My first codependency management technique was taping a fortune cookie sized scrap of paper onto the outside of my flip phone.

It simply read the word, boundaries.

This small, simple and stoic visual cue reminded me that there are no emergencies. As if to place a calm hand on my shoulder and whisper:

Hey man, you don’t have to drop everything you’re doing just to respond to this phone number you don’t even recognize. The world will not fall apart if you let it go to voicemail. And you will still be talented and loved and complete, even if you stay present in this moment. How about keeping your eyes on the road for a while before you sideswipe another elderly couple?

It’s amazing how much of a difference that little pause made in my daily life. Taoists have a beautiful scripture about this very issue:

Nature is never in a hurry, and it accomplished everything.

No wonder we’re so anxious all the time. We think nature is outside of us. Something we go out into.

But we’re part of it. Always have been, always will be. And yet, we are killing ourselves trying to respond to every magnet for our attention.

When the truth is, very few things are that urgent or important. It’s just a story we tell ourselves. Without a solid sense of boundaries, we ultimately allow people to rent space in our head without paying. And they’re horrible tenants.

My therapist friend once told me, if you pick up the phone, they will talk you out of your boundary. Learn to let it go. It’s not like you’re a surgeon on call.

Of course, this has nothing to do with phones and everything to do with setting limits. Behavioral scientists conducted a fascinating study about this.

They sought to pinpoint the specific psychological costs for people who knew that they could be called upon at any time. Their findings, not surprisingly, showed higher cortisol levels in those individuals. Because without boundaries, nobody can entirely relax.

Sometimes we need to just let the phone ring and trust that we’ll be okay.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
In a chaotic and unfathomable world where we can’t control much, why leave our minds at the mercy of the things we can?

Most project management software comes with inherent problems.

First, the majority of these programs are far too complex and cumbersome for the average person to use. Even if people do enroll in the system, they typically spend a few weeks getting all their tasks organized, but once they realize that it’s actually creating more work than they’re completing, they quickly abandon the platform for something simpler and more lightweight and low tech.

Like a sticky note or a spreadsheet.

Some other process that better jives with their work style.

Juvenal, the legendary poet, famously asked the question:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Who guards the guards?

That’s another problem. Nobody wants to manage the manager. It compresses their schedule into an infinite vortex of interruptions, which beautifully preserves the illusion of productivity, but doesn’t accomplish meaningful work. Remember, complexity is attractive because it feels like progress.

The other thing is, on any given team, there are always a few rebels who out rightly refuse to get on board with the system. This makes collaboration a huge pain in the ass and creates animosity within the group.

Speaking as a rebel myself, being a conscientious objector isn’t a great way to build team cohesion.

But the most significant flaw in these systems is, they fail to take into account the profound human aversion to micromanagement.

Think about it. Each time you fire up that app or receive a notification, every single goddamn task is just sitting there, silently bearing down on you, while every inch of your progress is perfectly quantified for all to see.

Truth is, long lists are guilt trips. And the longer the list of unfinished items, the worse you feel about it. And at a certain point, you just stop looking at it because it makes you feel bad.

This creates anxiety, not accomplishment. 

Victory Logs might be a better tool for you.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Which of your systems are more of a hindrance than a help?

Not everyone has a burning desire to navigate the treacherous waters that ambition requires them to travel.

Nor is everyone interested in being consumed by the frustration of trying to fulfill their ever escalating ambition.

And that’s okay. It’s not weak to be oriented towards that. Lack of ambition should not be a shameable offense. Some people just don’t feel like making the journey.

Tarantino wrote in one of his movies that if you smoke too much weed, it robs you of your ambition. Unless your ambition is to get high and watch television. It’s the ultimate stoner argument. And although it’s said in jest, there’s a fascinating point to be made about our culture’s relationship with ambition.

What matters, then, is not necessarily how ambitious people are, but how compassionate we are with whatever level of ambition they have.

Lebowski comes to mind, the celebrated character who has been abiding since the nineties. Dude’s sole ambition is to abide with as little hassle as possible.

