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During my latest trip out to California, I found myself in a conversation with some friends about momentum.
When it comes to building a creative business, I donât know if this is the case for everyone, but for me at least, there seems to be a kind of rhythm to things. You can almost feel when things are slowing down or speeding up. Lately Iâve sensed them speeding up, and the momentum has left me feeling more inspired and driven than ever.
Imagine this: youâre tasked with the seemingly impossible feat of moving a huge wrecking ball. (Donât worry, in this visual, Miley is NOT on top of the wrecking ball.)
If you were going to try and move this wrecking ball, would you run full speed at it and hope that your one-hit force sends it soaring? Heck no! That thing would lay you out!
Instead, you might just give it a tiny nudge at first to get the thing moving. That first nudge would create a bit of momentum which then would work in your favor the next time you nudge it. And the next. And the next. Each nudge would then gets easier and easier with greater impact. Before youâd know it, youâd have a huge wrecking ball swinging through the air. (ps. Is anyone else picturing George Banks diving in front of this wrecking ball from Father of the Bride II?) (pps. Dear physics junkies out there, please donât crush my spirits by sending me emails with why a single human moving a wrecking ball defies the laws of the universe or whatever. Itâs a metaphor. Cool? Cool.)
The point of this visual is, whether itâs starting a thriving business or changing a certain aspect of your life, at times, undertakings that large can feel like a two-ton wrecking ball. Like thereâs no way you can get it moving on your own. BUT YOU CAN. All you need is to create a little momentum. And how do you build momentum? With small wins. With tiny nudges.
Have you ever watched a football game where one team is down and out and somehow they manage to come from behind and win it all? Well, how do they do it? How do they shift the momentum of the game in their favor?
Usually, it starts with just one play. One interception that shifts the teamâs confidence or one big completion that gives them the hope they need. From that point on, it doesn’t feel like such an uphill battle. That momentum-shifting play is what you’re looking for when you need a small win.
Thereâs a lot of advice out there that says âStart before youâre ready,â or âJust start,â or âTake action,â and I think that advice is great. BUT I also know that there are some of you out there thinking, but HOW do I start? How do you find the courage to move forward when every fiber of your being is acutely aware of the gargantuan task that lays before you?
By identifying small wins, you can start to shift the momentum in your favor and no longer will it feel like you have to move a wrecking ball. Just like I mentioned, with each consecutive nudge, it will feel easier and easier to move forward.
If you want to make your blog more active, a small win for you could mean writing a post every day for one week. If you want to start an Etsy shop, a small win could be simply setting up the store and posting just ONE listing. If you want to finally start eating healthy, start by promising yourself to eat out just one night a week.
Whatever those small wins are for you, Iâm telling you that if you get enough of them under your belt, starting a business wonât feel so big and scary. Developing better habits wonât seem impossible. Changing your life will appear well within your reach.
So, remember:
âSmall wins create the momentum you need to start taking on your biggest goals.â
Make it substantial enough that it can create some momentum for you, but bite-sized enough that youâll hit it out of the park.
Let’s make this the week where the momentum changes in your favor.
Before I share my weird morning ritual, I think itâs important to share my old one because Iâm willing to bet the shirt off my back yours is eerily similar…
Wake up: Whether to an alarm or not, grab iPhone and swipe open. Immediately check any application showing a red notification (Twitter, Facebook, and email).
While reading email: Find out that I forgot to do something or someone wrote me an angry email. Fight the urge to write an angry reply, especially because Iâm still lying in bed.
While scrolling through Facebook: See a post from someone bashing our current president, or a rant about taxes, or a puppy thatâs in need of help, or a post about how our current president invented taxes on puppies.
While skimming Twitter: Read a tweet from someone complaining about how awful customer service is. Or a similar message about presidents/taxes/puppies.
Get up: Grumpy, sulking, and forcing myself to do some sort of âworkâ before anything else. Still thinking about how Iâm mad at the stuff I read, and how much I disagree with it.
You get the point. Believe or it not, youâre experiencing the same thing if you have a similar morning ritual. Even if you have the most highly curated feeds and friend lists, negativity will always slither its way through the cracks of our digital lives.
