One More Thing

Dear friend,

So excited that the Podcast dropped this week. I mentioned it a week or two ago, but didn't really tell you anything about it. I knew you were going to get an email and see it on the socials. And despite the data that people need to hear things at least seven times, I don't want to bombard you with what could seem like marketing. This letter is not for that.

Granted, I am excited about it. I want you to listen to all eight episodes. I want to hear what you think. I want to know if it has the intended positive impact on your soul. You can listen to them in any order. I'm going to record the next season before the end of the year, so if you have someone to recommend, besides yourself, please do.

It was a pretty consuming venture to get it all up and running. Monica and Chatters did a majority of the work. But on the day of the launch, I was troubleshooting and figuring out why everything didn't look like I thought it was going to. Which leads me to the other big project that happened this week: I cleaned up my contacts.

This sounds like a thing to do on a Saturday afternoon, which is what I originally thought. Except it went on and on and on. I have two google accounts and iCloud. How hard could it be to consolidate? As you can see from the picture of all the backups above, very. Have you ever started a quest to accomplish something and all you accomplished was finding there was always ONE MORE THING that needed done.

NEVER-ENDINg

The ridiculousness of my efforts were exhausting. I simply wanted to unclog my phone from duplicates and unknown people from decades gone by. At every single turn, something else didn't go as expected. And once I started the process, there was no going back. Only forward. Only until the mission was accomplished. Only until the purge was satisfied.

*&%#&!+%@! - That's how I felt. I'm not one to use expletives, though my friend David tells me one rightly placed is quite effective. (He tends to find numerous right places.) I wasn't so much frustrated as just tired of continuing to discover I had overlooked something. Or hadn't thought about something accurately. Or didn't realize how one move would impact another. Ever feel like all your best efforts aren't enough? Like this genuine desire to do something good takes way more work than if we had just left it be?

MINDSHIFT

What if this week you took a pause, patted yourself on the back for how far you've come and then get back in there with a fresh attitude?

IGNORANT

The uncovering of the unknown is what got me. Google has this thing called "Other contacts" that it doesn't include in contacts. Even when exporting all contacts. They are people you have communicated with but don't have a designated contact created. I didn't know. I DIDN'T KNOW that was a thing. So after hours and hours of thinking I was combining, merging and consolidating everyone, I was not. I WAS NOT! That happened twice. 😫

It was just me. I had no one else to be frustrated with. I could've been, but I was completely ignorant because I've never done this. What REALLY got me was the one-more-thing nature of it. The disappointment of actually thinking I was "almost there" when it turned out, I was not. How much broken hope can one man sustain?!

Have you heard the phrase "I can only take so much?" Ever been crushed in spirit by your attempts to stretch and accommodate? It's not a capacity issue. It's an energy issue.

MINDSHIFT

What if this week in your frustration, you didn't attempt to keep doing more, but rejuvenated yourself in a meaningful way?

ENERGIZE

This seems too obvious of a setup to plug the podcast, called "I Wish I Had Your Energy" - lololol - but as you know, I literally have no idea what I'm going to generate one paragraph to the next. So I find this amusing that it's brought me here. Genuinely though, the capacity to continue came when I stepped away, refilled my soul, and returned the next day. It took all week, literally.

We don't get to stop life to refresh, but we can prioritize reenergizing our soul in the midst of our frustration and disappointments.

I still have loads of issues with contact pictures. There is more work to do. Thankfully now I just have to laugh when the thought "will it ever end?" passes through my mind. No. The answer is No. These kinds of things will never end. "I thought I'd be through this by now" is not a surprise. "Am I still dealing with this?" Yes.

All of these kinds of sentiments have an underlying resistance to reality. The more we focus on filling our cup, keeping healthy expectations, extending ourselves grace and having a walk-away line, we'll be just fine. Of course there is one more thing...

SHIFTING

I hope this week you accept reality and commit to rejuvenate yourself. And lord if you're going to purge your contacts, talk to me first! #ShiftAway

You can watch or listen here: www.GregHawks.com/Podcast