Hey 👋🏽,

Gregg and I post mortemed our 1st dinner party on Friday night. It felt like a productive way to process the emotion of being with college friends again post-pandemic-isolation-BLM-coup-personal-crises etc. Or to avoid processing, not totally sure yet.

I turned the conversation into a rough checklist to improve the algorithm the next time around:

create a seating plan
make the cheese board in the morning
think about questions to connect people and move beyond small talk
read the Skimm that morning
edibles after dinner, not before

etc.

I don't consider myself to be particularly competitive but I do like to be good at the things that I do. No half measures, all or nothing. A good friend reminded me of this recently (and John C. Reilly's Yoda t-shirt in Stepbrothers on Saturday night did too).

A year ago I would have laughed at myself for listing out such obvious things or focusing on the small stuff so much but pandemic life has helped me acknowledge the things I'm a beginner at. Life is lived in and improved through the details. As with many things, to get better you have to fall in love with the process.

I've probably been overly focused on achievement over effort though and I think this is backwards. Carolyn Dweck, Stanford psychologist who pioneered research on growth mindsets would probably agree:

When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world — the world of fixed traits — success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other — the world of changing qualities — it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself. Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them?

carolyn dweck growth mindset fixed mindset start again today.png

I think I've probably faked a growth mindset in past, fearful of what happens when you let go of ego and prioritize learning. Yoga and a few close friends have helped me open up to this shift, to do more stuff I'm not good at yet and learn from it. To notice the progress from a year ago to today. To celebrate the wins. To keep going.

I see you, I love you, have a great week,