Good Morning wonderful humans,

I trust you're well. A friend gave me a great alternative to 'How are you?' the other week, instead ask 'What's the best thing that's happened to you today?' - much more interesting and personally I love the instant switch of mindset to gratitude. My answer would almost always be my morning coffee :) even on the worst days, you still get your coffee.

Now, I know I'm fairly positive with my outlook yet I'd never want that to come across as delusional or unrealistic in day to day life. There are always down parts of life. How we understand them and manage them to our benefit ourselves is another thing. Especially in the long term.

Short term perspectives are good for motivation but they kill the joy of daily life. Imagine I let one comment make me forget about how great my morning coffee was. Or my fatigue from working all week removed the joy I get returning home to see my wife and dog. You have to capture these moments every day and nurture them.

And this leads me nicely onto the title of todays letter - Good things take time.

Think of all the good things in your life. The most important ones are the long-term things - family, friends, career, hobbies, lifestyle. Things that are bigger than yourself. For those to be great and joyous, you need to nurture the moments. You can't have a healthy relationship if you only turn up when you're in a good mood. You need to be able to ride out the bad times too.

The things you truly care about in life will only become great once you've nurtured them for years. Nobody wants to hear that as it sounds like hard work. And sometimes it feels like it doesn't pay off or is reciprocated but that only makes us stronger and wiser. Which everybody aspires to be anyway. We just want to cut out the difficult bit.

There is a beauty in being in moments of pain. They are terrible to be in yet they are what make us. We cannot choose when they happen but we have to step up and fight. Not in a violent way but stepping up for what you believe in. Knowing and believing in how you want your life to be is a privilege that we all have. The issue is we want it to be easy.

There will always be moments - good and bad. Yet, they both require nurturing if we're going to create a life of substance. The pain is the teacher, the elation is the reward. Respect them yet bathe in them. And everything in between.

I'll close with some questions for you -

• What is something important in your life that requires time to become what you want but you're not giving it enough?
• What do you perceive as painful at the moment but is actually testing how much you want it?
• What are you giving too much attention that doesn't ultimately matter?

Write to me with any thoughts, if it helps, or use your journal to note it down.

Otherwise, have a great rest of your weekend and see you next week.

Best,

Lawrence

PS. I got some great feedback last week about an ebook I wrote over 2 years ago! Here it is for free if you want it -

Become Unstuck in 30 Days - https://lawrencemcl.gumroad.com/l/JSZyK​