August 26, 2025
by Stephen T. Messenger
This week, we dropped our college daughter off at school. She’s officially a senior and into her last two semesters. My wife and I are incredibly proud of the young woman she’s growing up to be. Upon initial drop-off in 2023, we threw our best advice at her, and my daughter gave us one piece back in return.
After reviewing them, they certainly stood the test of time, and I’m doubling down on the wisdom this year. Not only is this advice great for sending our kids off to new adventures, but it’s also helpful for our personal leadership journey during any new endeavor.
1. Understand Our Big Rocks and Focus on Them.
My advice came from a probably familiar story by author Stephen Covey about understanding what’s most important in life. He calls these our big rocks. Big rocks are the things that we simply can’t fail at. Some people call them “glass balls” that we can’t drop while we’re juggling our life.
He argues there are other things besides the big rocks such as smaller rocks, pebbles, or sand. While these other things may be good, they’re often a waste of time that prevents us from achieving our true goals.
For my daughter, I believe her four big rocks were most likely these in order: God, grades, exercise, and work.
It’s critical to maintain our comprehensive fitness. This includes spiritual resiliency (God), mental acuity (grades), health (exercise, eating right, and sleep), and financial stability with an eye to the future (work). College offers a lot of great activities that support holistic fitness to include the emotional and social components.
The environment also offers a lot of other activities (the smaller rocks, pebbles, and sand) that distract students from achieving their goals: parties, alcohol, social media, unnecessary drama, the ability to sleep in, and a host of other ways to push aside what’s really important. Whether in school or not, we all have these distractors in our lives. Yet none of them really take us closer to our ultimate end state.
Focus on the big rocks above all else and don’t get distracted from our end goals.
2. When We Make a Mistake, Don’t Compound It with Another
My wife offered better advice than me (as usual); it was about messing up. She said you’re going to make a bad decision—it’s going to happen. The key is to not compound that decision with another bad one.
First, we have to acknowledge that we’re all going to make bad decisions. There’s even a popularized phrase by English poet, Alexander Pope: “To err is human…” We’re fallible people who often choose poorly. That’s okay. What’s not okay is being oblivious to a bad situation.
I think about this like my Spidey-sense. It’s when I find myself in a place that just doesn’t feel right. I shouldn’t be in that part of town, making a decision with no options, overcome by peer pressure, or in a bad conversation that I knowingly walked into. Something in my gut knows it’s wrong, and I was the one who put myself there.
It’s not good to be there, but great when we’re aware enough to see the lurking danger. Now’s our time to make a better decision to improve our situation. Ask for help. Phone a friend. Call your parents (hint… hint…). Do something to accept the consequences of our mistakes and prevent anything worse from happening.
We all mess up. It’s what we do after which proves our character and demonstrates our leadership ability.
3. Take Charge of Our Life—Don’t Let It Take Charge of Us
My daughter’s parting shot of wisdom two years ago was that we have to run our life, or it’ll run us. This was encouragingly profound coming from my 18-year-old daughter which still rings true today, and she certainly understands that life is going to pass us by if we don’t take control of it.
She’s done this well in the last two years. She’s on track to graduate in six semesters, has some money in the bank, is participating in some manageable small rocks to go with her big ones, and is focused on life after graduation.
None of us can wait until life knocks on the door one day and asks us if we want to be successful. We have to go out and get it. It ties into the big rocks—go hunt what’s important and don’t get distracted.
“Be true to the game, because the game will be true to you. If you try to shortcut the game, then the game will shortcut you. If you put forth the effort, good things will be bestowed upon you. That’s truly about the game, and in some ways that’s about life too.” -Michael Jordan
The Beauty of Advice
My one piece of advice turned into three with some great help from my wife and daughter. Only, they’re a lot better at it.
As I read this wisdom two years later and reflected, the theme is that we have ultimate ownership of our lives. We choose where to spend our precious time and energy along with who we spend that time with. Then, we naturally make life decisions that will have both positive and negative results. Our job is not to be perfect, but to reframe and make a better choice. That’s how we control our lives instead of our lives controlling us.
What’s the best college or life wisdom you’ve gotten from parents or given to your kids?
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