Hereâs where I took control back. I decided to make a change and quit starting my day with negative things. I decided to remove all opportunities for the boa constrictor of negativity to make his way around my neck. I decided to start spending the first 10â15 minutes of my day with positive experiences.
So what did I do to create the best morning routine to increase happiness and productivity?
Meditation? Yoga? Deep breathing? Hide my iPhone in another part of my house? Get a puppy that can do taxes? Nope. I instituted InstaCoffeeHobbes. (And yes, thatâs a terrible name I made up.)
I keep my phone next to my bed, that wasnât going to change. But I removed the Facebook and Twitter apps and moved the mail app to the second page. When I open my phone, one of the only app icons I click is Instagram. Why Instagram? Because itâs a selective feed of photos of friends, family, beautiful people, cars, landscapes, and more. I canât remember the last time something showed up in my Instagram feed that was negative.
I spend between 5â15 minutes on Instagram. I get caught up on new photos from people I follow and check out the Instagram explore page to find interesting new stuff. After that, I close my phone and get out of bed.
I previously made Bulletproof Coffee (yes, with the butter in it). But I’ve since moved on to spending even more time making coffee in the morning.
I grind my beans every morning, sometimes by hand. I measure and boil exactly 850 grams of water. I use a Chemex to make two perfect (to me) cups of coffee. The entire process takes 5-10 minutes. I don’t look at my phone, laptop, or any attention-grabbing-notifications during this process.
While my coffee is brewing, I grab one of the twelve (not kidding) Calvin and Hobbes books I own. Why Calvin and Hobbes? First, it takes me back to a happy place in my childhood. I remember flipping through the Sunday paper with my mom to find the newest comic from Bill Watterson. I remember pretending I was Calvin and living out his adventures in my mind. I also remember re-reading the books in the attic of my grandparents house later in life (it was a finished attic, they didnât force me up there or anything weird).
Second, Calvin and Hobbes has some of the greatest writing about life you will ever read. Donât believe me? Go read a few comics right now and tell me Iâm wrong.
Instead of looking at my phone or firing up my laptop (where I could find negativity) while my coffee is brewing, I smile and conjure up feelings of happiness by reading a handful of comic strips.
I’ve also substituted Calvin and Hobbes for Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist Journal.
By the time my coffee has finished brewing, Iâve spent 10â15 minutes doing only things that make me happy. My day has started with positivityâpositivity that will be a shield of armor from the rigors of the rest of my day. If I were to start with negative influences first, the rest of the day is an uphill battle to reach positivity.
You may not be a big kid at heart and want to read Calvin and Hobbes. You may despise coffee. You may not have an Instagram account. But I guarantee you can replace InstaCoffeeHobbes with your own thing(s).
Maybe that means sitting cross-legged and breathing deeply in a dimly lit corner of your house while videos of puppies play in the background? I donât know. If that takes you to the peak of Mount Positivity each morning, then do that! I know how important starting my day off without negativity has been for me, and I want that for you as well.
It doesnât matter if you work from home or work a 9-to-5 job and have a commute; invest some time finding a morning ritual that makes you happy.
After what seems like years of searching and confusion, Iâve finally found a name that carries meaning: Zook.
Interestingly enough (to me at least), the journey to get to this new last name is not unlike that of any other entrepreneurial venture: Ups and downs, lots of changes, expenses and an eventual tipping point.
TL;DR – My new AND FINAL last name is Zook (rhymes with “look”)
For the rest of you, letâs dive a little deeper and talk about how I arrived at becoming Jason Zook.
I want it to be crystal clear, I am no longer Jason Sadler. In fact, since December of 2012 I havenât been Jason Sadler.
I completely understand that most normal people donât change their names ever (or maybe once for most women). So it might be difficult for people to sympathize with why I donât want to be known as Jason Sadler anymore.
Are you going to offend me if you call me Jason Sadler? Yeah, you are, you jerk! Okay, maybe not. But I would ask that if you do know me you could respect the fact that Iâd prefer to use my new (and final) name.
When challenged with the decision to pick a last name I actually wanted to keep forever, I knew I wanted to pick something that I would be extremely proud of.
