Quick note: If you use Gmail, drag this email to the Primary tab so you never miss future issues.
You ranked 28,674th in a marathon.
Your hopes were high, you trained a lot, yet you finished near the end of the pack, behind so many people that are much older than you. You genuinely thought you were in better shape than most of them.
Beat yourself up as much as you want.
But you made it to the finish line. And that puts you in the TOP 0.01% of the global population who finishes a marathon each year.
And if your mind says: “Yeah, but last year you did better.”
Tell it you've gone through another adventure and added another 26.2 miles to your resume. If that’s not worth celebrating, what is?
What’s the point of chasing a goal if you don’t even honor it?
It’s true that sometimes it feels impossible to be optimistic…
I remember being broke, jobless, friendless, out of shape, and stuck in a place I didn’t want to be. In moments like that, your mind defaults to everything that’s wrong.
What helped me was changing how I kept score. I started counting from zero instead of down from 100.
Like most people, I used to compare my life to an idealized image, worth 100 points. But nobody’s perfect, so something’s always lacking. That's why we're never satisfied.
But what if you started from zero instead? From the bare minimum… being alive. The odds of you being born are about 1 in 400 trillion. That's 1 point already.
And you woke up today. You can walk, you can see, you can laugh at a joke. You're at 5 now. You're already winning before the day even starts. Everything else is extra.
Being optimistic means choosing to see the win.
This week's action:
Pick one thing you're beating yourself up over.
Starting from zero, think about what you've already done. You tried? You showed up? What’s next? Write down everything above zero.
Focus on that this week.
Share this with a friend who might need it.
Thanks for reading,
Valentin