I have a confession to make:  There are a lot of tasks in my life that I just can’t will myself to get done.  Do you have a list like this?  I’ve lived in my apartment for almost 5 years now and only managed to put permanent blinds in my windows this past weekend.  I just bought a coffee table.  I still don’t have a passport.  I’m not sure what keeps me from getting these (seemingly small) tasks accomplished, but somehow they feel ‘big’ in my brain, so I put them off.

As a digital strategist, I think sometimes that our clients and companies in general that are not yet engaging with their customers online feel like the prospect of “getting social media done” is a daunting prospect, and it ‘feels too big in their heads’ (whether they’re able to articulate it that way or not), and so come up with all kinds of rationales to not move forward (‘no resources’, ‘no time’, ‘legal wont let us’, ‘can’t justify the ROI’).

I think we all do ourselves a disservice when we try to respond to these individual points (though we have the best intentions) to quell the fears that exist rather than trying to address the underlying issue.  The same way that having someone say things like “well, you want to be able to travel, don’t you?” in order to encourage me to get a passport, saying things like “customers expect you to engage” won’t alleviate the underlying ‘this is too big to handle’ illusion.

Instead, what Dave Allen’s Getting Things Done system recommends is that we “Break tasks down into actionable steps.”

What this means to me in both cases is:  Scale it down until you can do it.

Too scared to start, monitor and maintain a multi-channel social network presence? Try a monthly blog.  Or a personal Twitter account.  Keep scaling it down until you feel like you can act on something.  Don’t worry about how much you took off the table.  Don’t worry about how much the competition is doing, or how many other things are on your list.  Tiny progress is exponentially better than no progress at all.

The dirty little secret is that even when you feel like you are pushing yourself outside your safezone, you really aren’t.  What you’ve done is realize that your safezone is bigger than you thought it was.

So, maybe I can’t put a “done” mark next to “Get Passport” just yet.  But maybe I can fill out the form so that when I’m ready to take that next step, there are fewer things getting in the way.

That I can do.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been ahead of the curve.  This is not ego, it just a simple statement of fact.  I tend to be into things several years before they catch on with the general population.  This is applicable personally as well as professionally.  I’ve been using the internet to connect with people since I started posting on my Prodigy account and joining Delphi chatrooms in the early 90s (and via BBSs prior to that).  If you’re reading this, chance are that you have either had this experience as well, or have a particular person in your life that has.

I bring this up because I think that there’s a sense in the community at large that being an early adopter, a trend setter, someone who is on the cutting edge somehow makes you cool or rich or important.  What I’ve found is kind of the opposite.  I think that waiting for the world to catch up to what we know inherently to be true or important is one of the loneliest feelings that someone can have.

It’s hard having to go into conversations knowing you’re going to have to ‘dumb it down’ or explain why you’re so into some silly website or raw fish or some band they’ve never heard of.  Even the most well-intentioned and interested of people can be a source of frustration and deep sighing.  We want to explain and share our passion and get other people excited, we really do.  It’s just that when it’s variations of the same conversation with many new people, it tends to set up a sense of self that’s isolating.

That’s why, for all the bitching people do about the ’social media echo chamber’ or the ‘indie rock scene’ or whatever label happens to be associated with your own personal area of ‘ahead-of-the-curve’ness, it’s still so important to spend some time with members of your tribe.

I implore you to put yourself in a situation where you can have conversations about your passions that are more exhilarating than exhausting.  Spend time in a place where you can be as close to the full capacity of ‘you’ as possible.

Those places are all around. Online chatting is not enough. Dedicate yourself to recharging your creative batteries before spending time with those who are not yet part of the tribe. Your passion needs refreshing in order to truly bring the world up to speed.  That is where the usefulness, opportunity and obligation of being an early adopter comes in, and the only way to ensure the passion continues to be a calling rather than a burden.

2009, for me at least, was a time of change.  Between finally deciding to be more active in getting myself out there on social networks (and the resulting increase in Twitter usage), to personal tragedy, to a shift in how I choose to treat my thoughts, to professional advancement, to finding love, I feel quite reinvented.  Well, maybe reinvented isn’t the right word, as much as decluttered.  There have been a lot of habits and patterns that have stuck around for whatever reason, consciously and subconsciously. Learning to look at them and let go of the ones that keep distance from the happiness that exists inside has been transformational.

