Are You Where You Want To Be In Life?
Is everything perfect? Are you heading in the direction of where you want to end up and everything’s on track? If so, this article is not for you.
However, if you’re shaking your head wondering how your life ended up like this or why you’re not happy with where you are, take a look at this article.
I’m Not Where I Want To Be
If you aren’t where you want to be in life, it might be because you’re not sure what’s really important to you. When you don’t know what’s important to you and where you want to go, you end up just bouncing around throwing things at the wall until something sticks. And then life ends up just happening to you.
Often we make decisions from a superficial and meaningless place and it causes us to end up in a superficial and meaningless space. When we make decisions like this, it leads us to one day waking up thinking, “What am I doing? Where am I going? What is the point of all of this?”
You jump from here to there to everywhere, which often manifests as confusion, meaninglessness, and even depression. You want more out of life, you want to feel joy, connectedness, and a sense of purpose. You don’t want to simply survive you want to thrive.
Impactful Decisions
Making decisions is something we do on a second to second basis. When we lack understanding of what we are doing and why we are doing it our life becomes stressful, pointless and chaotic. We can spend endless hours wondering what decisions would make our future better or if we made the right decision. Our small day to day decisions that lead to big decisions are frantic, not well planned, haphazard, and reactionary. On the opposite spectrum, when our decisions stem from a meaningful place we can experience confidence, contentment, happiness, joy, and peace of mind.
Decisions are a big part of our lives and big players when it comes to our happiness, joy, peace, stress, guilt, fear, and other emotions. Many of us are unaware of the decisions we do make because we haven’t sat down to think about how our decisions shape our lives. It’s really these little decisions that make up the whole of our life. It’s the small decisions we make every minute of every hour that have the greatest impact on our lives.
How do you make decisions when you don’t know what is truly important to you? It could be as small as pouring yourself a glass of wine at the end of the day or choosing to make small talk about negative stuff that is happening with co-workers for a coffee break.
If your health and sleep are really important to you then choosing the glass of wine might be a hindrance. If spirituality and living positively are really important to you, you might find something else to do during break times or you may bring a new topic to the coffee station.
But if you are just going along in life, not really thinking that much is important outside of just surviving, you will find yourself waking up one day wondering what the heck you are doing and why.
What Is Important To Me?
Let’s start with knowing what our rocks are, what drives us, and how important those things are to us so we can start steering ourselves in the right direction.
The most important areas in life are different for everyone. Some might see family as the most highly ranked area and others might find that enjoying their career is their top priority.
Likewise, everyone’s definition of success and happiness are different. Success can mean so many different things depending on our upbringing, our environment, who we surround ourselves with, or how deeply we have looked inside. Unfortunately, in our society, one of the most popular ways of feeling successful, which people tend to base their self-worth around, is determined by how much money one makes. And although money can certainly make life easier and smoother, it alone won’t bring you lasting happiness or self worth.
In your head you might think you know what is important to you, but have you consulted your heart to see what it wants in order to bring you a fulfilling, high vibrating, happy life? If you are like most people, probably not in a very long time.
What Is The Solution?
Look At Your Rocks.
In my yoga course, my teacher told our class a story. There were many yogis waiting for their teacher in their classroom. The teacher came in with a bucket, full to the brim, of big rocks. The teacher put the bucket on the floor so that the students could see into it and asked,
“Is this bucket full?”
The students wanting to please their teacher, all replied quickly and assuredly with a strong “Yes, the bucket is full”.
The teacher took out a bag of pebbles and poured it into the bucket and the pebbles fell in the cracks until it reached the top. The teacher asked once again,
“Is this bucket full?”
The students now a little weary didn’t answer quite as quickly and only a few said “yes”. The teacher then took a bag of sand and poured it into the bucket and the sand filled up the crevices in between the pebbles. The teacher asked once again,
“Is this bucket full?”
The students now very weary said nothing. The teacher asked again, Is this bucket full? The students now saw the bucket full and thought “nothing can get past the small grains of sand”. Reluctantly, a few students said, “Yes, the bucket is full”.
Silently the teacher went to get a small bucket of water and poured it over the bucket and as the sand absorbed the water the teacher said, “Now the bucket is full”.
The teacher sat down and asked his students what would have happened if he would have filled up the bucket with the water and sand first. After a few moments of thinking one of the students said, “You could not have fit in the big rocks”.
