Spot the stork

Sometimes it's hard to see what's right in front of you.

So very well are the good things hidden. When you finally see it, try not to forget it's there. If you take your eyes off it for one second, don't lose it again. When you delight in its discovery, be wary of getting too close because sometimes it will just fly away before you can grasp it at its fullest. And, if it does fly away, then just be content with being grateful that you saw it once, and look forward to finding the other beautiful storks that the world is hiding.

Treat yourself to a "we" moment

The "you" moments (cf: last post) need some "we" moments.

Don't forget about your family. Don't forget about your friends. Don't forget the people who helped you and help you and might help you. Inherently, even acts we do for other people actually do have a personal gain aspect: even in doing something for a loved one, we find comfort and happiness in their happiness. This is perhaps the reason why we are compelled to help them out in the first place. Economically speaking, there is no real incentive to go beyond that, except for the fact that friendship (or love or whatever the nature of the relationship) is not usually unconditional. So being regularly inconsiderate -- be it forgetting to call or not keeping in touch or being disrespectful or never compromising -- could potentially cut the relationship short. After all, economically speaking, in that scenario, the incentive to maintain the friendship would be lost to the other person.

Many studies claim that people with good friendship live longer or are "happier". For example, the documentary "Happy" explores the lives of a variety of people whose happiness depends more on these interactions than on material goods like money. I think both aspects are important, for different reasons, to an well-lived life. And just like we put effort into maintaining our job security, we must put effort into maintaining our relationships. Relationships are mutual. Sometimes we have to have to make decisions that are economically disadvantageous for us in the short term, but give us a different vantage point that allows us reach a better part of the "friendship-space" later on. Economically speaking :-)

[A different perspective on "lose the battle, win the war", optimization techniques that decrease the objective function at a local step to boost it later, and many other theories of life].

Treat yourself to a "you" moment

Don't forget to focus on you and only you.

It's easy to get wrapped up in being busy, in taking care of others, in doing this and that and going here and there, in pushing yourself to the limit, in staying up late to finish one last thing, in getting up early to challenge your body with a run even though you're too tired, in putting someone else before oneself...

But because it's easy doesn't mean it's always right. The body knows how to signal stress so pay attention to unusual changes and rest assured (pun intended) that you can take a break now to be more efficient tomorrow.