Who Is In Your Front Row?

I think I’ve gotten myself too far on the negative side of the news cycle lately. Something feels off. So, this is more of a reset for myself than anything else.

Let’s talk about the concept of Front Row People. (h/t - Sahil Bloom)

If we had a mock funeral for you right now, who would be in the front row? Your significant other, a couple of family members and maybe 1 or 2 close friends.

That’s it.

That’s all the room there is. You can try and squeeze more people into the chairs or the pew but it’s going to cause some discomfort.

Why is this important?

Everyone knows, those with the most love for the deceased sit in the front row. We can use this as an illustrative example of who matters most to you and to who you matter most.

The problem is that we tend to lump front row people in with whoever likes most of our Instagram stories or who is the quickest to respond to our text messages. There can obviously be some natural overlap in these groups, in fact I hope there is.

However, being chronically attached to their phone doesn’t necessarily make someone front row material even though we’ve been trained to conflate the two.

The same way having the fastest slack response time doesn’t correlate with being a great employee. Often it means the opposite. Signalling that the work that employee is doing isn’t important enough to preclude them from answering requests from others.

Dr. John Delony talks about this a different way. Who is on your list? In this context he is talking about the opposite end of the spectrum, giving people permission to hurt you.

Does it make sense to give a random internet commenter or your ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend’s sister the ability to ruin your day?

Of course not!

But how many of us let exactly that happen on a daily or weekly basis?

Your most precious asset is time, it’s the only thing you can never get back. The biggest and only real challenge in life beyond your basic needs is how to allocate it. My hope is to nudge your allocation in one direction.

Pick your 5-10 people in the front and give them more of yourself.

The point I’m trying to get across is twofold:

1. You should spend more time loving your front row people.

2. You should spend less time worrying about people who won’t even be at your funeral.