The things I am most grateful for in life are my friends and family.
I have been blessed to call a handful of guys my best friends for over a decade. We’ve grown up together, gone to school together, gotten jobs and gone our separate ways yet still religiously stay connected.
We’ve shared countless memories together. Playing monkey on the woodchips or ghosts in the graveyard on warm summer nights. Football games over Thanksgiving and winter. Playing video games all night until we couldn’t keep our eyes open. Telling stories and making jokes in our campus dorms and apartments. Going to concerts and on vacations together. Long days of happiness and camaraderie peppered with nights of sorrow, loss, and consoling.
Day after day, month after month, year after year, one thing is constant: we are there for each other.
I wouldn’t trade these relationships for anything. I mean that literally. These memories, experiences, and guys make me happier than pretty much anything else in life. They have shaped me into the man I am today.
I consider relationships like these my life’s “big rocks” – a concept about life’s most important things that Dr. Stephen R. Covey wrote about. Those are the first things that go in my “jar” – or life – before anything else.
Friends, family, self care – this is the shit you should prioritize. The world is not slowing down. You have 4,000 to 10,000 things in your day vying for your attention (that’s true, by the way). But your friends, family, and well being are going to be along for the ride regardless of how long it is.
Thus, don’t be led astray by the “little rocks.” The tempting things that steal your time and attention away from what really matters.
Pretty soon you’ll have more than you know what to do with, and there’ll be no room for your big rocks to fit in your life’s jar.
The world may make you think that prioritizing expensive vacations, flashy cars, hundreds of likes on social media, or thousands of followers are the keys to happiness.
99% of the time, they aren’t.
If you’re feeling like you’ve accumulated too many little rocks, don’t fret. Barring exceptional circumstances, you have the power to turn that jar upside down, pour those fuckers out, and start again.
This time with the big rocks.
Ian
This post was originally published on March 11th, 2018
Ian Estabrook 