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- The Connection Newsletter 56 - Superpowers
The Connection Newsletter 56 - Superpowers
The Connection Newsletter 56 - Superpowers
Hello!
This is edition #56 of
The Connection
, the weekly email I send family, friends, and future friends (hello!) Glad you're here.
Question to you:
Was there a moment in your life when you felt like you “made it?”
Granted, the idea of “making it” is totally subjective. It could be personal (married your partner) financial (bought your home), professional (landed your dream job), or any combination of the above.
Here’s an example (and why I ask):
Rachel Hollis has a specific “I made it” moment (if you don’t know who Hollis is, she wrote a book called
Girl, Wash Your Face
and it’s everywhere). In the book, she talks about her desire to buy a Louis Vuitton Speedy bag - which cost $1,000.
“I wanted it because it represented the kind of woman I dreamed of becoming,” she wrote.
The day Hollis got her first $10,000 consulting check, she drove to the Louis Vuitton store at the Beverly Center and walked out with her bag (
).
To Rachel Hollis, the bag represented the moment that she “made it. Rachel Hollis became the the Rachel Hollis she always wanted to be.
Putting aside whatever judgement one may have about $1,000 handbags, I thought identifying your “I made it” moment was a powerful exercise. It’s a reminder of how far you’ve come and how much work you’ve put into building your life today.
Fortunately, I have a “I made it” moment nearly every day. Except instead of costing $1,000, it only costs $3.50:
Every time I buy a cup of coffee - I swear, it feels like I made it.
I grew up drinking Folgers “coffee crystals” from a plastic tub. Where do I get off spending $3.50 on a coffee that I can make at home for 15 cents?
It’s the same feeling when I buy clothes these days. I was the king of the sales rack. Jeans needed to be 60% off to fall into my consideration set. Today, I have the audacity to spend 5-10x more because I can’t be bothered to shop around. It’s difficult to even fathom the luxury.
Maybe this means I have to dream bigger. Or that I’m a #basic AF 33-year-old and this is as good as it gets. I’ll never reach that level where I’m dropping a stack on a handbag, watch, or sweater.
But in a world where you’re only one Google search away from being re-targeted with ads reminding you what you
need
, it feels like a goddamn superpower to be grateful for what you got.
I would love to hear: Is there a moment where you felt like you made it?
Make sure to hit "Display Images" above to see puppy pics.
About People 🦸♀️🦹🏽♂️
. She also has 9 children and by her own admission, a wicked shopping habit (“Put me in a hardware store and I'll come out with arms full of bags”). To curb the vice she resorts to - you guessed it - work.
Favorite quote:
"There are no miracles. There is only discipline."
---
There are many Oprah profiles.
from THR you get a sense for two things:
1. Her ability to read the tea leaves in today’s media landscape, and that the message has to shape itself to the medium.
“Apple exposes you to a whole lot more people. The thing that I'm really, really excited about — as I said that day — is creating the world's largest book club. And if I want to do a film or a doc series … The best place for [my docuseries on mental health] is not on OWN. Because you don't have the bandwidth and you have to create a completely different audience and then you have to have marketing.”
2. The chip on her shoulder.
I remember working in Baltimore [in the mid-1970s] and being in a position where I was doing the exact same job as my [male] co-host and going into my boss, saying, "Gee, I'd like to get a raise," and them saying, "But why? Do you own your home? Do you have children? He has children. Do you have college payments? Do you have a mortgage?" I just tucked my tail between my legs and said, "Thank you very much." And that's when I decided I'm not going to become an institutional anchor. I'm going to leave here because they cannot see my value. But I didn't blame myself for one minute. I just thought, "Oh, you don't get it."
---
I became a
fan after Moulin Rouge, but Dogville absolutely
floored
me (
).
Says Per Saari, her producing partner: “She’s as analytical as she is creative. She’s able to sit down and look at a budget and work that as magically as she’s able to sit down with a script and arc a character. Her superpower is her brain. And she never forgets anything, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
---
Apparently
. Like, really loves them. All 28 minutes of this interview were utterly fascinating.
---
About Work 💻
James Clear talks about
- your life is made up of four quadrants, or burners on a stove: family, friends, health and work. To be successful you need to shut off two burners, and to be
really
successful, you need to shut off three.
Clear examines different perspectives of the Four Burners Theory, but ultimately, life is about trade-offs. You just won’t know if the trade-off was worth it until it’s irreversible. For example, perhaps you focus solely on your career, thinking there’s plenty of time to rekindle relationships with family and friends once you hit the C-suite… only to realize that people aren’t burners at all, and relationships don’t come with on/off switches.
---
I’m not sure how I feel about
. This piece about a journalist’s career trajectory (or lack thereof) is brimming with equal parts excellent writing, self-loathing, and depression. It sounds like he’s lost. On one hand, I empathize. On the other hand, from his tone it’s easy to understand why he might be a tough hire.
---
If you’re
, there are real gems here - highly relevant as Reforge is on the cusp of doubling our team. I love the idea “visiting grants” and “random coffee chats” to build deeper relationships between teammates.
---
Accordingly to Glassdoor, the
.
Call me old-fashioned, but I think there’s merit in working for free while grinding out an existence on peanut butter sandwiches washed down with a glass of parental disappointment that builds resilience. Because at some point, life is gonna punch you in the face, and you just have to learn how to take a punch.
---
About Food 🍔
The western diet of burgers, fries, and the like has
.
---
It’s not just Cokes and Doritos that are making American households sick, stressed, and chaotic. The stumbling blocks these women encounter hour by hour make it clear that our food crisis is deeply intertwined with related crises, including income inequality, a fragile safety net, inadequate public transportation, and the scarcity of affordable housing.
---
Random 🎰
Confession: Ben Mezrich books are my crack. He has a new one coming out
. Sure, he has the bad habit of just making shit up in the absence of facts, but it’s hard to deny he has a knack for writing fast-moving narratives.
---
A interesting glimpse
: to prepare for his epic Napoleon film, Stanley Kubrick read hundreds of books, gathered 15,000 location scouting photos, 17,000 slides of Napoleonic imagery. He arranged to borrow 40,000 Romanian infantry and 10,000 cavalry for the battle scenes.
Then Sergei Bondarchuk’s
Waterloo
was released and Kubrick’s film was never made. (H/t Andrew)
---
Five tips to raise a kid that’s strong but not a bully.
:
Talk about death
Don’t complain about physical work
Don’t complain about work work
Exercise
---
A history of the rise and decline of the
.
“Employees used to be very skilled,” one says. “When you came to Apple, you could walk in and talk to someone who happens to be a musician or videographer on the side, really knowledgeable. They hire really nice people now, but they are much less technical.”
Thanks for reading!
Last thing: Is there anything I can help you with?
If there's any way I can help out, please let me know. Or if we just haven't chatted in a while, I'd love to hear from you. Just reply directly to this email.
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