It’s so important to be patient with yourself, especially during challenging times.  No growth comes quickly, no matter how much one may want to.  From getting your business online to stopping toxic behavior in your own life, things happen at their own pace, all the time.

So, here’s some of the things I’ve learned, in SEO-friendly bullet-point fashion!

• The world is on your side, and waits patiently for you to make room in your life for awesomeness.
• Just because you’ve always done something, doesn’t mean you should keep doing it one moment further.
• Not everything need be treated heavy-handedly or with Importance. In fact, the most important things in life thrive best when treated lightly.  In other words, Hold On Loosely.
• Breathe.
• It’s not the situation that makes our lives a certain way, it’s our relationship to a situation, which we can always control.
• Love is always better.  And it’s freakin awesome.

On occasion on this blog, I’ve posted lifehack-style things that I’ve learned, or resolutions I’m looking at, in the hopes that you may find something valuable from them to look at in your own life (see: Jeremy’s Rules For A Better Life, My Resolutions for 2009).  I know that many of the people who read this blog are also people who interact with me outside of it, be you friends, twitter buddies, fellow bloggers.  My resolution for you is: connect.

Connect wherever you can, with whoever you can.  Don’t be afraid of rejection.  Everyone is afraid of rejection, but nobody things other people are similarly afraid.  Say hi, send a twitter message, go up to a girl (or a boy) at a party, email that friend from high school, accept rather than ignore that facebook request.  Connection is the key to feeling love.  I hope that 2010 brings a fuller sense of connection to everyone reading this.

If you’d like to connect with me outside of here, you will find links to me on the various networks on the top-right-hand-corner.

Subtitle: : My unproductive fight against numbness and depression, healthcare, meditation, and what I’m doing now.

President Obama’s speech tonight provided me the opportunity to write something I’ve been wanting to share for a bit. His guiding principle, that the cycle of increased-costs-to-decreased-value that the insurance companies have been subjecting the American people to needs to end. Insurance companies, like any other for-profit enterprise, are entitled to work toward as big of a profit as they can legitimately create for themselves, but not at the cost of the health of the entities they claim to be a resource for.

Beyond proposing putting restrictions on some of the processes insurance companies are able to use, the President suggested an alternative opportunity for insurance companies to make themselves available to patients: open the world of options to a wider audience than currently exists (e.g.currently uninsured people) and let customers make the choice where to invest their attention and dollars. By redefining the parameters to create a bigger world to play in, the overinflated balloon of suffering caused by the limitations of the day-to-day process can be deflated and replaced with a more workable and productive model, that ideally will find an equilibrium between stress points and air flow.

What does all of this have to do with me (and maybe you too)? Read on!

As some of you may or may not know, I’ve struggled on and off with chronic depression for most of my adult life. I have lived my last 15 years in a state of aversion, using any number of distractions (food, the internet, unhealthy relationships) in order to try to get out of my head, or not have my thoughts rule me.

I’ve never known what people meant when they said ’stop thinking so much’. What other option is there? How does one interact with the world if not through one’s brain? I’ve been working in therapy for awhile now, trying to think my way out of this situation, which I’d defined as a sense of ‘coasting without connecting’, leading up to ‘not feeling like part of the world’. I thought I could figure out some way to stay in my head (which is the only place to be) but just nice-and-easy integrate my emotions back into my life.

All this came to a head last week when, in a “be careful what you wish for” epic fail moment, all the distractions I’d relied upon to not have to deal with myself suddenly stopped being effective in keeping me out of my brain, and I spiraled into a debilitating depression.

I stayed off of the internet, TV held no interest, I stopped eating altogether. I was desperately in search of an answer, something, ANYTHING that could be done to help me to figure out how to understand and escape my all-too-familiar situation. I didn’t know where the release valve on my suffering was, but I was at the end of my rope and willing to search anywhere for an escape hatch. Somehow in the midst of all this, the concept of meditation entered my brain.

I’ve been trying to learn how to meditate off and on for years, but I never really “got it”. It always seemed rather silly to me, how somehow sitting quietly could possibly solve my very real problems, challenges and self-imposed restrictions keeping me from being happy. It didn’t seem like DOING anything, and therefore it held no weight beyond a novelty. But now, in the desperate quest to find answers outside myself, I asked my Twitter folks for meditation resources, and was directed Radical Aceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, which ended up being a life-altering discovery.

