Curator

Welcome to Sync & Thrive. You design everything else together. Why not your health? Every Friday, we share how to move, connect, nourish, and recover as a team. New here? Subscribe.

👋 Happy Friday, Ladies and Gents,

I had an epiphany, if you will. I was flipping through a magazine and stumbled across the letter from the editor of W. It was an old issue featuring Frank Ocean, and editor Sara Moonves wrote that she knew from the beginning the issue needed to be about originality and the celebration of individuality.

As I was reading, the word "curator" popped into my head. It comes from the Latin cūrātor, meaning "one who looks after," or guardian, from cūrāre, "to watch over." I'd known the word for years, but I'd never thought of it in terms of my own life.

But we are curators of our lives. We watch over the life we are building and choose what goes in it. Every choice you make about your body, your time, and your marriage is an act of curation. No one else can watch over your life for you.

That word explains why I love photography and capturing people's stories and inner beauty. It's why I love cooking and watching the faces of family and friends as they enjoy what I prepared. It's in my love of drawing and in the antiques and vintage finds that fill our home. Each piece carries an untold story, and giving it new life is what makes it special. It's the same reason I love researching and bringing something of value to you each week.

In Forbes, Steven Rosenbaum compares curators to a DJ or a bartender. They all have the same music and the same bottles, but the good ones make the mix special. He adds that "the art is in the edit." Curating is also choosing what to cut, as much as what to collect.

We choose our partner, and we choose our health and our state of mind. When you share a life, your spouse becomes your co-curator. You each bring your own voice, and as a team you decide what stays, what goes, and what gets a new life.

With 90 days left in the year, now is the time to look at what the two of you are curating. This issue is our mix for the season: a way to keep moving when life gets in the way, a note worth writing by hand, what you feed your mind, and the hard things that make you stronger.

J + A

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Your movement should fit your life. Here's how we're getting back on track, plus a 90-day challenge for two.

On Tuesday, during my physical therapy appointment, my therapist told me she and her husband used to work out. Then life got busy, and they stopped. Now they're back at it, and her secret is having options: weights and YouTube workouts at home, and classes at the gym when her schedule allows.

I could relate. My leg injury sidelined both of us, taking us out of the gym, off our walks, and off the courts. On top of that, I caught a cold that left me drained. Sad to say, our routine has gone out the window. It’s been going on three weeks.

Three weeks is long enough, and it's time to adapt. I'm not cleared for lower-body workouts, so we're starting with what I can do: dead hangs. A hang takes some pressure off the spine, opens up a body hunched over desks and phones, and builds your grip. That matters more than you'd think, since a weaker grip is linked to an older biological age. You can hang at the gym or at home. We use this pull-up bar at home, and we're planning to upgrade to a Swedish ladder down the road.

If you have severe back pain, spinal instability, or certain disc injuries, check with your provider before you start, and step down onto a box instead of dropping.

To keep a consistent routine, you must be adaptable.

That's why, for the next 90 days, Aaron and I are hanging every day. We're sharing our progress on YouTube. We'd love for you to join us.

Try it together: On Saturday, October 3, each of you hangs as long as you can and records your time. Work up to 60 seconds. On December 31, hang one last time and compare. Come hang with us!

A handwritten note lands better than you expect. Here's why.

Do you remember having a pen pal? Mine was in fourth grade, and all I remember is her photo on our classroom wall. After fifth grade, my best friend, Katie, moved away. We promised to write to each other, and we kept that promise. When her letters came, I could hear her voice and see her mannerisms. Call me sentimental, but I've kept them all.

A letter keeps a person close. It holds their voice on paper, and you can return to it whenever you miss them.

Physicist Richard Feynman understood this. While his wife, Arline, was in a sanatorium with tuberculosis, their letters kept them connected while they were apart. Sixteen months after she died, he wrote her one more letter. He told her his love for her hadn't changed, and that he wanted to comfort and take care of her. He closed it by apologizing for not mailing it, because he didn't know her new address. The letter stayed sealed until after his own death in 1988.

Most of us save words like these for a few special days a year, or skip them because writing them feels awkward. That awkwardness comes from a handful of places. We worry we won't find the right words and that we'll sound cheesy. Or we assume our partner already knows how we feel, so writing it down seems unnecessary.

But the person reading your note cares less about the wording and more about the warmth. Writers underestimate how happy the reader will feel, and the awkwardness they expect doesn't show up. The writer gets something out of it as well: a few minutes with a pen leaves them in a better mood.

And the benefits may go beyond your mood. In one small study, people who wrote about their affection for someone they love for 20 minutes, three times over five weeks, lowered their total cholesterol.

