Interpret your reality so you win

Plus: The power of your beliefs, recovering from failure and sparking joy with meal prep.

Hey — Dean here.

Welcome to a very late 206th edition of this newsletter.

I just got back from a whirlwind weekend at a friends’ cottage.

It was hectic, but amazing. There were also a few lessons learned that I will share in today’s 3-2-1.

1/ Get back on track — the very next day.

Every Sunday for the last 205 weeks I have published this newsletter.

But I missed yesterday’s deadline because I was away at a friend’s cottage for the weekend.

There are 2 ways I can deal with this missed deadline.

• I can just forget about this one and get back on track next Sunday.

• or I can send this out one day late.

I am choosing the latter.

What I have found with human behaviour, specifically mine, is that once we give ourselves permission to miss something once, it begins to happen more frequently, until it stops happening all together.

It’s like this with all habits.

These “one-time failures” have the power to quickly morph into full-time failures if we don’t commit to get right back on track the very next day.

So with this in mind, I’m going to noodle on what I can do differently to make sure this never happens again, and I going to send this out about 16 hours late.

Lesson to learn → One-time failures quickly morph into full-time failures if you don’t commit to getting back on track the very next day.

Ps. That was me working at the Saturday afternoon corn roast where my buddy’s band was playing. Apologies for my “Oh sh*t! I just got caught stealing money from the till” smile.

2/ A simple way to improve self-discipline.

Don’t keep anything in your house that you can’t consume responsibly.

Instead, turn it into an event.

If you want to have it, you have to travel to it.

Travel as a buffer does wonders for improving self-discipline.

To try → What’s something you struggle with that you should stop buying and turn into an event that you must travel to instead?

3/ Say what you are thinking.

If you want to transform your life and the lives of others, say, out loud, the positive things you are thinking about others.

1/ The power of your beliefs.

This is one of my favourite stories about behaviour change, told by the late Trevor Moawad.

My takeaway → Your brain believes what you belief to be true - not what is true, what you believe to be true. So choose to believe things about yourself that open up possibilities for the remarkable to happen.

2/ Interpret reality so you win.

This was a story that former President Ronald Regan loved to tell.

My takeaway → Pessimists see the manure. Optimists do the work to wade through it to find the pony. 

1/ Make cooking fun.

My sister let me test out her electric grill. I opted to put it out on my dad’s balcony and cook our dinners out there.

There is something about cooking outdoors that sparks tremendous joy for me.

I’m going to continue to do this, hopefully during the winter months as well.

Your takeaway → What is something you can do or invest in to spark more joy with your cooking? Remember joy scales long-term, misery does not!

🙏 Thanks for reading. my friend.

👀See you again next week.

PS → 🥳Enjoy the newsletter? Please forward to pal. It only takes 30 seconds. Writing this took me 3 hours.

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