According to an academic examination of this man’s philosophy, he has not so much an ethos as a style, a way of taking it easy, living lightly. But despite his lack of conscious planning and his absence of ambition, he still manages to contribute to ongoing natural processes.

No wonder fans started a legitimate religion based around his approach to life. In a world where ambition, achievement and competition are idealized, abiding doesn’t sound half bad.

What if you were willing to accept that your ambitions were humbler than you originally thought? Would there really be any harm in shrinking the size of your goals to fit your personal reality?

It’s funny, ambition grosses some people out. It makes them disenfranchised by your desire.

But then again, so does your lack of ambition. People are equally upset when they discover you don’t have a horizon to point to.

Or at least, not a horizon that fits their model of the world. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Does your ambition drive you or hold you back?

Addictions and compulsions are all about avoiding unpleasant outcomes. They are born in anxiety and remain strangers to joy.

Beagley’s illuminating book on extreme behavior shows that people engage in repetitive behaviors over and over again. To alleviate the angst brought on by the possibility of negative consequences.

But this cycle can be defeated. We can practice the subtle art of response flexibility by training ourselves to notice, pause, evaluate and reframe our situation.

One question that has been helpful for me is.

What aspects of your circumstances might your view as a gift to be treasured?

This moment allows you to find joy where others accept fear.

Like when your phone abruptly dies. Instead of shitting yourself with fear that you’re missing out something better happening elsewhere, embrace unexpected boredom and actually delight in your surroundings for once.

Or when everyone at the office starts bonding over that new television show about robot dragon nazis. Instead of running home to binge watch the entire series so you can catch up and join the conversation, embrace the pleasure of engaging in relaxation that is uniquely appealing to you.

Instead of getting sucked into the vortex of noise and shoulds and societal expectations, breathe in the present moment and trust that you already have everything you need to be happy, right now.

These examples of response flexibility, aka, finding joy where others accept fear, reminds me of my first day at one of my startup jobs.

My boss told me, look, we’re all adults here, so when it comes to communicating during off peak hours, you need to decide for yourself what reasonable response looks like for you.

As an experiment, I chose not to install any email or chat apps on my phone. Just to see how it felt. Just to see if I was missing out on anything important.

After the first month, it became abundantly clear. I wasn’t.

There were no emergencies. If somebody needed me for something, it could wait until I got into the office.

This was a monumental milestone of joy. My boundary made my life feel physically lighter.

Lesson learned, setting boundaries and letting go of being on top of everything can create as much joy as fear.

It all depends on how flexibly you respond to the moment. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How will you create the space to metabolize your fears into joy?

Activists, experts, leaders and educators have been telling us for years that if we stopped labeling each other, everything would change for the better.

But as someone who hasn’t taken off his nametag in twenty years, my experience has been quite the opposite.

Being labeled is the best thing that ever happened to me. It makes me feel seen in a deeply human and personal way. It means people are unable to put me into a box. The tag has already taken the liberty.

Alter, a professor whose research has been published in dozens of psychology journals, summarizes it perfectly:

Labeling is a tool that humans use to resolve the impossible complexity of the environments we grapple to perceive. Like so many human faculties, it’s adaptive and miraculous, but it also contributes to some of the deepest problems that face our species.

Therefore, perhaps our big problem is not that we label each other, but rather, the way that we label each other?

Example. One of my cherished experiences is walking into a room where everyone is wearing nametags. What a relief. It’s just so much less work for everyone. And now, we no longer have to figure each other out. All of our names, all of those hieroglyphics of the soul, they’re out on display for all to use. Now we can simply unite through personhood, instead of something superficial and fleeting like position or preference or profession.

As opposed to whispering behind people’s backs, hey, who’s that short fat guy over there?

Fact is, the more people who wear nametags, the less likely we are to think others are not like us. The more likely we are to remember that everybody is the same everywhere.