Listen, Iâm not saying Iâm not proud of Headsetsdotcom or SurfrApp (read more on those here) – Iâm actually more proud of those last names that the ones I carried through my childhood (Stein, Hantzsche and Sadler). Growing up, I didnât have a stable father figure. Unfortunately, though, I did have to endure their last names. And when one would leave my life through circumstances outside of my amazing motherâs control, I was left with HIS name. A name that carried memories (most often ones I didnât have interest in carrying.)
Enter, my Great Grandfather: Roy Zook
If you talked to my childhood self, I would have told you he was the older guy who sat in his recliner in a home in the retirement community of Sun City, Arizona. He was a tall, slender man who wore glasses and enjoyed crossword puzzles and Triscuit crackers. He had an interesting cough (which our family called âThe Zook Throatâ). Itâs amazing the things you remember as a kid.
He was actually quite a brilliant man. How brilliant? Well apparently he was honored with the Nikola Tesla Award in 1973 (presented to individuals who have made significant contributions to the electric utility industry). He was Manager of Cooperative Power Association in Minneapolis, MN, at the time. Yeah, not too shabby huh?
On a visit with my grandparents, I asked them some questions about my Great Grandfather. Iâd let them know I wanted to carry on his last name, but that I also wanted to learn more about him and his life.
Roy Zook, born in Camden, NJ, in 1912. He grew up during WWI and the Great Depression. He married my Great Grandmother, Junice Stromme, in 1942, and they were happily married for 58 years. He served in WWII as a Major, USA Signal Corps, in the CBI (China, Burma, India) Theater. When he returned from overseas, he returned to his job with the Department of Agriculture, Rural Electrification Administration, as an electrical engineer. He remained there until 1963 when he left to become Manager of Cooperative Power Association. He grew that organization from three people to over 100 when he retired in 1973.
Now I certainly donât have aspirations to work in the power industry, but I have great admiration for what he was able to accomplish throughout his career. My grandmother (his daughter) tells me that he was a very driven man, a very smart man and a hard worker. Iâd like to think some version of those traits were passed directly through the bloodlines.
When Roy Zook passed away in 2001, the Zook name ended with him. The more I learned about him and the more I thought of a last name I could be proud of, the more I wanted to become Jason Zook.
A name that almost was: Jason Moorman
I mentioned my grandparents earlier and you may be wondering why I didnât take their name. Well, as much as I love and appreciate them, theyâre fortunate to have another side of the family (my grandfatherâs) that will carry the Moorman name forward. Honestly, itâs that simple.
I know my grandparents will read this and I hope they know how much I love them and how grateful I am for their overwhelming support. They get all the credit for the facts about my Great Grandfather! (I only brought the thing about crosswords and Triscuits to the tableâŚ)
I have absolutely zero regrets when it comes to selling my last name twice. It afforded me the luxury of continuing to build my business(es) while also introducing me to new people and new things. Being able to help a couple non-profit organizations along the way wasnât too bad either.
Some of you might be wondering, âJason, why didnât you just take the name âZookâ a couple years ago?â
And to you folks, I posit the answer that it wasnât even on my radar. I was in a different mental state in 2012 than Iâm in now. I definitely have a greater appreciation for my past and wouldnât have had that if I didnât go on the BuyMyLastName journey. For me, Headsetsdotcom and SurfrApp were stepping stones across the river of my life. Without them I absolutely doubt I would have thought about becoming Jason Zook.
It feels good to be done with names (especially the yearly visits to the courthouse). It feels good to have a name that Iâm extremely delighted to carry forward in my life and through the lives of my [eventual] children. I canât imagine a name Iâd be prouder to have.
And in case my myriad of last names is simply too much for you to remember, you can just call me Jason.
We all do it. We write a list of resolutions and 99.9% of us fail miserably at sticking to them. Trust me, I’m as guilty as the next person. But it’s time to shift our thinking.
Instead of resolutions, letâs think about reinvention.
For most of us, weâve never actively pursued reinvention. If weâve gone through reinvention, it probably fell into our laps or was forced upon us. What if this year we chose reinvention?
Starting a new (year) is powerful. It brings energy. It brings curiosity. It has the ability to feel like a reset button for life. What if we decided not to achieve a resolution, but instead we opted to make a big change?
