A quick take on your #TGIF as I roll across the country in my seemingly neverending desire to be out of my comfort zone, continually having to cope and deal with new and different contexts and situations. The anxiety = uncertainty x powerlessness equation from Chip Conely’s book Emotional Equations is at work in all of us, pun intended. New people, places, challenges, risks, and all the rest.
While you ponder that Slack, pending deck, teams meetings (gross, I hate teams), SMSs, zoom meetings, procrastinated deadlines, writing reviews, 1/1s, meme warfare in your DMs, job hunts, money stress, life events, job interview Olympics, work faceplants, wrong words, and so on. OMG, all the things, just writing that out was the first time; our days can suck, no?
Experience all that, but plan to do something for the first time—no matter how small or big. I am not advocating skydiving or anything like that, although if that’s your jam, do it. There is, for me, at least, something cathartic about being present to do something for the first time. It could be as small as ignoring all your slacks til 13:00h for a week #dontgetfired Could be calling your teammate with your actual phone and not using headphones or a speaker (literally, you work with people you have never talked to on your handset directly) minus the socially awkward software that is running in you head.
Could you find your, ‘When was the last time you did something for the first time?’ As a younger human, I was told more than once, ‘…I wasn’t going to amount to a hill of beans…'(still looking for a hill of beans tho) or keep being ‘two burner Mike, you’ll see where that gets you in life…'(spoiler that one was my Mom, she’s gone, but Ma I’m working on just being Fire at this point)
So much later, after numerous failures and faceplants throughout my life, I slowly began to adopt the ‘when was the last time/first time’ mindset.
While an incomplete research project (me), it has enormously impacted me and the people in my life. I won’t list mine here, but in the face of adversary, pain, loss, and much loss, you can have resilience and #keepmoving on to the last time you did something for the first time.
Thanks for reading, and if this triggers you to do it, please share it with your people. You never know what people are going through. 🖖 🙏
Happy #tgif all