2,000 Mornings with Thoreau
I have one daily practice that hasn’t changed for close to six years: every day, I drink my morning coffee from this mug. I bought the mug for $15.00 in 2014 right around the same time I got the idea to start my business, Asana Consulting. In its shiny new days, this mug’s words (paraphrased from Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 Walden) were a tangible source of motivation on my daunting new career path: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.” As someone who was stepping out of a successful 25-year career and into a blank slate of self-employment and entrepreneurism, I needed all the sources of encouragement and motivation I could get. All the better if it came with fourteen ounces of dark coffee.
Thoreau’s words were good company in those early days, but they also made me rumble with my fears and doubts: Could I be brave enough, go confidently enough, stay focused enough to turn an imagined professional life into my new professional reality? Could I really align my work life with my dreams? Did I trust myself? Was I making a good decision? Would I succeed? Did I have what it took? Could I experience all this fear and doubt and still keep moving forward? Did Thoreau have any idea what he was actually talking about?
I said “Yes” to all of it (to nobody, I might add, unless it was to my dog, because in the early days of no clients and no colleagues, that’s how it was: me, my mug, and my dog). I said Yes over and over and over. Yes because I had a clear vision of the life I imagined, and because I wanted it. Yes because I didn’t like the alternatives. Yes because a tiny part of me believed in the untapped power of the mind to make things happen. Yes because what the mug said was exactly what I needed to hear. Yes because people I trusted and admired told me they believed in me and to keep going. Yes because there was an exclamation point!
Some days I read the black words on the white ceramic as wisdom and truth, starting the day with a fist-bump “Yes!” to the Universe. Some days (and weeks and months), saying yes to Mr. Thoreau’s mantra felt ludicrous, impossible, ridiculous, and bananas. I wanted to send a note through time to him with a few thoughts of my own. But every morning, I kept picking up that mug when it was time to pour my coffee and trusting his words and saying Yes, because if…
