3-2-1: Slowing down, letting go, and lessons from the year

Happy 3-2-1 Thursday and Happy New Year!

If you're looking to start 2022 with a bang, then consider giving Atomic Habits a read (or re-read!).

In the meantime, here are 3 ideas, 2 quotes, and 1 question to consider this week...

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I.

"An expert is someone who, over many years, manages to remain confident enough to keep trying and humble enough to keep learning."

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​II.

"You have no responsibility to live up to someone else's expectation of you.

Spend as little time as possible chasing other people's preferences instead of your own."

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III.

"Slowing down enables you to act in a high quality way.

Kind rather than curt. Polished rather than sloppy.

It's hard to be thoughtful when you're in a rush."

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I.

Poet and novelist May Sarton on letting go:

"I think of the trees and how simply they let go, let fall the riches of a season, how without grief (it seems) they can let go and go deep into their roots for renewal and sleep...

Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go."

Source: The Journals of May Sarton Volume One: Journal of a Solitude, Plant Dreaming Deep, and Recovering​

​II.

Writer Joan Didion shares some life advice:

"I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it."

Source: 1975 Commencement Address at the University of California, Riverside

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What is one lesson you learned (or relearned) this year?

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Until next week,

James Clear
​Author of the #1 worldwide bestseller, Atomic Habits​
Creator of the Habit Journal​

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p.s. Happy New Year!​

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