I jumped on the wagon and watched that flick — The Social Media Dilemma. Though I had long decided to delete all personal social media, it still struck a chord with me in terms of my relationship with my phone.

I was initially planning to watch it with my SO, but he kept saying he was tired after work and he didn’t want to “watch anything sad.”

And by sad — we’re ultimately all my SO when what we really mean is we’re tired of all the depressing, disheartening, anguish inducing and disappointing slog 2020 is throwing at us.

I get it. Totally valid. …

“Live with purpose and you’ll know where you want to go. Live by priority and you’ll know what to do to get there.”

Going in, I thought Gary Keller’s The One Thing was simply going to reinforce what I had already read from plenty of other places about focusing and getting really good at “one thing” to see the proverbial “success” we’re all after (and whose meaning is very personal to each of us).

While yes, the book does do that, it goes beyond and digs deeper into fortifying the idea of ‘the one thing’ with fresh takes on a few ‘norms’ we tend to believe about producing good work I’d yet to hear before. …

I forgot where it is I saw the book recommendation for Big Magic but my wifi was down that day — so on a whim, I decided to give it a read.

As someone with much love for creativity — and who hasn’t yet watched or read Eat, Pray, Love, — I was delightfully surprised at how Gilbert weaves anecdotes and life lessons into her highly personal stories. …

If we let ourselves get carried away by what is presented to us at the click of a mouse, we’d think every young 20 year old in the world was succeeding — with us as the exception.

All it takes is looking a little closer and reading between the lines to find you’re often myopically presented with the outlying stories about people who’ve happened to make it big super young.

Mass-produced lists like Forbes “30 Under 30” and “Promising Young Hollywood Stars” abound. These lists, at face value, are deceiving. …

It takes some of us a while before we understand there are things we can do to better soothe and understand our often crippling anxiety (specifically GAD).

It’s not every day I wake up and tackle my day ‘successfully’. In fact, it’s the exception and not the norm lots of the time — a great portion of our day can often be lost in anxious rumination.

Obviously, getting treatment and therapy for it is paramount. …

You’ve likely read or heard about more than one account of someone “deleting their social media.” Usually, a string of the obvious upsides to it follow:

“I spend more time with my family.”

“I see my friends in person more.”

“I’ve seen a difference in my bank account.”

“I spend less time looking at a blue screen now.”

It’s worth noting these are all very positive side-effects of leaving the pseudo-social world online. …

“The problem with lethargy is that doing nothing validates the fear that nothing can be done.”

— Bill Crawford

These days, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wake up and go to sleep feeling lethargic most of the time.

I almost want to wax poetic with it and start singing it a song — “Hello lethargy, my old friend…” — It doesn’t quite flow though, so I’ll pass. But, the definition of the thing is simply “ a lack of energy and enthusiasm.”

And it’s pervasive, I might add.

Sometimes the colorful negative feelings you get as you feel lethargic isn’t done justice by that simple and clear cut definition. Still, the idea has always been to beat the emotion-fueled lizard brain inside us because we know listening and giving in to feelings of lethargy invariably gets us nowhere while leaving us anxious, desperate, dreading the coming day, and often feeling a jarring sense of pointlessness. …

Too often, we keep thinking about the future while the present stays disengaged.

Distractions are distractions when they feed a state of mind that is anything other than being in the present.

Staying distracted becomes a lot easier to do so when we’re self-employed or bootstrapping a business. We can fall into the ‘future-oriented’ trap without realizing it. There are deadlines to meet, content to create, ideas to brainstorm, Q3’s to plan for, or writing skills to hone — the list is indefinite, and sometimes scary, even.

This is when our brain simply wants to coast on doing easy things — things you likely ideate and daydream about doing, you guessed it, the future. …