This is a highly personal question. Depending on where you are in your current journey, the answer will be different for each person. The important part is that you’re asking the right questions and working to identify what’s right for you.

Much like a doctor, you want to take the time to diagnose your current state—understand where you are and where you want to go—before choosing a direction. Essentially, you want to examine your mental map and locate the big red dot that says, “You Are Here.”

One useful tool is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It offers a helpful framework to assess where you are and what might be lacking.

But before any other principle, I believe the most fundamental one is the principle of self-awareness.

Can you step outside yourself and observe your own behavior from your mind’s eye?

Can you review your own thoughts as they arise?

Can you mentally look down on your own avatar and watch yourself from a third-person perspective?

Self-awareness is paramount. It enables you to detach from the moment, reflect on your actions and thoughts, assess whether they are helping or hindering your goals, and, if necessary, change them. Without this awareness, change becomes incredibly difficult and you may find yourself blindly trying new tactics, hoping something works. And while you might stumble upon something effective, in the core areas of life, lasting results come from understanding and mastering the underlying principles—the ones you can adapt in your own way to consistently get the outcomes you want.

This is the difference between a chef and a cook:

• A chef has mastered the principles. They can use any ingredients (tactics) to create a unique and delicious dish (outcome) because they understand the fundamentals.

• A cook relies on following a specific recipe (a tactic) to recreate a known dish (a specific outcome). A cook doesn't understand the underlying principles so will not be able to create something unique of their own.

  
  

You can be anything you want—but not everything.

So it’s important to choose where in your life you want to be a chef versus a cook.

As a suggestion—based on universal human desires—the areas worth focusing on as a chef (where principles matter most) are:

• Health

• Relationships

• Wealth