500 Words a Week - 5 Thoughts to Consider
Admire the valleys
Valleys throughout our life are something we all encounter. Negative experiences, setbacks, injuries, times of uncertainty. We always view these times under harsh light. Punishing ourselves for getting into them in the first place. Or thinking that there must be something wrong for us for encountering these times, yet we all go through them. They are an aspect of life that we must be proud for making it through. That we had the strength and resolve to keep showing up when everything seemed to be dragging us down.
We should admire and praise the strength we see in ourselves and those around us for making it through the valleys.
The valleys make the mountains.
The end of normal
Your weird and wonderful uniqueness is something that we should look to cultivate as we go throughout our lives. There are already far too many normal people out in the world, we don’t need to add more of us to the mix. Embrace your uniqueness, embrace what excites you and interests you. The well trodden path is the easy route, the real fun lies in veering off the track everyone seems to have taken.
What does your calendar tell you?
We can preach about our values all we like. But at the end of the day, does our calendar match the values we discuss? We say friends and family are one of our important values, yet when we look at our calendar is there time built in for these people in our lives? Or does work take the priority? Do our at times loosely laid out boundaries with work seep into the time we were supposed to have with those we love? Or are we so raptured with the thoughts of work that when we are with those important people we aren’t even present?
Your word
What does our word mean? Is it full of empty promises? Or does it mean something? Do the people around us trust our word, that we say we will be somewhere, they know we will. That we keep our promises to those that mean the most. This thought around keeping our word, links into the above aspect of our calendar, and our strength in maintaining our boundaries.
“Reputation is like a shadow. Sometimes it's bigger than you, and sometimes it's smaller.” - Shane Parrish
What do those special to you truly want?
Link the last two points above.
When we hear people discuss that they are doing what they are to provide for their family or to make their family proud, we have to ask ourselves what do our family truly want? Do we think those important to us truly want us to spend that extra 1-2 hours at work each evening trying to make them “proud”, when all that really happens is they may never see us. Are we using the motivation of attempting to make our family proud of us in a false way to justify something else? Think back to when we were a child, what did we want? For the most, we just wanted those we loved around us.
