#it's an exercise in abandoning logic and just letting your mind go with the flow

[tulu-xuanwu]

No comments, only memes

[duckprintspress]

How can I return to writing after a long hiatus?

This post is based on a conversation we had in the Duck Prints Press LLC Discord, and all contributors comments have been used/paraphrased/integrated into this post with permission. The people who contributed ideas to this post are: @nottesilhouette, @ramblingandpie, @arialerendeair, @tryslora, @deansmultitudes, @theleakypen, Owlish Intergalactic, myself (I’m @unforth), and one who preferred to remain anonymous.

Few things are harder than coming back to writing after a long period of not writing. Being creative takes a lot of energy, and starting after not doing so for a period of time takes even more energy. The writers on our Discord had a really productive discussion, where we talked about strategies we’ve each personally used to help us get our writing mojo back. None of these methods work for everyone, but if you haven’t written in a while, maybe one of these will work for you!

How to Revive that Creative Writing Spark:

doing sprints with a friend - knowing you’re all in it together can really help!

talking with writing buddies about what you’re each working on - the shared enthusiasm can be really helpful,

journaling, about daily life, or about dreams you’ve had - turning the dream into something coherent can be a great strategy (or, don’t bother, and just write it however crazily it took place!)

pick a random story you wrote in the past and read a chapter, paragraph, or 500 word segment - and look at it as a reader, say things you liked about it, praise it, emphasize the good things about your own writing.

transcribe a song with lyrics you find inspiring, or crack open a favorite book and transcribe a few paragraphs. You can even do it with something you’ve written yourself!

set a low-pressure, low-word count deadline - make it public, if you’re the kind of person that helps, or keep it to yourself.

sign up for a zero-consequence challenge, such as a bingo, or the Duck Prints Press #drabbledaysaturday prompts on Twitter - something where no one will mind if you don’t succeed, but you might find some inspiration.

create a small goal, either daily, weekly, or monthly - it can be a time frame (I’ll write for 5 minutes a day!) or a word count (I’ll write 1,000 words a month!) or even something tiny (I’ll write one sentence a day!) or a public sharing goal (post a ficlet a day!) and then do your best to stick to it, and reward yourself when you succeed.

open your ask box or otherwise solicit short prompts - for example, do a “three sentence” meme (”send me a pairing and a trope and I’ll write a three sentence fill”) or a story title meme (”send me a story title and I’ll write a little about the story I’d create with that title”) or an emoji prompt (”send me three emojis and I’ll write a ficlet”) or make your own fun one that will bring you joy (one of our writers created a “name two characters and I’ll make them kiss in six sentences or less” meme that helped them a lot)

participate in a prompt month, something with no consequences for failure but with prompts that can inspire daily ficlet.

write without editing, and just throw what you create out into the world - anything to get the words flowing.

challenge yourself to write a drabble day, no more and no less.

try changing how or when you write - get a nice journal and write by hand, or if that’s your normal, try writing in a word document instead.

write at different times of day, and see if it’s easier for you over breakfast, or after lights out, or during your lunch break, or by stealing a few minutes while you’re “on the clock” at work.

make an attempt at different formats of writing - if you usually write prose, try a poem; if you usually write really long things, try a drabble.

look out your window, or find a place you like, and just describe what you see.

do some free association exercises - for example, use a random word generator (I use this one sometimes) and then write literally whatever word comes into your head next - keep going until you fill the page, or until it starts to turn into a story, or just until you don’t feel like it any longer.

pick a random sentence (the person who suggested this often uses “Just write anything”) to be the start of a story, and “pants” your way through whatever comes next, without worrying about grammar, continuity, logic, or much of anything.

plan ahead - schedule your writing time and don’t let yourself put it off (rewards for success are always good!) and/or visualize exactly what you want to write ahead so you’re ready when you sit down.

if you get hit by inspiration, don’t put it off - even if all you do is scrawl a sentence in your phone or on scratch paper between other tasks, get it out of your head. Even a single sentence is a creation!

get out of the spaces where your usual things are - go to a park, or on a hike, or in your backyard, or even a different room in your own home, and bring a journal or phone or laptop, and see what strikes you.

pick That Thing You Haven’t Been Letting Yourself Write and ignore all the things you Think You Should Be Writing and just...write what brings you joy

fanfiction can be very helpful, especially in canon using canon-compliant ships/characterizations - there’s no need to do the heavy lifting. Even if you just write the characters going to a grocery store, or talking about what movie they want to watch, or arguing over take out - something short and sweet that’s just for fun, with no expectations for yourself or anyone else.

alternatively, if you’re the type who writes better for others and you’re feeling down - knock out anything, even something short, and post it, and take joy even in a single like or kudos. Knowing even one person out there loved what you wrote can really help.

Any or all of these may help you, but there’s one final one that I, at least, think is the most important of all - and that’s helped me most.

FORGIVE YOURSELF. You have work in progress up. It’s okay to leave them. You told someone you’d write something for them. It’s okay not to. You have a deadline looming. It’s okay to ask for more time, or to withdraw, or - in the end - it’s even okay to ghost. You think what you’ve made is bad. It’s okay if it’s bad. You’ll never be able to create when you’re raking yourself over the coals. Everyone in fandom has “been there” - has missed deadlines, has left challenges, has abandoned works in progress, have reneged on a promise to a friend to write something. Until you forgive yourself, you’ll never be able to create anything, and isn’t even a single sentence that isn’t on that Big Important Thing better than no sentences on anything?

Forgive yourself, and find that spark, inspiration, muse, whatever you want to call it - and write things that bring you joy.

We believe in you!

YOU CAN DO IT!

[atlas-of-a-human-soul]

Hurt, pt. 13 (E.D.)

Summary: With more than one life hanging in the balance, Ethan worries he’s losing his mind all over again.

Warnings: ANGST, fluff, talk of depression and anxiety

Word Count: 3100

Hurt - Masterlist

There were three times in Ethan's life when he thought he'd die. First time was when he was in a motorcycle accident, the second time was when he lost his dad and third time was when Y/N was in a car accident. But this? Hearing her cry to him over the phone as he rushed to the ER and got into the ambulance as they went through every red light to their house...this was the moment he truly felt like he might not make it.

His heart beats fiercely against his ribcage, violently trying to break out of its bony confines. His breathing is sporadic, coming in few short and shuddered breaths. Sweat coated his forehead and rolled down the back of his neck, his hands clammy and shaky as he tried to keep the phone to his ear. Despite him feeling like he's no longer in control of his body, Ethan managed to keep his voice calm. If she felt him panic, she'd lose it. He knew that. It's always been the case. They mirrored each other way too much for him to slip up. Ethan couldn't risk making her more panicked, so by some inner strength he didn't know he possessed, he managed to keep his voice calm, reassuring and caring.

Y/N laid down on the kitchen floor, pressing her legs together. She didn't feel her legs anymore, but she pressed them together somehow, despite the searing pain that took over her. But if this was what she feared the most, she had to keep them inside by any means necessary. She couldn't lose Ethan's little asskickers. She couldn't lose what seemed to be their last hope. Had it not been for the pregnancy, Ethan and Y/N could have lost each other for good. She knew that.

''We're here, baby. We're here!“ Ethan rushed inside, his eyes going wide momentarily as he saw a puddle of blood surround her, his heart tearing like paper. Every edge of his paper heart had continued to cut everything around, making sure to leave a damaging mark.

''Ethan.“ She managed to breathe out, her lips twisting into a frown as more tears flowed from her eyes. He squatted down, his right hand brushing back her hair, his left one capturing her bloody one for comfort.

''I'm here. It's okay. Shh.“ The paramedics brought in a stretcher, preparing to lift her up, but she curled herself up to Ethan, both her arms wrapping around his neck and he knew she wanted him to do it, not some strangers.

Carefully, slowly, Ethan picked her up in his arms. She was heavier than he remembered, but Ethan didn't give a damn. Refusing to even grunt, he had carried her to the ambulance car, his chest shaking as he kept in sob after sob.

He placed her on the stretcher, feeling like his heart would explode as he watched them start pricking her with needles, plastering things all over her chest in the process.

“She doesn’t have any allergies.” He knew the ride to the hospital wouldn't be long, but logic abandoned Ethan. Time goes slow for those in agony and he had never been in agonizing pain like he was now.

Holding her hand tightly, he leaned his forehead on hers as he secured the oxygen mask one of the paramedics gave him to her pale face. They spoke so loudly around them, the siren blaring so loud it was making Ethan’s head spin.

''I'm so sorry, baby. I'm so sorry for all the times I fucked up. I'm so sorry for every tear you've let for me, for every doubt I've ever had, for every spark of yours I've put out, for not being there for you. I swear I'll be good to you. I'll be there for you. I love you so, so much.“ Ethan had to say it, just in case. He had to say it so she had no doubt about where he stands, where his heart is and always was. He had to let her know that she's his soulmate and there would never be another. He had to say something.

Struggling to pull her mask off, Y/N smiles weakly, looking up at Ethan through hooded eyes, speaking with the last bit of her strength.

''Infinity times infinity.“

That's when her eyes closed and Ethan began to unravel again. He saw her heartbeat on the monitor, and while it was a little too fast, it was there. He found comfort in knowing she was still there, with him. He had to cling to the promise of her surviving this. It was fairly evident she wasn't just in risk of losing the babies, but her own life and Ethan knew either loss would destroy him, but to lose it all? That would kill him.

Everything after that had turned into a blur. The arrival, them taking her away from him, waiting for news. It was the purest form of torture. Ethan didn't notice Grayson arrive, nor his mother who had a hard time containing herself. He felt them hug him each, but he was empty, void, his mind still with her.

''Can't believe that guy showed up.“ Grayson rolled his eyes, breaking Ethan out of his trance for a little while.

''What guy?“ Ethan turned to Grayson who didn't hide the glare sent toward a tall, blonde guy in a coat at the reception. The guy seemed oddly familiar, but Ethan couldn't quite place him in his mind. But then he turned around and Ethan instantly remembered the man who had stopped him from seeing Y/N the night he learned he would be a father. The same night Ethan would have given everything to be by her side but was denied access. But it was also a wake-up call for him – the final drop that made him decide to check himself in the psychiatric ward. In a way, he should actually thank the guy, but he couldn’t help feeling something other than gratitude - anger, resentment fit much better.

''Isn't he her first doctor? He gave her case to doctor Sonia because it was too complex, right?“ Ethan knew in his heart there was something more there, because when his warm hazel eyes met the icy flames of his blue ones, there was pure disgust and hate reflecting back. Besides, he had no business being there when he wasn’t her doctor anymore, so why was he there?

''No, bro. She's been seeing him for months now.“ And everything finally clicked. Ethan couldn't help the dry chuckle that escaped him as the doctor in question rushed behind the closed doors he was stopped at – rushed to his Y/N, the mother of his children and his wife. She's still his wife by law.

''That dick? The same guy who wouldn't even tell her I was there that night?!“ Speaking too loudly, Ethan's meltdown attracted some attention and he was trying so hard to exercise the patience and measured reactions he was taught in the past months in therapy, but how does one keep his cool when his wife may or may not be bleeding out, when his kids may or may not be dead before he even met them, when the man who had put a wedge between his wife and him is the same man who is trying to sleep with her?

''Yeah.“ Grayson placed his hands on Ethan's shoulders, putting pressure to cause some sort of physical sensation that would root him to reality, to sanity. Pain, pressure, those were all ways to get through to him and Grayson used both as he pinched him in the process.

''What matters is that all goes well now, okay? Don't start making scenes. We need to be here for her. This isn't about how we feel, it's about her.“

Nodding, Ethan sat on a chair, bowing his head down to try a breathing exercise. Grayson is right. He always is. He had to keep his senses sharp and he had to be prepared to hold her hand without losing it regardless of what happens.

Hours passed when Y/N finally came to.

Fluttering her eyes open, Y/N felt like she was floating. She didn't feel bound by her body anymore, a big part of her convinced she had died. But the pain was still there. It reminded her she did have a body, she could still hurt. And once her mind started working there were only two things on her mind: her babies and Ethan.

''Ethan?“ She croaked, blinking a few more times to clear her vision. For a moment, she was lost on who she was looking at – an angel perhaps?

''Hey. It's me. It's Ed.“ Edward smiled, slipping his hand into hers as he placed his free hand on her forehead caringly.

''There was a placental abruption, a tear of the placenta and it caused a lot of bleeding. We're assuming it's because you're carrying triplets, but we'll do more diagnostic tests when you're more stable. The babies are still safe, but you're on strict bed rest and close monitoring for a while and right here. It's too risky to send you home before the bleeding stops and we're sure it won't get worse. In case something happens, doctor Sonia and I agreed to give medication to help the babies develop a little faster. As a precaution. But you're okay. So are they.“ Y/N nodded at the news as she let out a long, heavy sigh.

''Thank you.“ She managed a smile, but that was a simple pleasantry. She was happy to know her babies are okay. It was the first thing on her mind, but knowing they’re fine had made her want the second thing on her mind - she wanted someone else by her side.

''Can you find Ethan for me? Please?“ She kept her voice sweet and curt, knowing Edward is weak for her whenever she asks something of him like that. To be perfectly honest, he was weak for her in any situation and they both knew it but chose not to acknowledge it.

''Why?“ However, she didn't expect him to scoff and ask that. In fact, she didn't expect anything but a smile and Ethan's face to be before her in less than five minutes.

''Because he's the one who brought me in. Now please, let me see him.“ She tried to keep her voice leveled, not to start a fight she was too weak to finish. She needed Ethan. That's all she could think now.

''As you wish.“ Y/N had never seen Edward so openly jealous of Ethan before. She had never heard the irritation in his voice as he spoke before. He had always been so kind, so accepting and agreeable. A part of her thought he could never be mean at all. But she felt the change in his voice so clearly and she didn't know what to make out of it.

However, he did bring her Ethan. The same Ethan who was waiting for hours on an update – an update he could have gotten at least two hours earlier had Edward wanted to give it.

Disheveled, Ethan stumbled into her room only to stop at the door. He was so relieved, so happy, so grateful to the universe that he had lost the ability to think rationally. Instead of saying something or simply hugging Y/N, Ethan took two strides before he was beside her, lowering his head and bending his neck, attaching his lips to hers.

Y/N's mind blanked. She felt like she malfunctioned, unable to form a coherent thought or a purposeful move. She couldn't move, not that she wanted to. A big part of her found comfort in the caramel coffee taste of his soft lips. But Ethan's mind was a little quicker to catch up. He went too far, he knew that. So he took a step back, breaking the kiss.

''I'm so sorry, I wasn't thinking.“ He covered his mouth, hoping he could keep the sensation of her lips upon his a little longer in his memory.

''It's okay. More than okay, actually.“ Y/N giggled, placing a hand over her chest to feel her raging heart.

Settling by her side, Ethan and Y/N didn't say much about the kiss anymore or the love proclamation Ethan made in the ambulance. They talked about the babies and names they could use. Neither of the names they suggested fit, mostly because they would remember someone with the same name that they absolutely hated in life and while it was a little frustrating, it put them both at ease. It was a diversion from the possible loss they could have gone through, but Y/N had more than one thing she wanted to talk about.

''Mind if I ask you something?“ She took his hand in hers, tracing the back of his hand with her thumb as she awaited his low hum of approval that always made her smile.

''Did Edward stop you from talking to me the night you checked yourself in? The night I was in the hospital and found out I was pregnant?“ Y/N feared Ethan's response, he could tell. Whether it be because she thought so highly of Edward and he had managed to make her doubt him so quickly or because she genuinely liked him and wanted more than just friendship. Either way, Y/N feared his response and Ethan didn't quite understand why.

''True.''

Y/N drew in a deep breath, nodding to herself as she licked her lower lip. ''Do you mind giving me some time with him? It's really late and I'll probably pass out at any moment now. You should go home, shower...sleep.“ She encouraged, hoping he'd take care of himself and not ruin all the progress he's made just because she's in a hospital.

Reluctant, Ethan stood, but not before he kissed the back of her hand tenderly. It made her smile and that was rewarding enough for him. It was enough even if it killed him to leave her behind with another man who seemed to have taken his place.

Ethan watched them through the window for a few moments, noticing the way Edward strolled right to her bed and left a kiss on her forehead. They were comfortable with each other, familiar with one another. It was more than just a friendship and it hurt more than Ethan expected it would. It hurt to see someone else was good for her because Edward was. He made her happy when all Ethan caused was misery and it was a defeating thought.

Leaving, Ethan couldn't look back. He couldn't bear seeing her smile up at another guy with the same loving look in her eyes she used to give only him.

But Y/N had something else in mind. Not smiles, not loving looks, but questions she needed answers to.

''Weird question, but did you stop Ethan from seeing me that night we met?“ She kept a smile on her lips, a deceiving tactic she hoped would work.

Edward paused, the silence turning Y/N's smile into a scowl as he furrowed his eyebrows.

''The rules state family members are allowed and he was supposed to be your ex-husband. The cheating asshole of a husband as you told Jackie. You were vulnerable, with high blood pressure, panicking and I did what I thought was best for you and the babies. I made a choice and I protected you.“ Edward reasoned, unaware of what his words are truly doing. 

In her time apart from Ethan, Y/N had rediscovered independence, freedom, her own mind. She was lost, but losing Ethan had helped her find herself - the woman she used to be before he made her doubt everything about herself - the woman he fell in love with. 

''Protect me? Thank you.“ Y/N bit the inside of her lower lips as she tried to formulate her next question. ''Had I not asked for Ethan would you have let him in tonight? When did you tell him I was okay? That the babies are okay?“ Y/N turned a little more aggressive. It wasn't hard to pick up on it.

''No and he found out when you asked for him. He's your ex. Why would I tell him anything?“ And that's the last of what she could listen.

She had become far too fond of herself - the new her that was just the old her reemerging for air. Ethan had always loved and respected that part of her - her mind and her choices. It’s one of the things she loved most about him.

''Ethan isn't just some ex. Ethan is my husband. He is the father of my children and he's the love of my life regardless of the shit he's done. He has every right to be told his children and wife are alive!“ Her voice echoed around the room, forcing Edward to stand. It's one thing to assume these things to be true, but to hear her say it when all he wanted to do is protect her from someone he thinks is extremely toxic for her, it's different. The sting is different.

''I made a choice that benefited you. Both times. I won't apologize for protecting my girlfriend.“

It was Y/N's turn to be surprised by his words.

''That's the problem Edward. You made a choice that benefited you. Both times. You made a choice for me without even presenting me with the option. You made a choice to keep my husband away from me at a time where we needed each other more than anything else in the world.” Pausing for a fresh breath, she shook her head lightly.

“You made a choice for me without even thinking about what I might want. Had it ever crossed your mind that I prefer to make my own choices in life? Especially when it’s something important like that? Because I hate being deprived of the ability to make the most basic human choices. I make my own choices and I love my choices.” She could see regret wash over Edward’s features, his usually bright blue eyes losing their light as he realized his good intentions had paved a way to his own personal hell.

“I choose to believe you did this because you really did have my best interests at heart, but I won't apologize for not considering you anything more than just a good friend. I felt something for you, but it’s abundantly clear we’re not a match in a romantic sense. I never agreed to be your girlfriend. Just a friend. And that's all you'll ever be and I'm being generous right now.“ She had trouble keeping a steady breathing rhythm because even if she wasn't truly dating Edward, she grew to care for him. It's never easy to learn something bad about the person you care for, especially not in her current state.

''I have to ask you to leave now. You can't be a part of my medical team and you can't be a part of my life. I need time before I can be your friend again.“ Part of her thought Edward would cause a scene. She expected him to say or do something that would make her hate him, that would make it easier to let him go. But he didn't. He sat in the chair like a kicked puppy, his eyes glossed over as he swallowed thickly, aware that he's lost.

Edward was always aware of what he was getting himself into. He knew that falling in love with a woman as amazing and as emotionally unavailable like Y/N is would be suicide and he still jumped. He made the jump and now when he could see the bottom, Y/N wasn't there with a safety net. He'd break.

Nodding, he stood slowly, walking to the door. He stood at the door with his back turned to her, building up the courage to speak without his voice cracking in the process. Looking at her over his shoulder, he forced a smile to his lips for her benefit.

''I hope I am wrong about Ethan. I truly hope you find happiness with him. I do.“

And with those words, Edward walked out of Y/N's life for good. 

Tags: @melodiesforari​​​​​​​​ @brittttneyyyy​​​​​​​​ @beautorigin​​​​​​​​  @dolandolll​​​​​​​​ @xalayx​​​​​​​​ @godlydolans​​​​​​​​ @heyits-claire​​​​​​​ @peacedolantwins​​​​​​​ @dolanstwintuesday​​​​​​​ @accalialionheart​​​​​​​ @ethanhes​​​​​​​ @lanadeldolans​​​​​​​ @ebbach-03​​​​​​​ @dolangels​​​​​​​  @xxaamzxx​​​​​​​ @cutestdolans​​​​​​​ @yaren-ates​​​​​​​ @dolansmith​​​​​​​ @vintagebitttch​​​​​​​ @primadolangirl​​​​​​​ @caqsicle​​​​​​​ @jjustjoy​​​​​​​ @justordinaryjen​​​​​​​ @graydolan12​​​​​​​ @imaginashawnns​​​​​​​ @graysonslovie​​​​​​​ @fandomsfeministsandothershit​​​​​​​ @bdsmdolan​​​​​​​ @graysavant​​​​​​​ @ethanspillow​​​​​​​ @dopedoodes​​​​​​​ @anything-dolan​​​​​​​  @sugarfootdolan​​​​​​​ @joyrivh​​​​​​​ @reblogserpent​​​​​​​ @jonesana​​​​​​​ @emiemille  @herewegoagainandagainandagain​​​​​​​​ @adventureswithmell

[izanyas]

Pythagorean

Gintoki 3 first kisses fic for @rethrone​ <3

Rating: T Words: 4,700 No warnings.

Pythagorean

Zura

"Have you ever kissed someone?"

Gintoki has come to learn that the boy named Katsura doesn't beat around the bush. He is quiet most of the time, drawn back further than any of Shouyou's other students, but whatever he says is always to the point. If he had not once stood by his side and readied himself to fight, Gintoki would have never thought him to be the kind for flashiness.

"Ew," he replies eloquently.

"So you haven't," Katsura says, matter-of-fact. "Taneda was taking about girls earlier. Takasugi started making fun of you in your back and said you'd probably die unmarried."

That is the thing with Katsura—the thing Gintoki has learned about Katsura. He doesn't speak up, doesn't stand out, but when that spark is lit, there is not stopping the fire from spreading.

They are alone now in the old room that Shouyou is occupying more or less legally for the month. Clean-up duty. Gintoki is still on punishment for the last time he punched his opponent instead of 'respectfully disarming him', and Katsura drew the short straw.

"What's it matter to Takasugi if I get married?" Gintoki asks, turning back to his task. His task being to polish the floor until it shines.

"Nothing, I suppose. He was adamant about it, though."

Gintoki hears the splash of water from behind him before he can sense Katsura move. Wetness spreads past his feet, and soap suds cling to his skin. He grabs the broom tighter and rubs it all away.

Were it up to him, he would have left the topic alone there. It doesn't matter to him what Takasugi does outside of fighting him directly, and Takasugi isn't yet good enough to beat him more than one time out of three. So what if the asshole has kissed someone and Gintoki hasn't? Any wife of his would probably take her own life after a week of having to look at his face.

Were it up to him, Gintoki would have not thought of kissing or marriage again until a long, long time. But Katsura is standing by his side and sweeping the wet floor, and he says, "Takasugi hasn't kissed anyone either, you know."

"Of course he hasn't," Gintoki replies in boredom. His smile is a little difficult to hide, but he manages. Katsura has never been very good at reading other people's faces anyway. "Who'd want to kiss him?"

"Some girls used to find him handsome, back home. I think his father said he'd be an easy marriage compared to his brothers."

Takasugi has brothers? Gintoki thinks.

He's never spoken about them before.

Katsura seems to guess his thoughts, for he adds: "His family is a little complicated. He'd probably beat me up if he knew I told you about it."

Gintoki is a little tempted to ask why Katsura told him, then. "Well, he's not," he says instead. "Handsome. Those girls must've had shit for eyes."

It's always a little funny to be crass around Katsura; his face remains unexpressive, but he can't stop a faint shudder every time. Right now it is his elbow shaking next to Gintoki's as if hunger is weakening him.

He splashes some more water over the floorboards and lets his broom fall into the puddle, making droplets fly over his and Katsura's clothes. "His personality sucks and he's always covered in crap. You're a lot more handsome than him, Zura."

"You think so?"

"Sure," Gintoki replies. "You've got nice hair and all that. Girls go stupid for nice hair." Or at least he thinks they do.

Katsura seems to take his words to heart, and the next while is spent in silence as they sweep the floor clean. They are neither of them good at such menial tasks—Gintoki has never had a house to clean, and Katsura looks the kind to have lived with a least a servant before. Their brooms knock into each other once too many times. Gintoki is half-tempted to engage Katsura in a mock-fight with them. The idea splits his lips into a smile, and he turns to look at the other boy with the suggestion ready, and stops. Katsura's face is somber.

What now, he thinks.

Katsura saves him the trouble of actually asking. "You think my hair is nice," he says.

For some reason, Gintoki's face warms.

"Uh, yeah," he replies. "I guess so. You know—better than Takasugi's."

Katsura looks up from the floor. Because he is shorter than Gintoki and Takasugi both, he always has to bend the head back a little to meet their eyes on the rare occasion he wants to. He does so now a little slow and deliberate; the clear spring light from outside pours over his face and changes his black eyes to brown.

"Would you kiss me?" he asks.

The flux between Gintoki's brain and his mouth seems to slow. "What?"

"Would you kiss me?"

Like, hypothetically? he wants to ask.

Part of his mind has gone white and silent. Another has bolstered up his blood flow so that his skin turns warm and uncomfortable from the neck up. Through it all, Gintoki can't quite meet Katsura's eyes or look away from them—the result being that he stares a little under the line of them, right where the bridge of his nose dips into nothing.

"Kiss you," he says.

"You'd have one over Takasugi," Katsura explains very plainly. He sounds nearly logical. "We both would."

"But you're…"

Gintoki doesn't end his line of thought. He doesn't know why, but telling Katsura 'you're a boy' feels like an insult.

As often when confusion reigns in him and Shouyou is nowhere to help him direct it into training, it turns into decision-making. "Fine," he manages. "Yeah, sure."

Katsura suddenly looks very pleased with himself.

He's the one who crosses the short distance between them, slowly enough that Gintoki has time to reflect on what he just said and wonder—Wait, right now? But then there is a twelve-year-old boy standing right before him, his straight nose a little too long and his brown eyes a little too wide, looking at him in expectation. Katsura smells like soap from his shower earlier. His hair, Gintoki notices, does shine in the sunlight in a very nice way.

It isn't the earth-shattering revelation that the other boys like to speak of sometimes. It isn't much of anything, really. Katsura's nose is way too long, and it ends up knocking into Gintoki's before their lips are anywhere close to touching. Katsura's eyes are closed now. He lets out a small sound that could be laughter or pain in equal measures. But Gintoki manages to tip his head a little to the left; he feels Katsura's exhale over his mouth and chin; he presses their lips together.

That's about all it is, in truth: the somewhat awkward position of his neck and the feeling of dry skin on his, not at all wet, not any sort of overwhelming. He doesn't close his eyes—he thinks Katsura may use the opportunity to open his and spy, and he doesn't know why the thought embarrasses him—but it's not like he can see anything from this close up anyway. After what he assumes is the right amount of time, he pulls back.

The step he takes to put distance between them almost ends up sliding off the slippery floor. He catches his balance before Katsura opens his eyes. The other boy lifts a hand to his lips and touches them thoughtfully.

How was it? Gintoki wonders.

Katsura says nothing, however, to let him know of his impressions. He nods, satisfied, and goes back to sweeping the floor in contented silence.

Gintoki can't chase the flush from his face for the rest of the evening. It sits below his skin, warming his cheeks and neck, until the late hours of night.

