This was the Buddha's purpose in laying out the path of mindfulness. The objective of cultivation of the mind is to learn to break the habitual preoccupation with the external world so that we become more aware of what is happening in us, in our own minds, as we go on in life. When this watching becomes a constant habit, second nature, the cycle of reacting mindlessly to the environment is broken. From this new insight there follows right thinking, right speech and right action, relative and appropriate to each specific circumstance and instance. Then the question of what is absolutely right or absolutely wrong no longer arises.
Wisdom sees things in the right perspective, samma ditthi.
In short, our life itself becomes the Noble Eightfold Path. This distinction becomes important when we talk about meditation and concentration in daily life. Well, samma samadhi is generally translated as one-pointedness of mind or right concentration. Thus I personally think it should not be translated as absorption in the four jhanas only. In this I am following the commentarial rather than the canonical tradition.