This is the 50th week of my emails. Just a few more and it will be a year.
Time is a funny thing. It seems like this past year went really quickly, but it feels like these weekly emails anchored the entire year firmly and resoundingly in place and made it feel much longer (in a good way.)
Unlike a diary or a journal of what happened, these weekly emails reveal more about the undercurrents of life, not the top notes or obvious events. What I was grateful for, what I was reading, the quotes and notes…I am so grateful for this weekly foray into writing in a predictable, habitual way.
Next week, I’m going to tell you what will be coming for the next year: a change of pace and format is just around the corner!
What I’m Reading: I’ve just started a promising little book called Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad One.The first chapter is what prompted me to buy the book. “Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement,” the author writes. The daily effect of habits, just like that tiny incremental increase in your savings account, may seem so small as to be inconsequential if you are looking at it from day to day. But the results of our daily habits, when observed from the lens of 2, 5 or 10 years, can be massive, but our brains have a hard time seeing the long-term results that come from the slow, slow pace of transformation. When we eat one unhealthy meal, or procrastinate on that big project and put it off once, there “seems” to be little if any impact on our health or well-being. But if we repeat those “1%” declines regularly, week after week, month after month, these small choices compound into toxic results.
What have you noticed in your own life? Or, perhaps it is easier to see in the lives of others! What daily habits make some people thrive, or seem to make others suffer? I’ll share any tips I find in here with you next week!
What I’m Pondering:Not surprisingly, the ancients knew all about the power of habits…
“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” – Aristotle