The following day during practice, Katsura challenges Takasugi to a spar. It is odd enough to see him challenge anyone that most of the other boys stop their own exercises to watch, Gintoki included. What's more, Katsura eliminates Takasugi in a series of well-placed hits of his bamboo sword, until Takasugi falls on his behind.

"What's wrong with you?" he spits at Katsura. His hair, sticky with sweat, leans over his forehead in little spiky strands.

Katsura lifts the bamboo sword and replies, "That's just the difference in experience between us, Takasugi."

-

Sakamoto

The injury is every kind of ugly.

Gintoki has never been squeamish in any way. A life of erring and feeding from the pockets of corpses beat that out of him long before he engaged in war, after all, and then war itself drained him out of the ability to cringe in the face of blood. He does feel something, however, looking at Sakamoto's wrist. He felt in when Sakamoto was carried away from victory by their allies, and he feels it now observing the red-stained cloth wound around his hand and arm.

This is Sakamoto's sword hand. The knowledge twists and turns inside of him and cuts his appetite short.

He has barely touched his meal when he puts the plate away for good. The rest of the wide room is mostly silent except for a few snores here and there; they are now living out of a farmhouse long abandoned by its inhabitants, all thirty of them, and night has fallen over their camp. Most of the men and boys are sleeping.

Nighttime and injury have never stayed Sakamoto's tongue, however.

"Chiyo-chan will never find me handsome now," he is bemoaning, Gintoki thinks. He stopped listening something like an hour ago. Sakamoto waves his injured hand around carelessly, almost hitting it to the corner of wall he is sitting against, and the bowl full of broth he his holding in his left spills some of its content over his dirty clothes. "I can never show myself to her house again."

"She never found you handsome to begin with," Gintoki replies, thinking not of the fat-bosomed girl Sakamoto fancies himself the love of, but of Sakamoto's hand under the bandages.

The cut is so very deep. Deep enough to almost sever his tendons. Deep enough to have damaged his muscles irreparably.

Finally, he can't stop himself. "Stop moving it," he snaps.

It is hard to see Sakamoto's face in the penumbra of the house, but enough moonlight filters in that Gintoki notices him blinking in surprise. "Yes, boss," Sakamoto says. His injured hand falls to his lap once more. "Are you gonna eat that?"

"Listening to you makes me want to puke. Go ahead."

Sakamoto laughs as brightly as ever. He maneuvers the bowl out of his lap and Gintoki's plate in its place. His chopsticks shake in the fingers of his left hand; half of the rice he picks up ends up falling back down.

Not that the animal minds. "Zura would offer to feed me," he complains, rice sticking around his mouth. "You're so uncute, Kintoki."

"That's not my name."

Gintoki does shift closer and hold the plate for him, though.

Zura and Takasugi are outside the house right now. Their turn to watch over camp. Any other day Gintoki would have come with them, and Sakamoto as well, probably, but Sakamoto can't walk so well with the fever that weakened him. It's a miracle it broke last night instead of killing him. Not even he is stupid enough to risk catching a cold now.

Gintoki frowns at the darkness in displeasure. They have been living here for over a week, but tonight the ground feels too hard to sit on, let alone sleep, and the air reeks of blood and warmed-over booze. There is a discomfort sitting tight within him that he doesn't know how to get rid of.

He thinks, oddly, that if it were Zura or Takasugi lying injured beside him, he wouldn't feel this way.

Sakamoto finishes most of the rice despite his trembling. The idiotic smile hasn't left his lips, but nightlight shines off of his sweaty forehead more starkly than before.

"You should sleep," Gintoki tells him before he can help it.

Sakamoto looks at him for a second. His smile widens. "Aw," he replies, "you're worried about me."

Zura has tried this line on him enough times by now that Gintoki is thoroughly immune to it. It's fine when it is Zura, who doesn't care about reactions as much as he does about making others listen to him, but Sakamoto is…

He's different. How or why, Gintoki doesn't know; but he is.

"You could talk a dead body into suicide," he grunts, looking away.

"Haha, thanks."

For a blessed moment, silence falls over them. Gintoki uncrosses his legs and rubs the fabric of his pants over his sweat-slick skin. Summer nights here are hot and heavy with wet. Many of the other boys and men complain about it in the languid hours in-between battlefields. When he leans his back fully against the wall, he feels humidity catch at his nape and warm over his skin.

"Hey, Gintoki," Sakamoto says.

Gintoki hums faintly in answer.

"Do you remember when I asked you to come to space with me?"

Gintoki is not supposed to remember that. That offer was made while he slept, or so he liked to pretend, but it's not as if he expected Sakamoto to be fooled either. It is so far removed a topic from everything going on in that moment that he finds no words to answer with. His shoulder closest to Sakamoto's own shrugs helplessly.

"So you do remember," Sakamoto goes on, satisfied. "Well, it looks like my plans might come true a little faster than anticipated, yeah?"

"You're leaving?" Gintoki asks.

If he were to believe in that, Gintoki could have thought Sakamoto's expression affectionate. "Of course," he says. "No place in a war for a man who can't swing a sword."

"You could—"

It is a stupid sentence to start, and Gintoki does not finish it. There are things that non-combatting people could do to help, but to suggest any to Sakamoto would add insult to injury.

Besides, it's none of his business what Sakamoto decides to do. He only joined their side of the war for profit and, as Gintoki understands, in order to spite his father. He's not like Gintoki or Zura or Takasugi. Not like the men sleeping around them either.

Sakamoto nods, almost pleased. "I still want you to come with me," he declares. "Won't you think about it?"

"Humans aren't made to fly off the ground," Gintoki mumbles. "Birds got wings for that. We don't."

"Yes, but think about it. Think of all those worlds out there we don't know! Haven't you ever wanted to explore?"

Gintoki has never thought about it before. Unlike Sakamoto, who grew up smothered and yearning for freedom, Gintoki has no greater wish than to be earth and home-bound.

He licks his dry lips. They taste of dirt and salt and of the thin broth they drank earlier.

"I'm not coming to space with you," he says. "Sorry."

It feels a little short, a little dry, for an answer. It is the best he can do.

"Ah," Sakamoto sighs. He doesn't sound surprised. "Well, I sort of expected it. Too bad, too bad."

For a moment Gintoki thinks that he may leave it at that and finally decide to sleep. This twice-avoided conversation would go back to its slumber and never wake again, and he could perhaps forget that he feels the way he does and forget that he doesn't know why he does.

But Sakamoto turns to face him frankly and says, "Then do you mind if I ask you for something else?"

He doesn't wait for an answer, however, or even to know if Gintoki has one to give. Gintoki sees him kneel up on the wooden floor and moves bracingly, wondering if Sakamoto intends to stand in his state and hurt himself further. Instead, Sakamoto grabs the back of Gintoki's neck with his good hand and leans in till their mouths are pressed together.

He pulls back almost immediately. Gintoki barely has time to feel the shape of his smile and the warmth of his fevered skin. Caught still and blank-minded, he watches Sakamoto look over the sleepers around them to make sure none are watching, and then his lips are back, firmer and more present than before, wet from the tongue he slipped over them furtively.

There is a faint hum on the heated air. Gintoki takes a moment to recognize it as Sakamoto himself voicing some kind of satisfaction. The fingers at his nape drag through his sweat-wet hair as Sakamoto fits their faces better; only then does he realize that he is leaning in instead of away and pressing right back.

It's hard not to echo that hum, that almost-moan, so febrile has his breathing gone and so tight does his chest feel. The kiss lingers between them, hot and awkward and yet not uncomfortable. This time, when Sakamoto pulls away, Gintoki knows his face his crimson.

He feels Sakamoto's laughter over his mouth and chin. Sakamoto's fingers rub his hair and nape and seem to drag away with them all the tension of the past week. "Can I get a little more?" he asks excitedly.

Gintoki's lips, face, body are a wreck. "More?" he manages.

"Yeah," Sakamoto says. "Yeah, like this."

He does't have to pull at all this time around. Gintoki meets him on the way, heedless of the heat and possible onlookers.

More, it turns out, is Sakamoto's lips aligned with his so that when they open, Gintoki's do as well. It is the surprising feeling of his tongue dipping between them and making Gintoki's whole head burn up—the endeared chuckle that challenges him into mimicking it until Sakamoto is as red as he is. His hands find Sakamoto's waist and grab tightly.

"This is so gross," Gintoki complains the second he pulls away for air.

He hasn't let go, however. Sakamoto laughs into his face; his palm strokes down the side of Gintoki's neck before leaving it.

"I think that was probably the most dangerous thing I ever did," he muses, pulling back fully. Gintoki has no more excuse to keep holding him, and so he stops and doesn't think about how wrong it feels. "If that guy saw…"

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, nothing," Sakamoto says. His smile is blinding even in the darkness.

Gintoki doesn't want to leave it at Oh, nothing. All of his reluctance has vanished and left him with a million questions on his mind. He doesn't know how to ask any of them—doesn't know that he wants to ask any of them. He unknots his limbs and falls back against the wall. His legs have bent into a half-kneel while they kissed; he straightens them now and smooths over the fabric of his clothes.

He is tense, he realizes. Something tells him that whatever is left to hover like this over them will come back to haunt him later if he doesn't address it. But Sakamoto is sighing now against his own corner of wall, one hand over his lips and the other, injured, in his lap.

"I'll miss you a lot, Gintoki," he says. His sincerity is nearly tangible. "Think about me sometimes, yeah?"

Gintoki looks over his profile in silence. His messy hair and crooked nose and adamant chin.

"Yeah," he replies. "I will."

-

Takasugi

The one and only time Gintoki thinks about kissing Takasugi, he is holding him in his arms and speaking of the past in flimsy words. The faint breaths that Takasugi lets out are few enough to be counted in the silence of the ravaged building. His skin is cold to the touch but each of his words burns.

Takasugi doesn't ask to be kissed like Zura once did. He does not make use of Gintoki's surprise like Tatsuma to take what he wants. He wastes his dying lungs to request a smile instead.

After that, there is no Takasugi to kiss, even if Gintoki wants to.

This is not any kind of ache he can push down and ignore. Gintoki used to be good at this—ignoring. Moving on. Making a small enough effort of living that the rest, the oh-so-heavy rest, can be forgot or looked away from. But either his age has caught up to him or he has become too saturated with grief to continue; for weeks and months after he tells Takasugi to wait for him in hell, he wakes and walks and sleeps with twice his weight in sorrow trying to bend his neck.

The human heart works in odd ways. Gintoki thought for over a decade that nothing could ever grieve him more than the memory of his sword cutting his teacher's neck. Now this seems faint, almost like a dream, next to the sound of Takasugi's voice asking not to see him cry.

Then, one day, Kagura comes to fetch him in the bedroom of Yorozuya. He has no time to wonder at the stunned expression she is wearing before she says, "There's a dead man at the door."

It is Takasugi. He looks a little smoother, a little younger, and both of his eyes are open; but it's him, standing on the front step and looking like he is expecting a sword to cut him down.

Gintoki could not have held a sword then if his life depended on it. His fingers shake under the weight of air alone.

The human heart works in odd ways. It isn't meant to sustain such grief and not meant to let go of it either. Gintoki contemplates the man in front of him and doesn't know how to feel anything but hurt, anything but sore, muscles and soul alike exhausted with effort. It's too much, he thinks, dry-eyed and dry-hearted. It's too much for fate to throw him another curved ball. He would need twice as much blood, thrice as much spirit, to overcome this.

Takasugi—the name alone dries him, with the man standing there—seems to share his feelings. His face is deathly pale in the cold morning light; his skin looks thinned and stretched to the point of breaking.

"I can leave," he says.

Gintoki knows what speaking like this costs him. It's the only reason he finds enough strength to reply, "No."

Moving aside to allow Takasugi in feels like moving a three-ton boulder with his bare hands. He does it anyway.

Kagura leaves the office without another word. Gintoki thinks faintly that she will join Shinpachi on his day off and help Otae out at the dojo while waiting for—for this to be done. Whatever it is.

Habit is what keeps him moving. He can't look at Takasugi for too long without feeling that his ribs are being pried open, can't stand breathing in the same air as him without suffocation taking hold, so he gives himself time by escaping to the kitchen. A chilled bottle of sake rests at the bottom of the fridge. He takes it out and warms some of it up.

Takasugi hasn't moved at all in the time he takes to come back. He is barefoot in the middle of the room, looking straight at the chipped desk Gintoki once fished out of an alleyway and has never had the heart to change.

Gintoki feels him breathe in as if the air is crawling through his own lungs.

"I went to see Zura first," Takasugi says.

The cups click against old wood. It seems to Gintoki that the sound echoes like that of bells. "How did he take it?" he asks.

He finds that the question is sincere. He finds that, for once, his worry for Zura is not tainted with reluctance or wariness.

"He only tried to stab me twice before he started crying."

Well enough, then.

"Sakamoto was harder to get a hold of," Takasugi goes on. Air moves with him when he takes a step forward. Gintoki doesn't have it in him to look at him, no matter that they now stand side by side before the desk. "He cried too. I wasn't expecting that."

Gintoki wants to ask him, Did you not expect people to love you?

"What about your old team?" he says instead.

"They were the ones who found me."

The take unfolds slowly. Takasugi has a talent for story-telling that is near classical in nature, something Gintoki remembers noticing and never commenting upon, a whole lifetime ago.

The dragon veins. The infant body he had to grow out of. The rate of this growth—the same as Shouyou's, when Gintoki found him—and the slow trickle of memories coming back to him as came back speech and walking. Takasugi tells it all in the way a writer would. He leaves in gaps wide enough to fit entire lives.

Their sake has cooled by the time either of them deigns to touch it. Gintoki can't imagine being able to lift his cup, never mind drink from it; Takasugi manages the former but not the latter, and for a long time it balances between his fingers to the rhythm of his words.

When silence follows his tale, it is much, much heavier than any Gintoki has known before.

He could withstand it. Grief is like a second skin to him by now; he could mure himself into it and wait for things to pass. He could accept to be just too tired.

But Takasugi is different. He has always been different. Silence is to him like gangrene to a wound. Distance of any kind nurtures and cultivates it. Gintoki knows that silence is not what Takasugi wants, just as he knows that if he leaves him to it, Takasugi will never again break it.

"Takasugi," he says.

He can't continue. Words fail him as they always have, as they always will. His body burns from belly to throat.

He thinks of phantom weight of Takasugi's dead body in his arms. He thinks of Zura's well-hid grief and Tatsuma's avoidance.

He thinks of himself and the things that those two did to pull the love out of him.

There is nothing in the way of his hands as he grabs for Takasugi's shoulders. He can hardly care that Takasugi jumps badly enough for most of his liquor to spill between them, not when the skin he finds in the opening of Takasugi's yukata is living-warm instead of cold, his heartbeat quick and secure.

He's not twelve or eighteen anymore; when he leans in to kiss Takasugi, he knows exactly what he's doing.

It doesn't stop it from being clumsy. Takasugi holds onto him almost painfully, his nails dug deep into the skin of Gintoki's arms, and from the way he moves and stutters, Gintoki can guess that he hasn't much experience. But the pain is welcome. The discomfort is welcome. Takasugi's chest stills and his face wets almost instantly, and Gintoki tastes salt between their lips.

Thank you, he thinks, is what he is trying to say by kissing Takasugi like this.

Thank you, and Zura, and Tatsuma, for giving me all those first steps.

It isn't anything he knows how to put into words, but that's fine. Takasugi sags against him like a puppet with short-cut strings, his body shaking and his wet mouth forming sounds that neither of them know how to decipher.

It's fine.

Gintoki pulls away from the kiss before he falls. Takasugi has leaned so far into him that his back is bent dangerously over the empty space behind him, and now the man is still gripped to Gintoki's body as if unclawing him would mean cutting off his own fingers. Gintoki wants to smile at this and wants to cry a little too; he replaces his hold on Takasugi's face with one around his shoulders and crushes him into a hug.

The sobs aren't long to come. Takasugi shakes against him and can't draw in a breath without choking on it, each warm burst of his air crashing against Gintoki's neck and shoulder. He doesn't let go for a single second. When eventually they part, Gintoki will wear the shape of his fingernails on his skin for days.

He thinks he wouldn't mind wearing them his whole life.

[pippafitzamobi]

just me

It’s that time of the term when I’m ready to do everything except real work. Here’s the result. All 2158 words of it.

Also can be found on ao3.

-----------------

The brisk of fresh air fills my lungs as I take a deep breath and close my eyes leaning against the huge tree. The surface of the trunk scratches my bare arms, and I welcome the sensation. The ache to feel anything except this overwhelming numbness I’m experiencing is taking over me again.

The past few days have been a whirlwind of inexplicable joy and painful revelations. The more I find out about myself the more I realize that there is to lose. 

It's no longer just about me, my sanity, my freedom. 

It's no longer just about Aaron, his wounds, his obligations. 

Somewhere along the way we've made friends, grew attachments. 

Something that was once an unfathomable concept for me: a poor, crazy girl destined for nothing but solitude. I am no longer alone. Now, I know the truth or at least a scrap of it. There is still so much to uncover, I can feel it, something escapes me and I’m too afraid to look closer.

We're all connected by the invisible thread of pain and now it's wrapping around our necks trying to strangle us into submission. 

I can't let that happen. 

I won’t let that happen.

Everyone is counting on me, on us, to end all of this once and for all. 

“Chiquitita tell me what’s wrong” a cracked, out-of-tune voice comes from the other side of the tree.

Kenji.

I've been a bad friend lately. So consumed with myself that I did not even once stop and thought about anyone else. I should do better. Kenji deserves better. The best of me, the best of anything really. He has been there for me and with me through it all. And I left him on his own when he was falling apart. 

“You really shouldn’t be out of bed yet.”

He ignores me, gazing somewhere deep into the darkness ahead of him. "So, what are we sulking about today, princess?"

My left shoulder rest against the tree as I turn to get a better look at him.

He looks tired, worn. An echo of a lively soul he once was.

What I wouldn't give to put my hands on Nazeera right now – if it wouldn’t be for a fact that my best friend is in love with her.

"I'm sorry."

The wind carries my words through the silence that settles between us as Kenji nods his head in understanding.

I love that about us. There’s no second-guessing, no questioning looks or doubts.

He gets it. Of course, he does. I don't know if there is any other person in the world who understands me as he does. 

What Aaron and I have exists on a different level of us. It’s more raw, rugged, soaked with everything we are and what we’ve done.

My connection with Kenji is not something that can be easily explained with words - it needs to be felt. And the fact that I don’t need to explain it to him is the best testimony to that.  What we have goes beyond anything familiar, beyond anything romantic. With each other, we can just be. And to people like us, that’s everything.

Especially since lately I’m not sure who I’m supposed to be anymore.

“Look J.” He slings a look down at me from the corner of his eye. ”I’m not angry with you. I could never be angry with for trying to rest and be happy,” he stops to release a loaded sigh, “but yeah..."

A broken laugh escapes him and something breaks a little inside me.

“It’s completely ridiculous when I think about it. I survived two decades of some serious shit without you and...,” he falls quiet for a moment. “I guess I should get used to not having you around.”

At that, I push away from the tree and stand in front of him frowning in confusion.

“What are you talking about?”

His lips tug in a small, pitiful smile and I suddenly struggle with an urge to punch him in the face.

“Come on, Jello, don’t be dense. We both know that when all of this is over you will go off to live somewhere far with the pretty boy and have a herd of his tiny megalomaniacal replicants.”

For a second I’m speechless. The sheer force of anger and shock that comes over me almost knocks me back. 

“I'm not leaving you.” It’s all I manage to say.

“Oh, that's so sweet. You are so sweet.”

I hate him.

“Tell me: are we going to live in the same neighbourhood? Or maybe even better! The same house. Do you think Prince Discharming would mind if we got a bunk bed, for you and me?  He can sleep underneath it, I suppose.”

My hands start to shake. “Kenji…”

“I don't want you to hold yourself back for my benefit. If anyone on this godforsaken world deserves a happy ending it's you. Even if it's with Warner.”

“Stop it. Just stop-p,” my voice cracks, my body shakes, my heart has abandoned me. “Stop saying things, I don’t want your stupid words.”

I shove his hand away as he tries to grab me and get closer to him, so close that I feel his warm breath on my face as I crane my neck to be able to look him in the eye.

I can’t believe him. That he would dare to think something like that. After everything, he thinks I could just get up and leave? Leave him, of all people?

“You listen to me now, you're not getting rid of me so easily. War or no war, we stick together, you understand? You and I have a long future in ahead of us and I expect you to be there.”

Something inside of him is brewing and breaking and mending all at once and I can see the change starting in his eyes, his face softening, his knees bending as he falls on the ground exhausted.

We’ve all been through so much, too much perhaps, that at times I wonder whether surviving it all is within our reach. I start to believe some of us were designed to cruise from one heartbreak to another until there will be nothing of us left, but a road wasted good intentions.

After a while, I join sitting beside him on the greenest grass I’ve ever seen, waiting for one us to speak.

“So, now that we got that out of our system, do you mind telling me what’s up with your sudden need for breathing exercises?”

How can I form into words what I myself don’t understand?

“Hey,” he says softly, nudging me with his shoulder.

 “I just feel I haven’t processed everything as well as I thought I have. And the chances that I will get time to do that are substantially small.”

“What’s there to process?”

I raise my eyebrow at him meaningfully, and he smirks in response.

“No, seriously. The only new thing is that you have a sister and are apparently from Australia–”

“New Zeeland, actually”

“...everything else is pretty much the same.”

“Is that so?”

He starts ticking off on his fingers, “Parents? Still shitty. Your taste in men? Still questionable. Superpowers? Unfairly high. The rest is only made of insignificant detail that will make you feel shitty the more you think about it. So...you know, don’t think.”

With a sigh I toss my face up to the sky, “Easier said than done.”

Stretching his long legs out in front of him, he crosses them at the ankles, while folding his arms across his chest, and leans back against the tree. “People put too much value into thinking. Thinking hasn’t changed anything in the world. Sure, sometimes it’s a good thing to do, but most of the time if you want to have something you have to get it done.”

He stops me before I get to say anything.

“And what we want right now is Adam and James back, Anderson dead, and your sister not pulling a plug on all of this,” Kenji points around them at the reminder of what her sister is exactly capable of.

“You make it all sound so simple. But I don’t even know who is supposed to pull it all off.”

“What do you mean ‘who’?” he frowns. “We are. You, me and the rest of them.”

“Yes, but...me as who? Juliette or Ella?”

His mouth opens in silent realization.

“Oh, Jesus, is it what it’s all about? Your name?”

“No, it’s not just that. It’s...what it mean..ugh…”.The frustration sweeps through me cresting in my chest. “I can’t explain it logically.” 

“Maybe because it lacks any logic, hm?” he squints his left eye at me as to emphasise his point.

Suddenly, my head starts to feel heavy so I let it rest on my knees. Communicating your problems is difficult when you don’t know what the problem is, or even if there is one. But I keep feeling this pressure in my skull and weight in my heart, so I need to try, try to speak about something I don’t even dare to think about.

“It’s like this,” I close my eyes and let words flow. “I was born as Ella, that’s who I am to Aaron and to my sister, and to many others who knew me since I was a child. But then I became Juliette, not by my own volition, but that’s who I’ve been for over a decade of my life. And it’s Juliette who discovered the true potential of her powers, it’s Juliette who rebelled, it’s her who fell in love and it’s her who made all of those wonderful friends. But Juliette is a creation of horrible design, but then again so is Ella. “

I open my eyes at last. They feel gritty. My throat is so dry I can't swallow the wad that despair lodged inside of it.  

“There are times I’m not sure which I am, and which I’m supposed to be.”

It is dark, but I can still see him, looking at me like he’s seeing me for the first time, noticing something he hasn't before. His expression gentle, understanding, and surprisingly sharp, almost determined.

Kenji knows. 

“Your name is just that. A name. Bunch of letters put together that don’t mean a thing. And don’t say a single thing about you.” He leans in closer, pulling me in with his eyes. “What do they mean? Did everything you went through as Juliette became erased when you found out your birth name?”, he shakes his head, “No.”

“Did your family stop exist when you were living as Juliette?”, he shakes it again, “No.”

His hand finds her in the dark. “You’re badass, you know that, don’t you? You survived hell and you keep coming back because you want to help people. It doesn't matter whose daughter you are and who is your sister, not even who are you dating right now. You can’t figure out which name to use? Use both, use neither. Choose a new one. For the first time in your life, you’re free to make a choice for yourself. Do you know how powerful that is, J? To be free? To be you? Because you've got to be you. No one else can.”

He knows he knows he knows

Me

With tears in my eyes I reach for him and he tugs me closer. I don’t need any powers to feel him, the certainty that there will always be at least one person who will understand me.

“Ella!”

Kenji groans against me and glares over his shoulder at approaching Aaron.

“I swear he has some sort of radar when it comes to you. Are you sure he didn’t implant any microchip into your skull? Actually never mind. I’m gonna check myself.”

He continues to work his fingers on my head until I elbow him, laughing. 

“Kenji!”

We're standing up, smiling at each other as if we have no other worries in the world, and at this moment I’ve never been more grateful that amidst all the tragedy in our lives we’ve found our ways to each other.

“Thank you,” I say, hoping it conveys all the gratitude and love I feel for him.

He messes up my hair, the way an older sibling might do a younger, to break the tension, but mostly because he knows I hate it when he does that. 

Throwing his arm over my much smaller frame, he starts walking towards the camp. “So, how about that plan? How much are we going to make Anderson suffer? I vote extremely much, the Spider-Man 3 level of pain.”

I may not know everything about my past yet, and my future might be even more uncertain than ever, but what I do know, is that this, this is the best side of love. And there’s no chance I’m losing that.

[lindafrancois]

Overwhelmed? Here Are the 8 Things I Do to Get Unstuck.

“Why is my eye twitching?!”

It’s 5:45AM, and I’m lying in bed with my eyes closed. I’m exhausted because I managed to have one of my recurring nightmares the previous night where I dreamed my bed was covered in spiders—this happens once every few months, especially when I’m overtired.

It’s real enough to me that about 50% of the time I actually jump out of bed and run into the other room.

And yet, despite being sleep deprived, there’s no WAY I can go back to bed either. Because I have far too much on my mind. It looks something like this:

“ACK! I was supposed to call the dermatologist yesterday to schedule an appointment—it’s been on my to-do list for 10 days weighing me down and yet I can’t get myself to pick up the phone. Why am I so averse to talking to a human on a telephone? Just do it, idiot! Call them today at 9AM.

“Why the hell did I dream about spiders again last night? I have to write thousands of words today. And I have that awkward meeting planned stressing me out. OH **** I forgot to send my mom a mother’s day card! I did send her flowers. Is that enough? She loves cards. Can I express ship one in time? AHHHHH!

“Is that networking event I agreed to tonight or tomorrow night? Why did Past Steve commit Future Steve to that? I hate that guy! Wait, is today Wednesday? Sonofa, today is a training day at the gym too. Good luck finding time for that. Oh GOOD, I’m out of clean underwear. And the fridge is empty. And how do I have a pimple inside my nose? I would like to curl up into the fetal position and opt-out of all responsibilities today.”

They say depression is worrying about the past, while anxiety is worrying about the future.

Like many who read this site, I’m quite good at both of those things!

Even though I’m generally a happy person with a very positive outlook on life, life can get overwhelming at times and my brain likes to take over and shut everything down.

What the inside of my brain looks like: take my crazy stream of conscious above and read it in the style of slam poetry, while a Tasmanian devil plays the bongos with no discernible rhythm in the background. He then eats the bongo and starts Irish step dancing. To salsa music. While setting off fireworks.

The days where this happens are shitty.

And many shitty days in a row only seem to compound the problem.

I can get so overwhelmed that I can’t seem to make any progress on anything, and yet I know making progress on stuff is the fastest path for me to escape this maniacal prison my brain has trapped me in!

I am a logical, rational, scientific person, which means thinking through this logically, rationally, and scientifically makes sense to me.

And yet in those moments, emotions sit in the command chair and start calling the shots.

At this point, you are either nodding your head going “Steve, WTF are you talking about?” orrrrrr ”OMG I totally know what that feels like.”

