Lately I've been thinking about a presentation a professor gave to his students. The professor took an empty jar and filled it with lots of sand. He asked his students to then try to fit as many large rocks as they could in the jar.

Obviously they could only fit a few because the sand had filled all the space in the jar.

Then the professor took a matching jar and had the students fill the new jar with as many large rocks as possible.

Then he told them to add in as many smaller rocks as possible. Fitting in the smaller rocks was somewhat easy as there were large gaps left by the larger rocks.

Finally he had the students fill in the gaps between the large and small rocks with as much sand as possible.

The result? It turns out that the order in which you put items into the jar resulted in being able to fit more items in the jar.

The metaphor here is that you can fit a whole lot more of your responsibilities in your own life (just like those large rocks, small rocks, and sand in the jar) if you are thoughtful about HOW you fit them in your life.

Anyways, I've been thinking this week that the whole metaphor is kind of a bunch of nonsense.

The truth is, sometimes even though there are spaces in our jars between the large rocks where some smaller rocks and even some sand might fit, it's ok to let that space just be.

We don't HAVE to fit more in to our lives just because there is technically some space for it.

Maybe it's ok for our jars to have some breathing room.

How much breathing room are you giving yourself right now?