Genetically Congruent Priorities and Values  

Furlough Fridays - A Blessing or a Curse:

Furlough Fridays were initiated in Hawaii on October 20^th 2009.  Teachers and students are not permitted on school campuses 17 Fridays a year.   The board of education and Teacher’s Union made a decision, based on “misallocated state funds”, to reduce school year days.  This was their politically correct answer.  Many parents now have to either take their child to work with them, stay at home with their children, provide day care or God forbid leave them alone by themselves on Furlough Fridays. 

Could furlough Fridays be an opportunity to raise our children better in the state of Hawaii and be a wake up call to aligning our priorities back in the right place?   

A friend once made a comment in which I whole heartedly agree to.  He said, “If you can’t raise your own children, you shouldn’t have them.”  Although I agree with this comment, I am not disregarding the financially difficult time our nation is currently going through.  In fact rather, may I be bold to say, we are experiencing this financially difficult time because of our priorities as a nation.  Friends, the purpose of this blog post is about doing the right thing and placing the right priorities back into every one of our lives.  God created us to live with right priorities.  He refers to it as righteousness (living right).  This type of living, by the way, leads to optimal health.

Family is more important than work.  Today, most Americans work to pay off their mortgage and material items to keep up with the Jones’s or to get ahead in life.  I am not discounting the fact that it is good to make lots of money and to possess nice things.  What I do have an issue with is when we have too much ‘stuff’ and paying for it costs us our values instead. 

We each have 168 hour in a week.  Are our lives more fulfilling; are we happier, do our children and spouses feel more loved, are we healthier, are we closer to God because of how we spent our time during the week?  These important questions should determine how much ‘stuff’ we have or have not.  Frankly, these important questions are our priorities and if we aren’t fulfilling them we should get rid of some ‘stuff’.  We are living genetically incongruent lives when our lifestyle choices are influenced by our ‘stuff’.  It is nice to have material things but if it costs us our family and our values, our priorities are upside down in my opinion. 

My wife and I chose to home school our daughter because of one reason.  To bond with her and teach her biblical values that she wouldn’t be able to receive anywhere else.   Our chiropractic and wellness practice days of operation have been Monday through Thursdays since 1996.  Not to be boastful but to make the point very clear, although we work less hours than 99% of corporate America, our practice is in the top 1% of the busiest and most successful wellness chiropractic practices in the world today.  

Working longer doesn’t always lead us to a more productive outcome especially when measuring the cost of your most valuable commodity – time!

Maybe God’s way of implementing Furlough Fridays in our state and others soon to follow is to get back to the things that are truly important to us…our family and our values.  We must remember, this great nation of ours was built on them and because our priorities have not been the same we are forecasted not to remain a great nation.

God Bless you,

Dr. Bruce