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Category: Making A Difference

Your Problems

Published on June 8, 2023

It’s the news’ job to make the world’s problems your problems.

Watch too much news and it’s no wonder you feel crippling fear, uncontrollable anxiety, and hopelessness. You are one person absorbing the problems intermittently faced by 8 billion.

No single person can face a volume of problems the size of the ocean and expect to come out afloat—let alone like they can have any kind of reasonable influence on it all.

The ceaseless influx is soul crushing. The sheer volume is paralyzing. And the overarching theme of it all is terrifying.

Hardwired into our brains is a survival instinct that watches keenly for any signs of danger—so we can safely navigate our environments and not, you know, die.

Well, the news is the channel that satisfies that instinct and gives us the sense that we better know our environment and can more safely navigate it. Only we’re getting WAY TOO MUCH information. A lot of which is exaggerated, exacerbated, irrelevant, and straight up made up so as to generate more attention from viewers.

Here’s where I land in the realm of life’s problems: I can barely stay on top of my own damn chores.

My advice? Turn off the news of 8 billion.

Come up with a solution that’s concise—no more than 5 minutes per day. Unbiased. And get the rest of your news from your immediate environment—friends, family, co-workers, etc.

Make it your job to make your world’s problems your problems.

…And focus most exclusively on doing something good in your own backyard every day.

P.s. My choice for concise, unbiased, 5-minute daily news is 1440.

Using Busy For Good

Published on May 13, 2023

If you have time to:

  • Complain, then you also have time to express gratitude.
  • Explore the internet, then you also have time to explore nature / reality.
  • Talk poorly about people behind their back(s), then you also have time to speak constructively about people to their face.
  • Stop at a fast food restaurant to buy junk food, then you also have time to stop at a restaurant that can make your food fast and buy healthier food.
  • Rack up hours of unintentional screen time daily (e.g. constant social media refreshing), then you also have time to rack up hours of intentional screen time daily (e.g. digital / audio books).

Don’t use busy as an excuse to make poor choices. Use the momentum that comes from busy to carry you forward from one good choice to the next with more ease. Learn to use busy as a facilitator that allows you to do more good with less effort—not the opposite.

Spoken Passion

Published on May 6, 2023

What’s something you could speak passionately about without needing to prep?

Could that become something you write passionately about without needing to prep?

The thing about the latter is that it multiplies the strength of the former—they are not the same process.

Writing is talking typed… then edited.

And the thing about spoken passion—that has also undergone a careful process of editing—is that there is essentially no more powerful tool for influencing a socially interdependent society.

Want to make a difference in the world? Your world? Start here. With where your deep-seated passions already lie. And slowly iterate your way to a clear and unquestionable conviction that you would be thrilled to share.

Little Big Things

Published on April 27, 2023

I see you…

  • Person who smiles when you could’ve chosen to frown.
  • Person who lets people in the lane when you could’ve chosen to cut them off.
  • Person who pays a compliment to a random stranger when you could’ve carried on and pretended like they didn’t exist.

You might not think you’re seen… but you are. Maybe nothing is said, no acknowledgment is paid, and maybe some things are done when none of us are looking… but have no mistake—goodness gets seen.

And while I (we) couldn’t say thanks in the moment for doing your part to improve our world—for whatever reason…

I’d (we’d) like to do so now.

Because it’s the people like you, doing the little things like that, who make big differences in the little lives of those living on this big planet.

Thank you.

P.s. If someone came to mind for you when you read this, forward it to or share it with them. There is no greater feeling than that of feeling seen.

On Being Helpful

Published on April 9, 2023

Sometimes the best way to be helpful isn’t to ask how you can be helpful.

…It’s to look for what needs to get done and to get to work helping to get it done.

This is as true when you’re being temporarily hosted by a family member who’s doing it all as it is when you’re being temporarily hosted by this planet who’s being exploited for it all.

P.s. In case you missed it, you can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week, here.

A Better World Via Better Moments

Published on January 19, 2023

A simple formula guaranteed to make the world a better place:

  • Leave each room you spend time in better than you found it.
  • Leave each person you converse with warmer than you found them.
  • Leave each natural setting you traverse cleaner than you found it.

If we can get into the habit of actively seeking opportunities to improve the world inside our daily moments… how could we not improve the world via our life?

P.s. I also published: 15 Quotes from Stutz (2022) on Therapy, Healing, and Vulnerability.

Knocking On Doors

Published on December 25, 2022

Things I discovered today from knocking on neighbors’ doors after the Buffalo Blizzard:

  • An elderly neighbor, who had an electric stove (but no electricity) had no way of heating up the food she had stored.
  • Two neighbors had no way of communicating (in case of serious emergency) because their phones died (and they were completely snowed in their houses).
  • A really unlucky neighbor’s window got smashed in early into the blizzard (from a patio pole that came loose from wind gusts)—causing blizzard like conditions to scream into her living room of her unpowered house.

I share this, not to share how helpful I was in helping solve these problems, but as a reminder that sometimes, the people who need the most help are the ones who have the most trouble asking.

The elderly neighbor wasn’t gonna trudge through the snow knocking on doors to ask for help—and the neighbor whose window got smashed in was so barricaded with snow that she couldn’t even open her front door without risking it breaking from bowing.

This goes for the people in everyday weather situations just as much as it does for people in the midst of a post-blizzard reality.

If you can find it in yourself to take the initiative, offer help proactively, and make it a regular selfless practice of asking something as simple as: “Hey! Is there anything I can do to help you?”—I imagine you’ll make a profound impact in the lives of some really grateful, humble-hearted people.