Hey, happy Monday!
I hope you had a great weekend; mine went really well.
Today's letter is a bit longer than usual, so take your time to read it.
One of my favorite quotes to repeat to myself and to tell others is “you can do hard things.” I find this to be increasingly true as I go and grow through life. Telling people they can do hard things might come off as suggesting they can withstand anything without being shaken, but when I say it, I mean the opposite. I say you can do hard things not because you are bulletproof and immune to having your knees buckle, but because even when things threaten to break you apart—whether it’s loss, grief, heartbreak, or any negative experience—you will get up again.
It doesn’t mean that your journey through life will be smooth sailing and that you will navigate every situation with ease. That’s unrealistic. You will hurt people, and you will be hurt. No one gets out of life unscathed. I say it because, regardless of how broken life may have made you feel, you woke up the next morning, and you put one foot in front of the other and kept going.
Think about every single storm you have weathered, every hurt you have healed from, every pain you have risen above. In these things, you will find remarkable strength even if it didn’t feel like it in the moment, even if it felt like the walls were closing in on you. You pulled through, and that was a hard thing that you did.
This letter is an invitation to let the track record of your strength anchor you on the days your hope is dwindling. Let it remind you that everything you once felt would never pass, everything you thought you wouldn’t make it through, didn’t actually kill you. That is strength, and that is a hard thing.
So if you are going through anything big or small, if it hurts, remember that you can do hard things. You’ve done it before, and you can do it again. You will be okay. You will heal. Your life will unfold beautifully (another of my favorite quotes, which I’ll write about next).
ON YOUR MIND THIS WEEK
A new segment of the newsletter where I give you a prompt to contemplate. The goal is to get you curious about self-exploration as opposed to just discovery because I believe that people have the capacity to hold multiple worlds.
The prompt for this week is: What does a good life feel like to you? There can be a tendency to create a life that looks good on the outside but doesn’t feel right on the inside, so ask yourself this question this week. What does a life that truly makes you want to get up in the morning feel like? It is important to be clear on this so you do not spend your entire time on earth trying to build a life you actually don’t care about just to impress others. We are on borrowed time, and it is very finite. Make it count.
Find more prompts here.
BEAUTIFUL THINGS ON THE INTERNET
I’m always on the hunt for beautiful things and art. I basically live on Pinterest at this point, lol. Also, you should follow me on Pinterest. Here are the pictures that made me feel something this past week.
LATEST ON THE UTTERLY HUMAN BLOG
One of the most incredible parts of the human experience is the ability to pivot, to evolve, to change. It's liberating to know that the life you've always lived is not the life you have to have until you die. You can decide that you want something different, that you want a better living experience, and you have the power to make it happen.
READ HERE
FAMOUS AT UTTERLY HUMAN
My most viral piece of work is my notes on love, and my most viral content is also a piece on love. So, I decided to pull together everything I've ever written about love in the past year or so into one PDF for people to easily read and reference.
Get it here.
Well, that's all I have for you this week, folks. I hope you loved reading this letter as much as I loved writing it. It’s currently 5:45am, and my neighbor is playing "Tony Montana" really loud—an interesting start to my day, I'll tell you that.
See ya later, alligator!
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All my love and stuff.