While I was writing my book in early 2014, my wife told me she was proud of me. At first I thought she was proud of me because I was writing a book. But then she told me that she had watched me go through a reinvention. For an entire year (before I started writing my book), it seemed that I was on a permanent vacation in Strugglesville, U.S.A. (Not a town you want to stay in too long, by the way.) She watched, and along the way helped me realign my finances, create new opportunities to make money, and address some personal issues that were holding back our relationship. There’s no doubt in my mind that I reinvented myself in 2014.
Now, does that mean I’m Jason 2.0 with a fancy new operating system and shiny new buttons? No. I’m the same t-shirt wearing, stubborn-as-hell, creativity-loving, Calvin and Hobbes-reading, entrepreneurial person. I simply reinvented myself by investing in myself (and by asking for help).
You can’t wave a magic wand and make these things happen. So what does that mean? Do you have to hire a business coach? A psychiatrist? A personal trainer?
Sit down and get real with yourself:
You have to be willing to step out of your cave, past yourself, and enlist the valuable insight of other people.
You didn’t get out of shape in 30 days, and you certainly won’t get back in shape in 30 days.
Your business didn’t fail overnight, and you won’t have astounding success overnight.
You didn’t rack up a bunch of credit card debt out of nowhere, so it will take diligence and effort to get rid of debt. (Impending post about this topic!)
If you need a complete overhaul, then sit down today and make a plan to drastically alter your life. If you need a boost or a shift in thinking, reinvent a small piece of your life.
No matter which direction you need to go with reinvention, make sure you break it down into bite-size changes. Small, actionable tasks can lead to huge, victorious successes.
The piece was titled, âWhen Your Dream Job Disappoints, How To Find Plan B.âThe section mentioning me detailed my excitement about â and subsequent disillusionment with â landing my first job in the advertising industry, something I had spent years in college dreaming of.
I watched as the article made the rounds that Wednesday afternoon: on the WSJ home page, on the cover of the Personal Journal print section, re-shared on LinkedInâs trending feed and through several outlets on Twitter. Subsequently the congratulatory messages started to pour in, something I half-expected being that it was the Wall Street Journal, after all. What I did not expect was the commentary surrounding the article and the debate that seemed to stem from this idea of the proverbial âdream job.â
The day the article was published, a friend invited me to a closed Facebook group of young professionals where a member had shared the story with one simple question â a question that seemed to sum up most of the comments Iâd seen about the article:
âIs the dream job a myth?â
That simple question got me thinking. What is this idea of the dream job, and why does it seems so often to lead to disappointment?
â
Sometimes we think of dreams as the literal images that dance in our heads as we fall asleep. Other times we use the word dream to simply represent a future goal, an ideal that we aspire to, the place on the horizon that we focus on to motivate us through the present moment.
But I have two bones to pick with dreams, and they have to do with a couple key words I included above:Â future and ideal.
A dream job is the ideal career that we envision for our future selves. This is where the root of unrealistic expectations begins, and unrealistic expectations will lead to disappointment every time.
We drift off to sleep and we dream of a career that will bring us money or recognition or power or fulfillment. All the good stuff. The broad strokes. The ideal. What we donât do is dream about the day-to-day. The not-so-pretty fine strokes of sacrifice and hard work. The struggles. The stress.
Thatâs the point of dreams after all: to escape reality. And so, as one might expect, in a state of escaping reality, unrealistic expectations tend to run amok.
In that dream state, we focus on what we think we know about a field, what we want to believe, and not what we have ever experienced. That means we cannot possibly see a job or career path for its wholeness â the rewards AND the sacrifice, the luster AND the daily grind. The result is a recipe for disappointment, and it continues to plague the world of work. How many people do you know who had their hearts set on their âdream careerâ only to discover it was nothing like what they expected? Iâm betting itâs more than a few.
And so, in that sense, yes, I would have to conclude that your dream job is a myth to the extent that it canât possibly exist in reality the way it exists in your dreams.
This does NOT mean fulfilling work is a myth too.
It just means that itâs time we stop focusing on the dream job that will bring us happiness and we start focusing on the dream version of ourselves that will radiate happiness from the inside out.
âIt just means that itâs time we stop focusing on the dream job that will bring us happiness and we start focusing on the dream version of ourselves that will radiate happiness from the inside out.â
When the WSJ article posted, another friend sent me a Jezebel article providing cynical commentary on the WSJ piece arguing the position that Millennials place too much emphasis on needing to find fulfillment in their work.
