Friday-September-17-2021 edition of Forward Positiwe, a community newsletter by Vishnu Goyal to inspire you do more, live well, and stay happy.
📋 Spend a few minutes outdoors
Try to go for a walk during any breaks you have during your day. Even a five-minute walk paired with some deep breathing can be the reset you need to restore your peace, decompress, and process any stressful interactions you may have had. Studies show that time spent in nature is linked to cognitive benefits, and also improvements in your mood, mental state, and physical and emotional health.
💬 I spend about 10-15 minutes almost every evening on the rooftop, strolling and just looking around. View from there: Trees, Metro, other people around, sky and few birds flying, and few more things. After the office work-time is over, it gives me the mood-reset I need to jump to other activities and do work on my side projects like Forward Positiwe and ZeroAdo.
So, just a gentle reminder: If you can go to a park or something for “outdoor” activities, great! Please go ahead. If you can’t slash short on time slash don’t want to go outside except for work, you can have kinda outdoor activity right in your home slash flat slash PG and still get a mood-reset and energy boost you deserve.
🔗 How to Protect Your Energy in Times of Stress – By Dr. Aaliya Yaqub – Thrive Global
📋 No. Opt out. Unsubscribe.
💬 You can make more time for living by sparing less of it on unnecessary stuff. And these three words are a great reminder of this— “No. Opt out. Unsubscribe.”
Say no to things that mean nothing to you.
Opt out of assignments and work you don’t care about.
Unsubscribe from stuff you don’t need.
The less you have to do, the better you can do it, the more you can live.
🔗 Opt Out – By Brittany – Less Less More
📋 When I was a child in Catholic school, the nuns never tired of telling us how lucky we were. Of course we were lucky in the obvious ways that should never be taken for granted — lucky for our health, our food, our families, lucky to be able to go to school — but in the face of real disaster, our luck escalated dramatically.
At 9, when I came back to school after a car accident, they tallied up my good fortune: a broken nose, a broken wrist, my lip stitched back together, shards of glass still pushing out of my skull — it could have been so much worse! My sister was worse, she was still in the hospital. She would be there for awhile, resting between the white sheets of her astonishing luck. She should have been dead, and she wasn’t.
At the time, I thought the nuns were idiots. They simply refused to see how we suffered. But now — 48 years later — I think, man, were we lucky.
💬 Whatever bad situations you have been into, it could get worse than it really did. But the good news is: It didn’t. So, I believe you can allow me to say to you: You are lucky! Plus, that’s a positive outlook you can rely upon to feel good in all circumstances.
For instance, having a bad job is better than having no job at all. So, having a bad job is being lucky.
Being jobless with few savings is better than being bankrupt. In this instance, being jobless is being lucky.
Having met with an accident but still getting to survive with a broken body part is better than losing life altogether. So, getting to live after an accident is being lucky.
Take any situation, no matter how worse, you probably can find something in it to feel lucky about. And you can stay happy feeling lucky always. Isn’t that incredible?
🔗 Sometimes the Luck Is in the Fall – By Ann Patchett – The New York Times
📋 Sooner or later, it happens to all of us: We put our trust in someone, only to have that trust betrayed. We get lied to, duped, cheated, bamboozled. It leaves us feeling foolish, and wondering how on Earth we didn’t see it coming.
💬 If someone has done “it” to you, you are not the one who did something wrong. By trusting someone, you did nothing wrong. It’s those fools, who betray you and hurt your feelings, who should feel guilty. So, never blame yourself if someone ever punches you in the back and plays with your emotions. Be chill and move forward, knowing you have nothing to be guilty about. On the better side, you get to see the reality. And living in reality is something you can be happy about.
🔗 5 Books About How People Lie, Bluff, and Con Their Way to Success – Next Big Idea Club
📋 I have one friend, a CEO, who wants the time on his calendar to be as precious as the time on a U.S. president’s schedule (he told me this during a different administration). If a meeting only needs seven minutes, then just give it seven minutes. A different friend, also a CEO, set a company policy that if a meeting invite didn’t include goals, an agenda, and pre-meeting preparation, you could skip it. The acronym there is GAP — no GAP, no need to attend.
💬 “No GAP, no meeting.” — If you can implement this rule in your work-life, please do.
I am trying too and have declined a few meetings without a pre-planned agenda this week only. I simply asked organizers over chat: “What is this about?” And most of the time, the meet was about something that could be easily dealt with over the chat or something I am not even working on. Saved few hours. So, this “No GAP, no meeting” trick really works.
🔗 A Reasonably Detailed Guide to Optimizing Your iPhone for Productivity, Focus and Your Own Health – By Coach Tony – Medium
📋 we can be confident and uncertain, that we can be courageous and need help, that “I don’t know. What do you think?” is not just a seven-word reply—it’s an invitation to human connection, growth, and forward motion.
💬 As human beings, we are always work-in-progress, making mistakes, learning new things, not knowing some stuff, and figuring it out.
So, even if you’re Pro at something, it doesn’t mean that you have to be “Know-It-All” and know all the answers right away. What’s important is that you know what needs to get done and be confident that you’ll figure out a way to do it.
For instance, among other things, I am an SEO Pro too. Time and again, I keep getting into situations when some technical issue is reported with the website causing errors in our Google ranks, and I am not sure how to get that problem fixed. And that’s when I get the opportunity to do R&D on that new issue, figure it out and get it fixed. This “keep learning” approach has always worked. And I say with full confidence that I am an SEO Pro, and I can get any SEO issue fixed.
Key takeaway: Stay confident even if you don’t know your stuff sometimes. You can always figure it out and get it done.
🔗 Do Better Work: Finding Clarity, Camaraderie, and Progress in Work and Life – 📘 by Max Yoder
Before you leave, a thought from my Scrawlbook:
No.
We all can use this word more often than we think possible.
Without feeling selfish.
Without feeling any guilt.
Without feeling like a slacker.
This simple word—No— if used wisely can save so much time.
Free up so much of the “busy” schedule.
And get us all the time we need to pursue aspirational and joyful activities.
Let’s say “no” more often to all the activities and work that are not really important and don’t bring back any value.
Until next time, keep living your fullest, Mate ✌️
And feel free to forward Forward Positiwe to your family ‘n’ friends if sounds cool to you : )
Vishnu Goyal
Keep Doing Good Stuff
[P.S. You are amazing. Let no one tell you otherwise.]
Just one of the 8 billion people here living on planet Earth, spending most of my time creating and growing and helping others create and grow in pursuit of an imperfect life, raising livinity, and building one carefree world.