Life in Numbers
Oct 21, 2020
Have you ever thought to look at your life in numbers?
I learned the concept mainly from Jesse Itzler. He is big on never missing a moment to create an experience. He talks a lot about building your life resume vs work resume. That hit me like a ton of bricks. We spend so much of our time sleeping and working, that we are missing out on life.
So what do I mean by looking at your life in numbers? Let me give you some examples …
- Did you know that the average person’s lifespan is around 79 years? This means that from birth to death, you get (give or take) around 28,835 mornings. Seems like quite a bit, right? Well if you are, say … 40 - because I’m turning 40 in a month - then you’ve exhausted over half of your mornings left to live. It’s not that many when we look at it that way, right?
- Here’s another example: if you have young kids. We know they won’t be young forever. Someday is going to come and they are going to be grown adults with an agenda of their own. Let’s say that is age 18 for this example. How many summers do you have left to enjoy those times as a family? When I look at this, l have about 13 more summers with Nyla. Like woahhhh! That makes me want to appreciate that time with her so much more.
- Ok - one last one … let’s change the perspective from what’s left to what’s possible: think about what you can achieve in 5 years. That’s 260 weeks, 1,820 days, 43,680 hours and 2,620,800 seconds. So often we give ourselves such a short window to achieve something. What if you flipped that into a 5 year plan. Think about what you could achieve? So much!
- I lied - one last one for real this time. We have been in one of the most challenging years of our lives. Whether that be someone who is a young child to some who is elderly. There’s no doubt that life was tipped upside down 2020. But what if we choose to make the rest of 2020 memorable in a way that felt good? What if we took the last 72 days to find a blessing in each day? Or spend more quality time with the people we love? Or see this shift as a way of slowing us down to appreciate the things that matter most?
I want to close this episode with this story that I think will help you gain perspective on time and the things that matter.
One day a philosophy profession brought a large glass jar and some beautiful river rocks to class with him. “Raise your hands when the jar is full,” he instructed his students, and he began putting the big rocks into the jar. Soon the lid would no longer fit, and all the students raised their hands to indicate the jar was full.
The professor then pulled out a bag of smaller black and white pebbles and poured them into the jar. As the pebbles rolled down, they filled in the little gaps between the big river rocks. The students smiled and raised their hands. This time the jar was completely full.
Then the professor produced a bag of sand and began pouring it into the jar. When the sand had filled the tiny gaps between the rocks and pebbles he triumphantly placed the lid on the jar and asked his class if the jar was now full. They all clapped and agreed, “yes it is full.”
At that point, the professor opened the lid and slowly poured two cups of coffee into the jar. The coffee completely filled the tiniest gaps between the rocks, the pebbles, and the grains of sand. “Now, life is very much like this jar,” he said.
The river rocks represent the most important things in life such as ethics, your family, your loved ones, your health. Even if you lost everything else, your life would still be full with these most important things in it.
The pebbles are the things in our lives that are pretty important - but our happiness should depend on them. Things like our job, house, car, etc.
Finally, the sand represents everything else - the countless small, busy things in our lives. If we fill up our jar first with sand, then we won’t have any room for the river rocks or pebbles. If we fill our lives with just the small stuff or the busy stuff, we won’t have any room or time for the things that meant the most to us.
After a brief moment of silence one of the students asked, “Professor, what does the coffee represent?” “Ah, I’m glad you asked,” replied the professor. “It means that no matter how full your life is, there is always room for a cup of coffee with a friend.”
SOOOO good, right?
Alright, my friends - you know I never leave a podcast without giving you something that you can take with you. Here are a few questions to think about?
- What is currently occupying your time the most? What is the thing that takes up the most space in your life? Are you filling your life with sand first?
- Which things should be your true river rocks? The ones that matter most in your life. So if everything else was gone, your happiness wouldn’t diminish because what’s most important is still there.
- Which sand or pebbles are you devoting too much time to? Are you spending time in an area that is just not serving you? Do you spend all your time working and no time with your family?
- And last - who are you gonna take out for coffee this week? Which friend deserves your time?
From my heart to yours, always sending you love. If you want to revisit the questions to think about, you can visit the show notes at www.heatherfcooper.com/tabletimepodcast