I Wasted at Least 3 Hours Today Looking for Problems that Didn't Exist

Let's see.  I start off the day waking up at 6:30 am feeling pretty good about myself.  Feeling good that I had the discipline to actually stand up and stay up at this time instead of crawling back into bed to try and sleep and not face the day.  I zip through my daily work responsibilities and am feeling close to home free at around 11:30 knowing that a potential 1pm finish is around the corner.   I even hear the good news that I'll be getting a nice fat five figure check in the mail to boot.  And what happens?  All of it.  Every single last bit of good feeling I have goes down the drain because of one email.  One email that's unbelievably minor in the grand scheme of things.  In fact it's like a joke how minor the email was.

20 Things I Hate about James Altucher

In my Google Plus account I'm following one person.  Do you know who that person is?  It's James Altucher.   Mr. Altucher is known as (well let's go to the Wikipedia page shall we?)

James Altucher is an American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, and bestselling author.  He has founded or co-founded over 20 companies, including Reset Inc. and StockPickr and claims to have failed at 17 of them. He has published 11 books, and is a frequent contributor to publications including The Financial Times, TheStreet.com, TechCrunch, Seeking Alpha and The Huffington Post.

There's Something Very Wrong with Posting about Death on Facebook

I have a Facebook account.  Chances are you have a Facebook account.  I've been guilty.  You've been guilty.  We've all posted things or used the Social Networking service for things we probably didn't intend to and even made fun of at some point.   Frankly I think the whole site has become a place where people become miserable seeing the 1000s of pictures of their friends having a great time.  It's also become a place where similarly to Twitter, people mention any and every single thing they are doing the moment they are doing it.   And that leads to a whole bunch of useless information and valuable time wasting.  

When You want to Kill Yourself, But Not Literally

There's not a single person out there reading this article that hasn't at some point in their lives typed in the phrase "I want to kill myself" or "suicide" or something along those lines while doing a Google search.  Whether you are suicidal or not, it's just an inevitable thought that is going to creep up in your mind.  And while I can go on and on about reasons you shouldn't kill yourself that's not really what this is about.  If you really do want to kill yourself then I'm not going to sit here and say "stick around here for a while and keep reading."  Go talk to someone, anyone.  Do something, anything.  And if you want to read something, try this article from Cracked called The Ten Minute Suicide Guide. Or perhaps this one called I Want to Die from James Altucher.

Dealing with Anxiety is the Same in Any Book, But Actually Doing it Feels Impossible

I happen to be one of those anxiety sufferers who has read more books than I can count, who has been to a therapist (and still goes), and has tried more than one medication.   And guess what?  It's gotten me nowhere.  Yippee!  Sound familiar?  Well not completely nowhere but when anxiety strikes it sure as hell feels like nowhere.   But if there's one thing that books and therapy have in common, it's this theme of "accepting."  A theme that I seem to fight on a daily basis.   Whether it's a book called Brainlock that deals with OCD and challenges you to use the 4 R's, which is to Relabel, Reattribute, Refocus, and Revalue, or it's Pema Chodron's When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times that essentially is based on the "here and now" and challenges the reader that instead of running away from problems to run directly towards them, or if it's Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now which essentially says there is nothing BUT now so why worry about a past and future that don't exist?  Frankly I recommend reading all of these books.  Why not?  Get as much perspective as you can.

I'm Addicted to My Anxiety

Even as I write this sentence I’m freaking out that my entire business that I’ve been running for the past 6 years is going to fall apart in one instant. Just one bad call. One crappy email. One server blip and the entire system shuts down for good. It’s all over and there’s nothing I can do about it….but I think I can. I know I can. All I have to do is check my email 600 times a day. All I have to do is work 14 hours a day and stay glued to the computer. I just have to keep checking and checking and checking. All I need to do is call up my business partner and know that he’s there. That’s he’s alive. That the business still exists. I just need to check Facebook to see that he’s updated his page to know he’s out there somewhere tending to things like I am. That he's alive. If the sites go down I’ll worry even more. I won’t eat. I won’t sleep. I won’t do anything but worry. I think that by doing these things it’ll help my cause. I think that by constantly focusing on that thought that it’ll magically restart the servers or put money in my bank account. I actually believe the mess I put myself in is in some way a panacea to a real world problem that doesn’t even exist yet. I don’t really think that but I act that way anyway. My logical mind tells me all the facts but I’m not dealing with logic here. I never have been. And that my friends is the rub. That’s the thought that pains me every single day and kicks my ass time after time. It’s the battle I’ll never win but am convinced I can. It’s my addiction to anxiety.