Today I want to share a tool that can help you set yourself up for a successful day. I learned about it from Hugh Jackman. Hugh is a well-known musical theater performer, artist, and singer (who holds the Guinness World Record for “longest career as a live-action Marvel superhero”). He talked about the practice he uses on a recent episode of The Tim Ferriss podcast. Here’s how it works.
Saying no is powerful. My toddler wields the word on a daily basis, and in many ways, I’m in awe of his unabashed claim of the word. Yet saying no can be hard! How do you do it well? Here are my time-tested strategies.
Every summer, we take a break as a family and take a summer sabbatical. Typically, we take a few weeks off in August, sometimes up to a month. This year is a little different, of course, because 2020 has been a tidal wave of epic proportions. Still, despite everything going on, we’re going to hang onto the threads of the idea of a sabbatical and take a small step back. Sticking to a semblance of structure and routine can be stress-relieving, especially when things are chaotic.
Decision paralysis is real. Sometimes when I have a huge decision looming ahead of me, it’s hard to figure out what to do. Just the other day, I met with my operations planning team, and we reviewed the pile of work that I had on my plate ahead of me. My lead operations person looked at me and said “Sarah, you have to make some tough decisions here. You no longer have enough bandwidth to complete all of this.” We had to get real about the time we had, and the projects we could do. The hardest part? Decision making. I’ve written before about why making decisions is so hard. Today I want to share four strategies you can lean on when you feel stuck and don’t know your next move.
Since starting my social media break last week, I’ve noticed something interesting. I’m hungry for more books. Books feel like a breath of fresh air. Like a complete conversation in a world that’s forgotten what more than a sentence feels like. The comparison between a book and Twitter is divine, and real. I’m back on track to read 50 books this year, but I want to read more. Here’s how I’ll do it.
I felt giddy. It turns out, being separated from your phone doesn’t feel like problem, it feels like freedom. The tether in my pocket was gone, and I could be right here, with people, full attention and absorption. The music overwhelmed, surrounded me. The innovation sank into me. Each line was a delight, and because it was improv, it was here—and then it wasn’t. My laughter felt larger, full-bodied, round. My face was open-mouthed with rapture and love and the full sensation of music, not just in my ears, but a part of me. To be honest, being away from my phone felt like being high.
We’re 90 days into shelter-in-place and social distancing, and I’m beginning to feel the affects on my energy, mental stability, and emotional resilience. To be honest, I feel like a 14-year old teenager again. I notice that I feel way more uncomfortable, insecure, and worried about what other people think about me, at least more than I typically do. Remember age fourteen? Yeah, I never thought I’d be back there again, but my brain and my mood feel eerily like I did when I was a teenager. This is not easy.
A quick primer on understanding key issues when talking about race, racism, and anti-racism in America and beyond.
Whenever I read an article or see a headline that says, “The surprising racist history of…” I think, wait, this shouldn’t be surprising because the United States and much of the colonial and Western worlds were built on the backbone of slavery, oppression, and racism. There is racism in everything. Including ourselves. This should not be a surprise. There is racism everywhere, in everything.