Talk is easy

…the hard part is following through.

When you end up being focused on the short term things like how liberated we’ll feel when you say it or how the other person will think of you when they hear your words, you distract yourself from the long term.

It’s the long term that matters most, things like how it will feel to follow through with what you said, the effort it will require, how long until you see desired results or what you’ll need to put in place to make it easier to keep to your word.

Sometimes doing what you said you’d do is easy but other times it’s a little more challenging. And so I think it’s worth focusing a little more on the action required and a little less on talking about it.

Reasons to leave an online membership

This blog post is actually based on an online membership I joined earlier this year but recently cancelled my subscription for.

Prior to joining I was quite excited and I thought I would really enjoy the membership. It turned out that I thought the membership was pretty good and definetly worth the cost. However, it just wasn’t quite right for me.

But instead of cancelling when I came to that realisation I remained in the membership for a few more months. I wanted to give it a chance to see if I changed my mind plus I’d been a fan of this persons free online offerings for years so I felt conflicted that I didn’t like the membership as much as I thought I would.

In hindsight I should have just cancelled the membership staright away and then rejoined if I felt called to but instead I chose to trudge on. Looking back a key issue was the time difference. There would be interactive live sessions held in the morning but for me it was late the night before. It was difficult to interact with the content in the way it was intended because I was 10 or 11 hours behind.

The second thing was that some of the content didn’t quite resonate with me. It wasn’t that it was bad, it just wasn’t for me. It turned out that the stuff I liked the most was the stuff that was similar to what they shared for free. I came to realise that I didn’t really want all the other stuff from this person.

The last thing was that it felt a bit much for me to keep up with. There was regular short bits of content, 2 or 3 each week but after taking a break from the videos for a couple of weeks it felt like a lot to catch up with. This particular point is more that my commitment to keeping up with the content fell away and never really came back. Whilst other members were keeping up as new content was posted, I ended up viewing at my own leisure.

Despite all this it took me a few months to actually leave the membership*. But when I did, I didn’t regret it at all and I knew I wouldn’t be missing out on anything. Of course there would be great content to come but it simply wasn’t for me. I think I had a hard time accepting that because I didn’t expect it to turn out that way.

My main takeaways from this situation can apply to any sort of commitment made, it could be about work or something with a friend.

Sometimes in life, we put ourselves in situations that we think will be good for us. Perhaps we find that they are pretty good to begin with. However, it may turn out that somewhere along the line things change.

From the outside, the clear option is to leave. Yet when you’re the one in the situation suddenly it’s not so easy. You then end up staying in situations you don’t need to be in when you know that you should just leave.

Sometimes the issue is that we don’t trust ourselves enough in the moment when the thought first comes up. Instead, we give ourselves time to ponder and ruminate but more often than not we reach the conclusion that we already had to begin with.

* Another reason was because it was fairly inexpensive so it felt easier to keep paying whilst I made up my mind than to leave and potentially want to rejoin shortly after. I’ve been thinking and making notes about subscription services so expect more on this soon.

Trial and error

In order to find the solution to a problem, it often takes trial and error. Sure, the first thing might work but not always.

Trial and error requires you to be willing to embrace uncertainty, take risks and persevere. However, often in life we’re not willing to do those things as much as we could or even should. And so our problems remain.

It has nothing to do with our problems being difficult or challenging. Instead we simply aren’t willing to try something that might not work, so we simply don’t try at all.

The resignation daydream

When a person finds themselves in a job role they don’t want to be in, it often takes a while to leave.

They may regularly have the thought that of handing in their resignation, being in a job where they feel valued or starting over in a new city. However, they don’t take these thoughts seriously enough for them to result in taking action. Instead they consider them to be like a sort of daydream.

And this can go on for months or even years until they finally decide that they’ve truly had enough.

Or sometimes they’re pushed by unfortunate circumstances.

I guess the point is that if you’re unhappy and you know exactly what the cause is then you should do something about it. Happiness is possible, it doesn’t just have to be something that you daydream about.

What if things could be easier?

I have this belief about the people that we meet.

I believe that sometimes we meet people who may be in our lives for a few days, a few months or maybe for years and years but we meet them and they become reminders. They remind us of the way that things can be.

Maybe there is something in your life that is challenging, frustrating, difficult or stressful, the total opposite of easeful. Chances are, within your mind you know that things could or even should be different but you’re so used to the way that things are that you just allow them to remain.