âItâs not your jobâs job to make you happy,â the article read.
And while I disagree with the overall tone of the Jezebel post, I do whole-heartedly agree with that quote. Jobs do not exist to make us happy â only WE can create that for ourselves.
If Iâve learned one thing over the past few years itâs that fulfillment and satisfaction in every area of our lives â including work â starts with self-knowledge. And so we have to start doing the work to understand ourselves before we can find a job path that is aligned with our true sense of self.
I think back to all those nights I dreamt about my glamorous life as an advertising exec, winning awards for my creativity and helping shape public sentiment for the biggest brands on the planet. What if, instead of the TV spots and the photo shoots and the Manhattan office, I had spent those nights dreaming of how I wanted to feel. Of what kind of person I wanted to become. Of what values would be most important to me. I think I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble figuring out the hard way that high-pressure, low-flexibility environments tear me apart from the inside out.
From the time weâre little, the emphasis is placed so strongly on what we will be when we grow up, not who we will be.
Instead of âI want to be a firefighter.â
âI want to be a teacher.â
âI want to be an astronaut.â
How about âI want to be adventurous.â
âI want to be selfless.â
âI want to be inspirational.â
â
I love dreams. I believe that when we reach for the stars, it leads us to greatness. And so I will never stop dreaming. But I can tell you that after years of wishing that the perfect job opportunity would come along, Iâve stopped placing the onus on the job and started placing it on myself.
Iâve traded in my dream job for my dream life. And as far as Iâm concerned, thereâs no such thing as âunrealistic expectationsâ when it comes to the greatness I can create for my own life, and, better yet, the greatness you can create for yours.
So many friends and acquaintances over the years have found themselves in that crappy familiar spot: hating their job. Whether it’s because a gig wasn’t what you expected or you’re just burnt out on what you’re doing, I know the negative toll it can take when you hate the job you go to every single day.
It paid well. The agency was hip, creative, and known on a national scale. The people were incredibly intelligent, helpful and treated me with respect.
And after about a month, I freaking hated it.
I was overworked (the only Assistant Media Planner on not one but two accounts) with two bosses that were fighting for my time. My days quickly filled up with phone calls from eager media reps trying to weasel me into buying space with them, Excel formulas that were more complicated than my college calculus homework, and maintaining the exhausting appearance that planning a $250K ad budget as a 21-year-old by myself didnât scare me absolutely shitless.
None of that was the fault of the agency; they were running a business and all of those tasks are necessary to the operation. The fault was mine. I was young and naive and I thought that the place I was working was more important than my actual role. Boy was I wrong.
Whether we like it or not, our work takes up a pretty large chunk of our lives. So if you hate your job, it matters. If youâre in a position that doesnât utilize your best skills and doesnât speak to your values, it matters.
But this post isnât about how to stop hating your job or convince yourself it’s not that bad or even how to do work that makes you come alive. (We’ve got plenty of articles on this site about how to do that.)
Back in 2010, there was a stretch where I came home every day and I cried. Not even because my days were that bad. Just because the dissonance between the life I was the living and the life I wanted to live was too much to bear. It weighed on me, and that weight manifested itself in my emotions.
I distinctly remember having a phone call with Jason one night after what seemed like an eternity of tearful calls night after night. He said to me, âYour situation is not going to change itself. Itâs up to you to make your days different.â
I realized that I had been waiting for someone or something to save me. I dreamed about a gallant knight from the creative department riding over to my desk on a white horse and saying âHop on mâlady. You donât belong here,â and then riding me back to the âfunâ part of the office. I fantasized about getting an email in the middle of the day from some amazing artist asking me to be their young protege (despite the fact that I had never really revealed to many people that I was even remotely creative. Whatever, they were just supposed to know, okay?)
I could have spent years (YEARS!) waiting for those things to happen. But instead I decided to do something about it.
If youâre there right now, please know that I understand what youâre feeling. You know you have a greater purpose inside you and it may feel like that inner spark will never see the light of day. But Iâm telling you right nowâŚ
It is completely within your control to get to a place where you’re doing work that you love.
But it doesnât happen by magic, and it doesât happen overnight.
Until you get there, here are three things you can do to avoid crying every day like I did.
