Each and every Friday — I outline a few of the articles and/or books that I have read over the last week or two that are worth taking a look at.
Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and into Your Life By Gary John Bishop
Are you tired of feeling fu*ked up? If you are, Gary John Bishop has the answer. In this straightforward handbook, he gives you the tools and advice you need to demolish the slag weighing you down and become the truly unfu*ked version of yourself. ”Wake up to the miracle you are,” he directs. ”Here’s what you’ve forgotten: You’re a fu*king miracle of being.” It isn’t other people that are standing in your way, it isn’t even your circumstances that are blocking your ability to thrive, it’s yourself and the negative self-talk you keep telling yourself.
In Unfu*k Yourself, Bishop leads you through a series of seven assertions:
I am willing.
I am wired to win.
I got this.
I embrace the uncertainty.
I am not my thoughts; I am what I do.
I am relentless.
I expect nothing and accept everything.
Lead the life you were meant to have—Unfu*k Yourself.
Go here to get a copy of this great book: https://a.co/d/chOCfbw
A Superior (and Realistic) Alternative to “Don’t Compare Yourself to Others”
The prevalent self-help advice in the context of comparisons is, well, “Don’t compare yourself to others”. And while well-intentioned, I don’t think this strategy is possible & sustainable — as I’ll explain next. The right approach, instead of trying to not compare, is to learn how to compare — such that, your mental health is not negatively impacted, but rather benefitted from the mental habits of comparisons.
“Don’t compare yourself to others” is B.S. Instead, try to tame your instinct to compare.
Studies show that social media comparisons can negatively impact one’s well-being. No surprise there. In response to the issue, the common self-help advice is “Don’t compare yourself to others.” But cognitively speaking, that isn’t possible.
Comparative thinking is not just an unwanted, useless tendency of our brains. It lies at the core of our social cognition. A study titled “Brain Mechanisms of Social Comparison and Their Influence on the Reward System” says —
Countless social psychological experiments have shown that comparative thinking plays a ubiquitous role in person’s perception and social cognition as a whole.
A “ubiquitous” role. That means it’s present everywhere. Even the most basic human judgments are comparative by nature, even if they may not appear so. For instance, when you say you’re “tall”, you’re actually making a comparison. You’re saying something like “I’m taller than the average for my age and gender.”
Go here to finish reading this post: https://medium.com/mind-cafe/a-superior-and-realistic-alternative-to-dont-compare-yourself-to-others-487d8e9032ba
Marcus on the Dichotomy of Value and Response
One of the exercises most widely used in modern, applied Stoicism is what we call ‘the dichotomy of control’, that is, distinguishing between what is and is not within our control, and focusing on doing what we can control and not wasting effort and emotional involvement on what we cannot control. It is an exercise that Epictetus refers to repeatedly and that Marcus often recommends to himself. However, Marcus also explains, more clearly than Epictetus, the Stoic rationale for this distinction.
What underlies the dichotomy of control is the idea of a dichotomy of value: between virtue, and happiness based on virtue, and what the Stoics call ‘indifferents’. One of the most important ideas in Stoic ethics is that our happiness in life depends not so much on health, success or celebrity but on developing the virtues, notably the four cardinal virtues, seen as a unified set. As the Stoics put it, virtue and virtue-based happiness are really good whereas these other things are ‘indifferents’.
This does not mean that they have no value; things such as health, property, and success are normally seen by Stoics as having positive value. But their value is on a different (lower) level than virtue, and that is why they are described as ‘indifferents’. They do not make the difference between happiness and its absence, whereas virtue does. This dichotomy explains why we should focus on what we can control. Working towards developing virtue and happiness based on virtue is something we can all do (it falls within our control) whereas gaining ‘indifferents’ such as success and celebrity does not. We should not focus on ‘indifferents’, not just because we may not get them, but because they do not have the same value as virtue in helping us to live a truly valuable (and happy) life. They are thus not ‘good’ in the way that virtue and virtue-based happiness are.
Here is an illuminating statement of this dichotomy in the Meditations (key terms are given in bold):
If you can find anything in human life better than justice, truthfulness, self-control, courage … if you can see anything better than this, turn to it with all your heart and enjoy the supreme good that you have found… if you find all other things to be trivial and valueless in comparison with this, give no room to anything else, since, once you turn towards that and divert from your proper path, you will no longer be able without inner conflict to give the highest honour to that which is properly good. It is not right to set up as a rival to the rational and social good anything alien to its nature, such as the praise of the many, or positions of power, wealth, or enjoyment of pleasures. All of these, even if they seem to suit our nature for a little while, suddenly take control of us and carry us away. But in your case simply and freely choose what is better and hold on to that. ‘But what is better is what benefits me’. If it benefits you as a rational creature, then maintain this. But if it does so as an animal, reject it and hold to your decision without a big fuss. Only take care that your enquiry is conducted securely. (3.6)
Marcus brings out very clearly that, in shaping our lives, we should focus, overall, on developing the virtues (the virtues listed here are the four Stoic cardinal virtues, though with ‘truthfulness’ in place of the normal ‘wisdom’). These virtues, and the kind of life they make possible, count as ‘the supreme good’, and as ‘the rational and social’ good (a phrase discussed shortly). These are what is ‘properly good’, and what ‘benefits’ us, consistently and throughout our lives, in our actions, relationships and feelings.
Go here to finish reading: https://modernstoicism.com/marcus-on-the-dichotomy-of-value-and-response-by-chris-gill/
How To Splinter Long Form Content
Congrats!
You just wrote a brand spanking new blog post! And it’s a doozy!
Now what?
What processes are in place to distribute this wonderful new resource on social media to maximize its impact? And, more importantly, what processes are in place to get LONG TERM impact out of this wonderful new resource?
The truth is that most blog posts have the lifespan of a mayfly.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
With the 6-step social sharing process I’m covering in this case study—your blog post will live a long and fruitful life. 😉
Our process not only notifies social connections as soon as a post is published, our strategy ensures that the post will continue to cycle through our social feeds days, weeks, and months after it’s been published.
Step 1: Splinter
As you know…
Product Splintering is the process of breaking off bits and pieces of your core product and selling them a la carte.
But splintering isn’t only for core products—the same process can be applied to any piece of content you create.
When your piece of content is published and ready for sharing, you have all the source material needed to splinter shareable content for social media posts.
Look to splinter the following from your blog post…
- headlines
- quotes
- images
- questions
- statistics
(It’s not necessary to use all 5 for every post, but if the opportunity presents itself, take it.)
Go here to finish reading: https://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/get-more-social-media-traffic/
Hope you enjoy these articles and books. Have a great rest of your Friday an amazing weekend!