💁Here's one mindset to drop this week
Good morning,
and welcome to the first English edition of Verve Letter 🎉. I'm not sure if it'll be all English from now on, I'll probably also throw in some German when it makes sense (to me). You'll learn. For now, I just want to play around with languages and see how that feels. Cool? Cool.
This week I'd like to open up a discussion: Are you the type of enviable person who lives in the moment and is always content with the now? Or are you someone who keeps a list of whens in the back (or front) of your mind? You know, the "when I finally get xy, everything will fall into place" kind of stuff.
I had a deep conversation about this with my friends while on holiday and when I boarded the plane in Heathrow last weekend, I noticed Emma Gannon had also picked it up in her Sunday Times column. The piece is paywalled, but the gist is:
“There is no miraculous transition or stepping stone to a different you. So it’s more beneficial in the long run to stop strategically planning the “when” moments and live for the now.”
I personally still find myself hung up on the when mindset way too much, but I'm slowly making progress (if you count that I haven't googled "how much is a cottage in Cornwall" yet as progress). However, I don't think I'll ever be 100% in the now. I'm going into more detail on why not in this Medium post, because this newsletter has to end eventually.
For future guidance though, I'll be turning to Ryan Holiday's beautiful manual on how to turn every day into a day you love. He boils it down to: "You know what to say yes to. What to say no to. You know who you are and what your life needs to be built around." Required reading on a monday morning, I reckon.
⭐️ Now please top up your coffee, because – and I don't say this lightly – here comes the best article I have read all year. Carina Chocano has taken on the "murfer" (= mum surfers, yes I also threw up in my mouth a little) influencer bubble of Byron Bay and IT'S ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT. It's witty, full of smart observations, and it's got a beat to it I haven't read anywhere in forever and makes me want to print out the whole thing and hang it on my wall. It's published in Vanity Fair and goes like:
"According to at least one Australian magazine, the murfers are “nailing the lifestyle,” which makes it sound like they’re effortlessly pulling off an expert maneuver that only an elite, highly trained few could hope to attempt without risk of serious bodily harm."
To use my favorite Blendle phrase: If you only read one article this week, let it be this one. You won't be sorry.
🎧 And when you're done reading, you can listen to this gem of a podcast: Inspired by my Cornwall getaway, I looked up what my favourite Broadchurch characters were doing now. Turns out, the wonderful David Tennant does a Podcast now. Yay! In the first episode he interviews his equally wonderful co-star Olivia Colman and it's lovely. Just lovely.
Alrighty then! Have a wonderful week and feel free to forward this to everyone you know and their cousin.
Much love,
Anna