Olim

March 6th

The ONE thing you need to get good at to grow as a human.

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Hey! Welcome to the 36th instalment of the Olim Love Letters - a weekly newsletter written by me, Eloise. Here, we talk about connection, copy, Really Weird Childhood Stories™, and the odd linguistic snippet thrown in for good measure.

Oh dang, Reader! Did you get a haircut? Try a new outfit? Maybe it’s the sunshine, maybe it’s Spring - but you look fantastic today, and very much you.

Now, on to equally serious matters: I have been on a Jon Acuff book-bender. ​

It started on the 23rd of January this year, when I binge-read his book Soundtracks on the train to London to gobble char siu bagels with my pal Becca and yap about strategy and business growth. I laughed! I snorted! I disturbed my fellow passengers!

Before I crammed my chops with carbs and barbecue pork, I was metaphorically snaffling this book - the whole lot devoured in approximately one hour, 44 minutes. #BookCrusherLeeson

Then, in February, also on a train (seeing a theme here?!) I read his book Finish, from cover to cover. And I’ve got another Acuff masterpiece, aptly called Start, right here on my desk.

I blame Shlomo Genchin (ad wizard extraordinaire) for the Jon Acuff addiction. He posted this on LinkedIn in the New Year, and I was hooked. What good lessons! How vital for a chronic non-finisher to have these tools to use.

For a very, very long time, I’ve been living with the unspoken ‘rule’ in my head that says:

“I, Eloise, will not be successful at business because I don’t read enough business books. And, that is especially true because the business books I do start, I don’t finish. Therefore, I will never be successful.”

The above is a) monumentally stupid, and also b) not actually true - of either finishing books, or business books being the “only” path to business success.

Case in point, Jon Acuff’s books, which I got so much value from, but also, could not put down.

I realised, as I turned page after page, that - hey! Maybe the problem wasn’t actually me! Maybe the problem was that most business books are as dull as dishwater with a personality deficit.

There are a couple of verbal clues that this unspoken belief wasn’t true - and was instead downright unhelpful.

First clue: the word “enough”.

I’ve ranted about the arbitrary nonsense that a word like “enough” heralds before, but I do think it bears repeating.

Just think of the sentences we use it in! “When I am thin/pretty/rich/nice/loved/successful/attractive enough…then I will be happy/content/can rest/can do that thing I really want to do/live out my dreams….”

Enough is a destination in constant motion, tantalisingly out of reach. And if you do want to arrive there, you’ve got to pin the bastard down with data. Decide what “enough” means, and stick to it.

Second clue: the presence of absolutes. An absolute is a world like “never”, or “always” or “only”.

Life is shades of grey. Sorry, black-and-white brigade, but we live in a world of nuance and context and gloriously rendered Technicolor™. It’s also much more fun over here. Just saying.

If you’re applying words like always, or never, you’re probably holding yourself (or others!) up to an impossible standard.

But the problem is that words like only and never and enough are subtle: oft-used and insidious. They creep into our perceptions and thought patterns. So, as the headline promised - what’s the one thing that I reckon we all need to start doing to grow (and keep growing) as humans?

It’s not sexy. It’s not even sparkly. But it is ridiculously powerful - and it is:

Measure your progress.

I told you! Not exciting. No chorus of angels here. No silver bullet. But, as my pal Jon Acuff says: “progress that isn’t measured doesn’t exist.”

Why does he say this? Because we are all far too ruddy good at dismissing the progress we do make! How easy is it for us to recall our failures, how hard it is for us to think about our successes.

And, worryingly, if we allow ourselves to believe that we make no progress, then we narrow our ideas of what we believe ourselves capable of.

We stop growing, we stop trying, we get content with doing the same-old, same-old, because that self-fulfilling prophecy proves us right. Suddenly, this is all we can do.

When you measure that progress, though, you start to gather evidence and data that tells the truth: no matter how incremental that progress might be, you’re still moving forward.

Or, to put it another way: no matter how slow you’re going, you’re still lapping everyone on the couch.

What a beautiful thing. Suddenly, one page is enough. An extra 0.3 miles on the run starts to feel like the win it is. Remember how small change adds up?​

Make your progress visible. I do a Friday Reflection, where I look back at the week and count my wins. What went well? What felt good? How can I improve for next time? I read these back, and I’m usually blown away at what Past Eloise accomplished. I bet you would be by your own progress, too, James.

I’ve got some sticky whiteboards that I use to track progress on big projects, like reports and whitepapers, so I can see how far I am from the starting line and how much closer I am to the finish.

I log my workouts (hello, 62.5kg back squat PB!) and I let all this data, all this info, help me see the reality that actually, no, Eloise, you haven’t peaked. You’ve got so much more to give.

There’s so much that you’re capable of, Reader. The best is genuinely yet to come, and it always* will be, as long as we keep rising despite falls and setbacks.

Mother Mary Francis said it brilliantly: “The more I do, the more I can do”, but I have an addendum:

The more you think you can do, the more you can do.

So do it. (Now log it somewhere and treat yourself! You deserve it.)

Rooting for you always, Reader.

Big love,

Eloise x

*Now, that's an absolute we can believe in.

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