The Atlas

Results, Actions and Shoulds

In her Netflix special, Brene Brown comments, "The great thing about middle age is that I can play the tape to the end. I know how this is going to go because I've done it a thousand times."

I woke up this morning with that thought running through my head: I can simply rinse and repeat and get the same result, or I can do something different and see if it gets me a different outcome. What does doing something different look like?

After spending the weekend taste testing what my new life in Miami could potentially look like, I am starting my week with the lingering taste of my weekend buffet of new experiences. And while the novelty junkie in me definitely appreciates the sheer newness of all of it, the middle-aged part of me that recognizes a few familiar inclinations surfacing that I like to think of myself as aware enough to remind myself to question.

I'll be in the Gallup Accelerated Strengths Training this week. As I mentioned in last week's video, this is something that I am super excited about, because I find their work on this front to be enormously useful and it has been a huge source of self-awareness, growth and leadership insight for me over the past decade.

But it starts with me. So, my question for myself at the moment: How do I leverage my natural strengths to lean into my new life in a way that doesn't default to the same old habits that have not historically served me? I need to remember that the goal isn't necessarily about finding an ANSWER, it's about asking the QUESTION and remaining genuinely open to new options without shoulding all over myself with legacy expectations.

Someone asked me one of my absolute LEAST favorite questions this weekend: What do you do for fun? As much as I hate that question, though, it's one that I need to keep asking over and over again. For 25 years, the answer to that question -- no matter how much I tried to dress it up -- was basically, "Fun is for other people. I work. Anything else is frivolous and not for me."

Want something different? Do something different. Damn, it sounds so easy.

So my question for this week: What do you do when you find yourself on the slippery slope of making the same decisions you've always made, when you know you want a different set of results?

Best,
Alora's Signature