With so many options to choose from and with so many solutions offered by others, each screaming pick me!, people too often lose sight of the actual goal. In the most complex system of them all, life itself, I find it much easier to navigate when the priorities are clear. Money is not number one. It is just a means to an end. In my opinion, the best choice of priorities and in this order are: truth, health and wealth.

1. Truth is about the ideas themselves. The meaning of everything. Don’t live in a lie. Don’t give in when you know it’s not the right thing to do. If you sacrifice truth, you will lose everything else.

2. Health is about yourself and about humans around you. If you lose your health, then you lose your life. The only thing worth risking your health on is the truth.

3. Wealth is what gives you power and influence on your environment. It is the tool you can use to effect change. As they say, money makes the world go around. But it is not always simply money; wealth comes in many forms and there are many ways to accumulate it. Knowledge is a form of wealth. Wealth is something everybody can have. The wealth of one does not have to take away from another.

Keep these priorities clear. If you do not prioritize the truth first and foremost, you will live in an illusion waiting to vanish. Wealth gained at the expense of the truth lacks a stable foundation and might fall apart in an instant. If you don’t have health, you can’t use your wealth.

Setting these three priorities in the correct order is the key to optimizing life.