What you want to be doing instead of your current job? I mean what would really make you excited to get out of bed? Avoid broad sweeping titles like âI want to write about foodâ or âI want to work in fashionâ or âI would love to work for myself.â Instead try âI want to have my own food column for a major lifestyle websiteâ or âI want to become a retail buyer for XYZ storeâ or âI want to do freelance wedding invitation design full time.â
Getting specific will do two things for you. First, it will make it easier to come up with actionable steps to reach that goal. Second, it will give you something tangible and concrete to focus on while youâre in your current position. Youâll be amazed at how your attitude will change once you have a âlight at the end of the tunnel.â
Once you have a specific goal in mind, write down one thing that you can do right now to work toward that goal. Think about the skills or attributes that someone would need to get that position or start that business and then work backwards to discover how you can start cultivating that RIGHT NOW.
No one would probably hire you to write a food column if they didnât know you could write or cook. So focus your energy on starting a food blog. If you got an interview, you could point to that work as an example of your skills. No one would hire you as a buyer if you didnât know about current trends or the buying process, right? Devote one hour a day once you get home from work to reading up on buying and identifying trends so that you could speak intelligently on the subject.
These steps will help mitigate that feeling of helplessness you may be experiencing right now. The positive feelings you get from this intentional action and progress will spill over to your daily life and it will make your current situation feel less permanent.
Like I said, most people are not in the position to walk into work one day and quit. So how can you make the time that youâre spending every day at your current job worth it?
Once again, working backwards can be especially helpful here. Think to yourself what your current company or role can offer you in terms of resources, skills, connections etc. that you might not have the opportunity to utilize after youâre gone.
Maybe you work with really smart, creative people. Make it a point to pick a few you look up to and ask them to lunch or drop by their office to ask questions and build a rapport. Those relationships you form could prove invaluable later on and your time will have been worth it. Or maybe you work for a company that has training seminars or classes â something you would not be able to have at your disposal at a smaller company. Take full advantage and learn all that you can to make your skill set more rounded.
Like I said, just knowing that your time in this position isnât being wasted will help you see your job more as a stepping stone and less as a sentence in purgatory.
I know this seems obvious, but take a moment and think about your day. If youâre miserable, and especially if youâve been that way for a while, youâre probably just going through the motions. Showing up, grabbing your coffee or whatever your morning routine is, checking your email, showing up to meetings, doing your daily tasks, watching the clock tick down to the end of the day, and getting bummed out that itâs dark when you drive home. It gets easy to wallow in the suckiness, doesnât it?
But screw that. Youâre in control of the joy that you let in to your day and the joy you shut out. Do you have a song that pumps you up? (I highly recommend Whitneyâs âI Wanna Dance With Somebodyâ) Why not listen to it every single day before you open your inbox? Why not send a daily email to your project team with funny GIFs? Or every Wednesday take your lunch to a coffee shop and read an awesome book with not a single person bothering you. Whatever your thing is, make it conscious and purposeful.
If there are other coworkers that are unhappy with their jobs too, at all costs avoid the âbitching circle of doom.â This is when you get so comfortable with commiserating that itâs the only thing you talk about. If youâre constantly chatting with someone about all that sucks at your job, believe me, itâs only going to make you feel worse. When someone brings it up, acknowledge their feelings and gracefully change the subject, maybe even talk to them about what youâre working on from points 1 + 2 above. It will put you in a much better mental place to make the changes you need to make to get out of your situation, and to maintain sanity in the process.
Like I said, Iâve been there. Consider this post your gallant knight on a white horse. Iâm telling you you donât belong here. But itâs totally up to you to save yourself. You donât have to wake up every day and dread going to the office. You just have to put in the work to make your days different.
Like anyone else, I’ve experienced negativity in my life. Yes, there’s been a bunch of positivity as well, and I’m not disregarding that, but the negativity seemed to be at an all time high a few years ago and it was coming from all angles.
While I don’t think you can remove all negativity from your life, I’ve been very proactive in removing as much of it as I can and want to help you do the same.
