A Game for People Pleasers and a Word from SZA

The Portal: Issue 057

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Happy Wednesday to anyone with braids in their hair, people with double 7’s in their phone number, and all the hot girls who are simply! doing! their! best!

💭 ONE THING WE’RE THINKING ABOUT

Every Monday, MJ posts a Bare Minimum Monday carousel to Instagram, which also includes memes of the phrase “doing my best” — which has grown to be more popular than the BMM ones themselves.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, we live in a culture that says you need to push yourself to a breaking point in order to feel like you’ve done enough.

But the big joke of it all is that “enough” is a something that you have to discover for yourself.

You realizing you can stop chasing that unreasonable standard

It’s something that probably looks different for you day to day, and definitely looks different from the person sitting next to you.

Claiming the label of “doing my best” feels good because it acknowledges that sure, maybe my life feels like a mess, maybe I’m not where I want to be, but I’ll be damned if I’m not doing my very best.

We could consider ourselves lucky when there is a clear cut standard of enough-ness, like beating your friend by 1 point in Mario Kart — clearly you did enough to succeed. But ultimately, most of life is not that cut and dry.

“Enough” is a sliding scale every day, and here we are all constantly measure it against what everyone else is doing.

So remember: On the days when you only have 80% capacity to give, and you perform at 80% — you gave 100%. You did your best.

We have as much difficulty remembering this as everyone else, so we made some wearable reminders that we’re thrilled to share with you this week —

☁️ THE DOING MY BEST COLLECTION ☁️

Life is hard. You’re doing your best. Snag yourself a cozy uniform for the days when “real clothes” aren’t going to happen.

As a thank you for being a bestie on our email list, use code DOINGMYBEST for 10% off our shop until midnight on Sunday the 19th!

👀 ONE THING WE’RE OBSESSED WITH

A little game to help recovering people pleasers feel confident when confrontation is necessary 😅

The Dime Game is a therapy tool to help people figure out how to ask for something or say no to a request — all you have to do is answer 10 yes or no questions about the interpersonal situation.

If you’re feeling a little nervous requesting something from your boss, asking that someone pay you back, or turning down an invitation, the Dime Game can help you feel validated in your approach to the interaction.

Bonus Tip: After you’ve played the Dime Game to help dictate how firmly to engage, use ChatGPT to help you draft what you’ll actually say!

🎧 ONE THING WE’RE LISTENING TO

We’re sending you a two-part podcast this week that was honestly… mind boggling.

In Part One of Search Engine’s “Why’d I take speed for 20 years?” you’ll get the history of amphetamines and how they ended up as ADHD medication (the story is… f*cking wild). You’ll also get a heartfelt reflection from the host on his own confusing a relationship with ADHD meds.

In Part Two, the host interviews a woman with a childhood brain injury and a later-in-life ADHD diagnosis with a beautiful conversation about how her perception of herself began to change with her diagnosis.

Based on the feedback from the Harper’s Bazaar article we shared a few weeks ago, we think you’re gonna like this series.

🤔 ONE QUESTION FOR YOU

⭐️ ONE LAST THING

Okay, we’re about to send you to TikTok for this video, but just remember that if you’re prone to scrolling once you’re there (who isn’t?), remember that you can come back here right after if TikTok isn’t where you want to spend your time.

Why you should do everything wrong:

@wallstreetjournal

“Doing everything wrong is the key to innovation,” says SZA at WSJ. Magazine’s 2023 Innovator Awards. #sza #music #innovation #wsjinnovato... See more

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