Quotes of the Week from Me:

“Start your day before the day starts.”

“Everyone deserves a best friend.”

“Accept challenge.”

“When does illusion become reality?”

Quotes of the Week from Others:

“Do not try to seem wise to others.” – Epictetus

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – Pablo Picasso

“You owe it to all of us to get on with what you’re good at…” – W.H. Auden

The quotes from others section always gets me “in my feels” about my hopes that someone finds one of my quotes 200 years from now and thinks, “Wow, brilliant.” I have so many moments when I connect so strongly to what someone has said from so many years ago. I want to know more about why they started writing. Why they continued. Why they wrote what they wrote.

An odd desire I also have is wanting to know what people will write in the future. What they will know that we don’t. Sometimes when I start typing I feel like I am contributing to that future, but then the end of each sentence casts those thoughts into the past.

(a bit dramatic – tends to happen when I write parts of this newsletter in the early evening on a sunny Sunday with a view of the flowers in my backyard. The colors fill the windows as I type.)

Quick Optimism

Nobody wakes up each and every day feeling their best or expecting their best. Those feelings come and go.

Some will notice those feelings and let them dictate their actions. Others will ignore those feelings and act without self-grace.

As with most things in life, moderation is key. Now, don’t get me wrong, one of my favorite quotes about exercise is that “moderation is for cowards,” but contextually, moderation and negotiation help us navigate ups and downs.

Listen to what your body and mind are telling you. Then act.

Full Newsletter

I am guessing some of you feel lucky to be alive. I’d bet there are days when you wake up and think, “Wow, I get to exist today.” If not, you should. Appreciation feels good. It keeps you fresh. My shoulders always feel lighter anyway.

In a 2011 Tedx Talk, Mel Robbins claimed that the odds of being born are 1 in 400 trillion. I wrote “trillion” because I literally didn’t know what “400,000,000,000,000” was upon first glance. Yes, 400 TRILLION.

According to an article I found, there was a doctor named Ali Binazir in the audience that day. He decided to calculate the odds of being born, the odds of existing, and concluded that they are basically zero.

He considered things like the odds of your parents meeting, their parents meeting, and on and on and on. It’s nearly impossible to calculate because of how many alternative variables exist for each generation before you.

In addition to the odds of meeting are the odds of deciding to continue meeting. Yeah, that second date. Did they REALLY want to see each other again? Did a job take them to another city? Did they get married but decide not to have kids? Could they have kids?

Then fast forward to deciding to have children, surviving pregnancy and giving birth, the baby’s (your) health, and so on. The list could be comprised of thousands of what ifs for each person and couple. Controllable and uncontrollable variables.

Yet, here you are.

I couldn’t find where it came from, but here is one of my favorite examples:

Imagine there was one life preserver thrown somewhere undisclosed in one of the oceans and there is exactly one turtle in all of the oceans, swimming underwater somewhere. The probability that you came about and exist today is the same as that turtle sticking its head out of the water – in the middle of the life preserver. On one try.

When I really get down into the nitty-gritty of life: money, relationships, jobs, health, and how we feel about it all, I come back to two of my favorite movie quotes.

“It just doesn’t matter!” – Eddie Murray, Meatballs (1979)

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow a mystery, and today is a gift… that is why it’s called the present.” 

– Master Oogway, Kung Fu Panda (2008)

You are a rarity. Live it up.

Make it a rare Monday.