Practically Peaceful | #6
Exciting times, hitting the big topics and what are you even talking about, mate?
Hey mates,
A couple of exciting things happened in our family businesses this week - after an unusually quiet summer, we had our biggest month of revenue that we’ve ever had over April, for our short-term rental business in Ballarat. All while we’ve been interstate! I plan to cover this more next week as heaps of people have been asking us about how we’re doing it. We also saw a cool story of someone selling their pet blog for over $300,000 after only starting it 2 years ago (yep you can still make a quid from blogging). We found this really inspiring - especially as we’re just getting started and it feels like we’re posting blog posts into the void.
Practical
I’ve read a few things recently that have helped to give me some sort of direction with the type of stuff I’m talking about here or ‘creating’ online. I’ve struggled to narrow down the thing I want to be able to talk about as I have heaps of different things I’d like to share/dig into.
Sofia Da Silva wrote this post on LinkedIn that helped to reframe my struggle to follow the advice of ‘pick a topic and go deep’ or ‘you must niche down’ - When You Have Multiple Interests and Skills.
Basically she’s saying embrace your multiple interests and enjoy creating stuff that is about different topics.
Dickie Bush (sick name hey?) wrote this also on LinkedIn and probably Twitter: (The 2-Year Test: How To Find 20+ Topics To Write About In 3 Minutes
He asks in the last two years, what are the skills, struggles, hobbies, life transitions, stories, topics that have happened. His schtick is if you share these things in an interesting way, it’s sure to help someone embarking on a similar journey on any of the above topics.
In Dan Koe’s newsletter this week one of the things he said was “When you are the niche, saturation and competition cease to exist”. Full article here: The Self-Reliant Career Path (How To Generate Independent Income).
Basically he says by being uniquely you, solving your own problems, sharing the journey and eventually helping others to solve similar problems, the creator path can be sustainable.
It’s all helpful and makes me feel better about riffing about what I feel like and figuring out what people are finding most useful as time goes on.
Peaceful
I used to think the answer to overwhelm was having too much on my plate or doing too much. Therefore, taking a minimalist approach to everything and cutting back to bare minimum or even nothing on a to-do list or decluttering the house, or completely clearing a social calendar was the answer.
I was wrong (for my own experience anyway). While I still value minimalist principles, a more sustainable and realistic way to address my overwhelm has been to grow my resilience muscle (a bit).
In this podcast, Ali Abdaal interviews Dr Aria, a clinical psychologist and performance coach, and the focus of the chat is resilience: It’s pretty intense and goes deep on things like quantum physics and evolution but it’s cool and some nuggets I took are:
“There’s a storm coming and it’s going to hit, the question is, are we going to be able to be calm amidst the storm?”
“How can I find that sense of serenity and calmness so that and no matter what is happening to me I can still remain standing?”
“There is no growth without struggle”
The obstacles we face are happening ‘for’ us - hit them head on and through them, instead of turning a blind eye. It’ll come back worse next time if we do the latter.
Also for me things that have been helping are: 10 minute guided meditations (from YouTube and on the days that I remember to do it), exercising regularly and having some resemblance of a routine.
If you’re interested in listening, this is the whole episode:
Book I’m reading
The Pathless Path - Paul Millerd
I first heard about this guy, also from Ali Abdaal, though this time through his YouTube channel. Paul, a former management consultant, completely ruined his health by living that life. All of his work now is exploring the future of work and what it looks like taking the path a bit less travelled, and using what we have available to us now (mainly the internet). The book really makes you question everything that we once thought was ‘normal’.
This is my second read through and there are heaps of takeaways the second time around as well.
A couple of nuggets I highlighted:
“When I first became self-employed, I was surprised at how strongly I had internalised a worker identity. As I struggled to find my first project, I felt guilty when I wasn’t working during typical work hours, Monday through Friday.”
And…
Face of the week:
Creepy watermelon guy
Dad Joke of the week:
Did you know your pupils are the last part to stop working when you die? They dilate.
Catch ya next week ✌️