Then all of a sudden you meet a person that shows you a different way. It can be shocking or surprising because you’re not used to it. Maybe you even judge it as being wrong or not the way that things should be because you’re so used to them being otherwise. Sometimes the ease of the situation is the very thing that you’ve been longing for but when you get it, you almost resist because you’ve gotten used to things being difficult .

I think that’s something a lot of people struggle with. So many people are used to things being difficult that they almost get hesitant when things become easier. Sometimes we unknowingly use the challenge and the difficulty to justify getting the thing we want. You end up feeling as though if you didn’t have to struggle to achieve something then you didn’t really deserve it. I think it’s healthy to let go of that mindset, not everything has to be difficult.

The mindset for starting over

When your life isn’t quite going how you anticipated. You might have the thought to start over. Often this takes a while to actually begin.

Starting over goes from being something scary that you choose to avoid (because you’d rather be unhappy with what you know than risk things being any worse if you try something new) to being something that is worth the risk.

The mindset goes from I’d rather stick with what I know and be miserable than venture out into the unknown to I’d rather venture out into the unknown than stick with what I know and be miserable.

As time passes, the value we place on familiarity in situations when we’re unhappy often decreases. It’s no longer considered worth it to stay in your current circumstances because if you’re unhappy now, the worst case scenario is starting over and still being unhappy. However, often things turn out significantly better.

What do Instagram and mobile phones have in common?

They both began with having a single use but overtime have become multi-functional.

Those of us with smart phones may find that we no longer have use for: mp3/4 players, cameras, torches, home telephones, address books, calendars, calling cards for overseas calls, photo albums or even a laptop.

Instagram has done the same but instead with other platforms. It hasn’t made them obsolete but it has given them a rival and in some cases has become more dominant.

Instagram offers an alternative to:
Snapchat with insta-stories
YouTube with IGTV
Affiliate links on blog posts with the swipe up feature.
Blog posts with guides (but even just a feed carousel and a long caption is pretty similar to a blog post)
TikTok with Reels

Instagram is no longer just a photo sharing app in the same way that mobile phones are no longer just for making calls.

The ‘wrong choice’ could be the best choice

When it comes to making decisions you might find yourself paralysed, stagnant and making no progress in life because you’re scared of making the wrong choice.

Weeks, months or even years can go by and when you look back on your life you’ll find that very little has changed. It could be about work, friends, family, romantic relationships, your home, how you spend your time, that thing you didn’t start or your appearance.

Perhaps you’re worried that leaving a job and trying something new will be something you’ll regret and so you stay in your current job even though you’re unhappy. You’re worried that leaving might be the wrong choice.

Maybe what you do next won’t work out so you’ll have to go back to a similar role that you used to work in, maybe your new career path pays less or maybe something else unideal will happen.

However, I think that if you yearn for change then maybe making the ‘wrong choice’ is the best choice. Mistakes and failures are opportunities for learning and growth. But taking the chance to try something new may also lead to greater happiness and fulfillment which I think is enough to make the risk worth while.

The rise and fall of Clubhouse

Over the past few months I’ve written various posts about Clubhouse. I wrote about how it had had grown but also my thoughts on the future. Over the past month or so it seems that Clubhouse has fallen. I believe it to be because the app came out whilst many of us were in lockdown. We weren’t able to do the things we would usually do and so Clubhouse became one of the things we used to take up our time.

Whilst the creators were watching their invention grow and thrive, the users although using and possibly even enjoying the app, were also longing for ‘real life’ to return.

And so once restrictions began to ease, use of the app reduced. People no longer needed something to fill their time as they could get back to going to the movies, going for dinner, going for drinks, going to museums, seeing friends and whatever else they did pre-pandemic.

Plus, unlike other things that came about during lockdown, Clubhouse was not able to replace Instagram or Twitter and it’s certainly not enough to replace social interaction.

Awkward conversations

Some things are awkward to bring up but that doesn’t mean that you should avoid them.

Acknowledge that it will be awkward and that maybe you’ll feel a little uncomfortable and then just tackle it head on.

You might find out that it’s not as awkward as you’d anticipated. But if it is awkward, that’s okay too. Some things aren’t so easy to talk about. However, they tend to get a little easier the more you talk about them.