Gratitude
Hello - welcome to Wednesday Weekly, which just so happens to fall on St. Valentine's Day, and here I am with a message about gratitude.
Life for me is pretty chaotic right now: I'm moving house (top tip: don't. Just don't. Love where you live and save yourself the angst); arranging for some possessions to be shipped to the US, moving temporarily into an AirBnB, and arranging to move to America.
It's one of the moments where you've been conscious of things building for a while, and then suddenly, overwhelmingly, find yourself in the epicentre of a maelstrom of chaos.
I'm always reminded of the comforting saying: "this too shall pass".
However, I've always felt it had two quite different interpretations.
On the one hand, it's reassuring to be reminded that things will blow over - they will literally pass. We are only ever in a moment. As my late Grandmother used to say: "tomorrow is another day".
There is though a more serious meaning to "this too shall pass", and that's one of recognition of the finite characteristic of the moment.
Everything will end. One way or another, nothing lives for everything: our love changes; our bodies change; our opinions, intelligence, style, ideas: nothing stays the same.
For whatever you can think of: "this too shall pass".
So, yes, take comfort that the troubling, problematic or otherwise uncomfortable moments in life will be over - I remember Joan Collins once saying to me "today's news is tomorrow's chip paper" in a nod to how fish and chips used to be wrapped and served in day-old newspapers.
But also use it to guide us. To appreciate every moment and what we can do with it: how can this moment be lived better; used better; or lead to something greater?
Psychologists call this a "pattern interrupt": something that effectively presses pause momentarily on your subconscious actions and thinking and helps make you reassess.
Given that we should all be grateful we woke up this morning, in this very moment of reflection and pause, what might you do next, perhaps more consciously, that will improve things at home or at work, which you might not otherwise have done?
Happy Wednesday,
Jez
PS. On the subject of gratitude, can I say a wholehearted, sincere thank you to the overwhelming response about my first in a series of new online learning and development masterclasses, the Leadership Accelerator Masterclass. So much useful feedback and patience with annoying link problems etc! You can sign up to a free, no risk, no credit card needed trial here and take a look at what I believe the future of learning should look like.