Feynman didn't wait for a special occasion. He wrote to Arline most days while she was alive. You don't need a letter a day (unless you want to), so why wait for a special day?

Try it together: Imagine your partner finding a handwritten card or post it from you this week. What would you want it to say?

What you dwell on shapes how you think and the life you build.

"You have the body of your repeated meals,
the mind of your repeated thoughts,
the attention span of your repeated distractions,
the life of your repeated days.

So instead of telling yourself, 'I want to change my body, my mind, my life,'
what if you said, 'I want to change my next meal, my next thought, my next day,' and then repeat it?"

The inputs we repeat become the voice in our heads. The podcasts we play while driving, the feeds we scroll before bed, and the conversations we have at dinner shape how we think.

Aaron and I listened to Steven Bartlett's interview with Adam Neumann, the former CEO of WeWork. Neumann talks about what he learned after WeWork's collapse, and he comes across as genuine and centered. Whatever you think of his track record, one piece of advice rang true.

He said, "Get to know yourself so you can start living yours," meaning your own life. For us, that applies to the business we're building and to our marriage.

When you know who you are, you grow your business in the right direction.

When you understand who you are deep inside, you have a sense of purpose, fulfillment, and peace, and it lets you be the most open and confident version of yourself.

The same is true for the person you're building a life with. When you each know who you are, you can be open and confident with each other and grow in the same direction.

Build the person while you build the life you want, and help your partner do the same.

Try it together: Ask each other: What are we feeding our minds most days, and is it helping us build the life we want?

Pushing through discomfort may keep your mind sharp. Here's how to define your next hard thing.

Doing hard things may build a part of your brain that makes you better at life. It's called the anterior midcingulate cortex, and it helps you push through effort and discomfort to reach a goal.

Some adults in their 60s and 70s have memories as sharp as people in their twenties. Researchers call them superagers, and they have a thicker version of this brain region. Lisa Feldman Barrett, one of the researchers, says her best guess at how to become one is to work hard at something. The region ramps up during hard tasks, which is why they feel tiring and frustrating while you're doing them.

Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman takes it a step further. He argues the key is doing things you don't want to do. If you love it, it doesn't count. It's a theory, not settled science, but it's one worth testing.

So why do most of us avoid what feels hard? It's part of how our bodies protect us. When something feels unsafe or unknown, we feel discomfort, fear, or doubt, and those feelings hold us back from moving forward.

Pushing past those feelings and doing hard things builds resilience, as individuals and as a couple. Enduring hard seasons and overcoming limiting beliefs lets us become the person and partner we want to be.

It takes effort, and it happens in small, repeatable ways.

We choose to hear "no" as "not yet," because it isn't personal. We treat failure as something that makes us better, and what matters most is how long we stay down after we fall. Shortcuts may be tempting; however, they skip the lessons we need to become a better version of ourselves.

If you have trouble keeping promises to yourself, it is because you haven’t defined it clearly enough. "We'll work out more" is easy to break. "We'll hang for 60 seconds after coffee each morning" is not. Spelling out the when, where, and how makes you more likely to follow through.

If you know something tends to get in your way, our piece Waiting Isn't a Plan walks you through WOOP, a method for naming the obstacle and planning around it.

Try it together: Pick one hard thing this week, define it, and share it with each other. 

Remember last week when we told you we had something in the works? Here it is: The Couples Lab, our new podcast!

The first episode lands in your inbox on Tuesday, October 6, and a new one arrives every Tuesday after that.

Each week, we'll share how we're taking agency over our health: the problems we run into and how we work through them, the new ideas we're testing, and the research and tips we think are worth adding to our routine. We'll talk about the relationship side of it all, the lessons we've learned, and what it's like to build a business as husband and wife. It's everything about designing the life we want as a couple, across our four pillars.

🎙️In Episode 1, we share why we started Sync & Thrive and what it grew out of, after more than 21 years of marriage.

Most couples are couples by default, not by design. We're choosing to design ours, one experiment at a time. We named it The Couples Lab because we're testing what works for us, and we'll share the results, good and bad. We'd love for you to join us on the journey.

If there's a topic you'd like us to discuss or a question you'd like to ask, email us at [email protected].

What are you curating that brings you joy and enriches the life you have with your partner?

With care,

💛 Jaylene & Aaron, Sync & Thrive Team

P.S. If you're new here, welcome. 👋 We're glad you found us. Everything we write is designed to help you and your partner build your health together, on your terms. The best place to start is with the Sync Quiz™.

P.P.S. If there’s a dynamic in your relationship you’d like us to explore, send us a note at [email protected]. Many of our best topics start with reader conversations.

🖊️ Most of what we write about lives inside four everyday areas of life together: how we move, eat, connect, and reset.