There’s no secret to how much time we all spend on social media sites. Scrolling through people’s lives and updates is bound to bring negativity into your life. Here are steps to take to remove negativity from your social media feeds:
Step #1: Kick negative people from your Twitter feed
It can feel weird to unfollow a bunch of friends and connections. Twitter Lists are a great way to group people into categories and you can create your own new List to check daily, instead of the main Twitter feed. Just remember, people can see what Lists you add them to (unless you make the List private).
Step #2: Use Twitter’s Mute button to hide Negative Nancys
You’ve seen that little Mute button, right?
Now you won’t see that person’s tweets in your feed or replies any longer. It’s a great way to quietly unfollow someone without actually unfollowing.
Step #3: Delete/deactivate your Twitter account.
OH THE DRAMA! But yes, you may need to go this far to regain how much of an impact your use of Twitter has on the amount of negativity you have in your life. Plus, you can always re-activate if you go that route.
Step #1: On Facebook, click that “Hide From News Feed” or “Unfollow”
On Facebook you shouldn’t bat an eye when it comes to using the “Hide From News Feed” or “Unfollow” options when people post negative stuff. We all complain now and again, but if every status someone posts is bashing the current President, something about religion, how much their job sucks, or a bunch of other stuff that doesn’t bring anyone value, they need to be removed from your FB News Feed.
Step #2: Be picky with who you let in your online social circles
For the longest time I allowed anyone in my social networks. Now, I’m picky. You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize Winner to earn my follow, but I look at this like a real friendship (just on the internet instead of in person). You should do the same thing, because people’s commentary and updates can have a huge affect on you.
Step #3: Delete/deactivate your Facebook account
Yep, may sound a little drastic, but just like Twitter, you can remove a whole slew of negativity if you don’t spend ANY time on Facebook (that’s what I did in 2016).
Other social media platforms: Hopefully it goes without saying that you can follow similar steps with Twitter and Facebook on Instagram, SnapChat, etc.
Take control of how you use social networks, don’t let them and the people on them control you.
This one may sound simple, but we’ve all been there. A friend is having a party, or so-and-so is going to this event, etc. When I don’t want to do something, but force myself to go, rarely does it end up being fun or bring me any value. That may sound selfish, but you know what, this is my one life to live and I’m tired of doing things to make everyone else happy.
I ruffled a few feathers with my Friends article. But that’s okay. Most of the people that outwardly were offended are not people I want to surround myself with. That was the point. If anything, that article unearthed a couple people for me that I was ignoring the negativity of because I thought I had to. You don’t have to. You really don’t. Life will go on.
Man, money sucks sometimes. Especially when people offer it to you to do things that aren’t a lot of work. But what I’ve found over the years is that getting paid to do things you really don’t want to do eats away at you. I’ve done numerous consulting gigs, video projects, random meetings/calls, and promotions that paid well but that I didn’t enjoy. This may not seem like “negativity” in the sense of the previous two examples, but it really is.
I want to be clear though, I still explore a lot of opportunities. I still answer every opportunity email. I still greatly appreciate that people want to work with me. Everyone should be pickier in life and truly enjoy what they are doing.
We all have our phones next to our beds, and most likely we grab for them before fully opening our eyes in the morning. As hard as we try, it seems like negativity will always come through our email inboxes. Someone complaining about a current project. A completely unexpected bill. A random email from out of no where. Whatever it is, it shouldn’t be the first thing you read when you wake up. That sets the tone for your day, and can completely ruin your mood.
Instead, I like to look at my Instagram feed in the morning. That feed is a curated list of people that share photos of things I 99% of the time like. I don’t open any other apps on my phone and wait to check my email until I’ve sat down at my desk and am fully prepared to take on the day. I recently wrote about my morning rituals.
Wouldn’t you rather start your day after looking at beautiful photos of puppies and landscapes, instead of reading emails that create a ripple effect of negativity for the rest of your day?
Let’s be honest, bills are little satanic pieces of paper that pile up on our desks. Instead of letting them chip away at me all week long, I make an effort to pile them up, and only look at them at one time or one day of the week (or month).
Mark time on your calendar one day a week, and take care of the negativity of bills all at once.
Another thing that sounds so simple, but is something we don’t do enough for ourselves.
One of my goals with my wife Caroline is what we call “Free Your Mind Fridays.” Since we work from home, we find ourselves sitting at our computers all day long. We’ve decided that Fridays are going to be spent (as much as possible) offline and working on projects around the house, building physical things (art/furniture/etc), or getting out and exploring different things and places. By doing this, we’ve turned Fridays from a day that could have negativity, into a day we purposefully only have positivity.
