3 Good Things

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"How was your morning?" I ask Seda, pulling lunch from the fridge.

"Expensive," she says.

"Oh?" I ask. "How's that?"

"Well, three good things," she says. This is a reminder. We begin our lunches daily by sharing three good things that happened since we last parted.

"Thing one," says Seda. "I learned that something I designed for a client didn't solve their problem. I could have fixed it, but I guessed that an engineer would do it better. So I referred them to an engineer.

"I guess the first good thing," she says, "is the clarity. That felt good. And that I like that engineer. I hope he gets the job. The second good thing is that I gave my client their money back, which felt like the right thing to do. I mean, I could have fixed it, but I think the engineer's solution will be more elegant.

And the third good thing is that the client was really happy about that. She understood why I proposed the solution I did and was grateful that I'm responding to the new information the way I am. She felt good about what happened and said she'd recommend me to someone else."

Now, if you're thinking to yourself, "Whoa, Seda, how did you make all those hard things good things?" I'm with you. She pulled a Next Level there for sure. But I'm not surprised. We've been working up to it together.

Seda and I started doing 3 good things 3 months ago when we both felt stretched to our limits. Our brains ran circles in analysis mode when we left our desks for lunch.

We'd meet to pick apart the happenings from the day with a fine tooth comb. Our brains just couldn't stop working. Brows furrowed and calendars came out as we plotted future change.

That's not the way I want to do business, and it's not the way I want to have lunch.

Balancing the brain's negativity bias by celebrating 3 wins turned things around. At first, I reined in my temptation to "dress up" hard things to look like good things. My gut said no.

I banned myself from what my sister calls "polishing the turd." Instead, I focused on things that I only had good feelings about. That required a search. The effort paid off in record time.

Something interesting happened. Starting lunch with 3 good things distanced the less sparkly stuff. Those bits fell to the back and could be sorted later.

One thing leads to another, and good things track toward other good things. Momentum! Who wants off that train?

Now, our brains are wired to celebrate what feels good whenever we meet. The ban on harder things feels less relevant as we feel better and better about what we're learning from our daily challenges.

We tune into how we feel and steer the conversation towards high vibes. Nowadays, we rarely stop at just 3 good things. Lunch has never been better.

When have you made a conscious choice to focus on the positive? If you decide to try 3 good things as a routine, please let me know how it goes!

Y'all, I did something last Sunday that I've wanted to do forEVER. I read last week's newsletter story on YouTube. If you want to hear it from the horse's mouth, find it here.

Also, it's not too late to uplevel your summer with Prime and Shine. Folks are joining from all over the world by the dozens. (Welcome, y'all!) I'm hearing about major shifts in their relationships, finances, health, and overall wellbeing—and it's just the first 6 days.

My high hopes have been exceeded. If you sign up, keep me posted on your discoveries! Register here (it's free). And share that link with a friend!

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