If that’s not an air tight argument for the positive power of labeling, let god strike me down where I stand.

In fact, let’s see what god has to say about this issue.

Kabbalistic scholars believe the letters making up our name represent the connection between the material and the spiritual world. Our name is our channel to the light of the creator, and for the entirety of our life, that name is not a mere label, it expresses the essence of its bearer.

The letters, sounds, the spaces between the syllables, the meaning of the name, are all descriptions of our soul.

And so, by virtue of labeling people incorrectly, there might be a subtle or gross dismissal of their humanity.

But then again, there might be a witness of their divinity. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
If everyone wore nametags all the time, what would you see when you see people?

Consider the teenage couple in the slasher film.

In the middle of making out, they suddenly hear a sound downstairs and think, ah, it’s probably nothing. Now, where were we?

But as the viewer knows, it’s not just the wind. It’s not all in their heads. That sound is definitely a homicidal maniac with a facemask and bloody machete.

Cue the creepy soundtrack.

Ki ki ki, ma ma ma. Ch ch ch, ah ah ah.

What’s interesting is, most of us have been in this situation before, minus the serial killer. Anytime we deny ourselves help because we feel that our problem isn’t serious enough, the same thing happens.

Except instead of getting impaled by a psychopath, we are the ones who hold the knife. And instead of blunt force trauma to the abdomen, it’s a slow death by a thousand cuts.

And it all goes back to guilt. It’s this judgmental and codependent story we tell ourselves about our own worthiness.

Are you playing this game of competitive suffering? Do you feel guilty for not having earned the life that you’re living right now? Have you ever binged on generosity to compensate for your privileged existence?

It’s a very real thing. Balancing gratitude for self and compassion for others is not for the faint of heart.

But before somebody starts playing the smallest violin in the world, here’s the point. We all have the right to honor our needs, regardless of their size and regardless of who we are. We all need to believe that our struggle is valid. To give weight to what happened and still happens to us.

It’s just like the kids in the slasher flick. When we hear that sound from downstairs, we need trust that something inside of us made us notice it, and further investigation, or in some cases, getting the hell out of the house right now, might save our lives in the long run.

Remember, we do ourselves a disservice by feeling guilty about our needs.

Ask yourself what you’ve been guiltily denying yourself, and then go do it.

It won’t protect you from any homicidal maniacs, but it will help you stop shaming yourself out of neediness. 

Ki ki ki, ma ma ma.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Do you practice healthy selfishness by taking care of yourself without guilt or blame?

Everything has two births.

First as an idea, and then as the real and tangible output of that idea in the world.

The gap between those two events is where creators get tripped up.

With each step they take closer to the launch date, the stronger the resistance grows.

Reminds me of a friend who has been working on a documentary for the past year. His new series sounds exciting and valuable and absolutely deserves to exist in the world. Trouble is, his creative partner is an insufferable perfectionist. Which means fear rules the day. Fear of failure, fear of being judged, fear being seen for who they really are, it’s all damming up the executional flow.

In fact, we talk about his project fairly regularly, and it feels like the gap between birth number one and birth number widens with each passing month. It makes me sad and angry, but unfortunately, it’s not my job to be his project manager. All you can really do is love people as they sort things out.

Fried, the creator of the world’s most successful project management platform, reminds us that:

Until we ship, it’s all opinions, hypotheses and hunches. You can only iterate on something after it’s been shipped. Prior to release, you’re just making the thing. Even if you change it, you’re still just making it. Iterating is when you change or improve after it’s out. If you want to iterate, you must first ship.

This is a crucial requirement for innovation. Each creator needs the forcing function of reality to build momentum. They need that nice punch in the face that can only come from bravely shipping something out into the world.

Otherwise they’re just creating in a circle. Bouncing their ideas off a thin wall. Or as my favorite comedian once said, jacking off into a ceiling fan.

Look, iteration is refinement, but you absolutely need a place to refine from. If you truly believe you can improve people’s lives and delight them along the way, then your primary goal should be getting your product into the hands of a customer as quickly as you can.

