Things I want my kids to know

You may or may not have noticed that this email is coming to you on a Monday, rather than a Sunday.

I read something a while ago that said that Sunday mornings are one of the best times for a newsletter, because you will get more opens and more clicks. At the time I thought “Ah OK, I should do that then.”

However, there is a little snag: on a Sunday morning, the knowledge that my emails are being sent out is buzzing around at the back of my mind, and it makes me a bit distracted.

It’s not so much a tense or anxious feeling. In fact it is often quite an excited feeling, as I do get some lovely responses and I look forward to these, but there probably is a little tension too: let’s just check it has gone out like it should have done, let’s just check there aren’t any major errors, for example.

So on Sunday mornings I have found myself slightly distracted, and tempted to pop onto my phone to check my emails or Substack. Generally, I find either a nice response, or just nothing. There isn’t anything massively negative or stressful about it, but in popping onto my phone I end up with my mind off in work mode a little more than I would like.

Yes, I am a therapist and yes, I know there are lots of things I could do to help myself to break out of this and to not let it dominate my mind or my behaviour, but there is also something perhaps more important that I have learned over the years, which is this:

If there is something stressing you out and you have the ability to change it, it is OK to choose the less stressful option.

Theoretically, a Sunday is a time where I might have more chance of people opening my emails. Fine. A) I don’t know if that is actually the case, but more importantly B) even if that is the case, it doesn’t really work for me at the moment. Right now, it is more important to me to be more present and at ease on a Sunday morning than it is for me to get a few more clicks or opens.

I have a similar thing with my socials and stuff. Theoretically, if I want my stuff to be seen more widely, the advice is to post every day, but frankly, even the thought of that stresses me out. It’s just not something I want in my life, really.

Sometimes a part of managing your mental health in a positive way is making choices that preserve your peace even if it means losing out on something else. I think sometimes we are looking to make choices that are win-win, that give us both productivity and peace, but sometimes that isn’t actually the choice that we are faced with.

Maybe it’s OK to choose the things that make you feel at ease.

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Thanks for reading. Until next week,

Ted

P.S. Happy Monday, everybody.