👟👠 Difficult conversations...

Hi !  Welcome back. Are you planning your Christmas break yet? This week I am thinking (and writing) about frogs, horses, difficult conversations, day dreamers and naughty AIs . If you haven’t subscribed yet, you can join here or by clicking the button below. - Eve D.❣️

WEEK IN REVIEW & RANDOM THOUGHTS

It’s been a good week. Lots of exciting things happening on the work front, and I’m taking a deep breath before the busy end of year period. I am not forgetting to have fun though, and work-life balance seems to be in check.

🐸 I have a pond in the back of my garden (it used to be a pool, don’t ask) and suddenly due to recent rains it is filled with what must literally be hundreds of bullfrogs, all singing outside harmony 😀 . I love the sound (I’m just far away to get the appropriate volume), but there are new apartments units going up next door (don’t ask, sore point) and their bedrooms look over our backyard, so things will get interesting soon.

🇩🇪 Zac is starting to learn German in preparation for his Cambridge exams, and it’s going to be a “fun” process to watch. (For context, his attempts at French, pre-Covid, were comical). He’s already determined the grammar rules are “dumb”, and thinks my rule of NOT allowing him to use AI to write the required German essays and do the homework is “a Gen X problem”, not his. 🙄 

✍️ I shouldn’t mock Zac and his AI, though. I’ve noticed that my spelling is getting so atrocious that often times my computer cannot even offer a suggestion because it cannot figure out what the hell I am trying to say. And I will never spell the word “definitely” correctly first time round. (It really should be “definately”)

✋ My friend Laura and I are going to start some sort of meetup movement, mostly aimed at women, but not exclusively. We have no idea what we are doing, but we are going to do it anyway! It feels right. She’s also starting a new blog on her midlife journey, and I will be so excited to share it with you when it launches!

🐴 I am loosely planning a trip to Cape Town with a friend, and one thing I want to do while there is go horse riding on Noordhoek beach. I’ve done it at full gallop twice before, despite the fact that I am not a horse rider. But now I want to change that! I am strongly contemplating taking up intensive horse riding lessons to prep me for the beach ride. (There’s no rush. The original idea was to go to Cape Town to celebrate finishing my book, and that is ….um….not going to schedule. I’m upset about this.)

☕️ Random thought: I was buying new coffee beans today and was shocked at the price, until I figured I could probably brew 30-40 cups with the bag of beans, and suddenly it seemed like the bargain of the century considering just how many cups of coffee I buy per week, and how much I pay for them 🤣. I know there is this ridiculous theory that if millennials only stopped eating avocado toast and drinking Starbucks they could afford to buy a house, but I think there might actually be something in this theory. (For clarity: I am not stopping my coffee-shop coffee consumption anytime soon).

💔 This week I was reminded that if a friend hurts your feelings, apologises and says they didn't mean to, you should believe them. I learnt this from our good friend Esther Perel. She's right.

LIFE HACK 1

Diversify your happiness

If you read this newsletter regularly (or if I ever finish my book) you will soon realise that I'm all about optimising life for happiness. I can talk for hours about this (or write for hundreds of pages), but it's actually a top-of-mind topic for many, if not most, people. Laura and I were discussing recently how important it is to diversify your happiness sources: for example, you need to make sure that your happiness (or joy) is not just due to a social connection with just one person. You need to diversify across many people, because if something goes south with you and that one person (think divorce, for example), you are up shit's creek without a paddle. Your source of happiness is gone, at a time when you need sources of happiness the most (but please note that I am not suggesting you juggle multiple lovers! 🤣 )

But it goes further than just diversifying across people. You need to diversify across domains too. Your work can bring you joy, but you need to accept that you will have bad days at the office. So then you need to find happiness in your friends, your hobbies, your side hustles, your community etc. Increase the surface area of opportunity to feel joy. You’ll never regret it.

FREE THERAPY

LIFE HACK 2

Difficult Conversations 

So a while back, a man in whom I was quite interested, dropped what I thought were strong hints that he was actually interested in someone else. This happened during a phone conversation, and when I hung up I felt …very sad? As I saw it, I had two options. I could either sit with that feeling of sadness and doubt, and allow it to fester and grow a life of its own until I saw this guy again, at which point I could try to somehow figure it all out, or I could….just ask him about it immediately and outright. I (bravely?) chose this latter option, because I know what happens to stories we tell ourselves if we allow them to run rampant for a week inside our heads. It was a good choice. He set aside my fears, and we had a good laugh about it. But even if I had been right, it would still have been better to find out immediately, rather than spend a week wallowing in worry.

This is the hill I am willing to die on: the ability to have difficult conversations is a superpower, and it enriches not just your life, but also the life of those on the other side of the conversation. Most people have no idea how to do this, but if you teach yourself how to tackle difficult issues in a dignified manner you will gain clarity, peace of mind, courage and respect. And you’ll be happier for it.

