Is your August full of joyful intercourse?
E90: Your presence changes everything
Welcome to the 440 of you now receiving Effortless Thursdays.
I started this newsletter in 2019, before it was called Effortless Thursdays, with just a few emails over six months before fizzling out.
But thanks to Write of Passage, which is sadly closing down, I’ve been writing to you weekly since October 2022. Write of Passage changed my life, and David Perell and the entire team can be really proud.
It’s easy to think of success only in terms of reaching the pinnacle: winning gold at the Olympics, climbing to the top of a mountain, or IPO-ing your startup.
But there’s so much along the way that high achievers often miss – the kind of success that leaves you feeling fulfilled, rather than wondering where all your joy went.
I’m grateful to each of you for joining me today.
How’s your August going?
It’s that time of year when everything seems to happen at once, isn’t it? You’re juggling more than you planned.
Mine’s been quite a ride, from watching the Olympics to gearing up for this weekend’s Edinburgh Dash.
Have you heard of the Edinburgh Dash before? It’s the only solution available when you can’t miss an Edinburgh Fringe Festival show, so you book tickets for a venue knowing that you’ll have to dash - or literally run - from that venue to the next in order to make it on time.
Besides the Edinburgh Dash, a few themes have been emerging in the coaching sessions with my clients.
One theme is overthinking yourself into a worry-fest — getting so tangled up in “what ifs” that you’re stuck.👇
Another is the challenge of how to grow a team. Moving from being the go-to expert to managing others can feel like climbing a steep mountain. It’s daunting, and getting the team dynamics right adds another layer of pressure.
Or maybe you’re feeling the DEEP frustration of clients messing with your holiday plans? We’ve all been there:
You plan ahead, chase your client for weeks, and just when you think you can relax, they come back with urgent requests that throw your plans out the window.
One of the things I love most about my clients is what I learn from them. This week, one shared a poignant reminder of the importance of letting go. Take a listen to what she shared with me.
In her words:
“Eric - sharing this poem which a friend shared with me a couple of years ago. It really resonates with me and I listen to it a lot - I think it is very much in the spirit of your remote control permission button idea. It’s one to listen to full attention/with headphones on.”
And if you’re interested in the remote control idea, it’s here 👇
Joyful intercourse
You might be wondering what ties these situations together?
Well, they all involve challenging “intercourse”.
Not the kind you might first think of, but the kind that’s about:
"communication or dealings between individuals or groups."
Sometimes this intercourse is with yourself—when your mind just won’t stop spinning.
Other times, it’s with others, like those clients who seem to have a knack for pressing all your stress buttons.
How we handle these challenging situations says a lot about who we are.
It’s not just about having the right answers or strategies — it’s about how you show up, your presence, and your way of being in those moments.
This week, the idea of how we show up reminded me of Kamala Harris. In her presidential campaign so far, she’s captivated her DNC base not just with what she says, but how she says it — her ‘way of being’.
It’s the energy she brings, how she shows up with joy, hope, and a belief that:
‘It’s possible’.
Her presence is like music that sets the mood, even when other, more jarring tunes try to drown it out:
the ‘playing small’ number
the belittling ditty
the name-calling refrain
the racist fugue
the misogynist coda
It takes courage and character to keep playing your music in spite of it all.
It takes courage and character to deal with challenging intercourse – perhaps even to turn it into an intercourse that’s joyful.
The point I’m making is that the solution to many of the challenges we all face –including my clients – isn’t about knowing more or learning something new.
It’s about how we and they show up.
It’s about our and their presence and how we and they engage with the situations at hand — whether that’s with ourselves, with themselves or with others.
👉 Over to you!
How is your August shaping up?
What’s one thing you can do to infuse some joyful intercourse into your life?
ps If you’re an entrepreneur, a lawyer or another high-flying professional - who’s looking to pause when you most need it to live and lead in a way that feels effortless, get in touch and let’s have a conversation.
That’s it for this week!
As always, I appreciate your feedback on Effortless Thursdays.
If Effortless Thursdays resonated with you, I'd be grateful if you told just one friend to subscribe. They and you can always unsubscribe using the link below.
What did you think of this week’s edition? How can I make it more useful to you? Let me know in the comments, by email, on X or on LinkedIn.
To your health, joy, and success—one step at a time!
Eric
I really like your insight into the "energy" of Kamala Harris. It hadn't occurred to my conscious mind that the much more joyful demeanor than we've seen in a long time in a candidate is actually shifting the an entire national mood, at least for a very large segment of the population.