They operate regardless of our awareness of them, or our obedience to them. When you recognize that external verities and realities ultimately govern, you might willingly subordinate your values to them and align your roles and goals, plans, and activities with them. In the absence of such a catalytic crisis, we tend to live in numbed complacency so busy doing good, easy, or routine things that we don't even stop to ask ourselves if we're doing what really matters. The good, then, becomes the enemy of the best. Just because we value a thing doesn't mean that having it will enhance our quality of life.
Nothing sinks people faster in their careers than arrogance.
In the uniform of arrogance, we fumble and falter pride comes and goes before the fall. But dressed in humility, we make progress. In pride, we often sow one thing and expect to reap another. Quality of life can't grow out of illusion. As human beings, we have four unique endowments self-awareness, conscience, independent will, and creative magination that not only separate us from the animal world, but also help us to distinguish between reality and illusion, to transform the clock into a compass, and to align our lives with the extrinsic realities that govern quality of life.