I’ve been running Nerd Fitness for close to 10 years now. I’ve seen and heard it all, and been through some shit.

In that time, I’ve come to a few universal truths:

“Busy” and “overwhelm” are serious problems that don’t go away without a plan to tackle them. Having a Strategy Guide to deal with these scenarios can be huge.

Knowing that, I’ve created a personal checklist (yes, a real checklist) for myself of things I can do when I can’t seem to get out of my own head.

These ideas help me break through overwhelm—and get back to a more natural state where I can start making progress on tackling what I need to for the day.

And today, I want to share that personal checklist with you!

#1) GET AN EARLY WIN

For me, the best early win? Making my bed.

When I’m stuck in a rut, lying in bed, and faced with a daunting day ahead of me, I try to give myself a quick momentum-building win to start the day.

I learned this philosophy from William H. McRaven, retired US Navy Admiral and author of the book Make Your Bed: how you do the little things will impact how you do the big things. And by starting with a simple little thing, it can help me build momentum and show myself that I do have control and can affect the outcome of things.

Sure, I don’t make my bed with military precision (sorry Admiral!)—I simply pull the covers up as neatly as I can, I put the pillows on the bed and make sure it looks presentable. This takes less than 2 minutes and gives me a quick win before I’ve even left the room.

WHY IT WORKS: “Look, you already did a thing today. Today can be different. What’s next?” It’s an instant, quick, gratifying win that is the first action meant to build momentum.

Note: Comically, this is often the suggestion I get the most vitriol or controversy for. I’m going to ignore the argument of “this makes it easier for bed bugs Steve” or “I read that creative geniuses have messy beds and I’m unique and blah blah blah” or “nobody else sees my bed; why should I waste valuable time making it?” or “I get up early and my spouse is still asleep and thus I cannot make my bed.”

Okay, that last one is totally valid. I hear ya!

If you are vehemently opposed to making your bed (or there is a person still asleep in it!), pick another thing like cleaning up your room, cleaning out the sink, cleaning off your kitchen table, etc. as soon as you wake up to give yourself an early win. OR, just make your bed, take the win, and move on!

#2) QUICK HYGIENE FIX

At this point, I’ve already started off my day with a win in the bedroom.

Wait, that came out wrong.

Next up: self-care! This term is hot these days, like “bitcoin” and “avocado toast.”

But I’ll be damned if it’s not an actually important thing that falls by the wayside when life gets busy. And I imagine if you’re a mom or a dad, you have plenty of other people to care for, and caring for yourself is often at the bottom of the list.

And yet, a little bit of work can go a long way.

Although I work from a home office and often type these articles without pants on (too much? cool), I still find it to be incredibly valuable if I treat myself like an actual adult:

So I take a shower. I shave my face. I put on moisturizer that makes me smell like I have my act together. I actually comb my hair.

Oh, and the big one:

I floss.

Yes, I know you’re supposed to floss every day. I do not floss every day. As the late comedian Mitch Hedberg once said, “It’s as hard [to quit smoking] as it is to START flossing.”

RIP Mitch.

But I’ll be damned if my teeth don’t feel great after a good floss. For whatever reason, flossing is something that I avoid, until I actually do it and realize “that wasn’t so bad, I’m glad I did that, I feel better.”

I like to think this primes my brain to tackle other undesirable tasks later on in the day. Flossing wasn’t bad, and I’m glad I did it. What about that other task I’ve been avoiding? I bet it’s not as bad as my dumb brain has built it up to be.

That first tooth is always the hardest, but once I do one, I know it’s all downhill from there to do the rest of them.

WHY IT WORKS: They say dress for the role you want, not the one you have. And I don’t currently have a spacesuit. So I’m stuck with dressing like a more grown-up, put-together version of me. When I’m showered, shaved, shampooed, conditioned, and flossed, I just feel like a better human being worthy of some compassion and also a guy that can get things done.

Plus, I know flossing will avoid my nightmare scenario laid out here.

#3) WATCH A MOTIVATING YOUTUBE VIDEO

I have a love-hate relationship with motivation.

Mostly hate.

Motivation is a consistently flaky friend that shows up when things are good and abandons me when I need it most.

So I don’t let myself be victim to the ebbs and flows of motivation. Instead, I make motivation work for me, and use it to strategically get me out of my own way and back on track.

It’s a video I can put on that takes 5 minutes or less that makes me want to run through a brick wall. In lieu of a brick wall being readily available, it inspires me to start actually getting things done and getting closer to my goals.

So before I do any of the next steps, I often put on this SINGLE VIDEO:

WHY IT WORKS: Motivation is a real thing. And when timed correctly, it can really help me get unstuck and get the ball rolling on a project or a good pump-up talk before hitting the gym. What I don’t do is force myself to watch 40 motivational videos and run out of time to exercise. This is neither productive nor helpful. And I know motivation wanes, so I use the motivation strategically to set myself up so that I don’t need motivation later.

Side note: please don’t get lost down a youtube rabbit hole—that’s how you end up watching 15 videos about baby goats. Not that this just happened to me. Have your go-to video that you watch and reminds you that you can get stuff done, and then go do it.

#4) DO THE 10-10-10 PROTOCOL

When life gets too busy, exercise is often the first thing to get thrown by the wayside. And I know that when I can’t get a workout in, I tend to eat like an idiot too, which makes things even worse.

Which means when I’m overwhelmed and need a reminder that I’m a work in progress trying to level up my life, I do the 10-10-Protocol.

Why is it a Protocol and not a Workout? Because I’m the one writing, and I decided “protocol” made it sound way cooler and possibly makes it connected to espionage or Batman.

So what is the 10-10-10 Protocol?

Think of it like a system reboot for your body and brain:

10 push-ups

10 lunges

10-minute walk

I’m a big fan of the mentality: “do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” (Thanks, Teddy Roosevelt). And this protocol will allow you to diffuse bombs and apprehend fugitives snap out of a funk with a clear head and remind all the muscles in your body: “We’re doing fitness things today!”

This is a workout that can be done no matter what you’re wearing. It can be done in your cubicle. It can be done in a house with a mouse. Or in a box with a fox.

WHY THIS WORKS: The 10-10-10 gets the blood circulating. It gets my muscle fibers firing. It gets my brain working. And that 10 minute walk can really clear my head. It allows me to get out of my head, stop worrying about the past and the future, and just focus on what I can do TODAY.

Unsurprisingly, I get my best ideas walking around, NOT sitting at my desk. And I know I’m not alone on that—this is borrowed from Steve Jobs, who held walking meetings instead of “sit in conference room” meetings.

If you want to stop reading right now and initiate the 10-10-10 Protocol yourself, go for it.

#5) DO THE VERY NEXT THING

There’s nothing more frustrating than feeling so overwhelmed at all of the things that I’m trying to do and not being able to get anything done.

It makes me want to curl up into the fetal position on the ground and hide from my responsibilities. Or play victim and lament the fact that I have so much to do. Or complain that life is so busy.

I do all of those things for about 30 seconds. And then I realize:

Busy is a choice.

It might not be my fault, but it is my responsibility.

And then I do three things:

Get mad at Past Steve for saying yes to so many things.

Make a note to start saying no to way more stuff to protect Future Steve.

Write down on paper all of the crap I have to do.

Sometimes if I feel like I could use a win, I put “make my bed,” “floss,” and “10-10-10 Protocol” at the top of the list and then immediately cross them off.

Progress and momentum for the win!

Next, I try to number these things in order of importance if possible. I ask, “Which of these things can I do today that will actually make an impact on my life?”

Then, I ask: “Okay, I now have my most important priority. What’s the very next step I need to take on this particular item? Good. Now shut the hell up and do that thing.”

As you can tell, I have to have conversations with myself like I’m a 5-year-old.

WHY THIS WORKS: When we get overwhelmed, it’s because our brains like to make Misty Mountains out of molehills. The “stuff” we have to do is nebulous, opaque, and scary. Until it gets broken down into steps.

And then it’s not so daunting. And once you can start to cross a thing or two off the list, or make meaningful progress on a project or activity, you come to the realization I come to every single time: I do have the time to do things. I need to say no to more things, I need to manage my time better, and the sooner I can get out of my head the faster I can be DONE.

No joke: halfway through writing this article I finally called the dermatologist, and timed how long the process took.

It took 2 freakin’ minutes.

This is something that had been on my to-do list weighing on me for the past 10 days, and it took me 2 minutes to schedule the damn appointment!

#6) BREATHE, IDIOT!

The past: I can’t change it!

The future: It hasn’t happened yet!

Today is a pretty good day. And yet, I have NO problem spending all of my time worrying about tomorrow.

This is suboptimal.

So I force myself to “breathe, idiot!”

(Before you get offended at my self-talk here, I mean “idiot” in a joking, loving manner to remind myself that I’m probably overcomplicating things to the point of paralysis and I need to just slow way down. Feel free to use the term “nerf herder or “cotton-headed ninny muggins” instead.)

Cool? Cool.

5 minutes. I just sit there and focus on breathing. In, out. In, out. You get the point.

I’ve tried meditating for 20 minutes a day and kept it up for 60 days (I used Headspace, and I’m also a big fan of Calm). It was like herding cats, and it didn’t unlock the secrets of the cosmos. I did enjoy the Cosmos miniseries on Fox, but that doesn’t apply here.

But just taking 5 minutes to breathe can help me slowwwww way down and just get back to work.

WHY THIS WORKS: I find big time value in reminding myself to breathe and just focus on the day I’m living. 5 minutes is enough for me to settle down and then I can go back to #5 (work on the very next step) of a project without being overwhelmed.

#7) CONSUME LESS, PRODUCE MORE

Whenever I’m overwhelmed and feeling crappy, a look back at my previous week will always reveal one constant:

I consumed more than I created.

For starters, from a pure health perspective, when I consume more than I produce—meaning I eat more calories than I burn—it’s going to result in weight gain.

The whole reason we have survived as a species is due to us producing more than we consume! Saving for a rainy day, thinking beyond just TODAY, growing more crops to share with society, etc.

So let’s get back to this concept of too much consumption.

I look back at how much time I’ve been spending consuming:

Television

Video games

Social media

Outrage news stories

Takeout

Books

In each of these instances, I’m an innocent bystander. Sure, video games are an active activity, but they can take over one’s life and contribute to overwhelm (I see you Fortnite), so I’ll put gaming in the “consumption” category.

If I’m overwhelmed, to borrow from Nate Green (who calls it “Nuclear Mode”), I recognize the things that are contributing to my overwhelm, especially the stuff that I can’t control—I see you political outrage on Facebook—and GET IT OUT OF MY LIFE.

I already don’t have any social media apps on my phone. I then use Freedom.to to block certain websites for the ENTIRE day. No more mindlessly scrolling Facebook or Instagram. No tinfoil hat theories on Zero Hedge.

JUST GET THE STUFF DONE I NEED TO GET DONE.

And that means less consumption, more production and creation!

Writing and creating content, like this article

Playing music (violin, piano, guitar)

Cooking my own meal at home

Creating art, doodling, drawing

Creating conversation with friends

WHY THIS WORKS: Creating makes me happy, and it makes most humans happy. And yet, our default behavior is to consume because consuming is so much easier. So I remove the temptation of consumption by blocking sites and deleting apps, and emphasize creation—even if it’s just for a few minutes.

Who cares if what you create isn’t worthy of being recorded or published or hung in a museum. It’s not the end result, it’s the activity itself!

#8) ASK FOR HELP, TALK IT OUT

When I get stuck in my own head, it’s easy to feel like Chris in Get Out: trapped alone, swimming in a bottomless pit of nothingness. Eeesh, that was dark, Steve.

It’s ALSO easy to tell myself: “Suck it up, Kamb! Other people would kill to be in your position! They have it WAY worse!”

And I have to remind myself that everybody is dealing with their own stuff, and just because others have problems doesn’t mean I can’t be allowed to deal with mine!

So I ask for help. Depending on what I’m struggling with, I’m not afraid to ask for help:

I might reach out to my dad or mentors for business advice.

I might call my mom just to tell her I miss her (moms love this).

I might text my online fitness coach to ask about how I can scale or change my workout schedule.

I might schedule a therapy session to help me manage all of this stuff!

I might reach out to a friend for relationship or friendship advice.

I avoided therapy for years until my friend Lindsay once told me: “Steve, fit people still go to the gym to exercise. There’s no shame in going to exercise your mind.”

We’ve written an ENTIRE article on a Beginner’s Guide to Mental Health, and if this is something you’re interested in please consider it!

Note: if you really struggle with depression/anxiety, speaking with a mental health professional could be a game-changing experience. Please do so as soon as you can!

WHY THIS WORKS: I used to be afraid to ask for help, assuming I had to know all the answers on my own. Or that people relied on me to be the happy-go-lucky person and I wasn’t allowed to be unhappy or stressed. And then I grew up.

Now I have no problem asking for help, saying “I don’t know” even if it makes me feel foolish, and I get to a solution MUCH faster!

I know with everything being online these days, it’s easy to spend a lot of time being friendly but not having actual deep conversations with people. This is something I have to work really hard on, as I’d much rather sit at home alone with a book all day and avoid people.

And yet, in most instances, when I’m with friends or loved ones, my day gets much better as a result. And thus, I prioritize saying YES. (Just not too much, so we don’t overload Future Steve.)

Overwhelmed? Do these 8 Things

Okay! This is my 8-step kickstart kickass strategy to dealing with overwhelm and anxiety.

Feel free to hijack these 8 things and the next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, take these steps to get unstuck and back on track:

Get an early win

Quick hygiene fix

Watch a 5-minute motivational video

Do the 10-10-10 Protocol

Do the Very Next Thing

Breathe, idiot!

Consume less, produce more

Ask for help

Break this list in case of emergency! Write these down, print it out, design your own checklist and share it with me so I can add it here to the post, whatever you want to do!

You can do this!

I’d love to hear from you: how do you manage overwhelm, and what are the steps you take to get out of that mental quicksand?!

Leave a comment below!

-Steve

PS: This week’s Rebel Hero: Nick T: rocking his new NF Battle Gear!

I can only assume he worked out so hard and flexed so perfectly that he blew the sleeves right off of it 🙂 Nick has been a super supportive member of our community for years and I’m damn glad he’s here.

Want to be the next Rebel Hero? Take a photo of you doing something epic in your NF battle gear, tag us on Instagram with #NerdFitness #battlegear, or email us at contact@nerdfitness.com!

PHOTO SOURCES: All amazing LEGO photos are from Black Zack, whose photos are here on Flickr.

Overwhelmed? Here Are the 8 Things I Do to Get Unstuck. published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/

[almajonesnjna]

Overwhelmed? Here Are the 8 Things I Do to Get Unstuck.

“Why is my eye twitching?!”

It’s 5:45AM, and I’m lying in bed with my eyes closed. I’m exhausted because I managed to have one of my recurring nightmares the previous night where I dreamed my bed was covered in spiders—this happens once every few months, especially when I’m overtired.

It’s real enough to me that about 50% of the time I actually jump out of bed and run into the other room.

And yet, despite being sleep deprived, there’s no WAY I can go back to bed either. Because I have far too much on my mind. It looks something like this:

“ACK! I was supposed to call the dermatologist yesterday to schedule an appointment—it’s been on my to-do list for 10 days weighing me down and yet I can’t get myself to pick up the phone. Why am I so averse to talking to a human on a telephone? Just do it, idiot! Call them today at 9AM.

“Why the hell did I dream about spiders again last night? I have to write thousands of words today. And I have that awkward meeting planned stressing me out. OH **** I forgot to send my mom a mother’s day card! I did send her flowers. Is that enough? She loves cards. Can I express ship one in time? AHHHHH!

“Is that networking event I agreed to tonight or tomorrow night? Why did Past Steve commit Future Steve to that? I hate that guy! Wait, is today Wednesday? Sonofa, today is a training day at the gym too. Good luck finding time for that. Oh GOOD, I’m out of clean underwear. And the fridge is empty. And how do I have a pimple inside my nose? I would like to curl up into the fetal position and opt-out of all responsibilities today.”

They say depression is worrying about the past, while anxiety is worrying about the future.

Like many who read this site, I’m quite good at both of those things!

Even though I’m generally a happy person with a very positive outlook on life, life can get overwhelming at times and my brain likes to take over and shut everything down.

What the inside of my brain looks like: take my crazy stream of conscious above and read it in the style of slam poetry, while a Tasmanian devil plays the bongos with no discernible rhythm in the background. He then eats the bongo and starts Irish step dancing. Out of rhythm. While setting off fireworks.

The days where this happens are shitty.

And many shitty days in a row only seem to compound the problem.

I can get so overwhelmed that I can’t seem to make any progress on anything, and yet I know making progress on stuff is the fastest path for me to escape this maniacal prison my brain has trapped me in!

I am a logical, rational, scientific person, which means thinking through this logically, rationally, and scientifically makes sense to me.

And yet in those moments, emotions sit in the command chair and start calling the shots.

At this point, you are either nodding your head going “Steve, WTF are you talking about?” orrrrrr ”OMG I totally know what that feels like.”

I’ve been running Nerd Fitness for close to 10 years now. I’ve seen and heard it all, and been through some shit.

In that time, I’ve come to a few universal truths:

“Busy” and “overwhelm” are serious problems that don’t go away without a plan to tackle them. Having a Strategy Guide to deal with these scenarios can be huge.

Knowing that, I’ve created a personal checklist (yes, a real checklist) for myself of things I can do when I can’t seem to get out of my own head.

These ideas help me break through overwhelm—and get back to a more natural state where I can start making progress on tackling what I need to for the day.

And today, I want to share that personal checklist with you!

#1) GET AN EARLY WIN

For me, the best early win? Making my bed.

When I’m stuck in a rut, lying in bed, and faced with a daunting day ahead of me, I try to give myself a quick momentum-building win to start the day.

I learned this philosophy from William H. McRaven, retired US Navy Admiral and author of the book Make Your Bed: how you do the little things will impact how you do the big things. And by starting with a simple little thing, it can help me build momentum and show myself that I do have control and can affect the outcome of things.

Sure, I don’t make my bed with military precision (sorry Admiral!)—I simply pull the covers up as neatly as I can, I put the pillows on the bed and make sure it looks presentable. This takes less than 2 minutes and gives me a quick win before I’ve even left the room.

WHY IT WORKS: “Look, you already did a thing today. Today can be different. What’s next?” It’s an instant, quick, gratifying win that is the first action meant to build momentum.

Note: Comically, this is often the suggestion I get the most vitriol or controversy for. I’m going to ignore the argument of “this makes it easier for bed bugs Steve” or “I read that creative geniuses have messy beds and I’m unique and blah blah blah” or “nobody else sees my bed; why should I waste valuable time making it?” or “I get up early and my spouse is still asleep and thus I cannot make my bed.”

Okay, that last one is totally valid. I hear ya!

If you are vehemently opposed to making your bed (or there is a person still asleep in it!), pick another thing like cleaning up your room, cleaning out the sink, cleaning off your kitchen table, etc. as soon as you wake up to give yourself an early win. OR, just make your bed, take the win, and move on!

#2) QUICK HYGIENE FIX

At this point, I’ve already started off my day with a win in the bedroom.

Wait, that came out wrong.

Next up: self-care! This term is hot these days, like “bitcoin” and “avocado toast.”

But I’ll be damned if it’s not an actually important thing that falls by the wayside when life gets busy. And I imagine if you’re a mom or a dad, you have plenty of other people to care for, and caring for yourself is often at the bottom of the list.

And yet, a little bit of work can go a long way.

Although I work from a home office and often type these articles without pants on (too much? cool), I still find it to be incredibly valuable if I treat myself like an actual adult:

So I take a shower. I shave my face. I put on moisturizer that makes me smell like I have my act together. I actually comb my hair.

Oh, and the big one:

I floss.

Yes, I know you’re supposed to floss every day. I do not floss every day. As the late comedian Mitch Hedberg once said, “It’s as hard [to quit smoking] as it is to START flossing.”

RIP Mitch.

But I’ll be damned if my teeth don’t feel great after a good floss. For whatever reason, flossing is something that I avoid, until I actually do it and realize “that wasn’t so bad, I’m glad I did that, I feel better.”

I like to think this primes my brain to tackle other undesirable tasks later on in the day. Flossing wasn’t bad, and I’m glad I did it. What about that other task I’ve been avoiding? I bet it’s not as bad as my dumb brain has built it up to be.

That first tooth is always the hardest, but once I do one, I know it’s all downhill from there to do the rest of them.

WHY IT WORKS: They say dress for the role you want, not the one you have. And I don’t currently have a spacesuit. So I’m stuck with dressing like a more grown-up, put-together version of me. When I’m showered, shaved, shampooed, conditioned, and flossed, I just feel like a better human being worthy of some compassion and also a guy that can get things done.

Plus, I know flossing will avoid my nightmare scenario laid out here.

#3) WATCH A MOTIVATING YOUTUBE VIDEO

I have a love-hate relationship with motivation.

Mostly hate.

Motivation is a consistently flaky friend that shows up when things are good and abandons me when I need it most.

So I don’t let myself be victim to the ebbs and flows of motivation. Instead, I make motivation work for me, and use it to strategically get me out of my own way and back on track.

It’s a video I can put on that takes 5 minutes or less that makes me want to run through a brick wall. In lieu of a brick wall being readily available, it inspires me to start actually getting things done and getting closer to my goals.

So before I do any of the next steps, I often put on this SINGLE VIDEO:

WHY IT WORKS: Motivation is a real thing. And when timed correctly, it can really help me get unstuck and get the ball rolling on a project or a good pump-up talk before hitting the gym. What I don’t do is force myself to watch 40 motivational videos and run out of time to exercise. This is neither productive nor helpful. And I know motivation wanes, so I use the motivation strategically to set myself up so that I don’t need motivation later.

Side note: please don’t get lost down a youtube rabbit hole—that’s how you end up watching 15 videos about baby goats. Not that this just happened to me. Have your go-to video that you watch and reminds you that you can get stuff done, and then go do it.

#4) DO THE 10-10-10 PROTOCOL

When life gets too busy, exercise is often the first thing to get thrown by the wayside. And I know that when I can’t get a workout in, I tend to eat like an idiot too, which makes things even worse.

Which means when I’m overwhelmed and need a reminder that I’m a work in progress trying to level up my life, I do the 10-10-Protocol.

Why is it a Protocol and not a Workout? Because I’m the one writing, and I decided “protocol” made it sound way cooler and possibly makes it connected to espionage or Batman.

So what is the 10-10-10 Protocol?

Think of it like a system reboot for your body and brain:

10 push-ups

10 lunges

10-minute walk

I’m a big fan of the mentality: “do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” (Thanks, Teddy Roosevelt). And this protocol will allow you to diffuse bombs and apprehend fugitives snap out of a funk with a clear head and remind all the muscles in your body: “We’re doing fitness things today!”

This is a workout that can be done no matter what you’re wearing. It can be done in your cubicle. It can be done in a house with a mouse. Or in a box with a fox.

WHY THIS WORKS: The 10-10-10 gets the blood circulating. It gets my muscle fibers firing. It gets my brain working. And that 10 minute walk can really clear my head. It allows me to get out of my head, stop worrying about the past and the future, and just focus on what I can do TODAY.

Unsurprisingly, I get my best ideas walking around, NOT sitting at my desk. And I know I’m not alone on that—this is borrowed from Steve Jobs, who held walking meetings instead of “sit in conference room” meetings.

If you want to stop reading right now and initiate the 10-10-10 Protocol yourself, go for it.

#5) DO THE VERY NEXT THING

There’s nothing more frustrating than feeling so overwhelmed at all of the things that I’m trying to do and not being able to get anything done.

It makes me want to curl up into the fetal position on the ground and hide from my responsibilities. Or play victim and lament the fact that I have so much to do. Or complain that life is so busy.

I do all of those things for about 30 seconds. And then I realize:

Busy is a choice.

It might not be my fault, but it is my responsibility.

And then I do three things:

Get mad at Past Steve for saying yes to so many things.

Make a note to start saying no to way more stuff to protect Future Steve.

Write down on paper all of the crap I have to do.

Sometimes if I feel like I could use a win, I put “make my bed,” “floss,” and “10-10-10 Protocol” at the top of the list and then immediately cross them off.

Progress and momentum for the win!

Next, I try to number these things in order of importance if possible. I ask, “Which of these things can I do today that will actually make an impact on my life?”

Then, I ask: “Okay, I now have my most important priority. What’s the very next step I need to take on this particular item? Good. Now shut the hell up and do that thing.”

As you can tell, I have to have conversations with myself like I’m a 5-year-old.

WHY THIS WORKS: When we get overwhelmed, it’s because our brains like to make Misty Mountains out of molehills. The “stuff” we have to do is nebulous, opaque, and scary. Until it gets broken down into steps.

And then it’s not so daunting. And once you can start to cross a thing or two off the list, or make meaningful progress on a project or activity, you come to the realization I come to every single time: I do have the time to do things. I need to say no to more things, I need to manage my time better, and the sooner I can get out of my head the faster I can be DONE.

No joke: halfway through writing this article I finally called the dermatologist, and timed how long the process took.

It took 2 freakin’ minutes.

This is something that had been on my to-do list weighing on me for the past 10 days, and it took me 2 minutes to schedule the damn appointment!

#6) BREATHE, IDIOT!

The past: I can’t change it!

The future: It hasn’t happened yet!

Today is a pretty good day. And yet, I have NO problem spending all of my time worrying about tomorrow.

This is suboptimal.

So I force myself to “breathe, idiot!”

(Before you get offended at my self-talk here, I mean “idiot” in a joking, loving manner to remind myself that I’m probably overcomplicating things to the point of paralysis and I need to just slow way down. Feel free to use the term “nerf herder or “cotton-headed ninny muggins” instead.)

Cool? Cool.

5 minutes. I just sit there and focus on breathing. In, out. In, out. You get the point.

I’ve tried meditating for 20 minutes a day and kept it up for 60 days (I used Headspace, and I’m also a big fan of Calm). It was like herding cats, and it didn’t unlock the secrets of the cosmos. I did enjoy the Cosmos miniseries on Fox, but that doesn’t apply here.

But just taking 5 minutes to breathe can help me slowwwww way down and just get back to work.

WHY THIS WORKS: I find big time value in reminding myself to breathe and just focus on the day I’m living. 5 minutes is enough for me to settle down and then I can go back to #5 (work on the very next step) of a project without being overwhelmed.

#7) CONSUME LESS, PRODUCE MORE

Whenever I’m overwhelmed and feeling crappy, a look back at my previous week will always reveal one constant:

I consumed more than I created.

For starters, from a pure health perspective, when I consume more than I produce—meaning I eat more calories than I burn—it’s going to result in weight gain.

The whole reason we have survived as a species is due to us producing more than we consume! Saving for a rainy day, thinking beyond just TODAY, growing more crops to share with society, etc.

So let’s get back to this concept of too much consumption.

I look back at how much time I’ve been spending consuming:

Television

Video games

Social media

Outrage news stories

Takeout

Books

In each of these instances, I’m an innocent bystander. Sure, video games are an active activity, but they can take over one’s life and contribute to overwhelm (I see you Fortnite), so I’ll put gaming in the “consumption” category.

If I’m overwhelmed, to borrow from Nate Green (who calls it “Nuclear Mode”), I recognize the things that are contributing to my overwhelm, especially the stuff that I can’t control—I see you political outrage on Facebook—and GET IT OUT OF MY LIFE.

I already don’t have any social media apps on my phone. I then use Freedom.to to block certain websites for the ENTIRE day. No more mindlessly scrolling Facebook or Instagram. No tinfoil hat theories on Zero Hedge.

JUST GET THE STUFF DONE I NEED TO GET DONE.

And that means less consumption, more production and creation!

Writing and creating content, like this article

Playing music (violin, piano, guitar)

Cooking my own meal at home

Creating art, doodling, drawing

Creating conversation with friends

WHY THIS WORKS: Creating makes me happy, and it makes most humans happy. And yet, our default behavior is to consume because consuming is so much easier. So I remove the temptation of consumption by blocking sites and deleting apps, and emphasize creation—even if it’s just for a few minutes.