I have made it a (relatively recent and somewhat imperfect) mission to try and initiate these type of conversations as often as as necessary, and let me tell you: there has not been one time when I did this and regretted it. Every single time the conversation cleared up a misunderstanding, or explained a problem that could then be mutually fixed, or - in the very worst cases - saved me months of grief. Also worth noting: there hasn't been a time when the other person has not appreciated that I raised the issue, even if discussing the issue made them very uncomfortable. People almost always love the clarity such conversations provide. It honestly makes for stronger relationships, stronger friendships, stronger family bonds and stronger work culture. You will gain the reputation of being the one who does not hide behind awkwardness, and people will respect you and even admire you for it. I'm telling you...it really is a superpower!

Of course, with every superpower comes responsibility. Some pointers:

• You need to take ownership of the conversation, and set the tone of kindness and resolution. The goal should be to take both participants to a better place, even if there is pain along the way.

• A conversation is not a monologue. You need to hear the other side with empathy and compassion.

• A difficult conversation is not a fight, or a quest to be proven right. Make sure the other person knows that their honesty will not be punished.

• Provide the necessary context, examples and vocabulary if necessary. Put the other person at ease.

• If there are elephants in the room, announce them. That's your responsibility: Once you start a conversation, you need to follow through all the way. Nothing relevant should be left unspoken, and most often it will be up to you to do the speaking.

• Both parties should feel a profound sense of relief, resolution or satisfaction at the end of the conversation.

• Do not be married to a specific outcome for the conversation. It might not go the way you want, and that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Be prepared for this.

Extra Bonus: By having these types of difficult conversations you teach others to have them too. They see the benefits, they learn from your methodology and they slowly start initiating conversations themselves. Everyone is then better off.

Extra extra Bonus: I believe that if you cultivate a reputation of addressing all difficult topics head on, you bring a special sense of calm and trust into your relationships, because people start to feel more secure with you. No one fears there are things left unspoken - unless they are the ones not doing the speaking, and slowly they will fix that too.

NEW HOBBY

Have I mentioned that I am a frustrated creative? I want to create art, but I can’t draw to save my life. Never fear…I often find some creative outlet that does not require me to have any actual talent 😀 . Here is my latest discovery: shadow flower drawing.

You simply trace the shadows of flowers onto a blank piece of paper. How difficult can it be? You just need a garden and some sun (both in abundance here, currently!)

The results seem quite promising, and could possibly even be worthy of being framed. I haven’t tried it yet, but that’s what Sunday is for!

OOPS

Here is something mildly alarming. Elizabeth Laraki submitted a photo to be included as a profile pic for a conference at which she would be speaking, and was surprised to see the photo was manipulated to show a bra peeking through her unbuttoned shirt.

She reached out to the organizers - in shock, I’d assume - and they were more shocked than her. Turns out, she submitted the photo in the wrong ratio(the organizers needed it to be more vertical), and they used AI to fill in the bottom part of the photo. The AI figured that while it was doing that, it might as well add a bra to make the photo more appealing. 🤯 

LAUGHS

If you want to laugh out loud, I strongly suggest you follow James Blunt on Twitter (the singer of… You’re Beautiful). He is funny, mostly because he is a natural at making fun of himself. His bio: “…proof that one song is all you need”. 😂 Self deprecating humour for the win.

LOVE

MASTERY

You know how we all wonder for what activity we could win a medal, if it was an Olympic Sport? I might have found mine! In Japan (bless that eccentric country!) they have a competition to determine the best daydreamer. It’s the Space-Out Competition. Contestants were judged on “how artfully they could do absolutely nothing for 90 minutes” (….just give me the medal already!). Heart rates were checked and anyone who laughed, talked or dozed off was eliminated from the competition.

SINGLE LIFE

This is a strong case against marriage:

MOVIES

This week for movie-night, my friend and I watched The Social Network, which is about the start of Facebook. That was some messed up, misogynistic startup culture, and I have no reason to believe things are any better there now. Good movie, terrible story. (Mark’s character reminds me a lot of Sam Altman, too). It’s scary to think that Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are in the hands of someone who thought it would be fun to create an app that compared and rated women against farm animals. I hope he’s grown up.

Next week we are watching Thelma, which is described by IMDB as “When 93-year-old Thelma Post gets duped by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson, she sets out on a treacherous quest across the city to reclaim what was taken from her.” So that sounds hilarious…I’ll of course report back!

Thanks for reading!

That’s it for this week. (Want more? You can find past editions here). I hope you have a great weekend and upcoming week. Please keep sharing /forwarding to your friends/groups 😄 . You can also email me privately by hitting reply on this email.

PS