“Holy crap, did you see the news?”
Every time someone asks me something like that, I get to tell them how I don’t watch the news, like some sort of a smug arsehole.
But at least the reason I’m not watching the news isn’t cause I’m too busy reading self help or business books or some other lame bullshit.
Nah, it’s purely cause the news is so fucking depressing, and when I watch it my entire world view changes. People are terrible. Everything is hopeless. We’re all broke. Blah blah fucking blah.
It makes me feel anxious AF, I develop a bit of a complex, and ultimately I feel like everything is hopeless and I shouldn’t leave my house ever again.
Definitely a healthy way to see life 😬
But the more I thought about it, the more I realised knowing what was going on in the world really didn’t give me anything good. It just gave me stress and anxiety, so I cut that shit out.
On the downside, it means I have no idea what’s going on in the world beyond what people bring up in conversation. On the upside, it means I have no idea what’s going on in the world beyond what people bring up in conversation.
But my mental health has never been better.
Taking this further
The whole “cutting toxic shit” isn’t just for the news.
I’ll cut people, activities, clients, etc - anything that makes me feel anxious or angry or upset more than inspired or excited or happy.
My goal is to fill my life with good shit, not toxic shit, and allowing all the stuff that makes me feel bad to stick around totally goes against that goal.
And I’ve learned this shit the hard way.
I’ve “burned out” at least 3 times. Like full blown depression-tier burn out. The level where you know you need to do stuff, you know there’ll be consequences if you don’t, and yet you still can’t manage to get yourself out of bed that day.
The only way I crawled out of it was by cutting the shit that brought me down, and replacing it with shit that lifted me up.
And THAT only started when I finally realised what was causing it, and that I had the power to make the change.
We’re products of our environments
I think a lot of people misjudge how much our minds are influenced by our surroundings.
Family. Friends. The news. Social media. All this shit influences us in a (not so) subtle way.
Remember covid? How many people had perfectly normal-seeming friends and family join whatsapp groups with other nutjobs and become full time conspiracy theorists?
They spent all their time with other wackos and they thought that’s how the world is.
Easy to laugh about it now, but less funny when you realise that the same thing happens to us.
Hang out with negative people? No matter how positive you are naturally, it will make you think other people are negative.
Spend time on LinkedIn? Well everyone’s using AI. Or hates AI. But at least everyone knows about it.
Watch the news? Well the future is… let’s say “what future?”
But when you go out of the bubble, look at the real world, it’s usually nowhere near that level of fucked. Many people are friendly and happy. Many people have literally zero involvement with AI in any way (and their jobs are safe). Our future is the same shit it’s always been.
Shit really isn’t that bad.
Making shit better
The biggest thing I’ve done to improve my mental health has been ruthlessly cutting toxic shit (and people, and activities) from my life, and spending my time doing stuff that makes me feel happy.
I mean think about it, if you’re a product of your environment, it makes sense to make your environment reflect who you want to be.
If you want to grow, spend more of your time with people who are the same.
If you want to do art, spend more of your time with people who are the same.
But if you want to be angry and sad, spend time with my dad. badum tshhhh
A lovely bunch of people
Today I hosted the first ever live call for the idgaf community, and it was awesome (even though I had to go to a cafe cause we’re replacing the floors in my house).
There was 6 of us on the call, and maybe I’m biased but I was really impressed with how awesome everyone was. Every single person has all this experience and insight into their specialty area, like legit impressive af.
In the community there are specialists in websites, seo, branding, marketing, copywriting, community, hr, and even data science. And since they’re all flying basically solo, they get it. They’re in the same boat. THEY FEEL YOUR PAIN (AND MY PAIN).
It made me stupidly happy. Like, part of my job is hanging out with these people? GTFO, how awesome is that?
You can get in on this too
Look, this isn’t some exclusive (and expensive) club. You can join the idgaf community for $25USD a month (if you join before the end of the month Aussie time). Considering how much I paid for a coffee earlier, that’s like 3 and a half coffees!
There’s like, 7-8 days left with the launch offer. Once it ends, the price is going up and I’ll never put it that low again. I’m not doing one of those BS extended deadline things cause I hate that artificial crap. Basically, if you miss out, you miss out.
Of course I want you to join up, but also… the people are awesome. They’re the kinds of people that when you hang out with, you feel better and do better.
These are the kinds of people that you grow when you hang around with, so it’s exactly the kind of positive environment I’ve been talking about.
So like, no pressure at all, but if you don’t join you will miss out on possibly the greatest thing in your life and one day when you’re old and poor and sick, you’ll be like “man I really wish I joined that handsome guy’s community for solopreneurs.” You really don’t want those kinds of regrets, do you?
You can check out the community here:
And if you have any questions, just reply and ask. Otherwise, catch you in the community?
Cowabunga,
Nick Gulic
* out of all the communities owned by Nick Gulic
