The Friday Thing #675

Hi…lots of love for the behind the scenes of Cuba Gooding’s win last week. Thankyou!

The Friday Thing #675 is another 3 part-ish edition with a focus on mindfulness. It begins with a truly inspiring and thought provoking discussion I participated in recently with Dr. Jeff Holguin.

Jeff is the Operational Fire Psychology Director at Lacey Fire District #3 where he leads the Behavioral Health and Behavioral Medicine Program. He is one of only 3 people with this role in the United States – with specialized training and experience in the areas of trauma, resiliency, serious mental illness, and neuroscience. Jeff has a background in biology and came to talk with my team about resiliency during Covid. It was *phenomenal*. Jeff gave us a vocabulary to explain and understand how we’re all feeling right now – anxious, depressed, alone, scared, optimistic, guilty and so much more. He also left us with some practical tips around physiological resilience, cognitive resilience, emotional resilience, behavioral resilience and interpersonal resilience. We had a great discussion about the role of social media in our lives and the impact of excess social media exposure. It’s tricky for many of us as it’s literally part of our job, but it has made me more intentional about my social media behaviors – and so I thought I’d share the image below that I saw this week, ironically on social media. It’s a good reminder as we go in to Thanksgiving week to be thoughtful about consumption. (NB: excessive turkey consumption is totally fine). 

As an aside, there have been over 4 million tweets since I started typing this edition. And over 3 billion emails. It makes my head hurt to think about what happens in one second on the Internet.

With Jeff’s permission, I am to share more of his tips over the coming weeks…..

In the meantime….check out this website. I really don’t know what more to say beyond “Click on the trees to take a small mindfulness break through nature.” Or “Let the rain wash over you as you focus on your breathing. (hello Seattle). I literally plan to leave this running on my computer for the entire week….

Okay…a few weeks back I promised a Friday Thing playlist but to be honest, it’s floundered. I think it’s setup to allow you all to add to the list, but I may be wrong. Check out this link and please, add away. (Rhonda, I promise I added some Take That ??)

Phew….I feel like I need to give you something to read this week….so, I will. I am a huge fan of The School Of Life and I have held on to a deck of cards I bought from them a year ago titled “Simple Pleasures”. I drew three cards today and here they are. Make of them what you will. They spoke to me…precede these statements with the question

“what are the small pleasures in life”?

That’s all I have this week – I had so many more links to share but to be honest, I’m exhausted and I know you are too. My advice right now is to hit pause. Read widely, share generously and give yourself and the people around you grace. I have this tiny feeling that we’ll look back on this time as when humanity pressed Ctrl Alt Delete a little bit. A time when we read a bit more and realized that mindfulness is indeed a thing. At least for a week?

And thus this week’s cocktail is called CTRL ALT DELETE. It may be a blue coloured drink ??

-Steve