Friends of Dave #359: 🥓 the weirdest letter 🏴☠️
The hardest thing is following your own advice.
Friends, I have been doing this newsletter consistently, without missing a beat, for almost 7 years now.
Over that period of time, as for most people, situations have come up that could have caused an interruption. Things like weddings, funerals, illness, holidays, graduations, power outages, moving, COVID, family drama, vacations, work, lack of work….you name it, I’ve managed to deal with it to keep the FoD streak unbroken.
One thing I have come to understand about putting thoughts out there on a week-in-and-week out basis for all of this time, particularly in the style with which I write this preamble — to a certain extent, you are exposed.
I can choose to say things, pontificate, make observations, get on my soap box or even take a moral high ground, and, by choosing the right words, tone and sentence structure, can make it seem like I have all of the answers.
Not surprisingly, I don’t.
And it is easy to see this when all of my BS is in black and white, seemingly shared publicly with you and who ever stumbles upon this, forever, on the internet.
What I continue to be reminded, especially with how things transpired this week, is that sometimes one of the hardest things to do is follow your own advice.
I talk about things in this space I think about, in part, to help me (and hopefully, you too) sort things out — and to keep me (and hopefully, you too) honest and accountable.
Aside from the occasional humorous rant or story, I like to use this space to delve into provocative, real world topics like empathy or teamwork or communication or “staying in your lane” or leadership or alignment and I can tell you that I truly believe in what I am saying when I write the words I put here. For the most part, I think I do a pretty good job living by what I say.
But, as we all know, it ain’t easy to always walk the talk, especially when you have a lot going on all at once. And in my case, my talk is out there.
So when I catch myself maybe saying or doing something in practice contrary to what I know I have written about publicly here before, I can honestly feel like a fraud — and I beat myself up a little.
Have you ever had that happen to you? Have you ever done something when you knew better but couldn’t help yourself? Have you heard a negative voice in your head afterward?
Mind you, in the big scheme of things it was not catastrophic or anything. This week, it was offering advice and sharing my opinion on something with someone at a time when they really didn’t need it, ask for it nor did I ask for permission to give it to them.
I honestly meant well. I wanted to help. Like I admitted just a few weeks ago, I’m a fixer, a modern day Vanilla Ice. I thought I was doing the right thing by sharing how a problem looked from my perspective. Yo, I’ll solve it….
What I was really doing was thinking about what was best for me and my feelings at the time — NOT what was best for the other person. I wanted to feel like I was helping. At best, when I think about it in retrospect, the other person expected me to maybe listen, but really they just wanted me to stay out of it.
The funny thing is I wrote about this same thing happening to me almost exactly a year ago » HERE« where I was on the receiving end of someone else coming on strong and giving me unsolicited advice when I didn’t ask for it. I remember how put out I felt at the time, so I made a point to write about it to remind me and keep me honest.
And yet, this week I couldn’t help myself and I ignored my own, well placed, advice.
But I guess that is what makes us human…..we are not perfect and we do not have all of the answers all of the time….even those of us who write over 350 weekly newsletters. We are all a work in progress and trying our best.
And in those times when we don’t take our own advice or maybe fall short of expectations, we need to remind ourselves there is no need for the negative self-talk. We are ALL a work in progress.
The best we can do is hope that the person on the receiving end will see this too. Hopefully they can be patient with those trying to help them, even when they may not want the help. Perhaps during a less hectic time they will realize it all was coming from a good place. Trust they will be able to remember when maybe they reacted in a similar way (even gave unsolicited input), with good intentions, toward someone else.
Let’s face it — giving advice to other people is easy. It doesn’t take any special license, training or title to do it. But I continue to be reminded that no matter how hard we try, sometimes the hardest thing to do is holding yourself accountable to that same advice yourself.
XOXO
Dave
And now a few things to make you smarter…
How do the world’s richest people invest their money?
This graphic shows how ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWIs)—people with a net worth of $30 million or more including their primary residence—allocate their wealth based on data from Knight Frank’s 2023 Wealth Report.
You can learn an awful lot about people, culture, and politics by studying R.
The crispy R is a phenomenon that some linguists had noticed, but which had gone largely unstudied—until the phrase “crispy R” was bestowed on it by Trixie Mattel, the winner of the third season of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, and later popularized via TikTok.
Once upon a time, if you were looking to drop a hundred bucks or more on a bottle of wine, you could be fairly certain what to expect. Burgundy, Bordeaux or Napa? Or perhaps a nice bottle of Champagne? For years these have been synonymous with luxury. This article offers five bottles that represent what's really coveted right now.
Whoever are the parents of the boy they call “Pigpen”? Expect a visit from CPS.
Over 50 years in the making, this hilarious, to the point, open letter to the neighborhood from Charlie Brown’s mom is exactly the post Halloween, pre-Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday post you need to read this weekend.
And if I am being completely honest, I am a little jealous I didn’t write this myself….