I had a friend that I’d met through church in Barbados who decided to go into coaching. This was before it was even in my consciousness that being a coach was a thing. It was not at the forefront of my mind.

She started to tell me about her offer and I was very interested because I really felt like ​​there were things in my life that I wanted to clarify and I wanted help with.

I had been part of a mastermind group at the time, before we knew it was a mastermind group. We were a multicultural group. The person who led the mastermind group was someone from another part of the Caribbean whom I had met when I was a student in Trinidad. We were just a group of three ladies coming together, setting goals with a spiritual focus. We had decided to set goals for each year.

By the end of year 1, we wanted to really double down on setting a vision for our lives and the legacy we want to achieve by the end of our lives. From that, we built 5-year goals, 10-year goals and 15-year goals.

We were challenged to not think small and to not think about limits.

I stuck with that.

What I came up with was so elaborate. It was overwhelming. It was energizing, but draining at the same time. This happened at a time when I was starting to feel really burnt out from work.

I had all these ideas and things that I wanted to do, but I really wasn’t finding the space, time or energy to pursue any of it.

I thought, “This is my vision. How do I achieve it? If this is led by the Holy Spirit, maybe I am meant to do all of these things.”

One of my objectives was really prioritizing my massive list of goals. I really wanted to prioritize what should come first.

I felt like it was a great time to really get some coaching.

When I went in to do the coaching, it helped clarify what my needs were. I shared the plan with her, and she was very excited to know that I had all of that in mind. I ended up talking a lot about my current issues at the time – feeling very overwhelmed and lacking support.

At the end, she sent me a video. It was about a jar, rocks, pebbles and sand.

The analogy illustrates prioritization in life. The jar represents limited time and resources. Filling it with rocks (the most important tasks/elements) first ensures everything else (pebbles, sand) fits around them.

The message I got from my coach was that:

I kind of want to do everything, but if I only have so much time, resources and energy, there’s only so much I can do.

With this, I have been working towards focusing on the rocks in my life, channeling my energy into achieving my vision and goals.