I’m 38 years old but still feel like the anxious boy I’ve been for as long as I can remember.

While I wasn’t fine with that, I’d accepted it. Until I had my daughters.

I started to see my anxiety in each of my girls. I saw how it limited their experiences and impacted their view of the world and their view of themselves. That wasn’t acceptable. So this blog is to document my journey to understand, manage, and hopefully overcome (whatever that means) my anxiety so that I can give my daughters a guide to have a better relationship with theirs from the start.

My starting belief is that we are all already equipped with the necessary ingredients to get beyond anxiety.

What we are lacking are the practices that bring cohesion to those ingredients and the tools to apply them daily.

There is no number of 600 pages self-help books that will change our lives for more than a moment. But there is likely 600 words, if the right words, and in the right order, and in which we can fully believe, can change our foundational wiring. This is not to discount our self-help books, but to distill them into a finite number core concepts that are usable.

Explanations, metaphors, rituals, and briefs

As a professional in a corporate creative role, I’ve learned a few things. Ideas need structure to take flight. People need to understand something before they believe in it. Doing hard things requires rituals to make the things feel smaller and you feel bigger. People need to be inspired regularly to see the beauty in the tedious and mundane.

While I don’t know exactly what all this will look like, I’ll be writing with these four categories as my initial compass.

Briefs

A clearly written, easily referenced document that makes it clear what needs to be done. This will be the format of most of the content.

Aphorisms

Short, general truth or principle that can keep you inspired for a moment. These will be what you see the right (on desktop) or below (on mobile).

Models

Tools and/or frameworks that when practiced regularly can change the way we perceive the world and ourselves.