a willingness to be agents in shaping their lives. The world beckons to each one of us, challenging us to ply our talents and carve our own paths. As the existential philosopher and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl discovered during his World War II concentration camp internment, it is our voluntary action, and not what we’re forced to do, that determine

“Knowing others is wisdom. Knowing yourself is enlightenment.”

but they also list examples of how she and her husband have learned to focus on the things that matter, accept less than perfection on the things that don’t, and be creative when being pulled in different directions. Building a solid foundation for sharing domestic responsibilities involved, for example, her husband conjuring a way to move his new

was that a fulfilling life does not consist of three separate serial phases in which you learn, then you earn, and then you serve. “The fact is,” he said in a 2008 interview, “you ought to be learning continuously. You earn, but you earn in different ways and different amounts.” He then added a rhetorical question: “Why does serving wait until you’

a plan for enlisting their help with something that matters to you. Make sure that this plan explains how their assistance will be mutually beneficial—good for them and for you.

The key question: What are you not doing that you could be doing to express what’s important to you? It could be something simple, such as spending time with friends, reading, or literally stopping to smell the flowers.

That blend of meaning and happiness is the good life. And the good life brings an inner serenity—a feeling of peace and contentment—in the midst of the chaotic world.

“And one of the reasons that I was attracted to general management was that it felt to me that my mission as an executive was to create an environment where other people could succeed.”

Successful people make it their business to be conscious of what and who matter most. Their actions flow from their values. They strive to do what they can to make things better for the people who depend on them and on whom they depend, in all the different parts of their lives.