Welcome to Doug’s Newsletter. Every Thursday, I share a theme from my journey to provide you insight along your spiritual path.

Today’s Setlist

🎩 One Theme → The Line of Fuck It

😄 Funny Business → I picked the wrong week to stop binging memes

📊 Community Poll → Socks in the bedroom?

🎩 One Theme: The Line of Fuck It

We all have stuff we want to do. Things we want to say.

Maybe it’s being more proactive about your anxiety. Or finally telling that person how you really feel about them.

But there’s always a reason it doesn’t happen…always an obstacle seemingly out of our control. I don’t have time to deal with my anxiety! How will I deal with the embarrassment if they reject me?

Fortunately, there’s a place where these obstacles can’t stop us.

That place…is beyond The Line of Fuck It.

Finding my Fuck It Line

Throughout my adult life, the most prevalent recurring theme I discuss with my therapist is my feeling the need to please others, and my fear of the rejection that will follow if I don’t have this need.

(My prevailing theory is this fear of rejection stems from a certain event, but who really knows?)

My logical mind knows — like most dilemmas in life — that this is a paradox: by intentionally trying to please people, I’m sacrificing being my Self to try to be who I think they want me to be, and as a result I am not who they want me to be…which is my Self.

Knowing this has never been enough to “get over” my fear of others’ opinions (Purple Line).

Throughout my adult life, I’ve had stuff that I want to do (Orange Line):

Sustaining myself while being my own boss, dancing more despite my horrible rhythm, sharing humor in weird ways like through "Fuck It Line" graphs...

To date, very little of that stuff has actually gotten done (Green Line).

As I conclude the first year of my thirties, I sense that I've reached an inflection point — The Line of Fuck It — where my desire to do this stuff now outweighs my fear of how I’ll be received for doing it.

Based on the graph — which is accurate because, you know, science — there is an exponentially beneficial feedback loop. Meaning this: the more Green I do, the less Purple I have, therefore the more Green I do…and so on.

Hopefully, one day, the Green and Orange meet.

Time will tell if I have now reached The Line. I hope I have, because it’s exhausting trying to always please people.

And if I haven't crossed that line yet? I don't care.

Fuck it.

💭 Your Invitation to Contemplate: Crossing The Threshold

Are you doing everything you truly want to be doing? If so, I am truly ecstatic for you, and you should skip down to Funny Business for some laughs.

If you feel you should be doing more of what you want to be doing…what’s holding you back from reaching your personal Line of Fuck It?

Is it fear of judgment? Trying something new and possibly failing? Cosmic reverberations from a huge fart you let rip in 4th grade?

Consider what crossing that line would require of you. What do you need to say 'fuck it' to, to allow the space for the stuff you actually want to do?

The best way to do this is to get still, inside and out.

Slow The Fuck Down’s Stillness Course teaches people how to do exactly that, so you can re-define your relationship with time and do things you actually want to do.

😄 Funny Business

📊 Community Poll

Results for last week’s question: How do you decide what to wear each day?

100%! It’s nice when we learn things that literally every human being has in common.

On to this week’s question…

How I Can Help

Whenever you’re ready, here are 2 ways for us to work together:

1. Grab time with me for a 1:1 session on community, consumer-driven research, or anything else.

“Every person’s life is sufficient. But yours is nearly finished, and still your soul reveres not itself, but seeks your well-being in the souls of others.” -Marcus Aurelius