Chaos is coming... and You're going to be just fine.

Hey there! Remember Me?

My resilience is being tested.
I was just starting to get the hang of things when it all went to shit.

If I’m being honest, I’m still not sure if I’ll come through it ok.
I will not dump the details of my woes on you.
But I do want to share some of the things that I’m learning from them.

My newsletter (and twitter presence) had become a real source of fun, creativity, and support for me. I wasn’t good at it… but I was getting better, and enjoying the process.

Then, without warning, I was visited by a monster. A multi-headed beast that embodies a spiritual “perfect storm” to torment its prey. Let’s call this monster what it brings… Chaos.

The chaos in my life is serious, complex, and acute. It hit me fast.
I had no choice but to focus everything I had towards getting through it.
Other things had to be sidelined.

• My newsletter quickly burned through all the “buffer issues” I had written prior to launch.

• Last week there was no newsletter.
  My twitter engagement fell to ZERO.

• My scheduled twitter content eventually ran out.
  I lost followers.

I lost a SHIT TON of momentum.

The SHAME of that lost momentum, and the emotional exhaustion of it all, had me wondering if I could (or even should) bother with coming back to it.

Maybe I ruined my chances of building something meaningful.
Maybe I was never cut out for it in the first place.

But here I am writing another newsletter.
Turns out the shame of walking away from it is just as hard to take.

So, in hopes that it will help someone else, I’d like to talk today about the things I’ve found helpful. The things that gave me enough strength to sit down at the keyboard again.

Embracing the Right Mindset:

Twitter Gurus love to talk about mindset. Most of it is built for people who either are, or are pretending to be ultra high performers. You need to embrace the RIGHT mindset FOR YOU.

The never stop, never slowdown, hustle culture is everywhere. When times are good, and you shoulder that kind of grind, it can be fun & exciting. But, it can also be quite toxic.

1) It’s Not Sustainable
Nobody can perform at their cutting edge indefinitely. Even super performers eventually get hit by the chaos monster. That’s life. If you want to build something that lasts - you can’t rely on hustle alone.

2) It’s Not Healthy
The Always-On Hustle culture harkens back to the iconic unicorns born from Silicon Valley. But they’re called unicorns for a reason. Success doesn’t USUALLY work that way. And Silicon Valley’s boom could hardly be described as healthy in any way other than financial.
Here too… If you want to build something that lasts… you need to last too.

When I started I my brand I adopted this as my guiding principle:
No one is making you do this. If it’s not fun - It’s YOUR Fault.
I have to remind myself of this often.

This simple mantra gave me permission to table working on my brand when my family needed me fully present…
and it’s giving me permission to get back to it, even if I did lose momentum.

I’m in this to Learn, Help People, and have fun. Everything else is a distraction.
I don’t have to be the biggest Brand out there.

It’s ok to prioritize LOVING your business and ensuring it is a HEALTHY ADDITION to your life.

Even if it means your growth is slower than you dreamed, or not a perfect trendline.

Prioritization:

We all have to balance a multitude of very important priority lists. And some lists are more important than others. Decide which of those lists is THE MOST important. And then unapologetically build everything else around it.

For me…
Corporate America is FULL of things that I “have to do” and expectations that I must meet. I don’t need more of that.

I started MY business focused on building something FUN.
Something restorative.
So when chaos turned everything upside down - I realized I had to step back if there was any hope of keeping that aspect of my Brand work.

Self Care:

You MUST find and nurture ways to release some pressure, and refill your spirit. I suggest you do this while times are good, because trying to do so when things are falling apart sucks.

The standard Self-care rituals like exercise, mindfulness, and establishing healthy boundaries are all super important. Building strong support systems including: mentors, fellow entrepreneurs, family and friends also super important.

BUT DON’T STOP THERE! I’ve come to understand that having good systems & frameworks to lean on is just as important when you’re facing some of chaos’ particularly acute challenges.

You need these frameworks to help you control the damage chaos can do, as well as to ease you back into things when chaos gives you a chance to do so.

As a content creator, I think it’s important to have a framework (or frameworks) to support (at least) the following areas:

CONTENT IDEATION & CREATION

If you don’t have a framework to make content Ideation creation easy for you. Get one.

As I ease back into my Brand work… I can’t be sure I’ve sufficiently dealt with Chaos. So I’ll be leaning on my content framework to get the most of any spare moment I get.

PLANNING & SCHEDULING

I use a calendar I built in Notion to plan out my content schedule. It makes it much easier to make sure I’m not covering the same topic over and over. When I’m creating a piece of content I can schedule it further out which allows me to spread my messaging more evenly, and also relieve some stress from future me. 😁

ENGAGEMENT & GROWTH

This is my weak spot so please reach out if you have any good suggestions here. But Engagement for me always comes down to time, and the time that I have isn’t the best for engagement.

Having said that, there are some tools that help to make the time I do spend more efficient:

Check out tweetdeck.twitter.com if you haven’t yet.
Just be sure to switch to the Old UI, and exclude retweets from the lists.

The Tweet Hunter X Chrome extension 
This makes it easy to see the important tweets and conversations happening on someone’s profile.

The minimal-twitter Chrome extension
Removes all the noise and reduces the tendency to doom-scroll your life away

Acknowledging & Celebrating Small Victories:

Resilience isn't just about major hurdles being overcome; it's also about acknowledging and celebrating small wins along the way. Including coming back after a traumatic meeting with Chaos. Maybe just deciding to get back at it is worth a victory lap.

Be where you NEED to be - but never stop coming back to where you WANT to be.

When Chaos tries to ruin everything, and you find your way back - even if you lost ground - that is pretty fuckin’ awesome.

I leave you with my heartfelt thanks.
I enjoy being here, and I truly appreciate you being here too.

~Doug

Something somebody said once…

You made it all the way down here!
You must like have liked the newsletter;
Help me out by sharing this with a friend?

☝ Thanks, You’re the Best! 😁
~Doug