From a young age, we seek love, acceptance, and approval from our parents. This deep-seated conditioning extends to many other areas of life as we get older, but it’s not always a good thing.

Your need for approval creates anxiety.

Ever find yourself compulsively checking social media notifications?

Approval addiction negatively affects your performance. It keeps you from focusing on the right things and making meaningful progress.

How do you stop worrying about what other people think?

Ever try to fit too much into your day?

Do you feel like you should be doing more, but at at the same time you have absolutely no capacity?

You get to the end of your day and there’s still a mountain of things left to do.

Meanwhile, you haven’t dedicated any time to your mental or physical health.

A new email just came in. Someone’s knocking on the door. Your watch vibrates with a text message. Your computer displays a reminder of a meeting coming up in 15 minutes.

We say yes to too many things, don’t think carefully about what really matters, and try to fit too much into a day.

Is it any wonder we feel overwhelmed?

Aaron Dowd joins me on today’s show to talk about overcoming mental overwhelm.

I have a big idea called Overlap.

But that word doesn’t mean anything to anyone else until I explain it.

While I have enough to say about my big idea to write the book on it, I also need to be able to communicate that idea in a simple manner.

That’s where today’s episode comes in.

I thought it would be fun to do a conversional episode with Ben about distilling down your big idea.

We also talk about how to come up with your big idea.

Hopefully you know about my book, Overlap, launching on September 14th.

You’ve heard me say it before: “People don’t notice announcements they notice consistency.”

If you want people to notice your project (this could be a book, podcast, video show, course, Kickstarter, or t-shirt collection), you can’t just announce it once. You can’t just mention it, you have to build up buzz and anticipation by continually talking about it.

Of course, you have to figure out a way to do that without being annoying or unnecessarily repetitive.

To get people to pay attention, you have to grab their attention.

If I want people to know about Overlap, I have to talk about it.

There’s a big problem though: I’m extremely introverted.

Have you been struggling with enthusiasm or motivation for a project lately? Have you encountered multiple setbacks that have derailed your progress?

At any given time, we all have dozens of things asking for our attention. Sometime even demanding our attention.
How do you stay focused and motivated when there are so many things trying to pull you away from your main goal? What do you do when making progress feels impossible?

In the last episode, we talked about choosing one thing to focus on.

Of all the many things you COULD do, which do you choose?

In this episode, we talk about what to do once you’ve chosen something. Now you need to project that focus.

When I say “curate”, what I mean is to selectively project a single focused thing. You want people to know what you’re about.

We have a cognitive limit, us humans. Dunbar’s Number refers to our ability to maintain only about 150 close relationships. Beyond those 150 people, connections are surface level.

In other words, people are forced to simplify you. They do their best in a very short amount of time to figure out what you’re about.

What they do next is a bit tough to accept:

They put you in a box.

Unfortunately, this is going to happen no matter what. There’s nothing you can do to avoid being put in a box by others. But what you CAN do is define the box you’re already going to be put in.

How do you define the box? By curating what you share. Publishing, sharing, and speaking only about the thing you want to be known for.

Does this mean you can’t be human? Does this mean there’s not more to you as a person than that one thing? No, of course not.

It’s a complicated topic, and there’s a lot to unpack, but that’s why we recorded a podcast episode about it.

Do you feel overwhelmed with the possibilities?

There are so many things you could do. So many things you want to do (or you’re good at).

How do you pick the right thing to focus on next?

What if you pick the wrong thing?

This line of thinking is a distraction. We’re going to talk about how it’s impossible for you to pick the wrong thing (this should come as a relief!) and why you need to pick an option and GO.

Indecision is the enemy and we’re here to help you get unstuck.

Some people just know what they’re passionate about.

That’s great for them, but what about you? People say “Find your passion” like it’s a TV remote stuck between the cushions, but it doesn’t feel quite so easy.

Passion is important. When things get tough and you encounter obstacles, passion will see you through.

But you need more than passion. You need skills. Sometimes your existing skills can develop into passions.

Today, we talk about places to look, how to start with skill, and why you need to pick one thing now but don’t need to do one thing forever.

Oh, and if you’ve been exploring for a while, we’ll help you stop feeling like it’s been a waste of time.

Ah, communication.

The world would be a better place if more people were better communicators.

We can either complain that they’re not or work to improve ourselves and our own communication. I choose the latter!

Here’s the problem: other people aren’t hearing you. You don’t feel heard, you’re not getting what you want in life, and you think it’s other people’s fault.

You want something. You think you’ve told someone. They don’t understand (or worse: they think you never told them), and you’re left disappointed.

How do we fix this?

The first thing to acknowledge is that communication is both the sending and receipt of a message.

If you’re broadcasting and nobody’s picking up the signal, you’re not communicating.

We talk about how you can take ownership and responsibility for communication to ensure you’re heard.

You’ll be able to resolve a lot of relationship problems and avoid arguments if you learn how to communicate.