Who cares if what you create isn’t worthy of being recorded or published or hung in a museum. It’s not the end result, it’s the activity itself!

#8) ASK FOR HELP, TALK IT OUT

When I get stuck in my own head, it’s easy to feel like Chris in Get Out: trapped alone, swimming in a bottomless pit of nothingness. Eeesh, that was dark, Steve.

It’s ALSO easy to tell myself: “Suck it up, Kamb! Other people would kill to be in your position! They have it WAY worse!”

And I have to remind myself that everybody is dealing with their own stuff, and just because others have problems doesn’t mean I can’t be allowed to deal with mine!

So I ask for help. Depending on what I’m struggling with, I’m not afraid to ask for help:

I might reach out to my dad or mentors for business advice.

I might call my mom just to tell her I miss her (moms love this).

I might text my online fitness coach to ask about how I can scale or change my workout schedule.

I might schedule a therapy session to help me manage all of this stuff!

I might reach out to a friend for relationship or friendship advice.

I avoided therapy for years until my friend Lindsay once told me: “Steve, fit people still go to the gym to exercise. There’s no shame in going to exercise your mind.”

We’ve written an ENTIRE article on a Beginner’s Guide..

https://ift.tt/2GBwV7u

[joshuabradleyn]

Overwhelmed? Here Are the 8 Things I Do to Get Unstuck.

“Why is my eye twitching?!”

It’s 5:45AM, and I’m lying in bed with my eyes closed. I’m exhausted because I managed to have one of my recurring nightmares the previous night where I dreamed my bed was covered in spiders—this happens once every few months, especially when I’m overtired.

It’s real enough to me that about 50% of the time I actually jump out of bed and run into the other room.

And yet, despite being sleep deprived, there’s no WAY I can go back to bed either. Because I have far too much on my mind. It looks something like this:

“ACK! I was supposed to call the dermatologist yesterday to schedule an appointment—it’s been on my to-do list for 10 days weighing me down and yet I can’t get myself to pick up the phone. Why am I so averse to talking to a human on a telephone? Just do it, idiot! Call them today at 9AM.

“Why the hell did I dream about spiders again last night? I have to write thousands of words today. And I have that awkward meeting planned stressing me out. OH **** I forgot to send my mom a mother’s day card! I did send her flowers. Is that enough? She loves cards. Can I express ship one in time? AHHHHH!

“Is that networking event I agreed to tonight or tomorrow night? Why did Past Steve commit Future Steve to that? I hate that guy! Wait, is today Wednesday? Sonofa, today is a training day at the gym too. Good luck finding time for that. Oh GOOD, I’m out of clean underwear. And the fridge is empty. And how do I have a pimple inside my nose? I would like to curl up into the fetal position and opt-out of all responsibilities today.”

They say depression is worrying about the past, while anxiety is worrying about the future.

Like many who read this site, I’m quite good at both of those things!

Even though I’m generally a happy person with a very positive outlook on life, life can get overwhelming at times and my brain likes to take over and shut everything down.

What the inside of my brain looks like: take my crazy stream of conscious above and read it in the style of slam poetry, while a Tasmanian devil plays the bongos with no discernible rhythm in the background. He then eats the bongo and starts Irish step dancing. Out of rhythm. While setting off fireworks.

The days where this happens are shitty.

And many shitty days in a row only seem to compound the problem.

I can get so overwhelmed that I can’t seem to make any progress on anything, and yet I know making progress on stuff is the fastest path for me to escape this maniacal prison my brain has trapped me in!

I am a logical, rational, scientific person, which means thinking through this logically, rationally, and scientifically makes sense to me.

And yet in those moments, emotions sit in the command chair and start calling the shots.

At this point, you are either nodding your head going “Steve, WTF are you talking about?” orrrrrr ”OMG I totally know what that feels like.”

I’ve been running Nerd Fitness for close to 10 years now. I’ve seen and heard it all, and been through some shit.

In that time, I’ve come to a few universal truths:

“Busy” and “overwhelm” are serious problems that don’t go away without a plan to tackle them. Having a Strategy Guide to deal with these scenarios can be huge.

Knowing that, I’ve created a personal checklist (yes, a real checklist) for myself of things I can do when I can’t seem to get out of my own head.

These ideas help me break through overwhelm—and get back to a more natural state where I can start making progress on tackling what I need to for the day.

And today, I want to share that personal checklist with you!

#1) GET AN EARLY WIN

For me, the best early win? Making my bed.

When I’m stuck in a rut, lying in bed, and faced with a daunting day ahead of me, I try to give myself a quick momentum-building win to start the day.

I learned this philosophy from William H. McRaven, retired US Navy Admiral and author of the book Make Your Bed: how you do the little things will impact how you do the big things. And by starting with a simple little thing, it can help me build momentum and show myself that I do have control and can affect the outcome of things.

Sure, I don’t make my bed with military precision (sorry Admiral!)—I simply pull the covers up as neatly as I can, I put the pillows on the bed and make sure it looks presentable. This takes less than 2 minutes and gives me a quick win before I’ve even left the room.

WHY IT WORKS: “Look, you already did a thing today. Today can be different. What’s next?” It’s an instant, quick, gratifying win that is the first action meant to build momentum.

Note: Comically, this is often the suggestion I get the most vitriol or controversy for. I’m going to ignore the argument of “this makes it easier for bed bugs Steve” or “I read that creative geniuses have messy beds and I’m unique and blah blah blah” or “nobody else sees my bed; why should I waste valuable time making it?” or “I get up early and my spouse is still asleep and thus I cannot make my bed.”

Okay, that last one is totally valid. I hear ya!

If you are vehemently opposed to making your bed (or there is a person still asleep in it!), pick another thing like cleaning up your room, cleaning out the sink, cleaning off your kitchen table, etc. as soon as you wake up to give yourself an early win. OR, just make your bed, take the win, and move on!

#2) QUICK HYGIENE FIX

At this point, I’ve already started off my day with a win in the bedroom.

Wait, that came out wrong.

Next up: self-care! This term is hot these days, like “bitcoin” and “avocado toast.”

But I’ll be damned if it’s not an actually important thing that falls by the wayside when life gets busy. And I imagine if you’re a mom or a dad, you have plenty of other people to care for, and caring for yourself is often at the bottom of the list.

And yet, a little bit of work can go a long way.

Although I work from a home office and often type these articles without pants on (too much? cool), I still find it to be incredibly valuable if I treat myself like an actual adult:

So I take a shower. I shave my face. I put on moisturizer that makes me smell like I have my act together. I actually comb my hair.

Oh, and the big one:

I floss.

Yes, I know you’re supposed to floss every day. I do not floss every day. As the late comedian Mitch Hedberg once said, “It’s as hard [to quit smoking] as it is to START flossing.”

RIP Mitch.

But I’ll be damned if my teeth don’t feel great after a good floss. For whatever reason, flossing is something that I avoid, until I actually do it and realize “that wasn’t so bad, I’m glad I did that, I feel better.”

I like to think this primes my brain to tackle other undesirable tasks later on in the day. Flossing wasn’t bad, and I’m glad I did it. What about that other task I’ve been avoiding? I bet it’s not as bad as my dumb brain has built it up to be.

That first tooth is always the hardest, but once I do one, I know it’s all downhill from there to do the rest of them.

WHY IT WORKS: They say dress for the role you want, not the one you have. And I don’t currently have a spacesuit. So I’m stuck with dressing like a more grown-up, put-together version of me. When I’m showered, shaved, shampooed, conditioned, and flossed, I just feel like a better human being worthy of some compassion and also a guy that can get things done.

Plus, I know flossing will avoid my nightmare scenario laid out here.

#3) WATCH A MOTIVATING YOUTUBE VIDEO

I have a love-hate relationship with motivation.

Mostly hate.

Motivation is a consistently flaky friend that shows up when things are good and abandons me when I need it most.

So I don’t let myself be victim to the ebbs and flows of motivation. Instead, I make motivation work for me, and use it to strategically get me out of my own way and back on track.

It’s a video I can put on that takes 5 minutes or less that makes me want to run through a brick wall. In lieu of a brick wall being readily available, it inspires me to start actually getting things done and getting closer to my goals.

So before I do any of the next steps, I often put on this SINGLE VIDEO:

WHY IT WORKS: Motivation is a real thing. And when timed correctly, it can really help me get unstuck and get the ball rolling on a project or a good pump-up talk before hitting the gym. What I don’t do is force myself to watch 40 motivational videos and run out of time to exercise. This is neither productive nor helpful. And I know motivation wanes, so I use the motivation strategically to set myself up so that I don’t need motivation later.

Side note: please don’t get lost down a youtube rabbit hole—that’s how you end up watching 15 videos about baby goats. Not that this just happened to me. Have your go-to video that you watch and reminds you that you can get stuff done, and then go do it.

#4) DO THE 10-10-10 PROTOCOL

When life gets too busy, exercise is often the first thing to get thrown by the wayside. And I know that when I can’t get a workout in, I tend to eat like an idiot too, which makes things even worse.

Which means when I’m overwhelmed and need a reminder that I’m a work in progress trying to level up my life, I do the 10-10-Protocol.

Why is it a Protocol and not a Workout? Because I’m the one writing, and I decided “protocol” made it sound way cooler and possibly makes it connected to espionage or Batman.

So what is the 10-10-10 Protocol?

Think of it like a system reboot for your body and brain:

10 push-ups

10 lunges

10-minute walk

I’m a big fan of the mentality: “do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” (Thanks, Teddy Roosevelt). And this protocol will allow you to diffuse bombs and apprehend fugitives snap out of a funk with a clear head and remind all the muscles in your body: “We’re doing fitness things today!”

This is a workout that can be done no matter what you’re wearing. It can be done in your cubicle. It can be done in a house with a mouse. Or in a box with a fox.

WHY THIS WORKS: The 10-10-10 gets the blood circulating. It gets my muscle fibers firing. It gets my brain working. And that 10 minute walk can really clear my head. It allows me to get out of my head, stop worrying about the past and the future, and just focus on what I can do TODAY.

Unsurprisingly, I get my best ideas walking around, NOT sitting at my desk. And I know I’m not alone on that—this is borrowed from Steve Jobs, who held walking meetings instead of “sit in conference room” meetings.

If you want to stop reading right now and initiate the 10-10-10 Protocol yourself, go for it.

#5) DO THE VERY NEXT THING

There’s nothing more frustrating than feeling so overwhelmed at all of the things that I’m trying to do and not being able to get anything done.

It makes me want to curl up into the fetal position on the ground and hide from my responsibilities. Or play victim and lament the fact that I have so much to do. Or complain that life is so busy.

I do all of those things for about 30 seconds. And then I realize:

Busy is a choice.

It might not be my fault, but it is my responsibility.

And then I do three things:

Get mad at Past Steve for saying yes to so many things.

Make a note to start saying no to way more stuff to protect Future Steve.

Write down on paper all of the crap I have to do.

Sometimes if I feel like I could use a win, I put “make my bed,” “floss,” and “10-10-10 Protocol” at the top of the list and then immediately cross them off.

Progress and momentum for the win!

Next, I try to number these things in order of importance if possible. I ask, “Which of these things can I do today that will actually make an impact on my life?”

Then, I ask: “Okay, I now have my most important priority. What’s the very next step I need to take on this particular item? Good. Now shut the hell up and do that thing.”

As you can tell, I have to have conversations with myself like I’m a 5-year-old.

WHY THIS WORKS: When we get overwhelmed, it’s because our brains like to make Misty Mountains out of molehills. The “stuff” we have to do is nebulous, opaque, and scary. Until it gets broken down into steps.

And then it’s not so daunting. And once you can start to cross a thing or two off the list, or make meaningful progress on a project or activity, you come to the realization I come to every single time: I do have the time to do things. I need to say no to more things, I need to manage my time better, and the sooner I can get out of my head the faster I can be DONE.

No joke: halfway through writing this article I finally called the dermatologist, and timed how long the process took.

It took 2 freakin’ minutes.

This is something that had been on my to-do list weighing on me for the past 10 days, and it took me 2 minutes to schedule the damn appointment!

#6) BREATHE, IDIOT!

The past: I can’t change it!

The future: It hasn’t happened yet!

Today is a pretty good day. And yet, I have NO problem spending all of my time worrying about tomorrow.

This is suboptimal.

So I force myself to “breathe, idiot!”

(Before you get offended at my self-talk here, I mean “idiot” in a joking, loving manner to remind myself that I’m probably overcomplicating things to the point of paralysis and I need to just slow way down. Feel free to use the term “nerf herder or “cotton-headed ninny muggins” instead.)

Cool? Cool.

5 minutes. I just sit there and focus on breathing. In, out. In, out. You get the point.

I’ve tried meditating for 20 minutes a day and kept it up for 60 days (I used Headspace, and I’m also a big fan of Calm). It was like herding cats, and it didn’t unlock the secrets of the cosmos. I did enjoy the Cosmos miniseries on Fox, but that doesn’t apply here.

But just taking 5 minutes to breathe can help me slowwwww way down and just get back to work.

WHY THIS WORKS: I find big time value in reminding myself to breathe and just focus on the day I’m living. 5 minutes is enough for me to settle down and then I can go back to #5 (work on the very next step) of a project without being overwhelmed.

#7) CONSUME LESS, PRODUCE MORE

Whenever I’m overwhelmed and feeling crappy, a look back at my previous week will always reveal one constant:

I consumed more than I created.

For starters, from a pure health perspective, when I consume more than I produce—meaning I eat more calories than I burn—it’s going to result in weight gain.

The whole reason we have survived as a species is due to us producing more than we consume! Saving for a rainy day, thinking beyond just TODAY, growing more crops to share with society, etc.

So let’s get back to this concept of too much consumption.

I look back at how much time I’ve been spending consuming:

Television

Video games

Social media

Outrage news stories

Takeout

Books

In each of these instances, I’m an innocent bystander. Sure, video games are an active activity, but they can take over one’s life and contribute to overwhelm (I see you Fortnite), so I’ll put gaming in the “consumption” category.

If I’m overwhelmed, to borrow from Nate Green (who calls it “Nuclear Mode”), I recognize the things that are contributing to my overwhelm, especially the stuff that I can’t control—I see you political outrage on Facebook—and GET IT OUT OF MY LIFE.

I already don’t have any social media apps on my phone. I then use Freedom.to to block certain websites for the ENTIRE day. No more mindlessly scrolling Facebook or Instagram. No tinfoil hat theories on Zero Hedge.

JUST GET THE STUFF DONE I NEED TO GET DONE.

And that means less consumption, more production and creation!

Writing and creating content, like this article

Playing music (violin, piano, guitar)

Cooking my own meal at home

Creating art, doodling, drawing

Creating conversation with friends

WHY THIS WORKS: Creating makes me happy, and it makes most humans happy. And yet, our default behavior is to consume because consuming is so much easier. So I remove the temptation of consumption by blocking sites and deleting apps, and emphasize creation—even if it’s just for a few minutes.

Who cares if what you create isn’t worthy of being recorded or published or hung in a museum. It’s not the end result, it’s the activity itself!

#8) ASK FOR HELP, TALK IT OUT

When I get stuck in my own head, it’s easy to feel like Chris in Get Out: trapped alone, swimming in a bottomless pit of nothingness. Eeesh, that was dark, Steve.

It’s ALSO easy to tell myself: “Suck it up, Kamb! Other people would kill to be in your position! They have it WAY worse!”

And I have to remind myself that everybody is dealing with their own stuff, and just because others have problems doesn’t mean I can’t be allowed to deal with mine!

So I ask for help. Depending on what I’m struggling with, I’m not afraid to ask for help:

I might reach out to my dad or mentors for business advice.

I might call my mom just to tell her I miss her (moms love this).

I might text my online fitness coach to ask about how I can scale or change my workout schedule.

I might schedule a therapy session to help me manage all of this stuff!

I might reach out to a friend for relationship or friendship advice.

I avoided therapy for years until my friend Lindsay once told me: “Steve, fit people still go to the gym to exercise. There’s no shame in going to exercise your mind.”

We’ve written an ENTIRE article on a Beginner’s Guide..

https://ift.tt/2GBwV7u

[johnclapperne]

Overwhelmed? Here Are the 8 Things I Do to Get Unstuck.

“Why is my eye twitching?!”

It’s 5:45AM, and I’m lying in bed with my eyes closed. I’m exhausted because I managed to have one of my recurring nightmares the previous night where I dreamed my bed was covered in spiders—this happens once every few months, especially when I’m overtired.

It’s real enough to me that about 50% of the time I actually jump out of bed and run into the other room.

And yet, despite being sleep deprived, there’s no WAY I can go back to bed either. Because I have far too much on my mind. It looks something like this:

“ACK! I was supposed to call the dermatologist yesterday to schedule an appointment—it’s been on my to-do list for 10 days weighing me down and yet I can’t get myself to pick up the phone. Why am I so averse to talking to a human on a telephone? Just do it, idiot! Call them today at 9AM.

“Why the hell did I dream about spiders again last night? I have to write thousands of words today. And I have that awkward meeting planned stressing me out. OH **** I forgot to send my mom a mother’s day card! I did send her flowers. Is that enough? She loves cards. Can I express ship one in time? AHHHHH!

“Is that networking event I agreed to tonight or tomorrow night? Why did Past Steve commit Future Steve to that? I hate that guy! Wait, is today Wednesday? Sonofa, today is a training day at the gym too. Good luck finding time for that. Oh GOOD, I’m out of clean underwear. And the fridge is empty. And how do I have a pimple inside my nose? I would like to curl up into the fetal position and opt-out of all responsibilities today.”

They say depression is worrying about the past, while anxiety is worrying about the future.

Like many who read this site, I’m quite good at both of those things!

Even though I’m generally a happy person with a very positive outlook on life, life can get overwhelming at times and my brain likes to take over and shut everything down.

What the inside of my brain looks like: take my crazy stream of conscious above and read it in the style of slam poetry, while a Tasmanian devil plays the bongos with no discernible rhythm in the background. He then eats the bongo and starts Irish step dancing. Out of rhythm. While setting off fireworks.

The days where this happens are shitty.

And many shitty days in a row only seem to compound the problem.

I can get so overwhelmed that I can’t seem to make any progress on anything, and yet I know making progress on stuff is the fastest path for me to escape this maniacal prison my brain has trapped me in!

I am a logical, rational, scientific person, which means thinking through this logically, rationally, and scientifically makes sense to me.

And yet in those moments, emotions sit in the command chair and start calling the shots.

At this point, you are either nodding your head going “Steve, WTF are you talking about?” orrrrrr ”OMG I totally know what that feels like.”

I’ve been running Nerd Fitness for close to 10 years now. I’ve seen and heard it all, and been through some shit.

In that time, I’ve come to a few universal truths:

“Busy” and “overwhelm” are serious problems that don’t go away without a plan to tackle them. Having a Strategy Guide to deal with these scenarios can be huge.

Knowing that, I’ve created a personal checklist (yes, a real checklist) for myself of things I can do when I can’t seem to get out of my own head.

These ideas help me break through overwhelm—and get back to a more natural state where I can start making progress on tackling what I need to for the day.

And today, I want to share that personal checklist with you!

#1) GET AN EARLY WIN

For me, the best early win? Making my bed.

When I’m stuck in a rut, lying in bed, and faced with a daunting day ahead of me, I try to give myself a quick momentum-building win to start the day.

I learned this philosophy from William H. McRaven, retired US Navy Admiral and author of the book Make Your Bed: how you do the little things will impact how you do the big things. And by starting with a simple little thing, it can help me build momentum and show myself that I do have control and can affect the outcome of things.

Sure, I don’t make my bed with military precision (sorry Admiral!)—I simply pull the covers up as neatly as I can, I put the pillows on the bed and make sure it looks presentable. This takes less than 2 minutes and gives me a quick win before I’ve even left the room.

WHY IT WORKS: “Look, you already did a thing today. Today can be different. What’s next?” It’s an instant, quick, gratifying win that is the first action meant to build momentum.

Note: Comically, this is often the suggestion I get the most vitriol or controversy for. I’m going to ignore the argument of “this makes it easier for bed bugs Steve” or “I read that creative geniuses have messy beds and I’m unique and blah blah blah” or “nobody else sees my bed; why should I waste valuable time making it?” or “I get up early and my spouse is still asleep and thus I cannot make my bed.”

Okay, that last one is totally valid. I hear ya!

If you are vehemently opposed to making your bed (or there is a person still asleep in it!), pick another thing like cleaning up your room, cleaning out the sink, cleaning off your kitchen table, etc. as soon as you wake up to give yourself an early win. OR, just make your bed, take the win, and move on!

#2) QUICK HYGIENE FIX

At this point, I’ve already started off my day with a win in the bedroom.

Wait, that came out wrong.

Next up: self-care! This term is hot these days, like “bitcoin” and “avocado toast.”

But I’ll be damned if it’s not an actually important thing that falls by the wayside when life gets busy. And I imagine if you’re a mom or a dad, you have plenty of other people to care for, and caring for yourself is often at the bottom of the list.

And yet, a little bit of work can go a long way.

Although I work from a home office and often type these articles without pants on (too much? cool), I still find it to be incredibly valuable if I treat myself like an actual adult:

So I take a shower. I shave my face. I put on moisturizer that makes me smell like I have my act together. I actually comb my hair.

Oh, and the big one:

I floss.

Yes, I know you’re supposed to floss every day. I do not floss every day. As the late comedian Mitch Hedberg once said, “It’s as hard [to quit smoking] as it is to START flossing.”

RIP Mitch.

But I’ll be damned if my teeth don’t feel great after a good floss. For whatever reason, flossing is something that I avoid, until I actually do it and realize “that wasn’t so bad, I’m glad I did that, I feel better.”

I like to think this primes my brain to tackle other undesirable tasks later on in the day. Flossing wasn’t bad, and I’m glad I did it. What about that other task I’ve been avoiding? I bet it’s not as bad as my dumb brain has built it up to be.

That first tooth is always the hardest, but once I do one, I know it’s all downhill from there to do the rest of them.

WHY IT WORKS: They say dress for the role you want, not the one you have. And I don’t currently have a spacesuit. So I’m stuck with dressing like a more grown-up, put-together version of me. When I’m showered, shaved, shampooed, conditioned, and flossed, I just feel like a better human being worthy of some compassion and also a guy that can get things done.

Plus, I know flossing will avoid my nightmare scenario laid out here.

#3) WATCH A MOTIVATING YOUTUBE VIDEO

I have a love-hate relationship with motivation.

Mostly hate.

Motivation is a consistently flaky friend that shows up when things are good and abandons me when I need it most.

So I don’t let myself be victim to the ebbs and flows of motivation. Instead, I make motivation work for me, and use it to strategically get me out of my own way and back on track.

It’s a video I can put on that takes 5 minutes or less that makes me want to run through a brick wall. In lieu of a brick wall being readily available, it inspires me to start actually getting things done and getting closer to my goals.

So before I do any of the next steps, I often put on this SINGLE VIDEO:

WHY IT WORKS: Motivation is a real thing. And when timed correctly, it can really help me get unstuck and get the ball rolling on a project or a good pump-up talk before hitting the gym. What I don’t do is force myself to watch 40 motivational videos and run out of time to exercise. This is neither productive nor helpful. And I know motivation wanes, so I use the motivation strategically to set myself up so that I don’t need motivation later.

Side note: please don’t get lost down a youtube rabbit hole—that’s how you end up watching 15 videos about baby goats. Not that this just happened to me. Have your go-to video that you watch and reminds you that you can get stuff done, and then go do it.

#4) DO THE 10-10-10 PROTOCOL

When life gets too busy, exercise is often the first thing to get thrown by the wayside. And I know that when I can’t get a workout in, I tend to eat like an idiot too, which makes things even worse.

Which means when I’m overwhelmed and need a reminder that I’m a work in progress trying to level up my life, I do the 10-10-Protocol.

Why is it a Protocol and not a Workout? Because I’m the one writing, and I decided “protocol” made it sound way cooler and possibly makes it connected to espionage or Batman.

So what is the 10-10-10 Protocol?

Think of it like a system reboot for your body and brain:

10 push-ups

10 lunges

10-minute walk

I’m a big fan of the mentality: “do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” (Thanks, Teddy Roosevelt). And this protocol will allow you to diffuse bombs and apprehend fugitives snap out of a funk with a clear head and remind all the muscles in your body: “We’re doing fitness things today!”

This is a workout that can be done no matter what you’re wearing. It can be done in your cubicle. It can be done in a house with a mouse. Or in a box with a fox.

WHY THIS WORKS: The 10-10-10 gets the blood circulating. It gets my muscle fibers firing. It gets my brain working. And that 10 minute walk can really clear my head. It allows me to get out of my head, stop worrying about the past and the future, and just focus on what I can do TODAY.

Unsurprisingly, I get my best ideas walking around, NOT sitting at my desk. And I know I’m not alone on that—this is borrowed from Steve Jobs, who held walking meetings instead of “sit in conference room” meetings.

If you want to stop reading right now and initiate the 10-10-10 Protocol yourself, go for it.

#5) DO THE VERY NEXT THING

There’s nothing more frustrating than feeling so overwhelmed at all of the things that I’m trying to do and not being able to get anything done.

It makes me want to curl up into the fetal position on the ground and hide from my responsibilities. Or play victim and lament the fact that I have so much to do. Or complain that life is so busy.

I do all of those things for about 30 seconds. And then I realize:

Busy is a choice.

It might not be my fault, but it is my responsibility.

And then I do three things:

Get mad at Past Steve for saying yes to so many things.

Make a note to start saying no to way more stuff to protect Future Steve.

Write down on paper all of the crap I have to do.

Sometimes if I feel like I could use a win, I put “make my bed,” “floss,” and “10-10-10 Protocol” at the top of the list and then immediately cross them off.

Progress and momentum for the win!

Next, I try to number these things in order of importance if possible. I ask, “Which of these things can I do today that will actually make an impact on my life?”

Then, I ask: “Okay, I now have my most important priority. What’s the very next step I need to take on this particular item? Good. Now shut the hell up and do that thing.”

As you can tell, I have to have conversations with myself like I’m a 5-year-old.

WHY THIS WORKS: When we get overwhelmed, it’s because our brains like to make Misty Mountains out of molehills. The “stuff” we have to do is nebulous, opaque, and scary. Until it gets broken down into steps.

And then it’s not so daunting. And once you can start to cross a thing or two off the list, or make meaningful progress on a project or activity, you come to the realization I come to every single time: I do have the time to do things. I need to say no to more things, I need to manage my time better, and the sooner I can get out of my head the faster I can be DONE.

No joke: halfway through writing this article I finally called the dermatologist, and timed how long the process took.

It took 2 freakin’ minutes.

This is something that had been on my to-do list weighing on me for the past 10 days, and it took me 2 minutes to schedule the damn appointment!

#6) BREATHE, IDIOT!

The past: I can’t change it!

The future: It hasn’t happened yet!

Today is a pretty good day. And yet, I have NO problem spending all of my time worrying about tomorrow.

This is suboptimal.

So I force myself to “breathe, idiot!”

(Before you get offended at my self-talk here, I mean “idiot” in a joking, loving manner to remind myself that I’m probably overcomplicating things to the point of paralysis and I need to just slow way down. Feel free to use the term “nerf herder or “cotton-headed ninny muggins” instead.)

Cool? Cool.

5 minutes. I just sit there and focus on breathing. In, out. In, out. You get the point.

I’ve tried meditating for 20 minutes a day and kept it up for 60 days (I used Headspace, and I’m also a big fan of Calm). It was like herding cats, and it didn’t unlock the secrets of the cosmos. I did enjoy the Cosmos miniseries on Fox, but that doesn’t apply here.

But just taking 5 minutes to breathe can help me slowwwww way down and just get back to work.

WHY THIS WORKS: I find big time value in reminding myself to breathe and just focus on the day I’m living. 5 minutes is enough for me to settle down and then I can go back to #5 (work on the very next step) of a project without being overwhelmed.

#7) CONSUME LESS, PRODUCE MORE

Whenever I’m overwhelmed and feeling crappy, a look back at my previous week will always reveal one constant:

I consumed more than I created.

