The river doesn’t drink its own water

I wanted to turn to my neighbour. I wanted to say “Isn’t he an incredible speaker!?! Wow.”

But I neither wanted to interrupt her listening, me listening, or him speaking. Even when he paused, and he paused often and long, I didn’t want to interrupt what was happening. So I waited until it was over to marvel in his performance.

The man: Corey Keyes.

The performance: “Just” a conversation between him and one of the organisers of the European Conference on Positive Psychology (who was clearly a bit stumped that he had asked to change the format of his invited keynote to simply sitting down and having a chat - my man!

I could share heaps of inspiration here, and I do recommend his latest book - Languishing, (link in comments) but there’s one thing he said that stuck with me more than everything else. He said:

“The river doesn’t drink its own water. The tree doesn’t eat its fruits.”

When we start contributing, something shifts profoundly, and there’s ample evidence now how much we gain from bringing gain to others.

It’s really a natural drive - love, contribution, community. Our lives used to depend on it when our species came up, and evolution has hard-wired this into our being. But in today’s day and age, technology and considerable social security allows so many of us to live quite isolated lives, which is one of the key contributors to languishing and poor mental health.

Let’s take a hint from the tree and the river, and remind ourselves that we are happier and our existence much richer when we contribute.

Thank you Corey.

With Love

Yannick

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That's it for this week!

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