So I got the vaccine…
[Friday Flow #27]
Hey.
I got vaccinated today for Covid. I feel lucky to be able to get the vaccine fairly early: it’s also been rolled out faster to those of us in healthcare but I also know there’s many who can’t get it yet too. My arm is a little sore but that’s to be expected.
I know there’s a lot of uncertainty and fear around this stuff and I get that: the past year raised many questions and there weren’t always good answers quickly enough. That’s a perfect recipe for conspiracies.
But I also know how serious Covid is, personally and professionally and I’m not about to play with that. As a friend recently said, the numbers have started to turn to names. It’s almost every week at this point.
I’m still writing though.
Yes > no (Essay)
My essay this week was about something I think about often but realised I hadn’t ever written on: the power of saying yes instead of no. Here’s how it begins.
If you’re struggling to say no to something maybe you should try saying yes instead.
Not to the same thing, of course! But instead of focusing on what you don’t want, why not focus on what you actually want?
Put that way it probably sounds obvious, right? And yet every day I see people struggle with it—heck, I still struggle with it. Which means it’s not as simple as it sounds, or I wouldn’t need to be writing an essay on how I came up against my forgetting of this again with respect to fasting.
Why is it so hard to say no to saying no?
Continue reading here:
Archive
Speaking of clear messaging, by the way, I found this old essay on honesty with heart appropriate for this moment we’re in:
So if you’re going to practice honesty with heart, you’re going to have to get used to something even more difficult: apologising when you catch yourself being thoughtless or deliberately hurtful. (“But I only said the truth!” you’ll think, with instinctive defensiveness. Yes, but the apology wouldn’t be for saying the truth: it would be for saying it anyhow.)
And be clear, the goal here is honesty with heart, not honesty without hurt.
Proverb
It’s the same gun that kills the ordinary people that also kills the great ones.
Applies to more than one thing in our world today.
Peace,
Doc Ayomide