Happy Monday! ✌🏼☕️ Second week into 2024 & hopefully it’s off to a great start. Today I chat about the importance of prioritizing yourself & some learnings from one of my favourite books - Shoe Dog (A memoir from Nike’s founder Phil Knight).

So if you’re up for some motivation, this quick read is definitely for you, or if Nike would say if it were a publisher…🥁 🥁 🥁 - Just read it… haha.

💫Words of the Week 

Growing up & even more now in the age of social media, we’re all accustomed to expectations. The world & everyone around us expecting us to follow a specific path, to be something, and to be someone. It’s super hard to think through the fluff & noise and pinpoint: what do I want? who do I want to become?.

We have these expectations from our parents, our teachers, & people online telling us to follow this “direction in life” ; to do this or do that, or to just do it as Nike would say (Yeah the jokes done now). But seriously, it’s okay to not pinpoint what you want, or what you want to do. The most important part is focusing on what makes your soul feel at peace ⭐️.

Focus on what you aspire to do, on what/who makes you happy, on what keeps you at ease. Key emphasis on you. Once you prioritize yourself in whatever way that might be (Goals, health, career-path, relationships, etc), is when everything should hope to make sense and the fluff starts to become clear.

So as the image says, the world does keep spinning and so should you - every day is a new day. Life really is too short to spend years and years living up to the expectations of others when you could be living up to the expectations of yourself.

💆🏻‍♂️ Some learnings & thoughts

Nike. Nike. Nike. I read the Shoe Dog by Phil Knight last summer and I was so heavily inspired that I got a laurel wreath tattoo to symbolize victory. Seriously.

It’s one of my favourite books and Phil Knight, who is the vision & creator behind Nike talks about his journey of triumphs & struggles behind what it took to build now a massive empire of a brand. If I can share one key learning from the book, I’d say: the hardest part is always starting.

Although quite corny, the just do it mentality is often crucial to chasing what you want to do. In a world of endless uncertainty & what if’s, the only way to know whether something will work is to just go and try it. More times or not, the hardest part about life decisions and doing things for yourself is taking the action and first few steps.

Knight, in his memoir, fresh out of business school and living with his parents, simply borrowed fifty dollars from his father and started selling shoes from the back of his car. He like many of us today, including myself, was unsure about what he wanted in life. The only difference was he knew he loved running. He loved athletes and sports. And he focused solely on that - the things that gave him purpose and peace.

💭 Question for you

What are things that you love to do and keep you at peace?

Think of what you do for fun, the things that get you excited. Any hobbies you wish you could spend more time doing? Is there a field of work that satisfies an internal purpose you have?

I think once we understand what motivates us and what keeps ourselves at peace is when we start to get closer to what we truly want in life. Not saying I’m a guru or anything - I simply don’t know my as well, but some good food for thought!💭

Till next Monday, Dave ✌🏽🌎