| "Five minutes each week that might change your life." | 84 people had a breakthrough last week. Read this newsletter on MarkManson.net. | | | TWO THINGS FOR YOU TO THINK ABOUT Everyone has something to teach you, even if neither of you realizes it. The catch is: it's not their job to show you, it's your job to figure out what you can learn. "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." – Simone Weil | Reflect: Then consider sharing this thought with others. | | | ONE THING FOR YOU TO ASK YOURSELF Who in your life might be teaching you something if you started paying attention? | Recommended: Use these as journaling prompts for the week. | | | ONE THING FOR YOU TO TRY THIS WEEK Give one person in your life your full attention. Then reply and tell me what you learned. | Remember: Small changes lead to lasting breakthroughs. Reply to this email and let me know how it went. | | | Small Actions Prevent Big Problems Sponsored by NordProtect Identity theft is stressful and time-consuming. It is also preventable. NordProtect is your comprehensive digital safety net, crafted by cybersecurity experts to help you protect your identity, credit, and accounts with advanced features that work quietly in the background 24/7. Once set up, it sends you real-time alerts for suspicious activity and provides recovery support and coverage for fraud, identity theft, or cyberattacks—giving you complete protection for your personal data and finances. Prevent tomorrow's headaches today. Use coupon 'MANSON' to get up to 76% off. Safeguard your identity and money—and get up to 76% off | |
LAST WEEK'S BREAKTHROUGHS In last week's newsletter, I asked you to identify what you're trying to avoid when you reach for a distraction. Gail discovered an unhelpful pattern: "What did I reach for? Comfort work that overlaps from my previous position. What was I avoiding? Feeling incompetent. I was promoted seven months ago from branch administrator to director of all the branches with very little training. It had been intense and exhausting learning my new role. I have also been grieving my boss leaving because we have become very close and she retired early due to health concerns. Recently the interim branch admin in my previous role quit and I am trying to fill in until we can rehire for the position. It's so easy to slide into my old routine on the days I am there and avoid the aspects I have not been trained on for my new position. Thank you for this prompt. I am now more aware than before of what I am doing when I go into avoidance mode and hopefully this will focus me more when I hit those hard tasks." Our next reader had a breakthrough: "This hit home for me. I never realized my actions were 'helping' me avoid dealing with something that I need to do, which is get another job and lose some weight. I've avoided updating my resume, LinkedIn, job searching, and updating my skills. Each time the thought of doing any of those tasks hits my mind, I turn to YouTube and listen to Reddit stories or the latest gossip channels. Last week I learned about insulin, lol. I call it the rabbit hole, and I live at the bottom of it. My breakthrough is finally realizing that what I call being productive or busy is actually what I'm doing to avoid failure and rejection." Finally, Faith faced what she'd been avoiding head-on, and was transformed: "This is the first time I have ever written to you. And actually, it is the first time I have taken you up on your journaling prompt. Not for lack of inspiration, but for the very point of your message today. The outcome has been truly transformational. It has been a few months since I have written and in all honesty, writing was one of the many things I have been avoiding. I stopped carrying my journal around from room to room and at some point I put it in a cabinet on the other side of my house, far from any room I would write in. This morning I read your message about distractions, realized the truth of the message in my life and decided as soon as the evening rolled around, the time of night I let avoidance and distraction take over, I would take my journal out of its perfect hiding place, get a cup of tea and sit in the new chair that has finally completed the living room ambiance I have been striving for since we moved into this house two and a half years ago. To say the stars aligned is an understatement! I won't bore you with the details of my musings. What I will say is that when I started writing, my shoulders and body were tight and I was curled up in a ball on my chair. I must have been breathing but had no mental awareness nor physical feeling of it, and had little to no sense of my surroundings. When I finished writing, I was leaning back in my chair, legs stretched out on the ottoman, with full attention on my breath, easy and deep, fully attuned to my surroundings with an immense sense of gratitude, peacefulness, relaxation, and presence, able to observe and note the quality of each and every sound, near and far, soft and loud. I will share the last excerpt in my journal tonight: 'I am especially thankful for this writing exercise, which has brought me around to what truly matters—full circle—rather than the downward spiral that was spinning out of control when I started writing.' Thank you for your musings, for your insights, and for giving your readers (like me) the space and time to engage with you and each other. Even though this is the first time I took you up on your challenge, you have definitely made a difference in my life." As always, send your breakthroughs by simply replying to this email. Let me know if you'd prefer to remain anonymous. Until next week, Mark Manson #1 New York Times Bestselling Author
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| FOLLOW FOR MORE Want to share this newsletter via text, social, or email? Simply copy and paste the following link: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough/194-attention If you were forwarded this message, sign up to receive it each week here. It's free. I never spam. About this newsletter: You are receiving this email because you signed up to my free newsletter. Each week, I send you a few powerful ideas, a few questions to ask yourself, and a few things to try in your life. If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter and all other updates from me, you can unsubscribe here. Disclaimer: By sending your breakthrough you are giving us your explicit consent to process the data and share it with our newsletter subscribers, MarkManson.net website visitors and on social media, including any sensitive data such as information regarding mental health, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life or sexual orientation. You may opt out and/or request deletion of the data at any time. You acknowledge that once we have shared your breakthrough with the other email subscribers we can no longer delete the data from their mailboxes. Infinity Squared Media LLC, 2525 Ocean Park Blvd, Suite 200, Santa Monica, CA 90405 | |
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