Suleika Jaouad’s cancer has returned for the third time.
I’m sure that prompts people to give all sorts of well-intentioned advice.
“Live every day like it’s your last.”
According to Suleika, this is terrible advice.
“It’s exhausting to live every day like it’s your last.
To carpe diem the crap out of everything.
It would be chaos.
We would be cheating on our spouse and emptying our bank account.
Instead, I had to shift to a gentler mindset and
Live every day as if it were my first.
Wake up with the sense of pure, uninhibited creative freedom.”
Her suggestion: Instead of living like it’s your last, live life as a series of “tiny acts of creative alchemy”.
Yeeeesss. It sounds much more peaceful to intentionally live with child-like wonder.
One strategy is based on fear.
The other on awe and amazement.
I am sharing a peek behind the curtain at what a coach is looking for when they coach you.
Yes, there are a lot of things, but secretly we are looking for patterns.
How do you treat yourself when you run into a rough patch?
What do you think about the people around you?
Patterns… good and bad.
If you find patterns that are painful, then you can change them. Yay!
But I also like to lean heavily into good patterns.
I noticed that often when I do things well, I do them slowly but consistently.
Like self-piercing earrings.
When I was in 6th grade, I got self-piercing earrings.
The device is a circle-shaped earring with a needle at one end and a small loop at the other. The needle eventually goes through the loop.
Pinch the earring each day and a month later your ears are pierced!
I know that sounds like torture to some of you.
But that’s a pattern I have repeated over and over.
With saving for retirement.
With weight loss.
With business building.
I don’t rip off the band-aid. It’s a slow transition for me.
I don’t jump into a cold pool. I gently lower myself, so my head doesn’t explode.
I am not someone who comes in hot and loses interest in a hurry.
I don’t come in hot and stay hot.
And I don’t struggle to find direction.
There are pros and cons to all patterns.
But I feel better about my health goals knowing that if I turn the ship a few degrees at a time, I have a history of big success.
What are your patterns?
(Did I just refer to myself as a ship? Hmmm… maybe a small schooner.)
You probably have some “deal friends”.
These friendships are transactional.
You may work with your deal friends or do business with them.
They are fun, but if there is no “deal” you wouldn’t be friends.
As Harvard professor, Arthur Brooks, says,
“Real friends are useless.”
So true.
That tickles me.
I plan on going out with some useless friends today.
Maybe I’ll make some more useless friends and have a useless friends party.
That sounds like the foundation of happiness to me.