The teacher said, “Yes! Precisely! Most people never focus on the big rocks in their lives. They run around in circles focusing on the water and sand. Your rocks are the big things in life that have brought meaning to your life as you look back upon departing this world, like fulfilling your purpose, relationships, health and wellness, or your spiritual evolution. The pebbles are your everyday things that fulfill and help you achieve your rocks like your job, spending time with your friends and family, your interests, or your environment. The sand and the water are the fillers. Distractions that just fill the time like watching Netflix or surfing the internet. It is not that the sand and the water are bad in small doses but many of us fill in too much of our time and give too much attention to the sand and water.”
What are your rocks in life? What are your pebbles? What are the things that are truly important to you? Your rocks and pebbles should be the basis for your decision making criteria.
You will always have sand and water in your life so the question really is, how much of your life are you going to spend on them? Your life won’t magically start feeling meaningful and purposeful until you make a conscious effort to move towards your big rocks and bring some of the pebbles in that are stepping stones to your rocks.
Some people spend their entire life filling up their bucket with sand and water. They push their big rocks off until they are on their deathbed.
Relationships – Being On The Same Page
Have you ever ended a relationship and felt like you didn’t understand how you could have ever been with them? They were just so different from what you thought? Well, many people get together and are in a serious relationship or marriage with people who have completely different rocks. They never have a serious sit down discussion about them and then wonder why the relationship fails.
It would be great to do this together. Even if you have different rocks you can make joint decisions and understand where the other person is coming from as you make your way through life together.
Let’s look at an example, Jane’s rocks are 1)Family & Friends, 2)Fun & Recreation, and 3)Environment and John’s are 1)Career, 2)Finances, & 3) Fun & Recreation.
Jane
I enjoy seeing my family on the weekends and want to have children soon. I haven’t told John yet but I assume he does too, we have talked about kids after all and we both want them, why wait? I love where I live, I like the city nightlife and going out with my friends. We have also talked about moving at sometime in the future to accommodate his job. I don’t really like the idea but it will be another big city, right? Plus, it will happen in the future, way down the road. Why get into that discussion now? He likes to go hiking and stuff on the weekends and that’s great, I can see my family and still have girls night occasionally. I just wish he liked hanging out with my family more but he’ll get into it. It’s great!
John
I like to be alone or go hiking on the weekends and don’t want to hang out with family or inlaws. I want to have kids but not now. We have talked about kids and after I make more money we can start, I am sure she sees that. I want to move up the corporate ladder, save money, and be outdoors. She is starting to feel bad that I don’t want to hang out with her family but it’s just not important to me.
One day I come home excited about a job opportunity to move up in the company but we have to move to a small town. She is really upset. I thought we talked about moving. I thought we talked about all of this.
As you can see clearly talking about your rocks up front can really save so much frustration, miscommunication, and heartache.
Our Memories Are Altered
Research shows that we all remember what happens differently. What stands out to us and the filters we have determines what and how we remember events.
We hear what we want to hear and remember what we want to remember. Because of this, sitting down and having a serious heart to heart about what is really important to you is a must for clear communication. Don’t assume because you heard something that your partner is on the same page as you. If you do, you may be sorely disappointed down the road.
If you know each other’s rocks and their “Wheel of Life” you can work together tgo towards each other’s rocks while both of you meet your own needs.
Rocks exercise: Download the PDF here with an example.
You will see a bucket of rocks, sand, and pebbles.
- Fill in your rocks. What really matters to you and why?
- Fill in your bucket with the rocks and pebbles of your life.
- List some sand and water that fill up your time day to day.
- Order the rocks in terms of priority. What are the most important to you?
After you are finished look at your rocks, pebbles, sand and water. You can only work on so many things at a time before getting overwhelmed and giving up. So I advise to only choose your top 3 or 4.
- What are your top 3 rocks? What are your top 3 pebbles? How can you make them more of a priority in your life?
- What are the top 3 things from your sand and water that take up a lot of time and that you can either get rid of or cut back on?
Life starts being light, bright and free
When you find out what your rocks are in your life and focus on those, life suddenly starts blooming; it gets less crazy and calms down. The more you steer yourself in the direction of your big rocks, the more fulfilled you will be. The confusion of where you should go and why disappears. When you make little or big decisions you can always come back and ask yourself, is this in line with my rocks? If not, make a different decision.
Take your time with this exercise. You might fill out the worksheet today and overnight might change your mind. It’s okay. Also, really be honest with yourself. If you don’t place high value something you think you “should”, that is okay too. We are all different and that’s great!
You will find that you feel calmer in the direction that your life is taking you in. Your day to day decisions and long-term goals will start to reflect your rocks, and when they do, you will find yourself feeling purposeful, passionate and on track. Let’s look at the next part of the series Part #2- Where am I Starting.
