Priorities

In relation to Drops of Rain: A Styrofoam Cup, a Paper Clip and a Rubber Band, the Rebbe, shlit"a, added the following practical advice for anyone involved in bettering their material situation.

“I told a young man who was starting a new job as an attorney that he should be vigilant because the only way to be successful in these large legal firms is to give them what they want...to own your soul. A little while later, he came to see me and said, “I was thinking about what you said before. How can I be vigilant about this new job?”

 

The Rebbe replied, “You can meet with someone; it can be your wife or a good friend or one of the Rebbeim. You’ve got to meet with them once a week and reflect with them together about what’s happened to your week. Taking that kind of inventory will keep you from slipping into the abyss.

“Also,” the Rebbe continued. “You need to sit down and draw up your priorities. Then take whichever ones qualify and make them sacrosanct. Commit to yourself that you will pursue a career as a successful lawyer but not at the expense of your family, learning, davening. Assign values to each one of them. Such as, you will insist in an inviolate way that you have six hours a week dedicated to learning, that two hours a week be dedicated to personal time with your spouse, a half hour of undisturbed time every day that you are going to be with your children, that you are going to be at Shachris, Minchah and Maariv every day, if that’s possible. If you can’t decide on time and priorities, then the things that are important to you will just be mushy ideals and wishes at best. You won’t be able to really measure if you’re moving away from where you want to be. So in order to really reflect together with somebody you need to have some very, clearly defined goals, priorities, performance criteria so you can measure yourself against them.

"I think that a person should always pray that their circumstances in life should be "better". But I think that they should always have in mind that "the better" is always for the sake of kiddushah, and that when they’re asking for this "better", what they’re looking for is that it should bring them closer to Hashem, and if that’s not the case then they shouldn’t be interested."