I have found myself dipping into an exercise from my past recently, an exercise called the Big Rocks. Here is how it goes. Take a large gallon sized jar and place it on your kitchen counter. Beside this place a number of fist sized rocks. Carefully place all of these rocks in the jar, to the point where you cannot place any additional rocks in the jar.
You will notice that the jar is full – or is it?
Next, take two or more cups of gravel and pour this into the jar. As you gently shake the jar, the gravel settles down around the larger rocks. Once again the jar appears full, but is it?
Now take two to three cups of sand and pour that into your container. You will notice that the sand filters down around the large rocks and the gravel filling in all the crevices. Again the jar appears full – is it?
Finally add a large jug of water to all the other ingredients. You may be surprised just how much water you can add. Now the jar is full.
What if you had reversed the order, filling the jar with water, sand or gravel first, would you have had space for the big rocks? The answer of course is NO.
And so it is with life. We forget to look at our priorities or what we consciously want to fill our life with and the space gets filled anyway, with the gravel of demands made on our time, with the sand of taking on things that don’t belong to us, and with the water of “should’s, have to’s and must do’s”. When your days come to an end you realize that everything that is truly important simply has no space.
What are your big rocks? At a ‘being’ level they represent your intentions and your clarity regarding what you want to attract in your life. At a ‘doing’ level your big rocks represent your priorities, the things you really want to get done to forward the action on your life or your business. They would be the first items you would put into your daily agenda and they would be the items that are non-negotiable.
Here’s what happens however. Your priorities get pushed aside because you have not learned how to say NO to the demands of others or you get caught in the trap that something else looks more appealing at the moment. Now I don’t want to suggest that knowing your big rocks make you inflexible, in fact I suggest it is just the opposite. You simply want to become conscious regarding your emotional, spiritual, and physical big rocks and where they belong in your life. Once you know this, everything else, the gravel, sand and water can be placed around and you have whatever flexibility you need with that.
Knowing your big rocks is an antidote for what I refer to as spinning, being in action without being clear on why you are doing what you are doing. It is simple to plan for. In terms of being, the big rocks require simply taking a few minutes at the beginning of your day to be clear and intentional about who you want to be that day, your ripple effect, and what are the main items on your to do list. On a weekly basis, planning you big rocks ahead of time and placing them in your agenda means, this time is for this big rock and this in non-negotiable. If you give up space for one of your big rocks, you cannot get it back.
I encourage you to include scheduled ME FIRST time as one of your Big Rocks. In fact this may be the most important time you spend every day and remember, it takes on 1% of your day, or 15 minutes to begin a ME FIRST practice. Imagine if dedicating simply 15 minutes of your daily schedule was the most important Big Rock of all and imagine if this simple practice changed everything. Wow, that really would shift how the space in your life is filled and, most importantly, you would be living the life you want for you rather than the life others expect of you.
Start today – name and claim your Big Rocks!
Until next time….
Betty