+1 #784: Silent Gifts

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. In our last plus one, we talked about Ferrari optimizing pit stops and celebrated the people in our cruise while committing to showing up as powerfully as we can for all the people whose crews we're blessed to be in. I referenced one of our plus ones on Remembering who dug the Wells. Check out a link to that. I was also going to reference a plus one on what Patricia Ryan Madsen calls silent gifts. Then I realized we didn't have one on that brilliant idea yet. So here we are. Patricia Ryan Madsen is one of the world's preeminent improv teachers. She taught at Stanford Forever and wrote a great book called Improv Wisdom. Among many other awesome insights, she shares this Are you sitting right now as you read? If so, then a chair, sofa, or bed is supporting you. You probably have not paid much attention to this fact until I mentioned it. Nor have you been thinking that someone designed the chair, sofa, bed, etc. Someone manufactured it. Someone brought it to where you were sitting. Someone paid for it. Perhaps it was you. It is likely that many people, mostly unknown to you, had a hand in the chair's creation and journey to where it is now. It is fair to say that you are receiving a service from a chair and from all those people whose efforts were part of the story. Whether you notice it or not, whether you think it or not, the chair offers you support and comfort. The chair is a silent gift. Silent gifts. They're all around us. All day, every day. Today's +1. Are you sitting right now? If so, then a chair or sofa or bed is supporting you. Take a moment to think of all the anonymous people who gave so much of their life force to create all the amazing things in our lives that are so easy to take for granted. Let's send a silent blessing to all the people who have given us all those silent gifts all day, every day, or at least once today.