I’ve recently been feeling highly demotivated and somewhat anxious. It’s a natural feeling that many of us are getting due to the pandemic. But, having lost one of my three jobs, I’ve been left trying to figure out a new source of “third income.” I’ve geared most of that towards passive income such as Redbubble and Medium.
As you can imagine, sales have been good but not nearly as high as they could be, and Medium only pays for views and interaction per article, and my newbie portfolio has not helped much.
Curation on Medium is challenging to get into, and so I have a bunch of fails and fewer wins. To top it off, I barely have time to spend on increasing sales on Redbubble and Medium earning potential.
My anxiety levels have skyrocketed to the top. My general happiness has gone out of the window as one of my jobs is customer service related, and we all know clients are a bundle of confusion, and not to mention the perfect recipe for a ruined day.
After chatting to a friend about this, he suggested rewarding myself every time I achieve something that I needed to get done with chocolate. I LOVE chocolate, but, unfortunately, chocolates are going to cost a lot of money if I reward myself for each task thus, furthering my anxiety.
I’ve decided to use reverse psychology on myself instead. Anxiety is a bad feeling, and I often can’t seem to bring myself back to a happy state after hitting an anxiety attack. Mix that in with depression, and I can’t figure out the best way to pull myself out of it.
In “The Secret,” they say you should find and focus on things that bring you joy. Can you think of anything more joyful than earnings? Well, there is one thing: tip jars.
Yes, earning tips are delightful.
That’s why every time I feel swamped in anxiety or depression, I now have a tip jar to encourage happy feelings.
And it’s working so far!
Every time I feel down, I add to my tip jar, and every time I see how much is growing in there, the happier I feel, reversing my initial anxious feelings.
We’ve been taught as a society to feel shame and to suck it up when we’re feeling down, but no one ever seems to tell us how to do this. That’s why I’ve taken the initiative to find a strategy of my own that eradicates my anxiety and depression. In the meantime, I earn some money as a bonus.
I haven’t figured out what the savings will go to, but I know I’m going to invest them in something big. The investment will definitely be one to turn money rather than feed my desires.
That’s how to grow money off of your anxiety tree.
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This post was previously published on Change Becomes You and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Unsplash