I’m fully aware that you may not have the ability to step away on Fridays, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enforce something like this on your weeknights, or weekends. Just be more diligent in planning to do stuff you really want to be doing that brings you joy.
We all need more positivity in our lives, and that doesn’t happen just by hoping it will happen. It happens by putting in effort and making tough decisions.
If something is eating away at you and making you feel sick to your stomach, it’s probably something you need to remove from your life immediately. As I’m typing this I’m thinking about something that I’ve been putting off for months and I need to just make a decision on and move on with. Things that linger in our minds will only fester and get worse. They aren’t going to take care of themselves and suddenly turn positive.
I hope you’ll work to remove some of the negativity from your life, it’s been really beneficial for me. It’s not an overnight change, but chipping away day-by-day really starts to add up.
This is one of those life realizations that slapped me right across my face, and I’m glad it did. I finally realized that I didn’t need all the things/stuff in life that society told me I should need.
If you would have asked me, “Jason, why do you want $1,000,000?” I definitely couldn’t have cobbled together a coherent answer. I would have said things like “Because I’d be rich” or “Because it’s cool” etc etc. Really stupid stuff, right? I know.
I turned 30 in 2012Â and luckily many years before that realized this goal was not only dumb (because I didn’t have a reason), but also didn’t make sense with my lifestyle and career choice(s).
Since leaving the 9-5 world in 2007, I’d never started an entrepreneurial project with a monetary goal in mind. Yes, I wanted to do things that were profitable, but it was never about making X amount of dollars.
If I really did want $1,000,000, I’d need to start making very different business choices. I also realized it’s not the amount of money I actually care about, it’s the quality of life.
Lesson learned:Â Being worth $1,000,000 â High quality of life.
I love cars. I’ve loved them since I was in high school and I’ve owned 15 cars since I was 18. For some reason, I’ve always thought I needed to own a Ferrari to be truly successful and thus reach the pinnacle of car ownership. But over the years I’ve learned a few things about cars and myself.
One very important thing I’ve learned in life is that I’m not a small Italian man.
In fact, I’m quite the opposite. At 6’5 I’ve sat in a few Ferraris and it’s downright uncomfortable. If you’ve ever tried to drive a car, let alone sit a car when it’s not moving, and you’re uncomfortable, it’s ridiculous to own that car.
With a nice car you never want to park within 10 feet of another car, nor do you want to go to parking lots with potential hazards (shopping carts, speed bumps, old ladies, etc). Also, I’ve owned a few nice cars over the years, and not only do they grab a lot of attention (most of the time unwanted), they can also be a big pain in the ass and wallet.
Do I love the way a Ferrari looks and sounds? Yes. Does it cost $10,000 to service the brakes on one? Yes. Do I need to own one? Not at all.
Lesson learned: Owning a really nice car â Being successful (or comfortable!)
Okay, I’ll admit it, this goal still seems great, but the retirement part of it is silly. You see, society tells us you retire from your “job” and then you are happy and enjoy looking back at your career, never having to work again.
What if you don’t hate your career and don’t actually need to retire? My views on vacation are similar. You don’t have to retire or have a set amount of vacation time, you simply need a career that supports the lifestyle you want.
I believe that retirement is only something you do from a job you hate.
While I’d love to live on the beach one day, it certainly isn’t necessary, nor does it define a certain level of success for me anymore.
Lesson learned: Early retirement â Success and happiness.
There are certainly tons of other things society tells us want we should want and what we should do.
It’s time to start asking why.
It’s time to start questioning the value of things and figure out what’s really important.
I realize that the life goals I had were probably immature, but I’m happy to be making progress towards finding myself in this world.
If you surround yourself with people who have unattainable goals, because they don’t have the drive or reason to achieve those goals, it will negatively affect you.
If you surround yourself with people who don’t get off their ass to get things done or make progress in their lives, it will negatively affect you. If you surround yourself with people who put pressure on you to own more stuff or do things you deep-down don’t want to be doing, it will negatively affect you.
Take a look around and figure out who your real friends are and who might holding you back from being who you really are.