For starters, from a pure health perspective, when I consume more than I produce—meaning I eat more calories than I burn—it’s going to result in weight gain.

The whole reason we have survived as a species is due to us producing more than we consume! Saving for a rainy day, thinking beyond just TODAY, growing more crops to share with society, etc.

So let’s get back to this concept of too much consumption.

I look back at how much time I’ve been spending consuming:

Television

Video games

Social media

Outrage news stories

Takeout

Books

In each of these instances, I’m an innocent bystander. Sure, video games are an active activity, but they can take over one’s life and contribute to overwhelm (I see you Fortnite), so I’ll put gaming in the “consumption” category.

If I’m overwhelmed, to borrow from Nate Green (who calls it “Nuclear Mode”), I recognize the things that are contributing to my overwhelm, especially the stuff that I can’t control—I see you political outrage on Facebook—and GET IT OUT OF MY LIFE.

I already don’t have any social media apps on my phone. I then use Freedom.to to block certain websites for the ENTIRE day. No more mindlessly scrolling Facebook or Instagram. No tinfoil hat theories on Zero Hedge.

JUST GET THE STUFF DONE I NEED TO GET DONE.

And that means less consumption, more production and creation!

Writing and creating content, like this article

Playing music (violin, piano, guitar)

Cooking my own meal at home

Creating art, doodling, drawing

Creating conversation with friends

WHY THIS WORKS: Creating makes me happy, and it makes most humans happy. And yet, our default behavior is to consume because consuming is so much easier. So I remove the temptation of consumption by blocking sites and deleting apps, and emphasize creation—even if it’s just for a few minutes.

Who cares if what you create isn’t worthy of being recorded or published or hung in a museum. It’s not the end result, it’s the activity itself!

#8) ASK FOR HELP, TALK IT OUT

When I get stuck in my own head, it’s easy to feel like Chris in Get Out: trapped alone, swimming in a bottomless pit of nothingness. Eeesh, that was dark, Steve.

It’s ALSO easy to tell myself: “Suck it up, Kamb! Other people would kill to be in your position! They have it WAY worse!”

And I have to remind myself that everybody is dealing with their own stuff, and just because others have problems doesn’t mean I can’t be allowed to deal with mine!

So I ask for help. Depending on what I’m struggling with, I’m not afraid to ask for help:

I might reach out to my dad or mentors for business advice.

I might call my mom just to tell her I miss her (moms love this).

I might text my online fitness coach to ask about how I can scale or change my workout schedule.

I might schedule a therapy session to help me manage all of this stuff!

I might reach out to a friend for relationship or friendship advice.

I avoided therapy for years until my friend Lindsay once told me: “Steve, fit people still go to the gym to exercise. There’s no shame in going to exercise your mind.”

We’ve written an ENTIRE article on a Beginner’s Guide..

https://ift.tt/2GBwV7u

[albertcaldwellne]

Overwhelmed? Here Are the 8 Things I Do to Get Unstuck.

“Why is my eye twitching?!”

It’s 5:45AM, and I’m lying in bed with my eyes closed. I’m exhausted because I managed to have one of my recurring nightmares the previous night where I dreamed my bed was covered in spiders—this happens once every few months, especially when I’m overtired.

It’s real enough to me that about 50% of the time I actually jump out of bed and run into the other room.

And yet, despite being sleep deprived, there’s no WAY I can go back to bed either. Because I have far too much on my mind. It looks something like this:

“ACK! I was supposed to call the dermatologist yesterday to schedule an appointment—it’s been on my to-do list for 10 days weighing me down and yet I can’t get myself to pick up the phone. Why am I so averse to talking to a human on a telephone? Just do it, idiot! Call them today at 9AM.

“Why the hell did I dream about spiders again last night? I have to write thousands of words today. And I have that awkward meeting planned stressing me out. OH **** I forgot to send my mom a mother’s day card! I did send her flowers. Is that enough? She loves cards. Can I express ship one in time? AHHHHH!

“Is that networking event I agreed to tonight or tomorrow night? Why did Past Steve commit Future Steve to that? I hate that guy! Wait, is today Wednesday? Sonofa, today is a training day at the gym too. Good luck finding time for that. Oh GOOD, I’m out of clean underwear. And the fridge is empty. And how do I have a pimple inside my nose? I would like to curl up into the fetal position and opt-out of all responsibilities today.”

They say depression is worrying about the past, while anxiety is worrying about the future.

Like many who read this site, I’m quite good at both of those things!

Even though I’m generally a happy person with a very positive outlook on life, life can get overwhelming at times and my brain likes to take over and shut everything down.

What the inside of my brain looks like: take my crazy stream of conscious above and read it in the style of slam poetry, while a Tasmanian devil plays the bongos with no discernible rhythm in the background. He then eats the bongo and starts Irish step dancing. Out of rhythm. While setting off fireworks.

The days where this happens are shitty.

And many shitty days in a row only seem to compound the problem.

I can get so overwhelmed that I can’t seem to make any progress on anything, and yet I know making progress on stuff is the fastest path for me to escape this maniacal prison my brain has trapped me in!

I am a logical, rational, scientific person, which means thinking through this logically, rationally, and scientifically makes sense to me.

And yet in those moments, emotions sit in the command chair and start calling the shots.

At this point, you are either nodding your head going “Steve, WTF are you talking about?” orrrrrr ”OMG I totally know what that feels like.”

I’ve been running Nerd Fitness for close to 10 years now. I’ve seen and heard it all, and been through some shit.

In that time, I’ve come to a few universal truths:

“Busy” and “overwhelm” are serious problems that don’t go away without a plan to tackle them. Having a Strategy Guide to deal with these scenarios can be huge.

Knowing that, I’ve created a personal checklist (yes, a real checklist) for myself of things I can do when I can’t seem to get out of my own head.

These ideas help me break through overwhelm—and get back to a more natural state where I can start making progress on tackling what I need to for the day.

And today, I want to share that personal checklist with you!

#1) GET AN EARLY WIN

For me, the best early win? Making my bed.

When I’m stuck in a rut, lying in bed, and faced with a daunting day ahead of me, I try to give myself a quick momentum-building win to start the day.

I learned this philosophy from William H. McRaven, retired US Navy Admiral and author of the book Make Your Bed: how you do the little things will impact how you do the big things. And by starting with a simple little thing, it can help me build momentum and show myself that I do have control and can affect the outcome of things.

Sure, I don’t make my bed with military precision (sorry Admiral!)—I simply pull the covers up as neatly as I can, I put the pillows on the bed and make sure it looks presentable. This takes less than 2 minutes and gives me a quick win before I’ve even left the room.

WHY IT WORKS: “Look, you already did a thing today. Today can be different. What’s next?” It’s an instant, quick, gratifying win that is the first action meant to build momentum.

Note: Comically, this is often the suggestion I get the most vitriol or controversy for. I’m going to ignore the argument of “this makes it easier for bed bugs Steve” or “I read that creative geniuses have messy beds and I’m unique and blah blah blah” or “nobody else sees my bed; why should I waste valuable time making it?” or “I get up early and my spouse is still asleep and thus I cannot make my bed.”

Okay, that last one is totally valid. I hear ya!

If you are vehemently opposed to making your bed (or there is a person still asleep in it!), pick another thing like cleaning up your room, cleaning out the sink, cleaning off your kitchen table, etc. as soon as you wake up to give yourself an early win. OR, just make your bed, take the win, and move on!

#2) QUICK HYGIENE FIX

At this point, I’ve already started off my day with a win in the bedroom.

Wait, that came out wrong.

Next up: self-care! This term is hot these days, like “bitcoin” and “avocado toast.”

But I’ll be damned if it’s not an actually important thing that falls by the wayside when life gets busy. And I imagine if you’re a mom or a dad, you have plenty of other people to care for, and caring for yourself is often at the bottom of the list.

And yet, a little bit of work can go a long way.

Although I work from a home office and often type these articles without pants on (too much? cool), I still find it to be incredibly valuable if I treat myself like an actual adult:

So I take a shower. I shave my face. I put on moisturizer that makes me smell like I have my act together. I actually comb my hair.

Oh, and the big one:

I floss.

Yes, I know you’re supposed to floss every day. I do not floss every day. As the late comedian Mitch Hedberg once said, “It’s as hard [to quit smoking] as it is to START flossing.”

RIP Mitch.

But I’ll be damned if my teeth don’t feel great after a good floss. For whatever reason, flossing is something that I avoid, until I actually do it and realize “that wasn’t so bad, I’m glad I did that, I feel better.”

I like to think this primes my brain to tackle other undesirable tasks later on in the day. Flossing wasn’t bad, and I’m glad I did it. What about that other task I’ve been avoiding? I bet it’s not as bad as my dumb brain has built it up to be.

That first tooth is always the hardest, but once I do one, I know it’s all downhill from there to do the rest of them.

WHY IT WORKS: They say dress for the role you want, not the one you have. And I don’t currently have a spacesuit. So I’m stuck with dressing like a more grown-up, put-together version of me. When I’m showered, shaved, shampooed, conditioned, and flossed, I just feel like a better human being worthy of some compassion and also a guy that can get things done.

Plus, I know flossing will avoid my nightmare scenario laid out here.

#3) WATCH A MOTIVATING YOUTUBE VIDEO

I have a love-hate relationship with motivation.

Mostly hate.

Motivation is a consistently flaky friend that shows up when things are good and abandons me when I need it most.

So I don’t let myself be victim to the ebbs and flows of motivation. Instead, I make motivation work for me, and use it to strategically get me out of my own way and back on track.

It’s a video I can put on that takes 5 minutes or less that makes me want to run through a brick wall. In lieu of a brick wall being readily available, it inspires me to start actually getting things done and getting closer to my goals.

So before I do any of the next steps, I often put on this SINGLE VIDEO:

WHY IT WORKS: Motivation is a real thing. And when timed correctly, it can really help me get unstuck and get the ball rolling on a project or a good pump-up talk before hitting the gym. What I don’t do is force myself to watch 40 motivational videos and run out of time to exercise. This is neither productive nor helpful. And I know motivation wanes, so I use the motivation strategically to set myself up so that I don’t need motivation later.

Side note: please don’t get lost down a youtube rabbit hole—that’s how you end up watching 15 videos about baby goats. Not that this just happened to me. Have your go-to video that you watch and reminds you that you can get stuff done, and then go do it.

#4) DO THE 10-10-10 PROTOCOL

When life gets too busy, exercise is often the first thing to get thrown by the wayside. And I know that when I can’t get a workout in, I tend to eat like an idiot too, which makes things even worse.

Which means when I’m overwhelmed and need a reminder that I’m a work in progress trying to level up my life, I do the 10-10-Protocol.

Why is it a Protocol and not a Workout? Because I’m the one writing, and I decided “protocol” made it sound way cooler and possibly makes it connected to espionage or Batman.

So what is the 10-10-10 Protocol?

Think of it like a system reboot for your body and brain:

10 push-ups

10 lunges

10-minute walk

I’m a big fan of the mentality: “do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” (Thanks, Teddy Roosevelt). And this protocol will allow you to diffuse bombs and apprehend fugitives snap out of a funk with a clear head and remind all the muscles in your body: “We’re doing fitness things today!”

This is a workout that can be done no matter what you’re wearing. It can be done in your cubicle. It can be done in a house with a mouse. Or in a box with a fox.

WHY THIS WORKS: The 10-10-10 gets the blood circulating. It gets my muscle fibers firing. It gets my brain working. And that 10 minute walk can really clear my head. It allows me to get out of my head, stop worrying about the past and the future, and just focus on what I can do TODAY.

Unsurprisingly, I get my best ideas walking around, NOT sitting at my desk. And I know I’m not alone on that—this is borrowed from Steve Jobs, who held walking meetings instead of “sit in conference room” meetings.

If you want to stop reading right now and initiate the 10-10-10 Protocol yourself, go for it.

#5) DO THE VERY NEXT THING

There’s nothing more frustrating than feeling so overwhelmed at all of the things that I’m trying to do and not being able to get anything done.

It makes me want to curl up into the fetal position on the ground and hide from my responsibilities. Or play victim and lament the fact that I have so much to do. Or complain that life is so busy.

I do all of those things for about 30 seconds. And then I realize:

Busy is a choice.

It might not be my fault, but it is my responsibility.

And then I do three things:

Get mad at Past Steve for saying yes to so many things.

Make a note to start saying no to way more stuff to protect Future Steve.

Write down on paper all of the crap I have to do.

Sometimes if I feel like I could use a win, I put “make my bed,” “floss,” and “10-10-10 Protocol” at the top of the list and then immediately cross them off.

Progress and momentum for the win!

Next, I try to number these things in order of importance if possible. I ask, “Which of these things can I do today that will actually make an impact on my life?”

Then, I ask: “Okay, I now have my most important priority. What’s the very next step I need to take on this particular item? Good. Now shut the hell up and do that thing.”

As you can tell, I have to have conversations with myself like I’m a 5-year-old.

WHY THIS WORKS: When we get overwhelmed, it’s because our brains like to make Misty Mountains out of molehills. The “stuff” we have to do is nebulous, opaque, and scary. Until it gets broken down into steps.

And then it’s not so daunting. And once you can start to cross a thing or two off the list, or make meaningful progress on a project or activity, you come to the realization I come to every single time: I do have the time to do things. I need to say no to more things, I need to manage my time better, and the sooner I can get out of my head the faster I can be DONE.

No joke: halfway through writing this article I finally called the dermatologist, and timed how long the process took.

It took 2 freakin’ minutes.

This is something that had been on my to-do list weighing on me for the past 10 days, and it took me 2 minutes to schedule the damn appointment!

#6) BREATHE, IDIOT!

The past: I can’t change it!

The future: It hasn’t happened yet!

Today is a pretty good day. And yet, I have NO problem spending all of my time worrying about tomorrow.

This is suboptimal.

So I force myself to “breathe, idiot!”

(Before you get offended at my self-talk here, I mean “idiot” in a joking, loving manner to remind myself that I’m probably overcomplicating things to the point of paralysis and I need to just slow way down. Feel free to use the term “nerf herder or “cotton-headed ninny muggins” instead.)

Cool? Cool.

5 minutes. I just sit there and focus on breathing. In, out. In, out. You get the point.

I’ve tried meditating for 20 minutes a day and kept it up for 60 days (I used Headspace, and I’m also a big fan of Calm). It was like herding cats, and it didn’t unlock the secrets of the cosmos. I did enjoy the Cosmos miniseries on Fox, but that doesn’t apply here.

But just taking 5 minutes to breathe can help me slowwwww way down and just get back to work.

WHY THIS WORKS: I find big time value in reminding myself to breathe and just focus on the day I’m living. 5 minutes is enough for me to settle down and then I can go back to #5 (work on the very next step) of a project without being overwhelmed.

#7) CONSUME LESS, PRODUCE MORE

Whenever I’m overwhelmed and feeling crappy, a look back at my previous week will always reveal one constant:

I consumed more than I created.

For starters, from a pure health perspective, when I consume more than I produce—meaning I eat more calories than I burn—it’s going to result in weight gain.

The whole reason we have survived as a species is due to us producing more than we consume! Saving for a rainy day, thinking beyond just TODAY, growing more crops to share with society, etc.

So let’s get back to this concept of too much consumption.

I look back at how much time I’ve been spending consuming:

Television

Video games

Social media

Outrage news stories

Takeout

Books

In each of these instances, I’m an innocent bystander. Sure, video games are an active activity, but they can take over one’s life and contribute to overwhelm (I see you Fortnite), so I’ll put gaming in the “consumption” category.

If I’m overwhelmed, to borrow from Nate Green (who calls it “Nuclear Mode”), I recognize the things that are contributing to my overwhelm, especially the stuff that I can’t control—I see you political outrage on Facebook—and GET IT OUT OF MY LIFE.

I already don’t have any social media apps on my phone. I then use Freedom.to to block certain websites for the ENTIRE day. No more mindlessly scrolling Facebook or Instagram. No tinfoil hat theories on Zero Hedge.

JUST GET THE STUFF DONE I NEED TO GET DONE.

And that means less consumption, more production and creation!

Writing and creating content, like this article

Playing music (violin, piano, guitar)

Cooking my own meal at home

Creating art, doodling, drawing

Creating conversation with friends

WHY THIS WORKS: Creating makes me happy, and it makes most humans happy. And yet, our default behavior is to consume because consuming is so much easier. So I remove the temptation of consumption by blocking sites and deleting apps, and emphasize creation—even if it’s just for a few minutes.

Who cares if what you create isn’t worthy of being recorded or published or hung in a museum. It’s not the end result, it’s the activity itself!

#8) ASK FOR HELP, TALK IT OUT

When I get stuck in my own head, it’s easy to feel like Chris in Get Out: trapped alone, swimming in a bottomless pit of nothingness. Eeesh, that was dark, Steve.

It’s ALSO easy to tell myself: “Suck it up, Kamb! Other people would kill to be in your position! They have it WAY worse!”

And I have to remind myself that everybody is dealing with their own stuff, and just because others have problems doesn’t mean I can’t be allowed to deal with mine!

So I ask for help. Depending on what I’m struggling with, I’m not afraid to ask for help:

I might reach out to my dad or mentors for business advice.

I might call my mom just to tell her I miss her (moms love this).

I might text my online fitness coach to ask about how I can scale or change my workout schedule.

I might schedule a therapy session to help me manage all of this stuff!

I might reach out to a friend for relationship or friendship advice.

I avoided therapy for years until my friend Lindsay once told me: “Steve, fit people still go to the gym to exercise. There’s no shame in going to exercise your mind.”

We’ve written an ENTIRE article on a Beginner’s Guide..

https://ift.tt/2GBwV7u

[kiaradnoblesus]

Overwhelmed? Here Are the 8 Things I Do to Get Unstuck.

“Why is my eye twitching?!”

It’s 5:45AM, and I’m lying in bed with my eyes closed. I’m exhausted because I managed to have one of my recurring nightmares the previous night where I dreamed my bed was covered in spiders—this happens once every few months, especially when I’m overtired.

It’s real enough to me that about 50% of the time I actually jump out of bed and run into the other room.

And yet, despite being sleep deprived, there’s no WAY I can go back to bed either. Because I have far too much on my mind. It looks something like this:

“ACK! I was supposed to call the dermatologist yesterday to schedule an appointment—it’s been on my to-do list for 10 days weighing me down and yet I can’t get myself to pick up the phone. Why am I so averse to talking to a human on a telephone? Just do it, idiot! Call them today at 9AM.

“Why the hell did I dream about spiders again last night? I have to write thousands of words today. And I have that awkward meeting planned stressing me out. OH **** I forgot to send my mom a mother’s day card! I did send her flowers. Is that enough? She loves cards. Can I express ship one in time? AHHHHH!

“Is that networking event I agreed to tonight or tomorrow night? Why did Past Steve commit Future Steve to that? I hate that guy! Wait, is today Wednesday? Sonofa, today is a training day at the gym too. Good luck finding time for that. Oh GOOD, I’m out of clean underwear. And the fridge is empty. And how do I have a pimple inside my nose? I would like to curl up into the fetal position and opt-out of all responsibilities today.”

They say depression is worrying about the past, while anxiety is worrying about the future.

Like many who read this site, I’m quite good at both of those things!

Even though I’m generally a happy person with a very positive outlook on life, life can get overwhelming at times and my brain likes to take over and shut everything down.

What the inside of my brain looks like: take my crazy stream of conscious above and read it in the style of slam poetry, while a Tasmanian devil plays the bongos with no discernible rhythm in the background. He then eats the bongo and starts Irish step dancing. To salsa music. While setting off fireworks.

The days where this happens are shitty.

And many shitty days in a row only seem to compound the problem.

I can get so overwhelmed that I can’t seem to make any progress on anything, and yet I know making progress on stuff is the fastest path for me to escape this maniacal prison my brain has trapped me in!

I am a logical, rational, scientific person, which means thinking through this logically, rationally, and scientifically makes sense to me.

And yet in those moments, emotions sit in the command chair and start calling the shots.

At this point, you are either nodding your head going “Steve, WTF are you talking about?” orrrrrr ”OMG I totally know what that feels like.”

I’ve been running Nerd Fitness for close to 10 years now. I’ve seen and heard it all, and been through some shit.

In that time, I’ve come to a few universal truths:

“Busy” and “overwhelm” are serious problems that don’t go away without a plan to tackle them. Having a Strategy Guide to deal with these scenarios can be huge.

Knowing that, I’ve created a personal checklist (yes, a real checklist) for myself of things I can do when I can’t seem to get out of my own head.

These ideas help me break through overwhelm—and get back to a more natural state where I can start making progress on tackling what I need to for the day.

And today, I want to share that personal checklist with you!

#1) GET AN EARLY WIN

For me, the best early win? Making my bed.

When I’m stuck in a rut, lying in bed, and faced with a daunting day ahead of me, I try to give myself a quick momentum-building win to start the day.

I learned this philosophy from William H. McRaven, retired US Navy Admiral and author of the book Make Your Bed: how you do the little things will impact how you do the big things. And by starting with a simple little thing, it can help me build momentum and show myself that I do have control and can affect the outcome of things.

Sure, I don’t make my bed with military precision (sorry Admiral!)—I simply pull the covers up as neatly as I can, I put the pillows on the bed and make sure it looks presentable. This takes less than 2 minutes and gives me a quick win before I’ve even left the room.

WHY IT WORKS: “Look, you already did a thing today. Today can be different. What’s next?” It’s an instant, quick, gratifying win that is the first action meant to build momentum.

Note: Comically, this is often the suggestion I get the most vitriol or controversy for. I’m going to ignore the argument of “this makes it easier for bed bugs Steve” or “I read that creative geniuses have messy beds and I’m unique and blah blah blah” or “nobody else sees my bed; why should I waste valuable time making it?” or “I get up early and my spouse is still asleep and thus I cannot make my bed.”

Okay, that last one is totally valid. I hear ya!

If you are vehemently opposed to making your bed (or there is a person still asleep in it!), pick another thing like cleaning up your room, cleaning out the sink, cleaning off your kitchen table, etc. as soon as you wake up to give yourself an early win. OR, just make your bed, take the win, and move on!

#2) QUICK HYGIENE FIX

At this point, I’ve already started off my day with a win in the bedroom.

Wait, that came out wrong.

Next up: self-care! This term is hot these days, like “bitcoin” and “avocado toast.”

But I’ll be damned if it’s not an actually important thing that falls by the wayside when life gets busy. And I imagine if you’re a mom or a dad, you have plenty of other people to care for, and caring for yourself is often at the bottom of the list.

And yet, a little bit of work can go a long way.

Although I work from a home office and often type these articles without pants on (too much? cool), I still find it to be incredibly valuable if I treat myself like an actual adult:

So I take a shower. I shave my face. I put on moisturizer that makes me smell like I have my act together. I actually comb my hair.

Oh, and the big one:

I floss.

Yes, I know you’re supposed to floss every day. I do not floss every day. As the late comedian Mitch Hedberg once said, “It’s as hard [to quit smoking] as it is to START flossing.”

RIP Mitch.

But I’ll be damned if my teeth don’t feel great after a good floss. For whatever reason, flossing is something that I avoid, until I actually do it and realize “that wasn’t so bad, I’m glad I did that, I feel better.”

I like to think this primes my brain to tackle other undesirable tasks later on in the day. Flossing wasn’t bad, and I’m glad I did it. What about that other task I’ve been avoiding? I bet it’s not as bad as my dumb brain has built it up to be.

That first tooth is always the hardest, but once I do one, I know it’s all downhill from there to do the rest of them.

WHY IT WORKS: They say dress for the role you want, not the one you have. And I don’t currently have a spacesuit. So I’m stuck with dressing like a more grown-up, put-together version of me. When I’m showered, shaved, shampooed, conditioned, and flossed, I just feel like a better human being worthy of some compassion and also a guy that can get things done.

Plus, I know flossing will avoid my nightmare scenario laid out here.

#3) WATCH A MOTIVATING YOUTUBE VIDEO

I have a love-hate relationship with motivation.

Mostly hate.

Motivation is a consistently flaky friend that shows up when things are good and abandons me when I need it most.

So I don’t let myself be victim to the ebbs and flows of motivation. Instead, I make motivation work for me, and use it to strategically get me out of my own way and back on track.

It’s a video I can put on that takes 5 minutes or less that makes me want to run through a brick wall. In lieu of a brick wall being readily available, it inspires me to start actually getting things done and getting closer to my goals.

So before I do any of the next steps, I often put on this SINGLE VIDEO:

WHY IT WORKS: Motivation is a real thing. And when timed correctly, it can really help me get unstuck and get the ball rolling on a project or a good pump-up talk before hitting the gym. What I don’t do is force myself to watch 40 motivational videos and run out of time to exercise. This is neither productive nor helpful. And I know motivation wanes, so I use the motivation strategically to set myself up so that I don’t need motivation later.

Side note: please don’t get lost down a youtube rabbit hole—that’s how you end up watching 15 videos about baby goats. Not that this just happened to me. Have your go-to video that you watch and reminds you that you can get stuff done, and then go do it.

#4) DO THE 10-10-10 PROTOCOL

When life gets too busy, exercise is often the first thing to get thrown by the wayside. And I know that when I can’t get a workout in, I tend to eat like an idiot too, which makes things even worse.

Which means when I’m overwhelmed and need a reminder that I’m a work in progress trying to level up my life, I do the 10-10-Protocol.

Why is it a Protocol and not a Workout? Because I’m the one writing, and I decided “protocol” made it sound way cooler and possibly makes it connected to espionage or Batman.

So what is the 10-10-10 Protocol?

Think of it like a system reboot for your body and brain:

10 push-ups

10 lunges

10-minute walk

I’m a big fan of the mentality: “do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” (Thanks, Teddy Roosevelt). And this protocol will allow you to diffuse bombs and apprehend fugitives snap out of a funk with a clear head and remind all the muscles in your body: “We’re doing fitness things today!”

This is a workout that can be done no matter what you’re wearing. It can be done in your cubicle. It can be done in a house with a mouse. Or in a box with a fox.

WHY THIS WORKS: The 10-10-10 gets the blood circulating. It gets my muscle fibers firing. It gets my brain working. And that 10 minute walk can really clear my head. It allows me to get out of my head, stop worrying about the past and the future, and just focus on what I can do TODAY.

Unsurprisingly, I get my best ideas walking around, NOT sitting at my desk. And I know I’m not alone on that—this is borrowed from Steve Jobs, who held walking meetings instead of “sit in conference room” meetings.

If you want to stop reading right now and initiate the 10-10-10 Protocol yourself, go for it.

#5) DO THE VERY NEXT THING

There’s nothing more frustrating than feeling so overwhelmed at all of the things that I’m trying to do and not being able to get anything done.

It makes me want to curl up into the fetal position on the ground and hide from my responsibilities. Or play victim and lament the fact that I have so much to do. Or complain that life is so busy.

I do all of those things for about 30 seconds. And then I realize:

Busy is a choice.

It might not be my fault, but it is my responsibility.

And then I do three things:

Get mad at Past Steve for saying yes to so many things.

Make a note to start saying no to way more stuff to protect Future Steve.

Write down on paper all of the crap I have to do.

Sometimes if I feel like I could use a win, I put “make my bed,” “floss,” and “10-10-10 Protocol” at the top of the list and then immediately cross them off.

Progress and momentum for the win!

Next, I try to number these things in order of importance if possible. I ask, “Which of these things can I do today that will actually make an impact on my life?”

Then, I ask: “Okay, I now have my most important priority. What’s the very next step I need to take on this particular item? Good. Now shut the hell up and do that thing.”

As you can tell, I have to have conversations with myself like I’m a 5-year-old.

WHY THIS WORKS: When we get overwhelmed, it’s because our brains like to make Misty Mountains out of molehills. The “stuff” we have to do is nebulous, opaque, and scary. Until it gets broken down into steps.

And then it’s not so daunting. And once you can start to cross a thing or two off the list, or make meaningful progress on a project or activity, you come to the realization I come to every single time: I do have the time to do things. I need to say no to more things, I need to manage my time better, and the sooner I can get out of my head the faster I can be DONE.

No joke: halfway through writing this article I finally called the dermatologist, and timed how long the process took.

