Sunday Thinking

"Life boldly confronts us through change, and change refreshingly leads us into a sense of awe and spontaneous joy."

November 27, 2022

The weekly Sunday Thinking newsletter is quick-hit content that aims to provide a booster shot to your thought process as you end and start your week.

"If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean a giving up of familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, relationships that have lost their meaning. As Dostoevsky put it, “Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.” The real fear should be of the opposite course."

― Gail Sheehy, Passages

I. Changing Perspectives

Simple mindset shifts:

  • I'm not hurt, I'm healing.

  • I'm not losing, I'm learning.

  • I was not rejected, I was redirected.

Negative things happen. Negative mindsets make them harder.

Source: James Clear, The 3-2-1 Newsletter

II. Cultivating Self-Awareness

Becoming self-aware involves the practice of self-witnessing. This means, seeing yourself from a macro or "overhead" perspective. Many of us lack self-awareness because we're constantly trapped in our thinking mind. Unable to actually see ourselves.

Here are 4 steps to become more self-aware:

  1. Notice when you're triggered ― Most people get triggered and then go into habit reaction (autopilot).

  2. Practice pausing ― Before you habitually react, pause. Say to yourself, "I am triggered right now" and breathe.

  3. Practice asking "Why" ― By asking why you got triggered, rather than reacting to the trigger, you'll understand yourself.

  4. Become the movie of yourself ― Learn to witness yourself like you're watching a character in a movie. Self-aware people know how they behave and why.

Source: Dr. Nicole LePera, How to Do the Work

III. Living By Design

Gentle reminders as we welcome a new week and the final month of the year. May we stay open and remain present:

  • Mindset matters. Routine matters. Consistency matters.

  • The way you speak to yourself can change your whole world.

  • Doing your best looks different every day. Be patient with yourself.

  • Focus less energy on what you can’t control and more on what you can create and impact.

IV. Question

What parts of your story no longer serve you? What stories are you attached to that you need to let go of?

V. This Week, I Will

  1. Follow up.

  2. Build small habits.

  3. Ask for what I want.

  4. Stay patient but persistent.

  5. Cultivate a next play mentality.

The Last Words…

"Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be…for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed."

― Alice Walker, Living by the Word

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