Anxiety Isn’t Real:

A life lesson from a reformed planner.

I caught myself the other day.

I spent 45 minutes planning.

Something has felt a little off in the messaging.

I thought I would work out what it was.

My first mistake.

I sat down and told myself stories for 45 minutes.

I have a reading chair in the corner of the office.

It was probably annoyed I wasted my time in it thinking.

In the 46th minute I came to my senses.

And got up and wrote.

I know how to overcome messaging issues.

By messaging.

Writing and hitting publish.

The reason my messaging is off is that I’m doing a lot of stuff.

I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire.

I documented a 18 pages pricing deep dive for today’s workshop.

SoloOs is growing more rapidly than I imagined.

The Society is expanding weekly.

I’ve got 12 folks coming to a mastermind in California on Monday.

I’m presenting at two events in November.

And I have another Bali Blueprint in late November.

All the while 3 kids, 3 animals and a passionate Brazilian get plenty of my time.

And had a casual 53 person, 3 day wedding 12 days ago.

I just do stuff.

I’m a reformed Planner.

Planning is the ‘action’ the classic over-thinking above average IQer does. A lot.

The Planner has whole notebooks and Notion doc filled with plans.

Using that big ole brain to put good ideas down on paper rather than test good ideas in life and see if they are actually good ideas.

I used to spend more time planning Crossfit workouts than actually doing them.

I used to spend more time drawing funnels than actually building them.

I used to spend more time planning creative than actually being creative.

For years.

My bank account and waistline reflected it.

One of the reasons I don’t have a first wife, and have a second one, is I spent more time telling her what we could do than doing it.

By the time it came to do it she didn’t believe me and thought her ideas were better than mine.

I now do stuff to prove my ideas are occasionally brilliant and consistently average.

One of my favourite self reflections is:

If you’re so smart why arent to rich/jacked/content

The frustration I felt as a smart person was only overcome when I did stuff.

Got more annoyed at the weight of thinking than the potential failure my ideas could trigger.

I only overcame it when I got more annoyed at myself than scared of the story.

Funny how all my anxiety lifted not long after.

I maintain that everyone knows what they need to do.

I did.

You are just scared of the story that you tell about what’s going to happen.

I was.

The story isn’t true.

It wasn’t for me and it wasn’t for everyone who finally just does stuff.

I don’t have time to be anxious or worry anymore.

I’ve got too much to do.