How to turn off your brain
And other essential things no one tells you that you need to learn to live as a full-time creator.
Hello dear friend,
Welcome to this week’s edition of Be Your Best Friend with Anangsha - the weekend newsletter that tries to make plans in advance, so things don’t get the chance to go insanely wrong at the last moment.
I’m writing this on a Saturday - the last day I have at home before I go on a 5-day long vacation with my family, followed by another 6 days at a very close friend’s wedding.
In fact, as you read this, I’m probably chilling at a beach resort with my family in the Maldives!
This is the first time I have traveled outside of the country with my family. This is also my fifth time stepping out of India, so everything is pretty exciting.
The reason I wrote and scheduled this newsletter beforehand is that I don’t want to renege on my promise. When I started Be Your Best Friend with Anangsha, I promised that I would write to you every week. I haven’t always kept my promise, but since I talk so much about consistency online, why not follow some myself?
Usually, when I travel, I feel overwhelmed and things feel like they are slipping all over the place.
But this time, things are different.
Before I boarded the flight, I made a list of all the things I need to keep in mind before I go AWOL. This included making 6 videos for my YouTube channel, writing 4 articles for Medium, scheduling posts for 2 weeks on Twitter and LinkedIn, and writing two editions of this newsletter.
If it sounds like a lot of pressure, well, it was.
But I managed to complete all the tasks on time, and this is the major reason why I’m able to turn my mind off work completely and only focus on living in the moment during my vacation.
This brings me to the most important thing I had to learn as a creator that no one told me about-
How to turn off your brain?
As a creator, you’re on a 24-hour rampage.
There’s content to schedule, client work to tackle, articles to write, and a personal brand to build.
Amid the hustle, you forget the #1 reason you were put on this earth for: live.
Maybe the purpose of life is not to do some grand gestures. Maybe the purpose of life is to just live.
But because we are so caught up in ticking items off our to-do list and making sure deadlines are met, we often forget to be in the present. We plan out stuff (aka live in the future) or obsess over what we could have done better (aka live in the past).
But the hardest and the most important thing you can do for yourself today is just be.
I know it sounds simple, but your monkey brain rarely ever shuts down. It keeps reminding you of all that’s left to be done, leaving you barely a moment’s respite to breathe.
While I’ve made peace with the fact that I’ll probably never be able to turn my brain off 100%, I’m okay with taking breaks for a few days at a stretch when I can just relax without having to worry about work.
And one practice that helps me achieve this is scheduling content. I write a lot, and I can’t publish everything I write immediately. That’s why I schedule a lot of my content in advance, so the cruel social media algorithms don’t realize I’m AWOL and decide to limit my reach.
There’s still a lot of stress, but I’m managing it.
If you have any tips on how you can balance work and life better as a self-employed creator, I would love to hear your thoughts. Please leave them as a reply to this email or as a comment on this post.
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That’s all from my end today. I’ll see you again soon. Till then, stay strong. Keep smiling and be awesome.
With love,
Anangsha.