Stuck in the Clouds: On Reaching Your Destination and Being Real.

Hello lovely readers and welcome back to my high-flying newsletter! The only newsletter that believes dad jokes are no joke…

Following a 3-2-1 approach, it contains 3 thoughts from me (that you should ignore), 2 quotes from others (that you should read), and 1 joke that’s so bad, it’s good!

Let’s begin!


3 Thoughts:

1) “Aim for 70% perfect. Then hit publish and move on with your life. Anything more than 70% and you enter into a diminishing rate of return. The effort stops justifying the reward. Also – the main point – if you aim for 100% perfect you’ll never get there.” – click to tweet

2) “If you can’t find peace now, what makes you believe you’ll find it at your destination? Is where you’re standing now not what once was your destination?” – click to tweet

3)  “The most important emotional distinction you can make is the difference between guilt & shame. Guilt is useful emotion that can facilitate genuine change. Shame is a destructive emotion that makes you more likely to repeat past behaviour. Guilt says I did something bad. Shame says I am something bad.” – click to tweet

2 Quotes:

Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real.” “Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real, you don’t mind being hurt.” “Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?” “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Margery William from “The Velveteen Rabbit”

For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next one is “I don’t have enough time.” Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of.…Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds are racing with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack.…This internal condition of scarcity, this mind-set of scarcity, lives at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudice, and our arguments with life.

— Lynne Twist. From her book “The Soul of Money.”

Joke Article: 

I’ve always believed that children should grow up believing their father is a bit of an idiot. That way they’ll learn not to take themselves so seriously. As it turns out, unbeknownst to me, that’s the whole point of telling dad jokes. No joke! Have a read of this: https://www.upworthy.com/dad-jokes-may-help-with-child-development


You can find more of AP2’s writing here at: https://wiseandshinezine.com

You can also find him on Medium at: https://anxiouspilot2.medium.com

You can also email him directly at: anxiouspilot2@gmail.com

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To have my weekly newsletter delivered straight to your inbox sign up for my Stuck in the Clouds newsletter here. 

Stuck in the Clouds: On Perfectionism and Value Diversification

Hello lovely readers and welcome back to my high-flying newsletter! The only newsletter that believes life is too short to be long…

Following a 3-2-1 approach, it contains 3 thoughts from me (that you should ignore), 2 quotes from others (that you should read), and 1 joke that’s so bad, it’s good!

Let’s begin!


3 Thoughts:

1) “There’s a trade off when it comes to the things we value. The more things we give a shit about, the less likely we are to get burnt when we lose any one of them. Diversifying your value portfolio is wise. However over-diversification can spread you thin. You won’t get a significant return on any one of them. You don’t want your life to be defined by one thing, but you don’t want it to be defined by too many things either. Deeply meaningful commitments require sacrifice. We need to understand the things we care about the most and then double down on them.”click to tweet

2) “It seems we want the light without the darkness. But we fail to see that the darkness gives rise to light. One cannot exist without the other. We must go through the tunnel to reach it.” – click to tweet

3) “Just like a child needs an environment where they are free to make a mess to discover who they are, a writer needs the same. The ability to make a mess to discover who they are – what it is they really want to write about.”click to tweet

2 Quotes:

Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is a defensive move. It’s the belief that if we do things perfectly and look perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around, thinking it will protect us, when in fact it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from being seen.”

Brené Brown (from “Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead”)

“The fastest way to see your ideas become reality is by giving them to other people.”

― Conor Neill

1 Joke: 

I was cycling with my wife the other day when a branch fell off a tree and hit me on the head.

I turned to my wife and said, “Did you see that? I can’t be-leaf it!”

She replied, “It’s lucky you didn’t crash. That was a sticky situation…”


You can find more of AP2’s writing here at: https://wiseandshinezine.com

You can also find him on Medium at: https://anxiouspilot2.medium.com

You can also email him directly at: anxiouspilot2@gmail.com

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To have my weekly newsletter delivered straight to your inbox sign up for my Stuck in the Clouds newsletter here. 

Stuck in the Clouds: On Writer’s Block

Hello lovely readers and welcome back to my high-flying newsletter! The only newsletter that tells you to smash through your writer’s block in a fit of rage like the hulk!

Following a 3-2-1 approach, it contains 3 thoughts from me (that you should ignore), 2 quotes from others (that you should read), and 1 joke that’s so bad, it’s good!

Let’s begin!


3 Thoughts:

1) “Cutting out distractions and inspiration are the same thing.”- click to tweet

2) “We cultivate meaning by helping others. Intrinsically this is what we want to do. Asking for help allows others to do exactly that. Letting people help you is perhaps the greatest gift you can give. The gift of meaning.”- click to tweet

3) 5 ways to smash your writer’s block to smithereens:

  • Charge through it. Show up at the same place, same time, every single day. Be ritualistic about it. (Even – especially – when you don’t feel like it. ) Eliminate all distractions and just write. Do nothing else. You’d be amazed how many people with writer’s block actually fail to show up and do any writing. Inspiration comes from doing the work, not the other way around.
  • Karate chop multiple blocks at the same time. Similar to the last piece of advice. Don’t put all your psychological eggs in one basket. I think it’s best to have two or three projects going at the same time and to move between them. Not only does this help with the cross-fertilisation of ideas (that makes you a better writer), it stops from feeling defeated by any one of them.
  • Rise above it. Writer’s block is often born out of perfectionism. Being a perfectionist is another way of saying you’re self-conscious. When this happens the internal editor tends to step on the toes of your muse. You need to separate the two. A time for writing. A time for editing. Another idea is to think in terms of writing to one person instead of an audience. Not only does this help to make us feel less self conscious – it has the added benefit of making your writing feel more personal. People respond to honesty and vulnerably first and foremost.
  • Walk away from it. Ultimately writer’s block is an emotional problem. If you really are stuck it either means you’re taking your writing way too seriously or not taking other matters in your life seriously enough. In either case that means you need to walk away and put life first. Going for a slow mindful walk, sitting down to meditate, playing with our kids or even taking the day off is often all we need to gain that much needed perspective. That’s usually when the apple falls from the tree and smacks us over the head.

2 Quotes:

“All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.”

– Eckhart Tolle

“The responsibility of any creator is to do the work, not judge it. Your job is to fall in love with the process, not grade the outcome.”

– James Clear

1 Joke: 

I entered ten puns in a contest to see which would win.

No pun in ten did.


You can find more of AP2’s writing here at: https://wiseandshinezine.com

You can also find him on Medium at: https://anxiouspilot2.medium.com

You can also email him directly at: anxiouspilot2@gmail.com

***

To have my weekly newsletter delivered straight to your inbox sign up for my Stuck in the Clouds newsletter here. You know you want to

Tuesday’s Top Tip

There are no good people.

There are no bad people.

There are only those who are trying to be better and those who are not.

Trying to be a “good person” or aiming for some idea of perfection is exactly what society wants you to do. This makes you feel like you’re always less than, like you’re not a good person, that you’re not capable…

For lack of putting it a better way, this is complete horse sh*t.

Forget good.

Forget perfect.

You are neither of those things. Well, maybe you’re occasionally capable of being good as defined by society, but never perfect. That is a fantasy.

No no no.

Banish good and perfect from your vocabulary and concentrate on one word alone.

That is better.

Make it your only aim in life. Your only aim everyday in whatever it is you decided to do. Simply try to be a better person.

This, you always can be.

This is enough.

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