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The moment you get engaged, everyone tells you the same thing.
Enjoy it.
This is the best time of your life.
Cherish every moment of the journey.
I can tell you for FREE that this is true for around three weeks and then after that point these people are lying to you.
Not for any reason, they’ve just forgotten what it actually feels like to stand in your kitchen fourteen months before your wedding with a notebook, a laptop, a colour-coded spreadsheet your wife has already filled in more than you have, and a slowly dawning awareness that you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing.
The venue.
The catering.
The flowers.
The photographer.
The invitations.
The seating plan, which, naturally if you’ve never done one, is essentially a game of chess where half the pieces haven’t spoken to each other since 2019 and absolutely nobody will tell you why.
The cake.
The music.
The suit that needs to be ordered six months in advance apparently.
The first dance song you’ve been arguing about casually since the second week of your relationship and are now suddenly required to actually decide on pain of it being too late.
All of it, arriving at once, staring back at you from a spreadsheet.
I say this as someone who has spent years studying the nervous system for a living.
Even I was not immune, not even slightly.
A few months back one of my favourite Instagram follows, Drake Davis recommended a book called Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott.
I nodded along like I do to most Instagram reels I watch like I was going to read it immediately and then obviously didn’t think about it again for a few months.
Until I remembered I was going on my honeymoon this week and I would finally have the time to start reading again.
I read the whole thing in two days on a sun lounger.
A sensational book.
However, somewhere around the second chapter I had to put it down and stare at the into the abyss for a minute because something landed so clearly I needed a moment with it.
The book is ostensibly about writing.
It’s actually about how to do anything that feels too big to start.
And the title says everything, it comes from a story about Lamott’s brother, ten years old, sitting at the kitchen table completely frozen in front of a school report on birds he’d left until the last minute.
Surrounded by books, overwhelmed, no idea where to begin.
Their father sat down next to him, looked at the whole chaotic pile, and said:
Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.
I read that and thought, that is exactly, precisely, to the letter what we did for fourteen months without ever knowing that’s what we were doing.
Because here’s the honest truth about wedding planning.
It looks from the outside like one big project.
My friends, it is not one big project.
It is approximately forty-seven medium-sized projects that all feel equally urgent, none of which can be properly started until you’ve done the one before it, and each of which carries enough financial and emotional weight that leaving any of them too long starts to feel genuinely dangerous to your health and your relationship simultaneously.
You cannot do all forty-seven at once.
I cannot stress this enough.
We tried, briefly, on a Sunday evening in month two with a bottle of wine and entirely too much ambition, and nothing was resolved.
Everything felt worse.
The spreadsheet had seventeen new tabs by the end of it.
What actually worked, what got us from that chaotic Sunday in month two to standing at the altar on the best day of my life, was doing one thing.
Finishing it.
Then looking up and doing the next one.
We booked the venue.
Then we stopped and had a normal evening like people who weren’t planning a wedding.
Then we found a caterer.
Then we did the invitations.
Then the flowers.
Then the suit, which I ordered slightly later than the recommended window and which the tailor made very clear was not ideal, but which arrived in time, and which I will not be apologising for.
Bird by bird.
Forty-seven birds.
Fourteen months.
And then it was done and it was perfect and I genuinely couldn’t explain how we got there except that we just kept picking up the next bird.
And the fact my wife is a rockstar in a crisis.
I’ve been thinking since finishing the book about how many things in ordinary life are just wedding planning with different consequences.
Starting a business.
Bird by bird.
You don’t build the whole thing on day one.
You register the name, and then you stop, and then you build the website, and then you find the first customer, and then the next one.
I didn’t build BreathingByEd.
I wrote one newsletter, for probably about twelve people, and then I wrote the next one.
189 Sundays later here we are.
Getting fit.
Bird by bird.
You don’t get fit.
You go to the gym on Monday. That’s it.
That’s the whole task for Monday. Tuesday doesn’t exist yet.
Having the difficult conversation you’ve been putting off for three months.
Bird by bird.
You don’t have the whole conversation.
You send the message asking if they’re free to talk.
That’s the first bird.
Do that one.
The rest will reveal itself once you’ve actually started.
The reason we don’t do any of these things isn’t because they’re too hard.
It’s because we keep looking at all the birds simultaneously and convincing ourselves we need a plan for the entire flock before we can pick up a single one.
You don’t.
You never did.
You just need the next bird.
Whatever is on your list right now that feels too big and too far from finished and too complicated to know where to begin, I promise you it has a first bird.
Something small.
Something completable.
Something that doesn’t require anything else to be sorted first.
Find that one.
Do it.
Then look up.
The rest of the birds will still be there.
They’re not going anywhere.
But you’ll be one bird closer to the day you look back and can’t quite explain how you got there except that you just kept going.
Trust me when I say it worked for our wedding and I have no doubt can be applied to almost any task in normal life.
Bird by bird, buddy.
Happy Sunday, and see you next week!
*BREATHWORK DISCLAIMER*
Breathwork can have an intense effect on the cardiovascular, endocrine, respiratory, nervous, and lymphatic systems.
If you are pregnant or have any medical problems with these areas of your body, do not practice breathwork until you are advised to follow a consultation with your doctor before practice.
For more disclaimer details, please click here.
"Much of life is in learning to always remain part of the solution rather than allowing ourselves to become part of the problem."
- Jim Rohn
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What has BreathingByEd been up to this week…
Listening to my guided BreathingByEd Breathwork for Sleep session.
Sharing that Breath Letter subscribers can access a sensational EXCLUSIVE BREATHINGBYED DISCOUNT of 15% on their Dream Recovery mouth tape using the code “ED10“.
Inviting you to leave a comment on what topics you would like to see in future The Breath Letter editions.
I hope you have a great Sunday, and until next week.
Ed
P.S. When you’re ready, here are 2 ways I can help:
1. Do you want to empower yourself with scientifically proven breathwork protocols to help you self-regulate your daily stress and anxiety, maximise your sleep and significantly enhance your daily performance using my ‘transformative’ Breathe2Achieve program?
Apply to join my 1-1 coaching program Breathe2Achieve on the button 👇
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