It took 2 freakin’ minutes.

This is something that had been on my to-do list weighing on me for the past 10 days, and it took me 2 minutes to schedule the damn appointment!

#6) BREATHE, IDIOT!

The past: I can’t change it!

The future: It hasn’t happened yet!

Today is a pretty good day. And yet, I have NO problem spending all of my time worrying about tomorrow.

This is suboptimal.

So I force myself to “breathe, idiot!”

(Before you get offended at my self-talk here, I mean “idiot” in a joking, loving manner to remind myself that I’m probably overcomplicating things to the point of paralysis and I need to just slow way down. Feel free to use the term “nerf herder or “cotton-headed ninny muggins” instead.)

Cool? Cool.

5 minutes. I just sit there and focus on breathing. In, out. In, out. You get the point.

I’ve tried meditating for 20 minutes a day and kept it up for 60 days (I used Headspace, and I’m also a big fan of Calm). It was like herding cats, and it didn’t unlock the secrets of the cosmos. I did enjoy the Cosmos miniseries on Fox, but that doesn’t apply here.

But just taking 5 minutes to breathe can help me slowwwww way down and just get back to work.

WHY THIS WORKS: I find big time value in reminding myself to breathe and just focus on the day I’m living. 5 minutes is enough for me to settle down and then I can go back to #5 (work on the very next step) of a project without being overwhelmed.

#7) CONSUME LESS, PRODUCE MORE

Whenever I’m overwhelmed and feeling crappy, a look back at my previous week will always reveal one constant:

I consumed more than I created.

For starters, from a pure health perspective, when I consume more than I produce—meaning I eat more calories than I burn—it’s going to result in weight gain.

The whole reason we have survived as a species is due to us producing more than we consume! Saving for a rainy day, thinking beyond just TODAY, growing more crops to share with society, etc.

So let’s get back to this concept of too much consumption.

I look back at how much time I’ve been spending consuming:

Television

Video games

Social media

Outrage news stories

Takeout

Books

In each of these instances, I’m an innocent bystander. Sure, video games are an active activity, but they can take over one’s life and contribute to overwhelm (I see you Fortnite), so I’ll put gaming in the “consumption” category.

If I’m overwhelmed, to borrow from Nate Green (who calls it “Nuclear Mode”), I recognize the things that are contributing to my overwhelm, especially the stuff that I can’t control—I see you political outrage on Facebook—and GET IT OUT OF MY LIFE.

I already don’t have any social media apps on my phone. I then use Freedom.to to block certain websites for the ENTIRE day. No more mindlessly scrolling Facebook or Instagram. No tinfoil hat theories on Zero Hedge.

JUST GET THE STUFF DONE I NEED TO GET DONE.

And that means less consumption, more production and creation!

Writing and creating content, like this article

Playing music (violin, piano, guitar)

Cooking my own meal at home

Creating art, doodling, drawing

Creating conversation with friends

WHY THIS WORKS: Creating makes me happy, and it makes most humans happy. And yet, our default behavior is to consume because consuming is so much easier. So I remove the temptation of consumption by blocking sites and deleting apps, and emphasize creation—even if it’s just for a few minutes.

Who cares if what you create isn’t worthy of being recorded or published or hung in a museum. It’s not the end result, it’s the activity itself!

#8) ASK FOR HELP, TALK IT OUT

When I get stuck in my own head, it’s easy to feel like Chris in Get Out: trapped alone, swimming in a bottomless pit of nothingness. Eeesh, that was dark, Steve.

It’s ALSO easy to tell myself: “Suck it up, Kamb! Other people would kill to be in your position! They have it WAY worse!”

And I have to remind myself that everybody is dealing with their own stuff, and just because others have problems doesn’t mean I can’t be allowed to deal with mine!

So I ask for help. Depending on what I’m struggling with, I’m not afraid to ask for help:

I might reach out to my dad or mentors for business advice.

I might call my mom just to tell her I miss her (moms love this).

I might text my online fitness coach to ask about how I can scale or change my workout schedule.

I might schedule a therapy session to help me manage all of this stuff!

I might reach out to a friend for relationship or friendship advice.

I avoided therapy for years until my friend Lindsay once told me: “Steve, fit people still go to the gym to exercise. There’s no shame in going to exercise your mind.”

We’ve written an ENTIRE article on a Beginner’s Guide to Mental Health, and if this is something you’re interested in please consider it!

Note: if you really struggle with depression/anxiety, speaking with a mental health professional could be a game-changing experience. Please do so as soon as you can!

WHY THIS WORKS: I used to be afraid to ask for help, assuming I had to know all the answers on my own. Or that people relied on me to be the happy-go-lucky person and I wasn’t allowed to be unhappy or stressed. And then I grew up.

Now I have no problem asking for help, saying “I don’t know” even if it makes me feel foolish, and I get to a solution MUCH faster!

I know with everything being online these days, it’s easy to spend a lot of time being friendly but not having actual deep conversations with people. This is something I have to work really hard on, as I’d much rather sit at home alone with a book all day and avoid people.

And yet, in most instances, when I’m with friends or loved ones, my day gets much better as a result. And thus, I prioritize saying YES. (Just not too much, so we don’t overload Future Steve.)

Overwhelmed? Do these 8 Things

Okay! This is my 8-step kickstart kickass strategy to dealing with overwhelm and anxiety.

Feel free to hijack these 8 things and the next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, take these steps to get unstuck and back on track:

Get an early win

Quick hygiene fix

Watch a 5-minute motivational video

Do the 10-10-10 Protocol

Do the Very Next Thing

Breathe, idiot!

Consume less, produce more

Ask for help

Break this list in case of emergency! Write these down, print it out, design your own checklist and share it with me so I can add it here to the post, whatever you want to do!

You can do this!

I’d love to hear from you: how do you manage overwhelm, and what are the steps you take to get out of that mental quicksand?!

Leave a comment below!

-Steve

PS: This week’s Rebel Hero: Nick T: rocking his new NF Battle Gear!

I can only assume he worked out so hard and flexed so perfectly that he blew the sleeves right off of it 🙂 Nick has been a super supportive member of our community for years and I’m damn glad he’s here.

Want to be the next Rebel Hero? Take a photo of you doing something epic in your NF battle gear, tag us on Instagram with #NerdFitness #battlegear, or email us at contact@nerdfitness.com!

PHOTO SOURCES: All amazing LEGO photos are from Black Zack, whose photos are here on Flickr.

from Fitness News By James https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/overwhelmed-anxious-how-to-get-unstuck/

[fitnetpro]

Overwhelmed? Here Are the 8 Things I Do to Get Unstuck.

“Why is my eye twitching?!”

It’s 5:45AM, and I’m lying in bed with my eyes closed. I’m exhausted because I managed to have one of my recurring nightmares the previous night where I dreamed my bed was covered in spiders—this happens once every few months, especially when I’m overtired.

It’s real enough to me that about 50% of the time I actually jump out of bed and run into the other room.

And yet, despite being sleep deprived, there’s no WAY I can go back to bed either. Because I have far too much on my mind. It looks something like this:

“ACK! I was supposed to call the dermatologist yesterday to schedule an appointment—it’s been on my to-do list for 10 days weighing me down and yet I can’t get myself to pick up the phone. Why am I so averse to talking to a human on a telephone? Just do it, idiot! Call them today at 9AM.

“Why the hell did I dream about spiders again last night? I have to write thousands of words today. And I have that awkward meeting planned stressing me out. OH **** I forgot to send my mom a mother’s day card! I did send her flowers. Is that enough? She loves cards. Can I express ship one in time? AHHHHH!

“Is that networking event I agreed to tonight or tomorrow night? Why did Past Steve commit Future Steve to that? I hate that guy! Wait, is today Wednesday? Sonofa, today is a training day at the gym too. Good luck finding time for that. Oh GOOD, I’m out of clean underwear. And the fridge is empty. And how do I have a pimple inside my nose? I would like to curl up into the fetal position and opt-out of all responsibilities today.”

They say depression is worrying about the past, while anxiety is worrying about the future.

Like many who read this site, I’m quite good at both of those things!

Even though I’m generally a happy person with a very positive outlook on life, life can get overwhelming at times and my brain likes to take over and shut everything down.

What the inside of my brain looks like: take my crazy stream of conscious above and read it in the style of slam poetry, while a Tasmanian devil plays the bongos with no discernible rhythm in the background. He then eats the bongo and starts Irish step dancing. Out of rhythm. While setting off fireworks.

The days where this happens are shitty.

And many shitty days in a row only seem to compound the problem.

I can get so overwhelmed that I can’t seem to make any progress on anything, and yet I know making progress on stuff is the fastest path for me to escape this maniacal prison my brain has trapped me in!

I am a logical, rational, scientific person, which means thinking through this logically, rationally, and scientifically makes sense to me.

And yet in those moments, emotions sit in the command chair and start calling the shots.

At this point, you are either nodding your head going “Steve, WTF are you talking about?” orrrrrr ”OMG I totally know what that feels like.”

I’ve been running Nerd Fitness for close to 10 years now. I’ve seen and heard it all, and been through some shit.

In that time, I’ve come to a few universal truths:

“Busy” and “overwhelm” are serious problems that don’t go away without a plan to tackle them. Having a Strategy Guide to deal with these scenarios can be huge.

Knowing that, I’ve created a personal checklist (yes, a real checklist) for myself of things I can do when I can’t seem to get out of my own head.

These ideas help me break through overwhelm—and get back to a more natural state where I can start making progress on tackling what I need to for the day.

And today, I want to share that personal checklist with you!

#1) GET AN EARLY WIN

For me, the best early win? Making my bed.

When I’m stuck in a rut, lying in bed, and faced with a daunting day ahead of me, I try to give myself a quick momentum-building win to start the day.

I learned this philosophy from William H. McRaven, retired US Navy Admiral and author of the book Make Your Bed: how you do the little things will impact how you do the big things. And by starting with a simple little thing, it can help me build momentum and show myself that I do have control and can affect the outcome of things.

Sure, I don’t make my bed with military precision (sorry Admiral!)—I simply pull the covers up as neatly as I can, I put the pillows on the bed and make sure it looks presentable. This takes less than 2 minutes and gives me a quick win before I’ve even left the room.

WHY IT WORKS: “Look, you already did a thing today. Today can be different. What’s next?” It’s an instant, quick, gratifying win that is the first action meant to build momentum.

Note: Comically, this is often the suggestion I get the most vitriol or controversy for. I’m going to ignore the argument of “this makes it easier for bed bugs Steve” or “I read that creative geniuses have messy beds and I’m unique and blah blah blah” or “nobody else sees my bed; why should I waste valuable time making it?” or “I get up early and my spouse is still asleep and thus I cannot make my bed.”

Okay, that last one is totally valid. I hear ya!

If you are vehemently opposed to making your bed (or there is a person still asleep in it!), pick another thing like cleaning up your room, cleaning out the sink, cleaning off your kitchen table, etc. as soon as you wake up to give yourself an early win. OR, just make your bed, take the win, and move on!

#2) QUICK HYGIENE FIX

At this point, I’ve already started off my day with a win in the bedroom.

Wait, that came out wrong.

Next up: self-care! This term is hot these days, like “bitcoin” and “avocado toast.”

But I’ll be damned if it’s not an actually important thing that falls by the wayside when life gets busy. And I imagine if you’re a mom or a dad, you have plenty of other people to care for, and caring for yourself is often at the bottom of the list.

And yet, a little bit of work can go a long way.

Although I work from a home office and often type these articles without pants on (too much? cool), I still find it to be incredibly valuable if I treat myself like an actual adult:

So I take a shower. I shave my face. I put on moisturizer that makes me smell like I have my act together. I actually comb my hair.

Oh, and the big one:

I floss.

Yes, I know you’re supposed to floss every day. I do not floss every day. As the late comedian Mitch Hedberg once said, “It’s as hard [to quit smoking] as it is to START flossing.”

RIP Mitch.

But I’ll be damned if my teeth don’t feel great after a good floss. For whatever reason, flossing is something that I avoid, until I actually do it and realize “that wasn’t so bad, I’m glad I did that, I feel better.”

I like to think this primes my brain to tackle other undesirable tasks later on in the day. Flossing wasn’t bad, and I’m glad I did it. What about that other task I’ve been avoiding? I bet it’s not as bad as my dumb brain has built it up to be.

That first tooth is always the hardest, but once I do one, I know it’s all downhill from there to do the rest of them.

WHY IT WORKS: They say dress for the role you want, not the one you have. And I don’t currently have a spacesuit. So I’m stuck with dressing like a more grown-up, put-together version of me. When I’m showered, shaved, shampooed, conditioned, and flossed, I just feel like a better human being worthy of some compassion and also a guy that can get things done.

Plus, I know flossing will avoid my nightmare scenario laid out here.

#3) WATCH A MOTIVATING YOUTUBE VIDEO

I have a love-hate relationship with motivation.

Mostly hate.

Motivation is a consistently flaky friend that shows up when things are good and abandons me when I need it most.

So I don’t let myself be victim to the ebbs and flows of motivation. Instead, I make motivation work for me, and use it to strategically get me out of my own way and back on track.

It’s a video I can put on that takes 5 minutes or less that makes me want to run through a brick wall. In lieu of a brick wall being readily available, it inspires me to start actually getting things done and getting closer to my goals.

So before I do any of the next steps, I often put on this SINGLE VIDEO:

WHY IT WORKS: Motivation is a real thing. And when timed correctly, it can really help me get unstuck and get the ball rolling on a project or a good pump-up talk before hitting the gym. What I don’t do is force myself to watch 40 motivational videos and run out of time to exercise. This is neither productive nor helpful. And I know motivation wanes, so I use the motivation strategically to set myself up so that I don’t need motivation later.

Side note: please don’t get lost down a youtube rabbit hole—that’s how you end up watching 15 videos about baby goats. Not that this just happened to me. Have your go-to video that you watch and reminds you that you can get stuff done, and then go do it.

#4) DO THE 10-10-10 PROTOCOL

When life gets too busy, exercise is often the first thing to get thrown by the wayside. And I know that when I can’t get a workout in, I tend to eat like an idiot too, which makes things even worse.

Which means when I’m overwhelmed and need a reminder that I’m a work in progress trying to level up my life, I do the 10-10-Protocol.

Why is it a Protocol and not a Workout? Because I’m the one writing, and I decided “protocol” made it sound way cooler and possibly makes it connected to espionage or Batman.

So what is the 10-10-10 Protocol?

Think of it like a system reboot for your body and brain:

10 push-ups

10 lunges

10-minute walk

I’m a big fan of the mentality: “do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” (Thanks, Teddy Roosevelt). And this protocol will allow you to diffuse bombs and apprehend fugitives snap out of a funk with a clear head and remind all the muscles in your body: “We’re doing fitness things today!”

This is a workout that can be done no matter what you’re wearing. It can be done in your cubicle. It can be done in a house with a mouse. Or in a box with a fox.

WHY THIS WORKS: The 10-10-10 gets the blood circulating. It gets my muscle fibers firing. It gets my brain working. And that 10 minute walk can really clear my head. It allows me to get out of my head, stop worrying about the past and the future, and just focus on what I can do TODAY.

Unsurprisingly, I get my best ideas walking around, NOT sitting at my desk. And I know I’m not alone on that—this is borrowed from Steve Jobs, who held walking meetings instead of “sit in conference room” meetings.

If you want to stop reading right now and initiate the 10-10-10 Protocol yourself, go for it.

#5) DO THE VERY NEXT THING

There’s nothing more frustrating than feeling so overwhelmed at all of the things that I’m trying to do and not being able to get anything done.

It makes me want to curl up into the fetal position on the ground and hide from my responsibilities. Or play victim and lament the fact that I have so much to do. Or complain that life is so busy.

I do all of those things for about 30 seconds. And then I realize:

Busy is a choice.

It might not be my fault, but it is my responsibility.

And then I do three things:

Get mad at Past Steve for saying yes to so many things.

Make a note to start saying no to way more stuff to protect Future Steve.

Write down on paper all of the crap I have to do.

Sometimes if I feel like I could use a win, I put “make my bed,” “floss,” and “10-10-10 Protocol” at the top of the list and then immediately cross them off.

Progress and momentum for the win!

Next, I try to number these things in order of importance if possible. I ask, “Which of these things can I do today that will actually make an impact on my life?”

Then, I ask: “Okay, I now have my most important priority. What’s the very next step I need to take on this particular item? Good. Now shut the hell up and do that thing.”

As you can tell, I have to have conversations with myself like I’m a 5-year-old.

WHY THIS WORKS: When we get overwhelmed, it’s because our brains like to make Misty Mountains out of molehills. The “stuff” we have to do is nebulous, opaque, and scary. Until it gets broken down into steps.

And then it’s not so daunting. And once you can start to cross a thing or two off the list, or make meaningful progress on a project or activity, you come to the realization I come to every single time: I do have the time to do things. I need to say no to more things, I need to manage my time better, and the sooner I can get out of my head the faster I can be DONE.

No joke: halfway through writing this article I finally called the dermatologist, and timed how long the process took.

It took 2 freakin’ minutes.

This is something that had been on my to-do list weighing on me for the past 10 days, and it took me 2 minutes to schedule the damn appointment!

#6) BREATHE, IDIOT!

The past: I can’t change it!

The future: It hasn’t happened yet!

Today is a pretty good day. And yet, I have NO problem spending all of my time worrying about tomorrow.

This is suboptimal.

So I force myself to “breathe, idiot!”

(Before you get offended at my self-talk here, I mean “idiot” in a joking, loving manner to remind myself that I’m probably overcomplicating things to the point of paralysis and I need to just slow way down. Feel free to use the term “nerf herder or “cotton-headed ninny muggins” instead.)

Cool? Cool.

5 minutes. I just sit there and focus on breathing. In, out. In, out. You get the point.

I’ve tried meditating for 20 minutes a day and kept it up for 60 days (I used Headspace, and I’m also a big fan of Calm). It was like herding cats, and it didn’t unlock the secrets of the cosmos. I did enjoy the Cosmos miniseries on Fox, but that doesn’t apply here.

But just taking 5 minutes to breathe can help me slowwwww way down and just get back to work.

WHY THIS WORKS: I find big time value in reminding myself to breathe and just focus on the day I’m living. 5 minutes is enough for me to settle down and then I can go back to #5 (work on the very next step) of a project without being overwhelmed.

#7) CONSUME LESS, PRODUCE MORE

Whenever I’m overwhelmed and feeling crappy, a look back at my previous week will always reveal one constant:

I consumed more than I created.

For starters, from a pure health perspective, when I consume more than I produce—meaning I eat more calories than I burn—it’s going to result in weight gain.

The whole reason we have survived as a species is due to us producing more than we consume! Saving for a rainy day, thinking beyond just TODAY, growing more crops to share with society, etc.

So let’s get back to this concept of too much consumption.

I look back at how much time I’ve been spending consuming:

Television

Video games

Social media

Outrage news stories

Takeout

Books

In each of these instances, I’m an innocent bystander. Sure, video games are an active activity, but they can take over one’s life and contribute to overwhelm (I see you Fortnite), so I’ll put gaming in the “consumption” category.

If I’m overwhelmed, to borrow from Nate Green (who calls it “Nuclear Mode”), I recognize the things that are contributing to my overwhelm, especially the stuff that I can’t control—I see you political outrage on Facebook—and GET IT OUT OF MY LIFE.

I already don’t have any social media apps on my phone. I then use Freedom.to to block certain websites for the ENTIRE day. No more mindlessly scrolling Facebook or Instagram. No tinfoil hat theories on Zero Hedge.

JUST GET THE STUFF DONE I NEED TO GET DONE.

And that means less consumption, more production and creation!

Writing and creating content, like this article

Playing music (violin, piano, guitar)

Cooking my own meal at home

Creating art, doodling, drawing

Creating conversation with friends

WHY THIS WORKS: Creating makes me happy, and it makes most humans happy. And yet, our default behavior is to consume because consuming is so much easier. So I remove the temptation of consumption by blocking sites and deleting apps, and emphasize creation—even if it’s just for a few minutes.

Who cares if what you create isn’t worthy of being recorded or published or hung in a museum. It’s not the end result, it’s the activity itself!

#8) ASK FOR HELP, TALK IT OUT

When I get stuck in my own head, it’s easy to feel like Chris in Get Out: trapped alone, swimming in a bottomless pit of nothingness. Eeesh, that was dark, Steve.

It’s ALSO easy to tell myself: “Suck it up, Kamb! Other people would kill to be in your position! They have it WAY worse!”

And I have to remind myself that everybody is dealing with their own stuff, and just because others have problems doesn’t mean I can’t be allowed to deal with mine!

So I ask for help. Depending on what I’m struggling with, I’m not afraid to ask for help:

I might reach out to my dad or mentors for business advice.

I might call my mom just to tell her I miss her (moms love this).

I might text my online fitness coach to ask about how I can scale or change my workout schedule.

I might schedule a therapy session to help me manage all of this stuff!

I might reach out to a friend for relationship or friendship advice.

I avoided therapy for years until my friend Lindsay once told me: “Steve, fit people still go to the gym to exercise. There’s no shame in going to exercise your mind.”

We’ve written an ENTIRE article on a Beginner’s Guide to Mental Health, and if this is something you’re interested in please consider it!

Note: if you really struggle with depression/anxiety, speaking with a mental health professional could be a game-changing experience. Please do so as soon as you can!

WHY THIS WORKS: I used to be afraid to ask for help, assuming I had to know all the answers on my own. Or that people relied on me to be the happy-go-lucky person and I wasn’t allowed to be unhappy or stressed. And then I grew up.

Now I have no problem asking for help, saying “I don’t know” even if it makes me feel foolish, and I get to a solution MUCH faster!

I know with everything being online these days, it’s easy to spend a lot of time being friendly but not having actual deep conversations with people. This is something I have to work really hard on, as I’d much rather sit at home alone with a book all day and avoid people.

And yet, in most instances, when I’m with friends or loved ones, my day gets much better as a result. And thus, I prioritize saying YES. (Just not too much, so we don’t overload Future Steve.)

Overwhelmed? Do these 8 Things

Okay! This is my 8-step kickstart kickass strategy to dealing with overwhelm and anxiety.

Feel free to hijack these 8 things and the next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, take these steps to get unstuck and back on track:

Get an early win

Quick hygiene fix

Watch a 5-minute motivational video

Do the 10-10-10 Protocol

Do the Very Next Thing

Breathe, idiot!

Consume less, produce more

Ask for help

Break this list in case of emergency! Write these down, print it out, design your own checklist and share it with me so I can add it here to the post, whatever you want to do!

You can do this!

I’d love to hear from you: how do you manage overwhelm, and what are the steps you take to get out of that mental quicksand?!

Leave a comment below!

-Steve

PS: This week’s Rebel Hero: Nick T: rocking his new NF Battle Gear!

I can only assume he worked out so hard and flexed so perfectly that he blew the sleeves right off of it 🙂 Nick has been a super supportive member of our community for years and I’m damn glad he’s here.

Want to be the next Rebel Hero? Take a photo of you doing something epic in your NF battle gear, tag us on Instagram with #NerdFitness #battlegear, or email us at contact@nerdfitness.com!

PHOTO SOURCES: All amazing LEGO photos are from Black Zack, whose photos are here on Flickr.

Overwhelmed? Here Are the 8 Things I Do to Get Unstuck. published first on http://fitnetpro.tumblr.com/

[lawrence9gold]

Humanoid Self-Gratification Laid Naked: The Morlocks and the Eloi

As a possibility, it's available . . . as an actuality, it requires moderation -- which is, "modulation" according to the circumstances: Self-Gratification. The intention of this writing is to appeal to your imagination to attract your attention and get you to remember things. Having done that -- and I mean this to be very important -- to dissolve the substance of it all by means I have provided at the end -- a lifesaver. Persons and things consist of both form and substance, "both" because form and substance compose the same one thing, "compose" consisting of two syllables:  "com" (with) and pose (position). The same one thing they together compose is kept in existence by changing:  "vibrating", "resonating", "moving", "interacting". People confuse "the form" with "the substance." The substance of something is its intensity, its duration through time. The form is its felt meaning, its quality, its direction of development. People think the substance is the form and go for the substance, That is the basis of materialism, that is, Consumerism an attempted solution to the distresses of life. If that escapes you, listen to this: Two behaviors that involve self-gratification are the affliction of the world: immature self-gratification and insane self-gratification

IMMATURE SELF-GRATIFICATION abandons sensibility (intelligence) -- or never had it

Immature Self-Gratification wants things before it has created them or earned them.  It wants more before it feels it has earned it -- but it rationalizes that it deserves it. It wants it, now.  It confuses imagining something in a vague sort of way with imagining it with such completeness and integrity that it can benefit others. It wants the "owning" but hasn't the capacity to sustain having what it wants because it hasn't developed, enough. It hasn't borne its fruit, but it wants the fruit brought forth by others. Already.  It's a Consumer.  Infantile and childish behavior doesn't know it's infantile or childish. Nonetheless, it wants its gratification  -- and devotees of Insane Self-Gratification will give it.

INSANE SELF-GRATIFICATION abandons conscience (integrity) for self-gratification -- or never had it

Insane Self-Gratification gets gratification from choosing The Unwholesome.

It accepts displeasure as part of its pleasure.

It chooses the things of its own pleasure and takes the pleasure despite the displeasure it afflicts -- and then tries to control the displeasure that comes with it, like taking a drug to counter the side-effects of other drugs.

Knowingly choosing what is unwholesome is the definition of, evil. It's also kind-of stupid.

It is the basis of Consumerism as a paradigm of marketing -- programming people to want things they don't already want, beyond what is beneficial, programming people to acquire meager (even if expensive), temporary (even if durable goods), or questionable (even if popular) pleasures in exchange for long-term displeasure -- the displeasure of being in debt beyond their means, owing and not being able to pay, or the let-down of the thing acquired not fulfilling the dream portrayed in the marketing -- pleasures portrayed to lastingly exceed the long-term displeasure of debt -- acquisitions depicted to make the displeasure worth it -- the tacit rationale for war, crime, and predation of all kinds.

One of the attitudes it holds is, " Businesses should be protected from interference simply because they are profit centers" -- a very simple-minded attitude. Don't you agree? 

Insane Self-Gratification is the arrested development or magnification of immature behaviors --  the desire to suckle at the breast -- Immature Self-Gratification "gone 'Godzilla at Tokyo', 'Dracula in London". Insane Self-Gratification is as Thirsty as Dracula and as Big as Godzilla -- bigger, if the truth be told. It's appetite is commensurably more ravenous -- and it can't distinguish between good and evil -- the Legal Insanity Defense -- or simply won't -- the definition of guilty. However, like Immature Self-Gratification, it feels, It deserves it.

Insane Self-Gratification preys upon Immature Self-Gratification. It feeds off of unnecessary Consumerism in its own Super Consumerism. It's "The Consumer of Consumers -- The BIG Consumer" and Immature Self-Gratification is the source of its food. 

Immature Self-Gratification is The Way of life of The Eloi. ("the 99.9%")

Insane Self-Gratification is The Way of Life of The Morlocks. ("the .1%")

in H.G. Welles', The Time Machine

What happens to the vampire's host after the orgasm of Blood Feast?

A Civilization dies when it collapses -- either because of environmental calamity or, more commonly, because of Immature Self-Gratification wanting more than it can sustain and Insane Self-Gratification not caring, as long as it can feed on Immature Self-Gratification.

But for either, it's not enough.

Both want, "MORE" -- one of them, with good reason. But the mood of, "MORE", they have in common.  It's just that one is predator and the other is prey.

In Consumerism, the Consumer is Consumed by credit-debt.

In Consumerism, those who control the wealth skim wealth from the flow of money from the productivity of the producer in virtually all of its channels, while producing nothing but rationalizations. They are involved with getting the Consumer to consume more and different things, unnecessarily or excessively, to exercise power toward the accumulation of wealth, and through wealth, control, for Insane Self-Gratification. That's Never Enough.

The Displeasure of Never Enough triggers the idea in them that "More Would Be Enough" -- and on they go, choosing the pleasures of their undeserving life, oblivious or inured or desensitized or perversely cherishing the displeasures of their actions that make all they have, always, "Not Enough".

