Tom O'Neil: Take a look at what is important in your life

Tony Gattari is the founder and chief energy officer of the Achievers Group, a business development consultancy based in Oz.

Welcome to my regular series entitled "My Light Bulb Moment". This series highlights a "blinding flash of insight" business, cultural and sports leaders have had in their career, and how this changed their lives forever

Sometimes, it's easy to get caught up in your work, letting the genuinely important things slip through the net.

Over time, this can lead to intense personal problems, even if outwardly everyone sees you as a great success.

For nine years Tony Gattari, as general manager of Harvey Norman's computer and communications division, oversaw the growth of the section from $12 million to $565 million.

After leaving Harvey Norman, he became an international sales and business speaker as well as co-author of three books — Pillars of Business Success, Marketing Success, and Business Success.

Today, Gattari is founder and chief energy officer of the Achievers Group, a leading business development consultancy based in Australia.

Decide what is important — Light Bulb Moment

Although his career was extremely successful, "at 35, my family life was a mess. I had neglected the people I truly loved — my wife and two little girls".

Leaving the corporate world to become his own boss and spend more time with his family, Gattari then had an even bigger hurdle to vault.

"I got terribly ill and was sick for three years with an unknown blood disease. All that I thought was important — money, career and reputation — suddenly meant very little. The things that I had ignored — family and friends — became important.

By facing my own mortality, I was truly able to put first things first.

Take some time out

As we run headlong into the second half of 2014, I encourage you to take some time out and do a personal stocktake of what's really important in your life.

A great exercise to complete is to list the main areas of your life — for example faith, family, career, health, fun — and rate out of 10 how important each of these is to you.

Second, rate each area again to determine how successful you feel you are in each of these at present. What areas require more attention?

At the end of the day, the good things in life are truly free only if we take time to maintain them.

The grass is always greener when we water it.

If you have had a blinding moment of insight (a Light Bulb Moment), please email me as I would love to hear about it.

• Are you in career transition or looking at ways to market yourself professionally? Join Tom O'Neil at his CareerGuru.co.nz day on August 29 in Auckland. Tom is an award-winning business speaker, international author of The 1 per cent Principle and Selling Yourself to Employers, and CEO of both AchievementExpert.com and CV.CO.NZ.