The Daily Reset

Welcome to the 10th and final weekly newsletter of The Daily Reset. My new book is out on Monday. I'm exhausted ;) But with just enough energy left to share the introduction to the book below. I'm pretty sure we'll keep this newsletter active on LinkedIn, though on a slightly less regular schedule. Many thanks for reading these past 10 weeks. It's felt like a long road to get to this point, yet I also know it's just the start of the journey. Steven

Introduction to The Daily Reset

In the midst of that unforgettable first pandemic lockdown of March?2020, there were two things that kept me going. First, I went back to journaling and ended each day by writing some thoughts down on paper before turning off the light and going to sleep. I have kept a journal on and off for most of my life, starting a diary as a young teenager in order to track my athletic progress and then to salve my growing teenage angst. For me, journaling helps keep me grounded and provides a daily anchor to what truly matters to me amid the maelstrom of life.

Second, I read The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman every morning as I prepared coffee. It was maybe the second or third year I had picked up the book but, to be honest, it was the first time that I kept up with the readings and exercises. As I write these words now, almost eighteen months later, that book is still an indispensable part of my morning ritual—almost as important as coffee. It has helped me understand the importance of going with the ebb and flow of life, to stop trying to control things and to understand the power and freedom of focusing on my own reasoned choices. For our post-pandemic world, I can’t think of a better daily guide, and I hope that my book also helps people return to a less restricted life.

The Daily Reset is at once a journal and a daily coach. Read it, write in it, highlight ideas you think are useful and disagree with those you do not. Above all, experiment. In these pages, you will find 366 nudges—reflections, questions, hacks, facts, stories, methods, and memories for you to change behaviour for good—to help keep wellbeing and a positive working life top of mind each day of the year.

How should you use The Daily Reset? There is a page to read each day of the year, perhaps in the morning or at night. This is one approach. If you prefer to read all the way through regardless of dates or jump to a specific section based on your interest or immediate need, that works too. My only wish is that you engage—by writing in the spaces provided or by moving to action and testing out the ideas each day. On some days, there is a clear action or question to answer while others are open to interpretation. Sometimes I’ll try and push you, perhaps into a zone of discomfort (where we grow) and on some days, we’ll take it easy. This is how we learn. Through increments, pushing at times beyond our current limits and then allowing for a period of recovery before pushing?again.

This journal is aimed at improving your health and wellbeing—on all levels. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, career, social, anything you can think of and require. As we emerge from the reset of the pandemic, brain health may show itself to be particularly relevant. It is an emerging concept that includes neural development and recovery throughout our lives. It therefore not only includes being well, but translating that wellbeing into the right behaviour and choosing to play an active role in the new?world.

We all have the opportunity get to write a new page of our lives each and every day. No matter if we have a fabulous day or a terrible one, we go to sleep and reset for the new one ahead. What we do in the future shouldn’t be constrained by what happened in the past, even when good. Each daily reset gives us an opportunity to improve by tiny yet valuable margins, and I hope to provide some guidance and inspiration to enable you to do that. It’s time to move forward. The pandemic held us in limbo, stuck. As restrictions begin to lift around the world, I sense a growing momentum around being unstuck.

The pandemic also raised the notion of reset the world over. Many called it ‘The Great Reset’ which links to different ideas, from the much-needed breather for the natural world to our collective questioning of the way we live our lives. Mental health was discussed with particular frequency and many people began to adopt their own measures to reset and protect that most precious resource.

All put together, this concept of reset highlights an opportunity to actively shape the new world—a type of ‘building back better’. That starts with re-shaping who we are as individuals. I’m not preaching. My approach to teaching wellbeing over the years has come from an awareness of my own failings and vulnerabilities in life. The 366 nudges that comprise The Daily Reset are both my journal and your journal. I?have used, and will continue to use, each and every one. Sometimes, I find—like you might—that I just can’t make them work on a given day. I think there’s a valuable lesson in that too.

Writing this book in the summer of 2021 marks my twenty year journey working in the field of wellbeing. In 2001 I was a visiting researcher at Stanford when I started to identify the questions that I’m still trying to answer today. Indeed, we are entering an ‘age of wellbeing’ where we are finally, en masse, asking the important questions about what it means to be well in our lives.

Wellbeing is a journey. We might not find the right path the first time. In fact, it’s something that is always changing, evolving as we adapt to the way our life journey throws us surprises, setbacks and fortune, pleasure and pain. Such is the richness of life.

Both journey and journal come from the same root, the Old French jour, or day. Every journey starts with a step, a day. If you don’t get it right today, simply reset. And go again tomorrow.

Let’s begin.

The Daily Reset will be available on Amazon worldwide from Monday 6th December in paperback, hardback, audiobook, and Kindle. Please visit www.dailyreset.me for details.