It's been said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

I think that's stupidity. It never learns.

I think that insanity is "going for what is, and feels, unwholesome" as if it were wholesome.

That leaves the psychopaths, who override the feelings of people for the sake of their "one-channel mind" results. They, also, choose self-gratification. But just as they don't feel the feelings of other people, they also don't feel their own feelings. Those feelings are overridden by the tenacity of the logic in them, that They Are Doing Things Right. They are selectively perceptive, one-channel (wealth-and-power-and-material-pleasures) minds incapable of or unwilling to take in more criteria than, "Money Excuses Everything". A one channel-mind is another version of, underdeveloped -- a "one-trick pony" mind.

It's not that "money excuses" (although it's well known that the wealthy and powerful get away with murder), but that people excuse them, abandoning their intelligence and integrity for the hope of themselves (Immature Self-Gratification) becoming like the wealthy and powerful (Insane Self-Gratification).

What a stupid game -- both are forms of Humanoid Self-Gratification

How about this:

Immature Self-Gratification: Educate yourself. Mature into becoming more fully human. Develop your interests into abilities. Produce benefit so that people will be glad to give to you. Get your self-esteem from living up to your own potential, not from others' social or political approval (which isn't self-esteem, but "other esteem" -- which doesn't really suffice, anyway). Exercise truthfulness to self, patience, persistence and creativity. Exercise creativity that embodies and advances well-being. AWAKEN AND DEVELOP YOUR INTENDING, IMAGINING, ATTENDING AND REMEMBERING faculties of intelligence. Get your intelligences on-line and connected.

Earn what you get within your capacity to maintain it. "By not advancing himself, he stays ahead of himself." (Lao Tsuh)

Overcome the indoctrination of Insane Self-Gratification. Deprogram yourself. Exercise your intelligence.

Insane Self-Gratification: You've seen that wealth, power, and consumerism are Never Enough, yet you haven't learned the lesson. You're the personification of stupid -- never learns -- and insane -- going for what is unwholesome. You're smart in a one-channel-mind sort of way, but you create more detriment than you do, benefit by preying upon Immature Self-Gratification instead of Nurturing it because, "being in business, you deserve it," a slick rationalization if I ever heard one -- and one you have sold to Immature Self-Gratification to open and direct the font of wealth in your direction.

You think this is a "top-down control" culture, but fail to recognize that the foundation of your wealth are those on whom you prey -- and that their well-being funds your own.

Get your "Enough" from the "Enough" of others who had, "Not Enough".

