Reading Time: 2 minutesHere is the Well-Being Practice we recommend you try on for this week of the Challenge. To learn more about the intention behind the Well-Being Practices and how you can choose your own each week, read this article.
This Week, Write a Short Message to Someone Important
Simple Instructions:
- Each day, send a brief message to someone important. It can be a message of thanks, acknowledgement, gratitude, or just to say you’re thinking about the person.
- We encourage you to use text message for this, but emails are also fine.
Watch this video for an explanation of this Well-Being Practice from Whole Life Challenge co-founders Andy Petranek and Michael Stanwyck.
Why Is This Practice Important?
The people in our lives do a lot to keep our lives running smoothly. If we really take a step back, it becomes easy to see just how much we don’t (and can’t) do life alone. Not and have it work out the way we want it to, at least.
Yet, it’s not uncommon (at least for me) to take this simple fact for granted. Other people are doing their thing; I’m doing mine. Given that perspective, it becomes easy to think it’s silly to acknowledge or thank people for just doing what they’d do to make their lives work.
But without the network that exists around us and to support us, our lives would likely be a total mess.
Taking a moment to remind yourself and someone else that the relationship you have is not just important, but vital can bring a sense of connection, gratitude, and ease to your life. It can remind us how special this whole thing called life is, how amazing human beings can be, and how supported we all really are.
Therefore, this week’s Well-Being Practice is an exercise not just in gratitude for our support system, but in becoming more deeply aware of its existence and its breadth.
For More on This Practice
The empathy with which Dr. Mark Goulston listens to others is like a superpower. He calls it “listening for” instead of “listening to,” and it has the power to transform every relationship in your life.
Because to truly appreciate the people around you, you need to truly hear them. Listen to this podcast to learn this amazing superpower for yourself.
He graduated from UCLA with a BA in philosophy as well as a degree from the Southern California School of Culinary Arts, and feels food is one of the most important parts of a life - it can nourish, heal, and bring people together.
Michael believes health and well-being are as much a state of mind as they are a state of the body, and when it comes to fitness, food, and life in general, he thinks slow is much better than fast (most of the time). Stopping regularly to examine things is the surest way to put down roots and grow.
He knows he will never be done with his own work, and believes the best thing you can do for your well-being starts with loving and working from what you’ve got right now.
