One of my favorite Christmas movies – part of the pantheon of shows my wife and I have watched every Christmas almost our whole time together (decades), is The Bishop’s Wife. David Niven plays Bishop Henry Brougham, who’s so consumed by his desire to lead the construction of a huge new cathedral that he neglects his wife and daughter, his flock, and himself.

It hit me as we watched it last month that it’s a timely warning of the lives we lead today. So very many people now live for their careers only, men and women alike. Hustle, hustle, hustle! (And side-hustle, too!) Be the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave at night! Climb the ladder! (Or be the CEO of a startup!) Wake at 4:30 and retire at 11:00! Go go go!

But we’re being sold a bill of goods. I felt that keenly right before Christmas, when I read a LinkedIn post by a young woman who was cheering herself for letting business travel keep her away from home for her daughter’s seventh birthday. Think of the example I’m setting for her about how women can get ahead and be corporate power-brokers! she consoled herself.

I thought of it again when a young woman posted an article this month detailing her struggle over the reality that she’d been forced to become a stay-at-home Mom. “No one wants to hear a TedTalk from a woman who gave up her career to follow her husband to another country for his career. Where are the lessons learned and inspirational stories in that?” wrote Dorin Greenwood.

I considered it deeply as I wrote this blog post some months ago, pointing out that my corporate executive friends are out of shape and look awful. That’s not how it should be if you’re fulfilled, am I right?

But I thought the most about it when I lived the corporate leader life, traveling constantly and missing things at home, and pissing my wife off tremendously in the process. I resented her quiet (but not subtle) temper tantrums each time I headed out of town – she was failing to support my climb up the ladder! And then I got royally shafted by people I’d supported for over fifteen years, people I considered friends, but who clearly considered me just a tool to get what they wanted. But I still had one cheerleader: my wife. I finally took a step back and thought deeply about what’s really important to me. And I realized that through all that time, I’d been every bit as miserable as I’d made her. I wasn’t chasing my life, our life – I was chasing a life all those people who wound up dumping on me decided I should have.

Since then I’ve tried very hard to have the right priorities. I still screw them up, but I guarantee you I’m a lot closer to living the life I want to live now than I was back then. My wife and my boys and my health come first now. It was very nice to reflect during the movie last month that I long ago jettisoned that cathedral I was letting other people run me into the ground to build. Oh, I’m still building – but it’s increasingly a design of my own making.

In the movie, Cary Grant plays the magnetic angel Dudley who shows up to answer the bishop’s prayer for help. Dudley’s increasingly close (and therefore threatening) relationship with Bishop Brougham’s daughter, servants, friends, and most of all, wife Julia (played by the radiantly lovely Loretta Young), brings the bishop back to his senses and has him abandon the planned cathedral to save his marriage, his family, and himself.

That’s probably not going to happen for you, an angel showing up to make everything right. What will it take for you to put first things first, to throw out those cathedral plans that others – your bosses, your colleagues, society – are trying to shove down your throat?