What works

In a strictly practical approach to analyzing life, we can simply ask, “What works?”  In other words, we can look at a variety of lifestyles, life choices and worldviews and ask if any of these “work”.  But in order to answer the question, we have to know what “works” means.  I would guess that most haven’t given thought to the criteria they use to determine if a particular lifestyle or worldview is successful.  Can we say the man who chooses homelessness as a lifestyle is successful?  We can if his goal was to be free of financial responsibility  and material ownership.  Can we say the pansexual is successful?  We can if his or her goal is to satisfy the sexual drive at any cost.  Can we say the business man is successful?  We can if earning their first million by 30 and ten million by 35 and they do so, at whatever cost.
But if we shift the goals of these life choice one space to the right, we would have to say that they have all miserably failed.  What really is at stake here is determining how we define success and upon what ground that definition is built.  Are we willing to define "success" upon our own thinking?  Are we willing to build our entire life and influence the lives of those around us, simply because we think we are doing the right thing, based on our own wisdom? 

Sacrifice

One can come to understand what is important in someone’s life by observing the sacrifices that they make. This is similar to the act of observing how one spends one’s time and one’s money but it is looking from the reverse perspective. We can look at the stellar successes of many people and cannot but feel envy (to some degree, not necessarily sinful) for that success. But we must understand that someone made great sacrifices, some of them simply wrong to make, in order to gain that success. Whether they be moral sacrifices, financial sacrifices, or otherwise, sacrifices were made.

The question is, what sacrifices should we be willing to make to achieve our goals? Do we sacrifice our conscience? Do we sacrifice the other-centeredness to which we, as Christians, are called? Do we neglect the health of our souls? Do we neglect or ignore eternity to make gains in the here and now? Do we think that we can squeak by on almost borderline morality?
One can speak of narcissism here or Machiavellianism or just simply selfishness, but these are really all just fancy terms for self-centeredness. It is so important and so valuable, I believe to try to always approach a thought, an idea, a situation, anything really, into which we make contact, from an objective, non-emotional perspective, at least to start.  If we can step away from the "fun", "fulfillment:" or "satisfaction" that great wealth can bring, and look at the price paid for achieving that level of financial gain, we will usually see that the price paid was too high.  Too many sacrifices were made, usually at someone else's expense. It is when we can think of success in this framework that we will begin to have a balanced view of the entire picture.
Sure it may be temporally satisfying, but at what price?