Hi Justanother47y/o,
I think working out what's important to you is the same as taking care of yourself. From what I am reading in your post, it's kind of like 'focussing on the task at hand'?? As in 'what's important to me NOW'
I see you re-evaluate what's important to you now as time goes on. I think that's a really good strategy. We all go through change, our circumstances change, therefore what's important to us would also change as time goes on. This I think is being flexible with the changing currents of life, and is REALLY important.
An analogy - I was once washing my car, I had a plastic bucket of water. I accidentally backed over the bucket. Being plastic, the bucket simply squashed a bit out of shape, but it was still a bucket (and I still actually use it). This was because the bucket was flexible. If it was a hard metal bucket, even thought it's technically sturdier and stronger than a plastic bucket, it's not flexible. The metal bucket would have been squashed and destroyed and become useless. So the point I'm making is the so called "stronger" metal bucket would have been ruined, where the apparently "weaker" plastic bucket is flexible, and survives another day.
So what others may see as a weakness, there's strength in being flexible. That's what will get us through to the next day. That's probably what's important to me. Being flexible enough to carry on in life.
That's (unseen) strength.You have that!!
Hobbit.