“Be Well.”
Inserting a slice of mindfulness into the workday, one email at a time.
If you’ve received an email from me in the past few years (coinciding pretty closely with when I co-founded a startup in the end-of-life space), chances are I signed off the email with the greeting ‘be well’. That is not an accident. I really do want you to thrive, prosper, be healthy, and, above all, be well.
It turns out that mindfulness and checking in with myself is the first thing that goes away when I am stressed, doing a hundred things at once. But on any given day, I send emails. Tens. Dozens. Sometimes hundreds. And you have to sign off every e-mail somehow.
So ‘Be well’ serves another purpose, too. ‘Be well’ is as honest and heart-felt a greeting as any. And it punctuates my day with moments of mindfulness. Whenever I sign off an e-mail with ‘be well’, pause before I hit ‘send’. I take three deep breaths, wait just a moment, capturing a brief, fleeting moment of mindfulness in a busy day.
Three breaths.
- One for myself.
- One for the recipient.
- One for the world.
It is easy. It is hard to forget. It inserts a couple of minutes of awareness into my day. I hope it shows. I hope it works.
If the idea strikes a chord with you, please feel free to start the same.
Best of all, you don’t have to change the way you sign off your emails. Keep it as-is, but change what you do when you write those two or three words. Keep it a secret. Keep it to yourself. But do carve out two seconds for yourself for every email you send. It makes a world of difference.
Be well.
Haje is a pitch coach based in Silicon Valley, working with founders from all over the world to create the right starting point for productive conversations with investors — from a compelling narrative to a perfect pitch. You can find out more at Haje.me. You can also find Haje on Twitter and LinkedIn.
