Ciao Reader,

We made it home from our trip to Maine & New Hampshire on Thursday night, right on the cusp of the global IT outage. Allegiant Airlines went old-school with handwritten boarding passes and we were asleep in our own beds by 1:30am. Hooray for making it work!

Thanks to the time away, my creativity is back in full force! It feels so good to have my brain churning out interesting ideas again!

Why the shift?

I credit a lot of it to play. I rode mountain coasters and gondolas. I swam in lakes (something I never do in my home state of Florida 🐊) and hiked mountains. I ate ice cream almost every day.

One evening, my family played a conversation starter game. I love these types of games because they spark the best discussions. But they also reveal some things about us we might not be completely comfortable with…

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The Porch Swing

Sit back & relax. Take a moment to reflect on where you are today.

Early in the game, we came across a question that stumped everyone (all the adults, at least):

What are 3 positive words that describe you?

We could quickly come up with 3 positive words to describe one another. But when it came to listing our own positive attributes, we had to think about it for far too long.

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The Recipe

Gather the essential ingredients. Enjoy these insights & lessons for success.

Based on my research, there 5 reasons why identifying our positive traits can feel surprisingly difficult:

1. Cultural & social conditioning: We’re usually taught to be humble and avoid bragging about our accomplishments or qualities.
2. Fear of judgment: We worry that we might come across as arrogant or self-centered—or even worse, wrong.
3. Negative bias: Our brains are wired to focus more on negative experiences and traits than positive ones.
4. Perfectionism: We tend to set incredibly high standards for ourselves. We feel that we haven’t achieved enough to be worthy.
5. Lack of practice: We’re not used to thinking about ourselves in a positive light. Like any skill, self-affirmation requires practice.

I can relate to just about all of those—and I bet you can too!

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The Path

Review your roadmap. It's time to prepare for action.

After some thought, I came up with my list:

1| Adventurous

2 | Happy

3 | Kind

I'm pleased with my list and I've thought about it frequently in the days since.

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So now it’s your turn, Reader.

Hit reply and share 3 positive words that describe you.

I’ll use my renewed creativity to whip up a beautiful graphic for you, so you'll have a reminder of just how awesome you are.

It will look something like this:

Even better? Send me 3 positive attributes of someone you love and I’ll create one for them too!

And that’s it for this week!

Don’t forget to hit reply and tell me those 3 positive words that describe you (+ someone you love)!

I can’t wait to create that graphic for you!

Ciao,

Sara