Overcome the indoctrination of "More will be Enough". Wake up and redirect.

~~~~~~~~~~

But understand -- psychopaths are emotionally underdeveloped and/or emotionally dissociated (albeit cleverly manipulative and intellect-dominant) humanoids with one-channel minds some of whose "incoming information" channels (e.g., moral intelligence, empathy, and sense of integrity) are unawakened or clogged with dysfunctional programming from who-knows-where, and so, distorted and so, only humanoid. There's something humanoid about their brain functioning. Their, "Never Enough" conditioning sucks hard on the "wealth and power" channel, and may suck it with enthusiasm to the point of killing the host -- and harming themselves, in the process -- but that may not seem to matter, to them, because their moral intelligence is limited. Dinosaurs.

There is a way to bring on-line and balance the intelligences -- but you've got to want to. You've got to see bringing your intelligences on-line as an advantage.

"At no time in the world will a man who is sane overreach himself, overspend himself, overrate himself." (Lao Tsuh)

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[amazonauthorinsights-live]

Writing Insights Part Three: The Revision Process

By Hugh Howey

It is often easier to rewrite from scratch than it is to revise

Welcome to the third entry in my four-part series on writing insights. In the first part of this series, I listed the things I wish I’d known before aspiring to become a writer. The second entry was all about how to get through the rough draft. Now I’d like to discuss how to improve your rough draft to get it ready for publication.

Many of the points in this section deal with the craft of writing. You may wonder why these are brought up after a rough draft is complete. Shouldn’t you learn to write before you beginwriting? I wish it worked this way, but it doesn’t. You learn by doing, not reading about doing. Rough drafts require skills beyond the skill of writing. They are about endurance and stamina. They require willpower and force of habit. Many phenomenal writers can’t complete a rough draft and never will. This is why much of the writing advice out there is really just motivational advice to get you through that first draft. More “You can do it!” rather than “How-to.”

This is exactly as it should be. Once you know you can write a novel, you can learn through the revision process how to write a better novel.

Having said that, all of these insights are meant to be read at any time. If you haven’t written your first word, I would recommend reading this entire series before you begin. There are insights about the publication process in the next section that may influence how you structure your rough draft. And if you’re working on your tenth novel, there may be something in here that helps you see the writing process in a new light. Or you may see what’s missing from this advice and share your thoughts, which will help me and others in our writing processes. With this series, I mostly have in mind the aspirational writer, someone who is where I was ten years ago. So it assumes nothing and attempts to help anyone starting from scratch.

Before we get to the revision insights, I want to start by congratulating those of you who find yourself at this point of the writing process. It’s an amazing accomplishment. I’ll never forget the day I finished my first rough draft. I happened to be visiting my mother and sister at the time, and that night we went out for a celebratory dinner. A USB thumb drive containing a backup of my work sat on the restaurant table as we ate. I didn’t want to let that manuscript out of my sight! I still didn’t believe it. For the next week, I had to stop myself from telling perfect strangers that I’d written a novel. I also realized during this week that I had no idea what to do next. I’d worked so long and so hard to get to this point that I’d never researched the rest.

Here are the ten things I wish I’d known, sitting at that dinner table all those years ago…

Insight #21: Don’t rush to publication.

For many writers, getting the rough draft complete is the hardest part of writing a novel. It can feel like you’re done at this point, and you might want to get the project out into the wild so you can start on something new, or so you can get some feedback, or see if it’ll be the runaway bestseller that you hope it might. These impulses lead to tragic mistakes. New authors will often submit a manuscript to agents before it’s ready; or they’ll self-publish before the work is truly done.

Now is not the time to waste all the effort you’ve put into your rough draft. Now comes the fun part. The next step(s) will involve perhaps a dozen full passes through the work. Yeah, a dozen or more! Each pass will gradually smooth away rough spots and errors. It’s like taking a roughhewn hunk of lumber and turning it into a polished piece of furniture. You’ll start with heavy grit sandpaper and work your way down to wet-sanding a typo here or there.

The beauty of the revision process is that this is where you’ll learn to become a great writer, much more so than in the rough draft stage. The techniques you pick up as you shore up your story and polish your prose will carry over into the next rough draft. Because of this, the writing process will get easier and easier. The revision process will become faster and faster.

I’ve heard some writers suggest that you should step away from a rough draft for a length of time, but I never understood the usefulness of this. When I finish a rough draft, I celebrate for a day and then go right back to the beginning of the novel to start the revisions. There are a handful of main things I want to accomplish with the first pass: (1) I want to plug any missing sections (scenes or chapters I skipped). (2) I want to make the prose more readable and improve the flow between sections and chapters. (3) I want to give the characters and my world more depth and detail. (4) I want to tighten the plot, add some foreshadowing, close any logical holes.

Now is also the time to think about how you plan to publish this work, which is the area we’ll cover in the fourth and final part of this series. If your rough draft is a 300,000 word epic fantasy tome, and you want to publish this with a major publishing house, your revision process is going to involve cutting that draft up into three novels to create a trilogy. This will require some plot restructuring. One of my keenest insights that I possess now, which I didn’t appreciate when I started writing, is that how you publish will influence what and how you write.

In the next section, we’ll also discuss how insanely easy it is to publish these days, and this is why some patience is required. In the old days, you didn’t have a choice but to be patient. It could easily take several years (if at all) to bring your book to market. Now it takes a few hours. I want to convince you to take longer. At least ten revision passes before you submit to agents or self-publish. I promise you’ll be glad you took this advice.

Insight #22: It is often easier to rewrite from scratch than it is to revise.

Before we discuss revising, it’s worth pointing out the alternative: rewriting. Yes, I hear your collective groans. We just got done writing the rough draft, and now we have to start a scene or chapter from scratch?! From a blank page?! Can’t we just move a few words or sentences around and be done with it?

Usually, you can. The revision process mostly involves massaging what’s already in place. But there are times when revising actually takes a lot longer than a rewrite. Understanding when this makes sense, and being brave enough to tackle these challenging moments, is often the difference between success and failure. I’ve seen entire manuscripts abandoned and/or destroyed because of this fatal oversight.

This is especially true with the opening chapters of a manuscript, which are the most important chapters for hooking your audience, whether that audience is an agent, a reader, or a publisher. As you wrap up your rough draft and go back to the beginning, now is the time to explore rewriting as well as revising. You know your story and your characters more fully now. Your writing skills have improved through the hours and hours you’ve invested in this project. Maybe your opening feels a little stale. Or you wonder if the story shouldn’t start with a different scene or a different piece of information. You can try revising, or you can open a blank document and see what kind of opening chapter you would write now. It’s a fun exercise. You might surprise yourself.

This technique works wonders, and it works throughout your novel. You can peel off any scene or chapter or sentence and try it again from scratch. There have been times when I’ll spend hours trying to get a chapter or paragraph just right, then pound out something new in a fraction of the time that’s far cleaner and better. Our existing words often get in the way. Learn to step around them and try something new.

This fits well with the last insight from the previous entry in this series, about writing lean. The beauty of writing lean is that you spend more time adding material, and less time wrestling with the pain of deletion or the discomfort of massaging the wrong words into a different order that isn’t much better.

Insight #23: Great books are all about pacing

To become a better writer, it helps to understand how the delivery of words affects a reader’s mood and their retention of information. The most important tool in this regard is pacing. Pacing can mean different things in different contexts. The next few insights are all about pacing in one way or another.

Let’s start with the importance of overall book pacing and construction. It can help to consider extreme scenarios in order to arrive at more general truths. For instance, imagine a 300 page novel with no chapters or scene breaks. I’m sure they’ve been written or considered by people eager to break rules and convention. I imagine they are nearly impossible to read. Why? Because our brains are built to absorb ideas in chunks and to process those chunks individually.

We experience things in the moment, move those experiences into short term memory, and then perhaps to long term memory. If we get too much information all at once, we can’t process it well (or at all). Chapters and paragraphs signal an opportunity to file away what we just absorbed and prepare to absorb another chunk. This is why paragraph length is critical for flow and retention. If possible, paragraphs should be of similar length, each one containing three to seven sentences. This can vary depending on how long or short the sentences are (more on that in a bit). And this rule can be broken to great effect. Those effects are diminished when the rule is ignored altogether.

Short paragraphs stand out – but only if used sparingly!

And long paragraphs have their place in our stories, especially if the desired effect is to ease the readers brain into a somnolent state, like the sing-song of a lullaby. Proust was a master of paragraphs like these; they went on for pages, and were full of sentences that stretched line after line, full of clauses and lists, huddled together between commas and semi-colons and dashes, all with the combined effect not of conveying concrete information and facts, but to get the reader in a certain mood, perhaps to make them wistful, to deprogram their concrete minds so they were ready for the dream-state of Proust’s expert meanderings; in this, the words become like music, more notes than ideas, and the reader’s muscles themselves relax, a hypnotic trance ensuing, perhaps at the risk of losing them to literature’s great nighttime enemy and thief: sleep.

Practice both types of paragraph structure and pacing. Look for examples in your own reading. Ask how the authors you admire are affecting your mood as you read their prose, and then ask the same questions as you revise your rough draft. Chop up that long paragraph into two or more. Be frugal with your short declarations so you don’t rob them of their power. Treat your words like lyrics and listen for the song they sing.

Insight #24: Find your cadence between action and reflection

The pacing in the previous insight deals with how words are lumped together. Their physical structure, if you will. There’s a second kind of pacing, and this one deals with the actual content and type of words used. It’s the flow between action and reflection, and it’s especially crucial for works of fiction.

Action scenes don’t necessarily mean gunfights and car chases and alien invasions. An action scene can be an argument between two lovers. It can be a fierce internal struggle as a character decides to leap or step back from a metaphorical ledge. Action scenes are anytime something major is happening in the plot or to the characters. The reader is usually flying through these passages at a higher rate of speed, eager to see what happens next. Most often, these scenes have large blocks of text and less dialog, but that’s not always the case.

Reflection is what happens after the action. It’s when characters absorb the change that’s happened and plan what comes next. Period of reflection also give the reader a chance to absorb what’s happened and to guess or dread what might happen next. This is the cadence of your book, the rise and fall of action and reflection.

Now, if an entire novel was written with nothing but action, it would make for an exhausting read. And if a book consisted of nothing but constant reflection, it would be difficult to wade through. In the former, you would have change in your plot but not your characters. In the latter, you would have change in your characters but no plot. Every book should contain some balance between the two.

That doesn’t mean the same balance. A literary novel will typically have lots of reflection and very brief spurts of action. A genre novel will have lots of action and shorter pauses for reflection. I haven’t seen a definition of what makes a work “literary” that I fully buy, but maybe this fingerprint of cadence comes closest. It could be why many genre fans can’t read literary novels, and why many literary fans can’t abide genre works. It doesn’t matter if the genre works are as well-written as the literature – there’s simply too much happening. Not enough reflection. I would argue that pace defines these books far more than content. Which is why some great works of science fiction, like THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS or THE HANDMAID’S TALE, read more like literary novels (and are often shelved as such).

As you revise your work, look for places where the action goes on too long and consider inserting a pause for reflection. Let the characters catch their breath in an elevator, crack a joke or two, or tend to some wound or primal fear before you pick up the pace again. Similarly, look for anywhere that characters are ruminating too long and figure out how to spice things up. If you’re bored with what you’re writing, chances are a lot of readers will be bored as well. Make a gun go off; a car backfire; someone in the neighboring booth get the wrong order and pitch a fit; a zombie pop up that has to be dealt with, anything. And if you feel like you’ve gone on long enough, there’s always the em dash and a sudden exit—

Insight #25: Don’t repeat yourself. Unless it’s deliberate. And then repeat yourself carefully.

Alliteration and repetition are both an important part of pacing, and they both highlight the importance of grasping reading psychology. Readers love repetition when it is deliberate, for extra punch, for added stress. But our minds trip over accidental repetition, as when the same words appear too near to one another in a paragraph or chapter accidentally.

The psychology of this is strange, and it varies slightly from reader to reader. Common words can appear throughout the same sentence or paragraph without tripping the reader up. Uncommon words draw attention to themselves. If the reader sees a rare word twice, part of their brain will perk up and draw attention to the second sighting, which breaks the flow and distracts them from the content or emotional impact of the sentence. One of the most common things you’ll see from a good editor is similar or same words highlighted if they’re too close to one another in a manuscript. The editor will suggest changing or deleting one of them. This is always sound advice.

Repetition, however, can be extremely powerful if wielded appropriately. Play around and experiment. Pay close attention as a reader to see when you trip up and how you might have avoided that mistake in your own writing.

Insight #26: Reading is aural

I find it fascinating that we can hear ourselves think. When I was very young, I had a hard time telling if this was indeed the case. When I read silently to myself, am I “hearing” those words in my mind? Or am I just thinking them? What seemed to settle the question for me was the ability to hear various accents in my head. I could think with a British accent, or a French accent, which meant the words didn’t just have meaning, they had pitch and inflection and all the properties of sound.

This is why cadence is so important when it comes to writing. It’s why the long paragraphs mentioned (and demonstrated) above have a powerful effect on us. This is also how we can hear our characters’ voices, and why it’s important to make those voices distinct. Common writing advice includes the importance of observation: sit and watch crowds and make note of how they move, how they dress, how their features look. This is great advice. But we have to observe with our ears as well.

Some of your characters will have gravelly voices. Others will have a slight lisp. They should have accents and vocal tics. Be sure that all of your characters don’t have your vocal tics, or they’ll all sound the same. You want these voices to jump out, so try to exaggerate the differences between their voices in your own head. The common mistake is to leave them all sounding the same.

Another mistake writers make is to leave out all the background noises that bring a scene to life. Pay attention when background noise is done well. A great example is the novel THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET by David Mitchell. Birds and street-sweepers, mischievous monkeys, the rattling of the wind, all of these things set the stage and help break up the dialog and narrative passages. They also help bring the world to life and make it real. Read this book, and you’ll become a better writer; I guarantee it.

The musicality of silent reading is why punctuation is so powerful. How much pause do you want readers to take? This power lies almost entirely with the choices you make. Liberal usage of commas – and there’s no hard and fast rule on many of the comma choices we make – can change how a sentence sounds in one’s head. The em dash (as used above) is super powerful. So are parentheticals as in the previous sentence; the beauty here is that a parenthetical provides not just a pause, but a hint to the reader to say these words softer, almost like an aside. The semi-colon in the previous sentence keeps things flowing more than a comma but less than a period. And going without punctuation as in the previous sentence, when I could easily have added one or two commas, rushes you right through.

The last sentence in the above paragraph could easily have been written without the middle clause and the two commas that encase it. It wouldn’t change the content or meaning, it just provides an example of what the sentence before it didn’t employ. Each of these decisions is a branch; everything sounds different depending on which one we go down. One of the most powerful skills a writer develops over time is the ability to “hear” these various choices in advance and choose the best one in each scenario. At first, it’ll require typing out several versions of each to see which you like best. Read each choice both aloud and silently. Eventually, you’ll make these choices without realizing it, and your writing will grow stronger.

I’ll say it again: Practice. Take a chapter you aren’t thrilled with and rewrite it from scratch, going for a more breezy style or a more punchy one. Write scenes that don’t have anything to do with your work in progress. Athletes do this all the time. They play a game of HORSE to improve their shooting form. They take a hundred free throws in a row. Actors will sit in front of a mirror and go through different moods and inflections; writers should do the same. Sit down and write a car chase, a bar fight, a sex scene, someone losing their job, someone getting their dream job, someone wishing they could quit their jobs. Do these things to play with your pacing and punctuation. If you go these extra lengths in your writing career, you’ll see dividends. I promise.

Insight #27: Zoom down into your character’s eyes.

Remember those posters that became a fad for a while, the ones that looked like tessellations of shapes but held hidden scenes of dinosaurs and dolphins? Kiosks in malls sold them. People would crowd around them and stare and stare, and then bust out laughing or gasp in surprise. Because if you crossed your eyes just right, 3D images popped out of nowhere. And then they’d disappear. You’d fight to get them back.

When you write your fiction, do you see the words on the page, or the events you’re describing? The chances are, you mostly see the words. I want to convince you that you can see both. And that the more you practice, and the deeper you fall into the flow of writing, the more often you’ll see just the action, and the words will disappear.

When you find this flow, you’ll write with astonishing speed and clarity. This is a truth that surprises most non-writers: On the days that I write the most, I have to edit the least. Quantity and quality often come hand in hand. I’ve written 10,000 words in a single day and had to edit very little of it. I’ve had other days where I agonize over 300 words and use none of them. Some days I get my eyes crossed just right. Other days, I’m staring at words.

The voice and tense you choose have a huge impact here, and we’ll discuss them next. More important perhaps is the zoom level you pick. You have to pinch-to-zoom your manuscript at times. If you are writing a fantasy novel, and you start with a prologue, you might want to zoom way out and write with a detached omniscience about the history of the land, the coronation and death of kings, the foment and ravages of war. If you are writing a thriller, you might start off your story by zooming in to write down the barrel of a gun, deliberately leaving out-of-view the larger context (like who is pulling the trigger). My advice is to stay as zoomed in as you possibly can. See the world through your characters’ eyes at all times.

Video games usually come in one of two perspectives. One perspective is the isometric view; it’s a third-person view above the action and at an angle. Unfortunately for many writers, this is the default view we assume when we write our first novels. I think it’s a huge mistake. We end up describing events and scenes as they appear, rather than as they feel. We give too much context about the layout of the scene and the action, and not enough context about the emotions and feelings of those experiencing those actions. If you feel like you’re seeing your story from this isometric, over-the-head view, stop writing and zoom back in.

The other videogame view is the first-person view, and this is what we’re after with our writing. Push down into your characters’ skulls. See the novel through their eyes. What are they thinking? What’s going on in the background? Are they hungry? Scared? Excited? Cold? Angry? Do they have any lingering aches? Is their mind wandering? Did they miss-hear something and need it repeated?

Whatever you do, don’t fall into the trap of describing events to the reader. Live through those events yourself and help your readers do the same.

Insight #28: Play with Tense and Voice until you find the right combo for each work

Tense and voice are basic writing concepts, but they merit mention here. I can’t count the number of times I’ve written a story in one tense or voice and had to revise the entire work to a different tense or voice. It happened in the previous entry of this series when I needed to write a quick chase scene. I thought it might be useful to share the before and after, so you can see the difference.

In past tense:

Marco bolted out the back door, Sarah right behind him. He could hear bar stools and tables toppling, had that last image of Marco reaching for his gun, and now every nerve in his body was waiting for a shot to ring out, for Sarah to cry she’d been hit, or to feel the punch and burn of a bullet slamming into his body. He urged Sarah ahead of him, knowing being shot would hurt less than seeing her go down. The end of the alley was a forever away. Footsteps pounded behind them, one of the goons yelling for them to stop or he’d shoot. Sarah swerved left and threw her shoulder into a shut door, the wood cracking. As the first shot rang out, Juan threw himself against her to shield her body with his. The both of them crashed through the door and into a busy kitchen. Men and women in white turned and gaped, but there was no time. Juan and Sarah scrambled to their feet and kept running.

And now in present tense:

Marco bolts out the back door, Sarah right behind him. He can hear bar stools and tables toppling, has that last image of Marco reaching for his gun, and now every nerve in his body is waiting for a shot to ring out, for Sarah to cry she’s been hit, or to feel the punch and burn of a bullet slam into his body. He urges Sarah ahead of him, knowing being shot will hurt less than seeing her go down. The end of the alley is a forever away. Footsteps pound behind them, one of the goons yelling for them to stop or he’ll shoot. Sarah swerves left and throws her shoulder into a shut door, the wood cracking. As the first shot rings out, Juan hurls himself against her to shield her body. The both of them crash through the door and into a busy kitchen. Men and women in white turn and gape, but there is no time. Juan and Sarah scramble to their feet and keep running.

Present tense is more powerful when we want to leave the outcome in doubt. Past tense often spoils the fact that the narrators lived to tell their story. Even worse, past tense can lose some of the immediacy of action. Anyone who has watched a taped sporting event versus a live sporting event can relate. Knowing that a thing is happening right now is a powerful feeling. But there are times that past tense just feels more apt for a particular story. Many writers are more comfortable writing in past tense, so they default to this. Whatever you choose, be consistent through each scene or chapter (in most cases, the entire book). And choose deliberately.

Voice is another major decision, one that can change in the revision process. This is a laborious amount of editing, so it’s best to think on these things early. But don’t be afraid to try both and see which one works better. There are myriad combinations of voice and tense. Some combinations are more off-putting than others, but this doesn’t mean you can’t make them work. The HUNGER GAMES books are written in first-person present tense, which many find difficult to read. Millions of fans of the books disagree. Here’s my chase scene again, this time in first person:

I bolt out the back door, Sarah right behind me. I can hear bar stools and tables toppling, and I see that last image of Marco reaching for his gun. Every nerve in my body is waiting for a shot to ring out, for Sarah to cry that she’s been hit, or to feel the punch and burn of a bullet slam into my own body. I urge Sarah ahead of me. Getting shot would hurt far less than seeing her go down.

The end of the alley is a forever away. Footsteps pound behind us, one of the goons yelling for us to stop or he’ll shoot. Sarah swerves left and throws her shoulder into a shut door, the wood cracking. As the first shot rings out, I hurl myself against her to shield her body. The two of us crash through the door and into a busy kitchen. Men and women in white smocks and hairnets turn and gape, but there is no time. Sarah and I scramble to our feet and keep running.

First-person present tense is great for reader immersion, but don’t rely on it. The number of sentences that start with “I” can be grating to the reader, so you have to work hard to mix it up. And the advantage with third-person perspectives is that we can move between characters from chapter to chapter. There’s also the nagging doubt that our narrator doesn’t survive their adventure, that the reason it’s told in third-person is because it has to be; the protagonist doesn’t make it. Third-person can be just as immersive if we write it zoomed in, as we mentioned above. Give us their thoughts and perspective, and it feels almost like we’re writing in first-person:

Juan hadn’t felt love like this since high school. Since Amanda. Turning over his arm, he studied the scar there across his bicep, the jagged raised whelp with the staggered row of dots to either side. She had told him to stop being a baby, to hold still, but he’d seen the way her hands shook as she threaded the needle. He remembered the blood on them both. There was only so much numb in the world when thread is making its way through flesh, skin puckering up as it’s pulled tight, the girl you love twisting her face up in concentration and worry, and you trying your damnedest to not pass out. Only so much numb in the world . . . What Juan wouldn’t do for some of that numbness right now.

In this example, we remove the reader from the POV by making it third person, and we remove events from the present by describing something about the past, and we write it all in past tense! Normally, these choices would create distance and reduce immersion. But is the passage above any less immediate? It feels like it’s through Juan’s eyes, even though it refers to him in the third person. Details and zooming work miracles, and they balance out our decisions about voice and tense. Speaking of details…

Insight #29: Details, details, details.

It has taken this long to mention my favorite writing technique, and now you’re in for it! Details turn stories into works of art. Details make us believe the stories we’re told. The number one thing that separates a serviceable writer from a great writer is the level of detail they achieve. We’re going to go through several examples here to kick your attention to detail up several notches.

Before we do, I want to stress why details matter. Our brains are wired for telling and hearing stories; there is some good research to suggest that this is a foundational feature of the human brain. We are storytelling animals. Some of these stories are true, and some aren’t. Some are meant to warn us of danger, some stories are meant to just give us information, and some stories are designed simply to entertain.

When stories are full of little details, we tend to believe them. Especially if those details make sense, and we don’t think the person telling the story would know to make those details up. Con men and practiced liars are great at sprinkling in details to distract from their overall fictions. Fiction writers should take note.

Let’s look at some common mistakes I see in early novels. These are problems you might find in your own work. These problems arise because the author cannot see the details of their world and their characters. The absence of these features call attention to the fiction. They create a backdrop similar to the one in the film THE TRUMAN SHOW, a feeling of all façade and no substance.

– The main character has no job and seems to never have had a job. You see this in a lot of YA. The character’s job – according to the author – is to allow the plot to happen to him or her. The character cannot possibly know about the plot that’s going to unfold, so this bit of convenience distracts us. Our brains can tell there’s something wrong, something missing.

– Entire branches of the protagonist’s family are missing. Anyone not central to the plot is absent, or paper-thin. Grandparents especially. This is because many authors don’t know how to include details without distracting from the plot. Great writers sprinkle details in a way that make the plot easier to understand, rather than distracting.

– Characters in poorly written novels often feel naked and empty-handed. When most of us leave the house, we have to plan what we wear, and we hunt and double-check that we have a handful of important items with us. In many freshmen novels, the character only has the plot to attend to. Out the door they go, furthering the plot along. Again, this often comes from improper zoom, inattention to detail, and not thinking about characters while away from the keyboard. As the author, you might know the protagonist is out the door to meet the girl of his dreams, but he only knows he’s going grocery shopping. Have him prepare and think accordingly.

– Food, water and their disposal. We eat, poop, and piss a lot. Characters in fiction never seem to. You don’t have to capture every instance, but you do have to include enough. Keep your characters hydrated! Make them stop the car and pee in the woods, the wind causing shadows to dance on the forest floor, the sound of something large moving through the branches, hopefully a deer. Food and its disposal are a great chance for reflection and cadence. No one does this better than George RR Martin, but you don’t have to take it quite so far as he.

– Give your characters scars, both physical and emotional. Too many characters are inserted into a plot as a blank canvas on which to drape some action. Their next love is their first love. Their next injury is their first injury. This is because not enough time has been spent daydreaming about these characters, their pasts, their families, their experiences. ROMEO AND JULIET starts with Romeo pining for his last love. The pattern of his fickleness tells us depths about him that a one-time love affair would not (and more about the Bard’s view of love as well).

– Behind-the-scenes knowledge. I read a book recently in which a character went on a talk show. One of the details mentioned was the choreography of cameras dancing and weaving beyond the bright lights, and it not only painted the scene for me, and what it must feel like to sit up there, it made me suspend disbelief because the author was sharing a detail that I realized must be true that I don’t often think about. Small details like this are what make it difficult to be a great writer; you need to know a lot of things about a lot of things. This is why a wide variety of experiences, jobs, reading, travel, and other types of media consumption make for a better writer.

– Totems and object origins. Does the character have a favorite piece of jewelry? Is their car a hand-me-down from a friend or relative? Is there a secret place they keep the things dear to them hidden? The more details like this that you sprinkle in, the more you’ll find use for them later in your plot. Just the mention of an uncle who gave your character their beater of a car might inspire you to bring that uncle in for a greater role down the road. This is the amazing thing about sprinkling details throughout your novel: Each one is an instance of pure imagination, and intricate plots are built on them. The best part is: when you use some detail for later inspiration in your novel, you’ve set up the original mention as a nice bit of foreshadowing.

During the revision process, I’m always looking for places to add detail. In my chase scene from the last section, I originally didn’t have the chefs in the kitchen wearing white smocks and hairnets. With just a few words, we can paint a scene more vividly. In a fast paced action scene, only certain highlights might stand out. We might not see that one of the chefs is tall and thin, another short and squat, one holding a colander, another stirring a steaming pot. But we’d notice they’re all dressed the same, because a group of strangers rarely are. We might notice all are wearing hats or hairnets. Or that one is holding a knife, because our adrenaline is pumping. Which details we choose to add are important. Think about what would stand out to your character if you were in their shoes.

One last example of detail, this one on how to interrupt your action. The world does not come at us linearly. When people talk, they rarely do so in complete sentences. They finish each other’s sentences, cut each other off once they understand the gist of what’s being said, incorrectly hear some words and make mistakes or have to ask for clarification. And some details interrupt the flow of the plot. A plot on rails stands out as being inauthentic. Send characters down dead-end alleys, literally and metaphorically. Use interruptions to sprinkle in backstory, foreshadowing, and missing details.

For instance, your detective might be chasing the bad guy when her grandmother calls to ask her to help with her computer. The detective doesn’t have time right now. You never have time for your grandmother, she might hear. Oh, okay… And she walks her through sending an attachment to another relative, all while trying not to lose the killer. Diversions like this add depth and realism. They wake the reader up. Make sure your story has a few.

Insight #30: Get help!

Every writer has strengths and weaknesses. You might be a whiz with dialog, but you can’t write action scenes that feel gripping. You can build amazing worlds, but you can’t create characters that leap off the page. There are hundreds of small skills that add up to one great writer; no one starts off good at all of them.

Getting many different perspectives on our works during the revision process will not only improve the drafts, they’ll improve the writer. It’ll make subsequent novels better, and they’ll require less editing. Join a writing group in your area; form one if a writing group doesn’t already exist. There are online editing groups out there as well. These groups often exchange rough drafts, and each member makes notes to assist the author. Take this process seriously. You’ll learn much through another author’s strengths and weaknesses. They’ll teach you much in return.

Read about writing, especially while you’re in revision mode. One of my favorites is EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES by Lynne Truss. It’s a hilarious book about grammar that will clean up lots of technical mistakes, leaving room for your editors and critique partners to comment more on story, characters, and pacing.

Find a loved one who can be an honest critic. My mother has been a wonderful collaborator over the years. She never hesitates to tell me where I can improve a story. It also helps to know when she’s confused, when I’ve left out too much information, or perhaps where I added too much detail.

When the revision process gets to the last stages, and you’re reading along looking for typos and rough edges, rope in some beta readers if possible. Some authors employ dozens of beta readers, but this is only easy to do once you have a following. Starting out, you might have to cajole friends into helping. Whatever you do, don’t be worried about “giving away” your work or your ideas. If you’re this far along in the process, you’ll know by now that execution is the difficult part. Ideas are the cheap bits.

Those are my top ten insights on the revision process. If you’ve made ten or twelve passes through your work, and you’ve had some editorial assistance to find the things you missed, you should have a nicely polished draft of an interesting story clearly told. Now what? How do you get as many readers as possible? Or as many sales? Or win awards? Or ensure the best chances of making a livable income?

* This is the third in a four-part series. Read the rest:

Writing Insights Part One: Becoming a Writer

Writing Insights Part Two: The Rough Draft

Writing Insights Part Four: Publishing Your Book

  A version of this article appeared at The Wayfinder.

Hugh Howey

Hugh Howey is the author of the award-winning Molly Fyde saga and the New York Times and USA Today bestselling WOOL series. The WOOL OMNIBUS won the Kindle Book Review 2012 Indie Book of the Year Award.

[trigafy]

New Post has been published on

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Self Hypnosis As You Read: 42 Life-Changing Scripts!

Self Hypnosis As You Read: 42 Life-Changing Scripts!

Product Description “Let Go of the Baby Weight,” “Get Over Your Ex,” “Relieve Social Anxiety,” “Manifest a New Job,” “Save More Money,” “Eat Less Chocolate” – these are a few of the 42 life changing scripts in Self Hypnosis As You Read. This easy to use method brings you into a hypnotic state and improves your life without ever putting down the book. You remain aware at all times and gently come back to everyday consciousness. And there is no memorizing or hour-long sessions needed. Typically, self hypnosis requires script memorizing and takes up to an hour of your valuable time. With Forbes Robbins Blair’s method you put aside a pleasant, effective 15-20 minutes for a few days until you reach your goals. This book of 42 scripts comes at the requests of readers of the best selling book, Instant Self Hypnosis: How to Hypnotize Yourself with Your Eyes Open. The scripts in this collection help you to conquer dozens of life’s most challenging problems quickly and easily, including these issues: Drop the Last Ten Pounds, Money Stress Relief, Fall Back in Love with Your Mate, Magnetic Sex Appeal, Approach Hot Women, Perpetual Stress Relief, Expand Your Comfort Zone, Pursue Your Dream, Stop Overreacting, Stop Cussing, More Loving and Affectionate, Embrace Your Age, Love Your Body As It Is, Shrink Cancerous Tumors, Fibromyalgia Relief, Tinnitus Relief, Freedom from Eczema, IBS Relief, Feel Fine with Heights, Overcome Hypochondria, Release Fear of Abandonment, Override the Fear of Rejection, Okay with Confrontation, Comfortable Expressing Anger, Freedom from Porn Addiction, Conquer Compulsive Masturbation, Stop Drinking Coffee, Eat Less Chocolate, Love Cleaning House, Break Shopping Addiction, Stutter Anxiety Relief, Overcome Blushing, Never Be Late Again,Delay and Intensify Ejaculations, Tennis Focus, Sports Excellence, Be More Psychic and Intuitive, Let Go of the Baby Weight, Social Anxiety Relief, Manifest a New Job, Save More Money, Get Over Your Ex. Also included in the book are four hypnotic inductions as well as four advanced techniques. Self Hypnosis As You Read: 42 Life Changing Scripts can make the difference. Conquer dozens of life’s most challenging problems head-on, quickly and easily. Change negative habits to positive. Take your life to the next level!

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How To Hypnotize Yourself – Self Hypnosis

How to Hypnotize Yourself, the Basics:

In this simple Self Hypnosis beginner’s guide I show you how to hypnotize yourself quickly and easily with just a few simple basics. Whether you want self hypnosis for success or simply to get into a relaxed trance state prior to meditation or ritual work, this video covers all the hypnosis basics you’ll need. This video also includes the most simple and easy to use of Milton Erickson’s NLP techniques, namely using conjunctions like “and” to make suggestions.

Quickly learning how to hypnotize yourself:

In just 10 minutes you’ll learn how to hypnotize yourself and will have all the information you need to know about hypnotism to perform your own form of self hypnotherapy, and with the basics it is quite easy to then learn more and improve your technique. If you have any questions or want to know more, feel free to leave them down in the comments below.

The program I mentioned in the video for recording your own hypnosis tapes, Audacity, can be downloaded here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/

If you liked this video and enjoyed learning how to hypnotize yourself then leave a comment below or share the video with one of your friends. I’d also love to hear what you’re using self hypnosis for. Are you using self hypnosis for success? For conquering fears and phobias? For something else? Let me know down below!

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If you would like to book a private consultation with me where you can get detailed answers and help on any subject, via text, audio, or video format depending on your preferences, then send me a private YouTube message by heading to my channel page, clicking “About”, then clicking “Send Message” in the top right. Please include what exactly you will need help with, rates are flexible depending on what you need.

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How Self-Hypnotherapy Can Help You Do you get nagging symptoms that pills don’t control? You should consult a physician, but self-hypnosis might help as well. First, prove to yourself that your mind physically affects your body: Hold your palms four inches apart and imagine they are … News story posted on 2017-03-18 Here are some very important principles pertaining to self hypnosis. Some form of each of these principles needs to exist when you do self hypnosis. The good news is that most of these occur naturally as you do the sessions, while others will require some effort.

The first principle is that you must escape your everyday mindset and be willing to change into a trancelike state of mind. Believe it or not, this can be accomplished largely by physical means such as changing your posture, calming your breathing, slowing down your thoughts, and the putting your awareness on what you desire. Actually, self hypnosis is a natural way of changing your awareness. Also remember that this exercise is a means of thinking differently about the world around you. Self hypnosis does not make the world change, it simply changes the way you perceive the world.

The next principle is to love and accept all that you are. You must develop a sense of self trust and cooperation with your entire being. If you do not respect yourself, it will be very difficult to get cooperation within your mind that is necessary for changes to occur.

Next, you need to immerse yourself into the flow of life in a spontaneous way unlike what might be prescribed by the logic of your cognitive mind. You have to let the thoughts of your cognitive self wander as if it were dreaming. Think about it, if you follow the same old logic train of your mind, how will you ever achieve anything new or different? You have to step into uncertainty occasionally to grow and find new adventures. And this is best achieved from the state of active dreaming. This is also where solutions to problems develop.

You will need to become aware of how the body reacts to verbal suggestions that are being made. Should your body start to tense up when hearing one of these suggestions, there is a good chance that you will not be successful in implementing them. This is very critical to the success of your program. In this case, you must find a way of presenting information and possible changes to your self that does not threaten, and is safe and supportive to your internal self. Do not take this aspect lightly as your internal self is very powerful and if left unchecked, can easily sabotage your efforts.

You must start considering every thought, feeling and desire that you have as being of equal importance, rather than giving more importance to any one particular one of them. We have all heard that often times it is the little things that end up having the greatest importance in the long run. Once again, this ignored thought could be the one that undermines your entire program.

Eliminate thoughts that label and make judgments. It is the thinking mind that discerns between right and wrong or good or bad that creates many of your problems. We burn an enormous amount of mental energy by classifying and judging our world.

Be aware that the whole concept of self hypnosis is to experience the thought that comes before thinking. To experience life with an empty mind that does not know. This is the state that experiences real truth.

Chuck Cox currently operates the How to Do Self Hypnosis website which addresses how to improve virtually any area of your life. Did you find this article helpful? Find out more about Self Hypnosis Principles at http://howtoselfhypnosis.net/

[lindafrancois]

Overwhelmed? Here Are the 8 Things I Do to Get Unstuck.

“Why is my eye twitching?!”

It’s 5:45AM, and I’m lying in bed with my eyes closed. I’m exhausted because I managed to have one of my recurring nightmares the previous night where I dreamed my bed was covered in spiders—this happens once every few months, especially when I’m overtired.

It’s real enough to me that about 50% of the time I actually jump out of bed and run into the other room.

And yet, despite being sleep deprived, there’s no WAY I can go back to bed either. Because I have far too much on my mind. It looks something like this:

“ACK! I was supposed to call the dermatologist yesterday to schedule an appointment—it’s been on my to-do list for 10 days weighing me down and yet I can’t get myself to pick up the phone. Why am I so averse to talking to a human on a telephone? Just do it, idiot! Call them today at 9AM.

“Why the hell did I dream about spiders again last night? I have to write thousands of words today. And I have that awkward meeting planned stressing me out. OH **** I forgot to send my mom a mother’s day card! I did send her flowers. Is that enough? She loves cards. Can I express ship one in time? AHHHHH!

“Is that networking event I agreed to tonight or tomorrow night? Why did Past Steve commit Future Steve to that? I hate that guy! Wait, is today Wednesday? Sonofa, today is a training day at the gym too. Good luck finding time for that. Oh GOOD, I’m out of clean underwear. And the fridge is empty. And how do I have a pimple inside my nose? I would like to curl up into the fetal position and opt-out of all responsibilities today.”

They say depression is worrying about the past, while anxiety is worrying about the future.

Like many who read this site, I’m quite good at both of those things!

Even though I’m generally a happy person with a very positive outlook on life, life can get overwhelming at times and my brain likes to take over and shut everything down.

What the inside of my brain looks like: take my crazy stream of conscious above and read it in the style of slam poetry, while a Tasmanian devil plays the bongos with no discernible rhythm in the background. He then eats the bongo and starts Irish step dancing. To salsa music. While setting off fireworks.

The days where this happens are shitty.

And many shitty days in a row only seem to compound the problem.

I can get so overwhelmed that I can’t seem to make any progress on anything, and yet I know making progress on stuff is the fastest path for me to escape this maniacal prison my brain has trapped me in!

I am a logical, rational, scientific person, which means thinking through this logically, rationally, and scientifically makes sense to me.

And yet in those moments, emotions sit in the command chair and start calling the shots.

At this point, you are either nodding your head going “Steve, WTF are you talking about?” orrrrrr ”OMG I totally know what that feels like.”

I’ve been running Nerd Fitness for close to 10 years now. I’ve seen and heard it all, and been through some shit.

In that time, I’ve come to a few universal truths:

“Busy” and “overwhelm” are serious problems that don’t go away without a plan to tackle them. Having a Strategy Guide to deal with these scenarios can be huge.

Knowing that, I’ve created a personal checklist (yes, a real checklist) for myself of things I can do when I can’t seem to get out of my own head.

These ideas help me break through overwhelm—and get back to a more natural state where I can start making progress on tackling what I need to for the day.

And today, I want to share that personal checklist with you!

#1) GET AN EARLY WIN

For me, the best early win? Making my bed.

When I’m stuck in a rut, lying in bed, and faced with a daunting day ahead of me, I try to give myself a quick momentum-building win to start the day.

I learned this philosophy from William H. McRaven, retired US Navy Admiral and author of the book Make Your Bed: how you do the little things will impact how you do the big things. And by starting with a simple little thing, it can help me build momentum and show myself that I do have control and can affect the outcome of things.

Sure, I don’t make my bed with military precision (sorry Admiral!)—I simply pull the covers up as neatly as I can, I put the pillows on the bed and make sure it looks presentable. This takes less than 2 minutes and gives me a quick win before I’ve even left the room.

WHY IT WORKS: “Look, you already did a thing today. Today can be different. What’s next?” It’s an instant, quick, gratifying win that is the first action meant to build momentum.

Note: Comically, this is often the suggestion I get the most vitriol or controversy for. I’m going to ignore the argument of “this makes it easier for bed bugs Steve” or “I read that creative geniuses have messy beds and I’m unique and blah blah blah” or “nobody else sees my bed; why should I waste valuable time making it?” or “I get up early and my spouse is still asleep and thus I cannot make my bed.”

Okay, that last one is totally valid. I hear ya!

If you are vehemently opposed to making your bed (or there is a person still asleep in it!), pick another thing like cleaning up your room, cleaning out the sink, cleaning off your kitchen table, etc. as soon as you wake up to give yourself an early win. OR, just make your bed, take the win, and move on!

#2) QUICK HYGIENE FIX

At this point, I’ve already started off my day with a win in the bedroom.

Wait, that came out wrong.

Next up: self-care! This term is hot these days, like “bitcoin” and “avocado toast.”

But I’ll be damned if it’s not an actually important thing that falls by the wayside when life gets busy. And I imagine if you’re a mom or a dad, you have plenty of other people to care for, and caring for yourself is often at the bottom of the list.

And yet, a little bit of work can go a long way.

Although I work from a home office and often type these articles without pants on (too much? cool), I still find it to be incredibly valuable if I treat myself like an actual adult:

So I take a shower. I shave my face. I put on moisturizer that makes me smell like I have my act together. I actually comb my hair.

Oh, and the big one:

I floss.

Yes, I know you’re supposed to floss every day. I do not floss every day. As the late comedian Mitch Hedberg once said, “It’s as hard [to quit smoking] as it is to START flossing.”

RIP Mitch.

But I’ll be damned if my teeth don’t feel great after a good floss. For whatever reason, flossing is something that I avoid, until I actually do it and realize “that wasn’t so bad, I’m glad I did that, I feel better.”

I like to think this primes my brain to tackle other undesirable tasks later on in the day. Flossing wasn’t bad, and I’m glad I did it. What about that other task I’ve been avoiding? I bet it’s not as bad as my dumb brain has built it up to be.

That first tooth is always the hardest, but once I do one, I know it’s all downhill from there to do the rest of them.

WHY IT WORKS: They say dress for the role you want, not the one you have. And I don’t currently have a spacesuit. So I’m stuck with dressing like a more grown-up, put-together version of me. When I’m showered, shaved, shampooed, conditioned, and flossed, I just feel like a better human being worthy of some compassion and also a guy that can get things done.

Plus, I know flossing will avoid my nightmare scenario laid out here.

#3) WATCH A MOTIVATING YOUTUBE VIDEO

I have a love-hate relationship with motivation.

Mostly hate.

Motivation is a consistently flaky friend that shows up when things are good and abandons me when I need it most.

So I don’t let myself be victim to the ebbs and flows of motivation. Instead, I make motivation work for me, and use it to strategically get me out of my own way and back on track.

It’s a video I can put on that takes 5 minutes or less that makes me want to run through a brick wall. In lieu of a brick wall being readily available, it inspires me to start actually getting things done and getting closer to my goals.

So before I do any of the next steps, I often put on this SINGLE VIDEO:

WHY IT WORKS: Motivation is a real thing. And when timed correctly, it can really help me get unstuck and get the ball rolling on a project or a good pump-up talk before hitting the gym. What I don’t do is force myself to watch 40 motivational videos and run out of time to exercise. This is neither productive nor helpful. And I know motivation wanes, so I use the motivation strategically to set myself up so that I don’t need motivation later.

Side note: please don’t get lost down a youtube rabbit hole—that’s how you end up watching 15 videos about baby goats. Not that this just happened to me. Have your go-to video that you watch and reminds you that you can get stuff done, and then go do it.

#4) DO THE 10-10-10 PROTOCOL

When life gets too busy, exercise is often the first thing to get thrown by the wayside. And I know that when I can’t get a workout in, I tend to eat like an idiot too, which makes things even worse.

Which means when I’m overwhelmed and need a reminder that I’m a work in progress trying to level up my life, I do the 10-10-Protocol.

Why is it a Protocol and not a Workout? Because I’m the one writing, and I decided “protocol” made it sound way cooler and possibly makes it connected to espionage or Batman.

So what is the 10-10-10 Protocol?

Think of it like a system reboot for your body and brain:

10 push-ups

10 lunges

10-minute walk

I’m a big fan of the mentality: “do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” (Thanks, Teddy Roosevelt). And this protocol will allow you to diffuse bombs and apprehend fugitives snap out of a funk with a clear head and remind all the muscles in your body: “We’re doing fitness things today!”

This is a workout that can be done no matter what you’re wearing. It can be done in your cubicle. It can be done in a house with a mouse. Or in a box with a fox.

WHY THIS WORKS: The 10-10-10 gets the blood circulating. It gets my muscle fibers firing. It gets my brain working. And that 10 minute walk can really clear my head. It allows me to get out of my head, stop worrying about the past and the future, and just focus on what I can do TODAY.

Unsurprisingly, I get my best ideas walking around, NOT sitting at my desk. And I know I’m not alone on that—this is borrowed from Steve Jobs, who held walking meetings instead of “sit in conference room” meetings.

If you want to stop reading right now and initiate the 10-10-10 Protocol yourself, go for it.

#5) DO THE VERY NEXT THING

There’s nothing more frustrating than feeling so overwhelmed at all of the things that I’m trying to do and not being able to get anything done.

It makes me want to curl up into the fetal position on the ground and hide from my responsibilities. Or play victim and lament the fact that I have so much to do. Or complain that life is so busy.

I do all of those things for about 30 seconds. And then I realize:

Busy is a choice.

It might not be my fault, but it is my responsibility.

And then I do three things:

Get mad at Past Steve for saying yes to so many things.

Make a note to start saying no to way more stuff to protect Future Steve.

Write down on paper all of the crap I have to do.

Sometimes if I feel like I could use a win, I put “make my bed,” “floss,” and “10-10-10 Protocol” at the top of the list and then immediately cross them off.

Progress and momentum for the win!

Next, I try to number these things in order of importance if possible. I ask, “Which of these things can I do today that will actually make an impact on my life?”

Then, I ask: “Okay, I now have my most important priority. What’s the very next step I need to take on this particular item? Good. Now shut the hell up and do that thing.”

As you can tell, I have to have conversations with myself like I’m a 5-year-old.

WHY THIS WORKS: When we get overwhelmed, it’s because our brains like to make Misty Mountains out of molehills. The “stuff” we have to do is nebulous, opaque, and scary. Until it gets broken down into steps.

And then it’s not so daunting. And once you can start to cross a thing or two off the list, or make meaningful progress on a project or activity, you come to the realization I come to every single time: I do have the time to do things. I need to say no to more things, I need to manage my time better, and the sooner I can get out of my head the faster I can be DONE.

No joke: halfway through writing this article I finally called the dermatologist, and timed how long the process took.

It took 2 freakin’ minutes.

This is something that had been on my to-do list weighing on me for the past 10 days, and it took me 2 minutes to schedule the damn appointment!

#6) BREATHE, IDIOT!

The past: I can’t change it!

The future: It hasn’t happened yet!

Today is a pretty good day. And yet, I have NO problem spending all of my time worrying about tomorrow.

This is suboptimal.

So I force myself to “breathe, idiot!”

(Before you get offended at my self-talk here, I mean “idiot” in a joking, loving manner to remind myself that I’m probably overcomplicating things to the point of paralysis and I need to just slow way down. Feel free to use the term “nerf herder or “cotton-headed ninny muggins” instead.)

Cool? Cool.

5 minutes. I just sit there and focus on breathing. In, out. In, out. You get the point.

I’ve tried meditating for 20 minutes a day and kept it up for 60 days (I used Headspace, and I’m also a big fan of Calm). It was like herding cats, and it didn’t unlock the secrets of the cosmos. I did enjoy the Cosmos miniseries on Fox, but that doesn’t apply here.

But just taking 5 minutes to breathe can help me slowwwww way down and just get back to work.

WHY THIS WORKS: I find big time value in reminding myself to breathe and just focus on the day I’m living. 5 minutes is enough for me to settle down and then I can go back to #5 (work on the very next step) of a project without being overwhelmed.

#7) CONSUME LESS, PRODUCE MORE

Whenever I’m overwhelmed and feeling crappy, a look back at my previous week will always reveal one constant:

I consumed more than I created.

For starters, from a pure health perspective, when I consume more than I produce—meaning I eat more calories than I burn—it’s going to result in weight gain.

The whole reason we have survived as a species is due to us producing more than we consume! Saving for a rainy day, thinking beyond just TODAY, growing more crops to share with society, etc.

So let’s get back to this concept of too much consumption.

I look back at how much time I’ve been spending consuming:

Television

Video games

Social media

Outrage news stories

Takeout

Books

In each of these instances, I’m an innocent bystander. Sure, video games are an active activity, but they can take over one’s life and contribute to overwhelm (I see you Fortnite), so I’ll put gaming in the “consumption” category.

If I’m overwhelmed, to borrow from Nate Green (who calls it “Nuclear Mode”), I recognize the things that are contributing to my overwhelm, especially the stuff that I can’t control—I see you political outrage on Facebook—and GET IT OUT OF MY LIFE.

I already don’t have any social media apps on my phone. I then use Freedom.to to block certain websites for the ENTIRE day. No more mindlessly scrolling Facebook or Instagram. No tinfoil hat theories on Zero Hedge.

JUST GET THE STUFF DONE I NEED TO GET DONE.

And that means less consumption, more production and creation!

Writing and creating content, like this article

Playing music (violin, piano, guitar)

Cooking my own meal at home

Creating art, doodling, drawing

Creating conversation with friends

WHY THIS WORKS: Creating makes me happy, and it makes most humans happy. And yet, our default behavior is to consume because consuming is so much easier. So I remove the temptation of consumption by blocking sites and deleting apps, and emphasize creation—even if it’s just for a few minutes.

Who cares if what you create isn’t worthy of being recorded or published or hung in a museum. It’s not the end result, it’s the activity itself!

#8) ASK FOR HELP, TALK IT OUT

When I get stuck in my own head, it’s easy to feel like Chris in Get Out: trapped alone, swimming in a bottomless pit of nothingness. Eeesh, that was dark, Steve.

It’s ALSO easy to tell myself: “Suck it up, Kamb! Other people would kill to be in your position! They have it WAY worse!”

And I have to remind myself that everybody is dealing with their own stuff, and just because others have problems doesn’t mean I can’t be allowed to deal with mine!

So I ask for help. Depending on what I’m struggling with, I’m not afraid to ask for help:

I might reach out to my dad or mentors for business advice.

I might call my mom just to tell her I miss her (moms love this).

I might text my online fitness coach to ask about how I can scale or change my workout schedule.

I might schedule a therapy session to help me manage all of this stuff!

I might reach out to a friend for relationship or friendship advice.

I avoided therapy for years until my friend Lindsay once told me: “Steve, fit people still go to the gym to exercise. There’s no shame in going to exercise your mind.”

We’ve written an ENTIRE article on a Beginner’s Guide to Mental Health, and if this is something you’re interested in please consider it!

Note: if you really struggle with depression/anxiety, speaking with a mental health professional could be a game-changing experience. Please do so as soon as you can!

WHY THIS WORKS: I used to be afraid to ask for help, assuming I had to know all the answers on my own. Or that people relied on me to be the happy-go-lucky person and I wasn’t allowed to be unhappy or stressed. And then I grew up.

Now I have no problem asking for help, saying “I don’t know” even if it makes me feel foolish, and I get to a solution MUCH faster!

I know with everything being online these days, it’s easy to spend a lot of time being friendly but not having actual deep conversations with people. This is something I have to work really hard on, as I’d much rather sit at home alone with a book all day and avoid people.

And yet, in most instances, when I’m with friends or loved ones, my day gets much better as a result. And thus, I prioritize saying YES. (Just not too much, so we don’t overload Future Steve.)

Overwhelmed? Do these 8 Things

Okay! This is my 8-step kickstart kickass strategy to dealing with overwhelm and anxiety.

Feel free to hijack these 8 things and the next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, take these steps to get unstuck and back on track:

Get an early win

Quick hygiene fix

Watch a 5-minute motivational video

Do the 10-10-10 Protocol

Do the Very Next Thing

Breathe, idiot!

Consume less, produce more

Ask for help

Break this list in case of emergency! Write these down, print it out, design your own checklist and share it with me so I can add it here to the post, whatever you want to do!

You can do this!

I’d love to hear from you: how do you manage overwhelm, and what are the steps you take to get out of that mental quicksand?!

Leave a comment below!

-Steve

PS: This week’s Rebel Hero: Nick T: rocking his new NF Battle Gear!

I can only assume he worked out so hard and flexed so perfectly that he blew the sleeves right off of it 🙂 Nick has been a super supportive member of our community for years and I’m damn glad he’s here.

Want to be the next Rebel Hero? Take a photo of you doing something epic in your NF battle gear, tag us on Instagram with #NerdFitness #battlegear, or email us at contact@nerdfitness.com!

PHOTO SOURCES: All amazing LEGO photos are from Black Zack, whose photos are here on Flickr.

Overwhelmed? Here Are the 8 Things I Do to Get Unstuck. published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/