The book, written by Tara Brach, opened my eyes to the totally understandable habitual and very common folly of paying attention to the reptillian brain’s thought processes. Within these pages it is explained in plain language that the thoughts that I’d gotten completely caught up in are the automatic responses of our evolutionary fight-or-flight process. They are comprised entirely of judgments “this is good” “this is bad” “this is dangerous”. They are not rational, nor are they ‘intended’ to be. They are just the brain’s way of processing experience. The trouble happens when we begin to take these automatic responses at face value, when we begin to believe them.

I believed them. I got caught in them. I bought into the fundamental rational conclusion that one comes to when identifying with these thoughts: I’m not good enough. Something is wrong with me. I can never experience love or peace. I don’t deserve these things. And once I got caught in it, there was seemingly no escape.

It turns out, however, that you can’t think your way out of being caught up in thought. It seems simple when phrased like that, but as any of you who have been caught in depression know, when you’re in it there is no past where you felt better, there is no potential future where you can feel better, and it seems like the only way to get out is by some external source (said much better than I have here by Robert Burton in his The Anatomy of Melancholy, published in 1621.) The rallying cry of the depressed is “Save Me” for a reason.

I decided, as a last resort (before looking into a pharmacological option) to commit myself to investing in meditation. This resulted in probably the most intense weekend (three day weekend, no less) of my life thusfar.

In my newfound “I’m going to give this a serious chance”, I discovered that Tara Brach has a free podcast where she expands upon her teachings from the Radical Acceptance book and leads her class in guided meditations (which are basically real-time audio or visual instruction guiding you through the process of becoming aware of your awareness and focusing on your core being rather than getting caught up in thoughts or emotions that are connected to automatic processes). Our consciousness is ‘prior’ to these processes. It’s closer to us.

I listened and learned and focused and tried it. And something finally clicked. This is the other option.

Finding myself sitting by the East River, eyes closed, listening to the sound of Tara’s soothing voice for hours at a time, I began to learn how to connect with my awareness, that which is more centrally ‘me’ than the thoughts, the emotions, the dread. Through these three days of intense change, I’ve gotten closer to becoming in sync with my core being than I’ve ever been, and learned that the way out is actually within us. I finally felt like I’d identified where the release valve was.

It was not easy. It did not come quickly. I’m lucky enough to have a Mom who went through something similar, and found similar release in the practice, and was able to offer invaluable information, advice and support.

Since then, I’ve been meditating for 20 minutes every morning. I’m beginning to feel the effects. I am able to get out of my head more quickly than before. I pay more attention to the world around me. I smile at people on the street, and get smiles back. I’m learning to ask questions when I’m unclear about something, rather than making assumptions that add to my stress level of a particular task at hand. Obviously I’m very new to this process and am still getting the hang of it.

What’s the point? Beyond my full and unreserved support for this practice (especially for my fellow geek friends who have similar challenges getting out of their own way), the point is, I’m learning to deflate the balloon. My balloon had expanded to the breaking point. It hit the wall. The only way out was to let go, let the balloon deflate, let it go slack, find another way to get the goal of living done. Change doesn’t come when we’re comfortable, it’s only in a crisis that change is possible. I’m tempted to make a comparison to business and social media trends here, but you’re all smart enough to get there yourselves, yes?

I haven’t been on Twitter (or blogging) quite as much, I’m a little different in how I interact with the world now, I’m learning to spend more time in the cool glow of presence and connection to the world. I’m figuring out what really matters to me (turns out, as with most people, it’s ‘connection’). I’m working on me. I’m figuring out how to work with my balloon to find equilibrium. I am.

Am I going to give up all my worldly possessions and go live on a monastery somewhere? Probably not. I’ve never been particularly religious, though I’ve always believed that you get what you give (i.e. Karma). The meditation practice does not require any particular religious belief, only a belief in our own primal nature, before thought, before emotion, and a commitment to loving kindness to all beings. There are plenty of resources on the web that can describe all this stuff in far greater detail, and I encourage exploration.

I hope this post will inspire any reader who finds themselves in a similar situation to consider this path as an option, and hope to continue being mindful as much as I can for as long as I can.

Thank you for listening, hearing and loving.

P.S. I realize that I addressed a bunch of this stuff in my “You Matter” post. I was considering revising it to take into account this new perspective, but I think its more interesting to be left alone as a ‘before and after’ study.

I just turned 30 this past April.  As my birthday was approaching, I spoke to lots of people who had gone through their 30s, and all the feedback I received centered around one thing: Your 30s are a time of change, and will be much more awesome than your 20s were.

