It’s time to kick Monday’s ass…

If you’re not taking care of your brain, your thoughts, your moods… I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see if that has a monetary impact.

I don’t say that to fear monger – but it’s important to remember. Because it’s a lot easier to have bad days “on the job”, when you might be able to take a sick day or maybe not get a ton of work done on a down day.

When you’re the owner and operator of the business… until you’ve built it to give you that kind of breathing room, the work doesn’t stop when you’ve got doubts and down days.

Now more than ever, get in the habit of taking care of yourself. I’m not talking bubble baths and face masks.

I’m talking about learning to let go of catastrophic thinking, of refusing to use yourself as a punching bag when you’re frustrated. And giving yourself grace for being human and having bad feelings to begin with. We all do it, we all get past it. And we’ll get past this too.

That brings us to…

Kick Monday’s Ass Video

Keeping in line with the intro, today I wanted to talk about anxiety.

One of my mentors once caught me in the middle of a particularly buggy anxiety spiral and told me, “Angie, you can’t create from a place of anxiety.”

That has stuck with me for years and I’ve come to see it as true. Whenever I’m wigging out, I’m not coming up with ideas… because my brain is essentially chasing its own tail, telling me how much I suck at everything I’ve ever tried.

But I noticed something that helps me short circuit that spiral… the repetition and catastrophizing. I go into it a little deeper in this week’s video:

(and here’s a link to the video in case you don’t see it embedded below)

That’s OK. Feel the feelings and let them go… because for now is not forever.

Badass of the Week

Joe Polish. In case you haven’t heard of him, he’s a business building genius and all-around good dude.

I was looking through my notes for someone to feature here this week and realized I didn’t read all that many good news stories last week (I’ll be fixing that mistake this week since positive stories help with that anxious mindset!).

And in those notes I stumbled across a line he shared with a small dinner group I attended, back in November:

You can’t punish the pain out of people.

No amount of making people (including yourself) feel like shit is gonna suddenly inspire them to get it together and do better. Sure, there’s a certain subset of “I’ll show you” types (including myself) that use anger as motivation to prove people wrong.

But that channeling of anger doesn’t do anything to address the root problem… the pain that made them want to prove people wrong to begin with.

So let’s make a pact – stop shaming people. It’s not helping anyone. Stop beating yourself up. It’s not doing the world any good.

On Repeat This Week
Mellowness continues…

If you’ve met me, odds are you’ve noticed the massive, colorful tattoos on my arms. On my right arm I’ve got a lot of words surrounded by a night sky in the forest… and a lot of people tease me about having a sales letter tattoo.

It’s actually the lyrics to this song… Planet Caravan by Pantera. I call it my “insta-relax” song. It’s a long story for another day, but suffice it to say when you’re stressed as hell, there’s nothing quite like sitting near a campfire with a beer, watching the stars while this song plays int he background.

It’s Monday y’all… get out there and kick some ass (while practicing social distancing).

Rock on,
Angie