Your Best Qualities are Invisible
Ex: strength, pain tolerance, and capacity to love
Greetings friend, It's me, your friend Jen. I'm writing to you from a park bench.
I attempted to make a new friend this afternoon. It flopped.
Goofy started playing with a dog and I started talking to the dog's human. I realized, quickly, how much her and I had in common. It made me so excited that I blurted out:
“Wow, we should be best friends!”
What I really meant was: I'm really excited to meet another human who I can connect with on so many different topics.
But my enthusiasm might have been too much, too soon.
It made me think that one skill we all could have benefited from, early in life, was learning how to make friends. More importantly, how to meet someone new and simply say:
“Hey, you're awesome. Let's exchange numbers and meet for coffee.”
Sure, that's easy to type. But in the moment, your mouth fills with wet cement.
And just like that, another potential best friend, waves goodbye, and walks out of your life.
In this issue: The invisible parts of all of us, a note on figuring out your personal style, and a bunch of little pick me ups.
Why you’re getting this: I'm Jen Glantz and this is the Pick-Me-Up newsletter. I've been sending it every Monday, for 8-years, to thousands of awesome humans, just like you. Thanks for letting this email live in in your inbox. It truly makes my heart explode with joy.
THE PICK-ME-UP
Something that less than 1% of people in my life know about me is….
That when I was in high-school, I was a kickboxer.
I was made fun of and bullied in middle school, so when I went off to high school, at a brand new school, where nobody knew me, I wanted to be the strongest version of myself.
My parents let me take a self-defense class and I loved it so much that they hired the teacher to give me 1:1 kickboxing lessons 2x a week.
Even though nobody at school knew that I was doing this and I never had to use the kicks, punches, and block routines that I learned in my training, It helped me have confidence…for the first time in my life.
So much of what we are made of is invisible.
Our personality is what spews out of our pores on a daily basis.
But it's what we have stored in our backbones that really makes us who we are.
We only see how strong we can be during the toughest of times.
We only understand how much pain our heart can handle right before we think we've stomached enough.
We only know realize our enormous capacity for love once we've lost that person, place, or thing.
On Sunday, I took a boxing class for the first time in years. I put on the gloves and hit the bag over and over and over again.
I felt strong, psychically, in a way I forgot I could feel.
And it made me remember how so much of what we're made of hibernates for most of our lives. When it crawls out of its cave, we doubt it. we deny it. We swear it's not a part of us.
But it is.
It's years worth of learning how to be strong, and to move past pain, and to love as if love is the only thing we're meant to do.
So much of you is hiding. But please know, my friend, it will show up when you need it the most.
All my love,
Jen Glantz
Random Pick-Me-Ups
Things to Read or Listen to When You Need a Pick-Me-Up
How to (sort of) make new friends
Next on my list of books to devour
Advice a business coach gave me on being a better entrepreneur
Quick read on the best and worst places to live
Advice on finding “hidden jobs”
LOVED this article on publishing a book
The Pick-Me-Up Show on Amazon LIVE!
One of my personal challenges this month was to do more live video content. I've auditioned for QVC TWICE! I didn't get the job either time. So I figured why not create my own opportunity and do my own LIVE shopping show. Every Friday, at 10:30am EST, I go live on Amazon with Jen Glantz's Pick-me-Ups. You can view past lives here. Join me this Friday for another Amazon LIVE!