The first birth is only half the battle.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Would you rather appear good, or know that you’re good?

We now live in a world where we’re all trying to out special each other.

This phenomenon called competitive individuality has become our favorite pastime.

But there’s also something called the paradox of uniqueness. It’s the idea that we are all simultaneously special and not special. It’s all depends on the context.

When we’re sitting across the desk from a hiring manager or prospective client, want that person to think the following:

Wow, this guy’s talent stack is rare, his work experience is compelling, his creative portfolio is original, his energy signature is unique and his valued added is remarkable.

In the absence of that uniqueness, we’re destined to be unemployed for a long time.

When we’re sitting across the desk from a surgeon, it’s the opposite. We hope the doctor thinks the following:

Excellent, this guy’s test results are typical, his physical state is normal, his diagnosis is unremarkable, his symptoms are ordinary and his body is doing exactly what we expected.

In the absence of that ordinariness, we might want to get our affairs in order.

See the difference?

Imagine if your doctor told you to stay put while he enthusiastically grabbed four of his med school students to come into the examination room and witness just how special you were.

Behold, young doctors, this gentleman’s cardiac anomaly accounts for only two percent of all patients worldwide!

Not the kind of uniqueness worth striving for.

And so, it’s all a matter of perspective. Sometimes it’s better to be a blade of grass, not a daisy. Sometimes it’s paramount that people notice how special we are, and sometimes terminal uniqueness is a danger to our health.

Speaking of cardiac anomalies, years ago a medical organization hired me to give a presentation at one of their summer camps. This charity provided free camping experiences to children undergoing treatment for, and survivors of, cancer and blood related diseases.

Their mission was to help kids make new friends and experience relief from the everyday stresses caused by their illness.

Five minutes before my presentation, the executive director pulled me aside and said.

Scott, we appreciate that your nametag story is all about being an individual and finding your uniqueness, but these kids attend our camp because they just want to feel normal. They’ve spent their whole lives being sick, battling their disease and fighting the stigma attached to it. Please adjust your speech accordingly. Thank you.

That’s the paradox of uniqueness.

Not everybody wants to out special each other.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
When has your individuality worked to your disadvantage?

Neurosis is the blocking of forward momentum.

It’s the anxious attempt to prevent life from happening.

But what it points to, other than somebody’s need for a few antacid tablets, is a lack of authority over one’s life. Neurotic people need to recapture control of their own attention. Otherwise the paralysis of fear will ensue.

Here are six words that perfectly depict this experience.

“Oh my god, I can’t even.”

Maybe you’ve heard somebody say this before. My favorite dictionary defines it as a phrase that depicts a state of speechlessness, either as a result of feeling overjoyed or exasperated. It denotes the sudden onset of the cessation of brain activity, brought under the presence of acute stress, leading to somebody’s inability to perform simple actions which have been made impossible by this affliction.

Oh my god, I can’t even.

It’s a breaking point. Which is understandable. We all experience those traumatic situations when serious problems really do overwhelm our coping mechanisms.

But what bothers me is when people utter this expression in reference to ordinary human misery. If the train is running late or their waiter messes up their order or their boss says something insensitive, and your default response is, oh my god, I can’t even, then you have poor coping skills. Period.

You have sentenced yourself to slave labor in the sweatshops of your own neuroses.

Neptune’s threat to the winds comes to mind. He warned:

How dare ye, ye winds, to mingle the heavens and the earth and raise such a tumult without my leave?

This is the predominant mindset, since we live in a culture of cortisol. Everything is a manufactured emergency. Everyone has become neurotic.

But pressure is a choice. We can consciously choose healthier ways of coping that build momentum, rather than sapping it. We can cognitively reframe our circumstances, do deep breathing exercises, engage mindfulness incantations, try free form journaling, or for god’s sake, take a walk around the block.

Any of those options are healthier than announcing to the world that we can’t even. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Do you know the key areas in your personality where you are most neurotic?