Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Book of the Week: "The Light We Carry" by Michelle Obama

 Former First Lady Michelle Obama has certainly been an icon and an inspiration to many people out there - particularly women. She proved that as a woman you could have it all. You could have a killer career, be a powerful career woman and a mother all at the same time. But it came with a cost and there were many bumps in the road as she described in her first book "Becoming." 

Her second book, penned out of the pandemic, Michelle described life as she attempted to navigate one of the worst international global health crisis in the last 100 years. There was so much uncertainty and with that lack of knowing what the future held for her and rest of the Obamas came a new diagnosis of low-grade depression (along with a new passion for knitting). 

In times of uncertainty and you don't know what is right in front of you, it is paramount to slow things down and take things one step a time. It is not much different than the sport of golf. 

Golf is a counterintuitive sport. If you want to hit the ball in the air, then you have to hit down on the ball. And it goes for all aspects of the game. 

If you find yourself on the golf course and you're hacking away, hitting low rollers and making little progress, the solution to that is slow things down. It's certainly frustrating when you're playing poorly, you want to get to your next shot quickly and hit fast hoping that the next shot will be one that turns everything around. 

Well that's the wrong approach. Increasing your speed is only going to make your game spiral further south. Now it's hard to slow down. You don't want to slow down the pace or hold up the group behind you, but that is precisely what you need to do. And if you do that you will find you will be playing faster (and better). 

"Slow down to move fast."

An that is exactly what one needs to do in times of uncertainty. It's what the Commonwealth of Massachusetts did when re-opening the state. It's what brought athletics back to many colleges that put sports on the back-burner for a year. Slowing yourself down, but not stopping and taking one small step at a time. May I remind you of the phrase "little drops make big drops?"