Good Morning Friends,

We had a flurry of snow this week and luckily I caught some pictures for you! As always, I will sprinkle them throughout this week's letter for you.

I'm going to start with something slightly bold - self-improvement is becoming outdated. It's now about life-improvement. Every single thing we do should improve our lives. Every action, decision and interaction. We spend so much time worrying about how to improve our lives that we don't even enjoy it for the most part. Sometimes we even get duped into thinking it will improve our life but it doesn't. Then sadly we can realise this too late.

Perhaps this is a realisation of almost 5 years of writing and talking about it but I think there is more to life than we're led to believe. Self-improvement can be a wonderful marker to start but it can take hold of every aspect of our life if we let it and suck all the fun out of life.

My advice? Take the good parts and the bits you find fun, then chuck the rest away. The boring stuff will give you pride but nothing else.

Self-improvement is just a branch in the many arms of life improvement. Nothing can succeed singularly, these branches create the beauty of your entire tree. Yet life improvement is the trunk that supports it all. Our branches blossom, die and re-bloom. Even when it's time to shed our leaves, we always have another opportunity to flourish.

But the roots and trunk remain. Let's get into life improvement - the beauty lies in the subjective. You get to choose what your life is. You get to choose what is good and what is bad. Yet, sometimes when you make a decision you think you choose. Usually influenced. We aren't immune to mistakes yet one big decision about your life can lead to elation or misery. Are we analytical enough about the impact our jobs have on our life? Nope. Are we brave enough to look at the value within our relationships? Nope.

But why not? Shouldn't this be the essence of our everyday existence? Creating foundations for the rest of our lives? One of my favourite reads this year has been about living simply and it always comes back to this. It's not about creating ennui in our lives but it's as plain as this -

'Living simply doing the things that make us feel alive'

Is this it? Is this the answer? I'll take everything that comes with it if that is the outcome or what we need to achieve.

We spend so much time over-analysing, over-worrying yet not being reflective enough nor enjoying the time we have.

It's time to shift.

What do you need to do to downshift pressure but uplift life?

Write to me with any thoughts or opinions you have on this. Otherwise, have a cracking rest of your Sunday!

Best,

Lawrence

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