Hard-won wisdom from 42 years on planet Earth
42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything, according to Douglas Adams in his book Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy. It is also the critical angle of light reflecting off glass and is also the value of the “Hubble Constant”, a measurement of how quickly objects in the universe are receding from each other. Thanks, science.
So when this mystical number became my age, I half expected some sort of enlightenment to descend upon me like magic dust falling from the sky, but alas I can confirm I remain slack-jawed and mostly clueless.
Ironically, one of the lessons…
Everything you ever wanted to know about Tony Robbins affiliated coaching but were too afraid to ask
Note: This article is also a YouTube video if you want to watch that.
That stupid advert kept popping up on Facebook. “Be the best you” or “Super power your life” or whatever it said.
It was one of those adverts where someone good looking smiles into the sunshine, dressed in smart-casual clothing with a smug expression on their face because their life is so fucking together.
I’m not sure how Facebook does it, but I’d been considering getting a life coach for a while and it had been throwing Tony Robbins Performance Coaching adverts at me – like an…
You’re not going backwards, you’re levelling up
Self-transformation is messy and confusing. There is no linear growth and often no real markers along the way. It’s a process of faith as much as anything else.
This is why it’s important to be able to reflect on how far you’ve come.
The human brain is a funny old thing. Once you learn something new, it’s impossible to imagine not knowing it.
Therefore, we can’t look back accurately, only through the lens of everything we know now and that can make it feel like there hasn’t been growth at all.
This article is to remind you there has. You…
You’re not stuck, you’re scared, and that’s OK
Most of us bumble along in life believing things will just happen by themselves. This is especially true when young. We believe somehow, things will turn out the way we hoped, somehow our dreams will come true, somehow we will find happiness, love, money, that we will simply evolve into our best selves. Time will do the leg work for us.
Time doesn’t give you what you want, your choices do.
Sure, part of life is luck, but the luckiest people actively work at loading the dice in their favour. …
It’s about having skin in the game
“Wherever you are struggling is inevitably a programme in your subconscious that does not support that destination you’ve been looking for.” – Dr Bruce Lipton
Life is all about choices. Wherever you go, there are your choices —compounded, fully grown, they are the reality you live every day.
So it’s no hyperbole to say it’s fundamental you understand why you make the choices you make because waking up at 7am for work with a hangover and 3 hours of sleep under your belt makes you realise you don’t always choose wisely.
What stops us from creating the life we want?
…
Why discrimination is still drawn along class lines
Race and gender are hot topics these days but I’d suggest one of the biggest divisions in the UK is still drawn along class lines.
This doesn’t mean discrimination or discussions around rights and identity aren’t happening elsewhere, but snobbery is so built into the fabric of British society it’s basically ignored. Yet there is no escaping it. It is part of our nation’s genes.
Unlike our cultural sibling America, Britain is a constitutional monarchy, and whilst political power no longer trickles down from the top of a feudal pyramid, influence and reverence certainly still flows down from its peak…
Stop being a “successful loser”
When you work in a corporation, that office is someone else’s dream, it’s their empire, their profits, their goals.
You’re sacrificing your dreams to make someone else’s come true.
And they won’t even thank you for it.
The average man does not want to be free, he wants to be safe. So he takes the compromise offered up by society — I’ll kill off my wild thoughts to dance to the beat of someone else’s drum and in return for my dancing they’ll drip feed me resources to keep me comfortable.
I get it. It’s the easy route. I did…
Shopping in real live is in real strive, yeah?
The decline of the high street is one of the things everyone wrings their hands over, but no one actually does anything about. A bit like climate change or that musty smell in the downstairs cupboard.
Though I do worry about the high street dying out, but only because I know I’m part of the problem. Again, like the downstairs cupboard.
If I think about it, the last time I went to the high street to buy something was in 2003 when I needed a Pritt Stick and a packet of Wrigley’s.
It’s these small sundries that the internet can’t…
What would you do if money were no object?
When I explain Medium to my friends, their heads explode.
“Wait, so you make money writing online? Writing what? How? Who reads it? Why would they read it?!”
Even in 2021, an internet income seems like witchcraft or trickery.
When I answer their questions I always get the same response. “Oh wow, I might give it a go myself.”
This makes me laugh. Give what a go, exactly? You can’t just turn up, write a few articles and roll in the cheddar.
What they don’t realise is writing will fuck you up. It will rinse you dry. It’s a beautiful…
There’s a war between writing platforms and everyone benefits
This month Medium gave me another $500 bonus. I’m not saying this to boast, I’m mentioning it because the amount of money available to indie writers at the moment is freakin’ amazing.
I’ve been an unpaid blogger and music reviewer for two decades. I’ve been writing on Medium since 2016 without earning a cent. Then, in 2020, I decide to monetise an article that went viral and boom, I made $1,300 in one month.
My head exploded (not literally, but metaphorically, we writers are good at metaphors) as before that, making money on the internet seemed like some sort of…
Jamie Jackson
Between two skies and towards the night.
