One of the reasons I enjoy writing these daily emails?

The thought of one of my old English teachers stumbling on an email and looking aghast at how many classroom writing rules I’m breaking.

Do I trot out a bunch of fancy vocab in these emails?

Nope.

Do I use punctuation the right way?

Do I heck.

And do I structure my emails with well thought-out paragraphs?

Clearly not.  Some of my paragraphs are one word long!

Which prompts the question why.  Why am I not writing the way I was taught to write?

The answer is simple:

I want to write emails that people enjoy reading.

Sure, using proper syntax & grammar is nice and all. 

But I happen to believe that if I wrote these emails like a sixth former writing an English essay or like Emily Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights, people wouldn’t read them.

Which means I need to ignore and even actively defy most of what my earnest English teachers taught me.

This idea of resisting what we're taught at school goes way beyond writing.

For instance:

*** Schools reward students who do exactly what they’re told to do (arrive on time, stand quietly in line, do their homework etc).  My suggestion: don’t get too used to this.  The more you autopilot your life and do what you’re told to do, the harder it will become to tap into your inclinations and know what the right options & decisions are for you

*** Evaluation is everywhere at school  You get a mark on your recorder exam, you have trials for the netball team or you’re told your French accent needs improving.  But don’t get sucked into this culture of you and your work being evaluated.  It might start to lead to your own self-evaluation and the idea there’s something to fix, improve or change about you.  Spoiler alert: there’s not.  You’re whole and complete already

*** School might have you believe that it’s important to have all the answers.  But try to resist this belief – and the belief that most questions have “right” answers at all.  To my mind, being comfortable with the unknown is a much more useful asset vs having all the answers up your sleeve, ready & waiting to be unveiled

*** Don’t overweight your intelligence.  You might get a gold star from teacher, land a plush spot at a top uni or even end up working in a sexy investment bank earning enough money to hire Rylan to compère your 40^th birthday bash.  But if you want a rich life in every sense of the word (not just one where you’re patting yourself on the back for your smarts and your ever-increasing bank balance), the key is getting out of your head, not into it

It all comes down to this:

We get so used to doing & thinking in certain ways (especially when we’re younger and our brains are like sponges) that we can become wary of other ways of doing & thinking.  Or even lose touch with the fact that there are other ways of doing & thinking.

Some examples are very obvious.  Like writing.

Others are more nuanced.  So nuanced we may not even realise what’s happened.

In fact I’d wager that some people reading this email will scoff at the idea that most questions don't have a "right" answer or that your IQ can be a handicap.

Which, ironically, just proves my point.

But before we go too far off course, let me bring it back to the 4 points above by asking you this:

Do you have difficulty knowing what you want to do sometimes?

Do you give yourself a tough time more often than you’d like?

Do you actively avoid situations you’re unfamiliar with?

Or do you feel like you’ve spent most of your life studying, working and going all-in with your brain, yet you still feel stuck or like something’s missing?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions and you’d like that “yes” to become a “no”, then hit reply.

I have an offer for you that you might like.

That’s all for today.

Have a great weekend.

 - Tom