To that end, I thought I’d share some self-reflection strategies for those times where change needs to happen that just happen to be carefully worded so that they can apply to business as well.  Wasn’t that clever of me?

I. Accept the reality of your situation.  Go ahead, give it a shot.

Chances are, things weren’t what you thought they were – If the bottom has fallen out of your situation, consider for a moment the prospect that you may have been judging the reality of your situation inaccurately to begin with, and that the new realizations and trends can serve as a reality check and give you a new place to work from.

Rethink, don’t combat – There is the tendency when we feel attacked both as people and as professionals to want to strike out in anger against those we perceive are doing the hurting (e.g. See: RIAA suing its customers, the venom with which traditional print media regards bloggers, blaming society/our parents/ex-girlfriends for our current situations).  Often, those people are not actually the root cause of the issue, but rather are symbolic of a deeper, more internal issue.  This is a perfectly natural reaction, but once you’re done throwing a tantrum, it’s time to look within and see exactly what led to this behavior.

The goal is to rebuild, not to regain – Take this opportunity to look at what’s not working and change it, rather than trying desperately to get things ‘back to the way they were’.  Things will never be the way they were, because the world and your place in it is fundamentally different at this moment than it has ever been. Accepting this can free you to decide where you ultimately want to end up.

II. Figure out where you want to go

Identify and embrace core values.  Figure out what they’re not, then figure out what they are. – Get back to basics.  What do you stand for? Be as specific as possible.  In thinking about your core values, throw out all the mottos, taglines, things people have complimented you onand phrases that you’re used to parroting back into the world.  If it helps, write them all down on paper and cross them out with a big pen.  Those are not your values. It’s time to get real.

Your core value statement is what sets you apart as unique in the world, it will need to be specific enough that you can measure every action you take against it to see if you are aligned or not.

Start from scratch, sort of – OK, so take those core value statements that you came up with, and consider: if you had the chance to reset yourself, without being beholden to all your current baggage and learned behaviors, what specific values and activities would you embrace?  What would you  immediately leave by the side of the road? What would you take out back and stomp on repeatedly? How would you interact with others? What kind of impression would you want to make?

III. Identify barriers to getting there

Figure out why you’re not there already – An important step in being able to take action is to look at why you haven’t yet done so.  Accept that some of the reasons may be emotional in nature and therefore not objectively rational.  The important thing is to get as many of them ‘down on paper’ as possible, so you can evaluate whether they should continue to be able to hold you back.

Identify the consequences of not doing anything – Chances are, if you’ve read this far, you are at least considering addressing change.  However, to really drive the point home, it may be helpful to take a look at what might happen should you continue on your current course. Just keep in mind that not making a decision is, in fact, a decision as well.

IV: Do something about it!

Yes, this is the scary part.  Hopefully parts I-III have given you enough preparation and data so that you can be aware of what you need to do, how to gauge whether you’re being true to you core goals.  If you’ve made it this far, you are ready to act.

Don’t try to do it all at once, but do something. – Take some small steps, measure, adjust.  Try something new, do something differently than you have in the past.  Put yourself out there in a way more aligned with your real goals. Commit yourself to ramp up the process.

Measure, measure, measure -  As you get more comfortable with the action -> measurement -> adjustment loop, you will find that opportunities for change begin to present themselves in a way that they haven’t before.  As with the actions you took when ramping up, it is critical to test new opportunities against your core goals and values.  If they are in alignment, then act, measure, adjust accordingly.  If not, dont do them.  When reviewing, always remember to ask yourself whether you getting where you want to go.

Build momentum, but be mindful of your speed - One of the things that may have gotten you to the place you were was years of momentum.  If we aren’t careful to be mindful of our goals and values, our momentum can take us down disastrous paths.  Remembering our high school physics, it takes much more energy to stop and reverse direction than it does to always be adjusting your course.

Accept setbacks, ignore haters, keep to your path as much as you can. – This is pretty self-explanatory.  Whether we’re talking about you or your company, there are going to be wrong moves, there are going to be people who are waiting for you to fail, or fudge a result or have your adjustments be ‘all an act’.  Those people are easily ignored.  Stick to your guns and your values, and the vast majority will appreciate the improvement!

So there you have it.  Jeremy’s not-so-concise guide to handling change, both personally and in business.  I’m looking forward to seeing what my 30s have to offer!