Once More, From the Heart
(THWIP!)
No that’s not Spider-Man you hear. It’s the sound of my own thoughts as they create a whiplash effect every nanosecond of every day, across all 97 days of January 2025.
Things are really bad.
(THWIP!)
Things will be fine.
(THWIP!)
I should stop checking the news.
(THWIP!)
Don’t you dare!
(THWIP)
OK but THIS much?
(THWIP!)
That’s how they get ya!
(THWIP!)
I can barely get through a typical week of parenting tiny humans and building my own business. I don’t have room for a new show, let alone…
(THWIP!)
Tough, you gotta.
(THWIP!)
Yeah but I GOTTA get back to focusing on my work.
(THWIP!)
Work? At a time like this? You aren’t saving lives or strengthening the foundations of democracy. Give it a rest, pest.
(THWIP! THWIP! THWIP!THWIP!THWIP!THWIP!THWIP!)
This, dear reader, is unsustainable.
It’s not conducive to … anything. Anything at all. This is not conducive to being productive as a citizen or a professional, as a friend or parent or partner, as a leader of any kind. This is not actually what it means to be informed. It’s not actually the path to taking action, to doing the work, to serving others, to ensuring your own health enough to watch out for loved ones too.
The whiplash is their goal. The “flooding the zone” is their goal. Your lack of focus is their goal. Think of that: the crappy way you feel is the thing they want to manufacture. The inability to pick a lane and make meaningful progress, or at least hold the line? That’s you, victimized. That’s them, victorious. (I’d urge you to listen to this calm, important explanation.)
OK, OK, OK, got it. No more whiplash. Resist!
But then I open my laptop and—THWIP!
But then I open my phone and—THWIP!
In THWIPPING myself into a frenzy, I feel I’m about to vibrate straight off this plane of existence (would that be so bad right now?). I feel like I’m getting stuck in limbo, caught between thoughts, between worlds of succumbing and succeeding. In trying to make sense of one, then the other, then the first again, then the second once more… I make sense of nothing. In trying to resist and produce, focused on this then that, then that then this, I resist nothing, I produce nothing … I become nothing.
We’re all versions of Anxiety when Pixar’s animators showed us her peak frenzy: moving so fast, THWIPPING to such a violent degree as to appear … still.
I’m here to tell myself (and if you want, to tell you too) that this ends now. At least when it comes to one rather thwippy thought: how to feel about my work.
If writing is thinking, I think I ought to write. If thinking informs action, here I am, acting out my thoughts.
Look, I don’t operate on patients or pass legislation. I don’t defend your rights in courtrooms, and you won’t ever hear me asking for your vote in my upcoming election. I coach others on their speaking, their messaging, their premise and IP development. I work with experts to become stronger public voices, not to go off and defend democracy but to build their businesses.
THWIP!
That stuff doesn’t matter. I should reinvent my entire business to only serve people who work to strengthen democracy, teaching THEM to become stronger speakers and storytellers.
THWIP!
Ugh. I’m back. I can’t seem to stay here though. Where was I? Ah, right: where I focus.
In my content, I don’t talk about the federal government or even local government. I say stuff like, “Don’t market more. Matter more. When your work matters more, you need to hustle for attention less. Don’t be the best. Be their favorite. That’s how people actually make choices. It’s subjective. You have to align closer with them, connect deeper, forgetting cursory awareness to focus relentlessly on affinity. Think resonance over reach.”
That’s^ my work’s lens.
It feels more blurry with each new THWIP! Maybe it’s starting to crack. Do I blow it up? Do I reinvent entirely? Do I quit? Shut up, stop sharing, stop publishing, and just sit there.
Still.
But if writing is thinking, I think I ought to write. If thinking informs action, here I am, acting out my thoughts. And right now, my thoughts are telling me:
Doing the work matters. Doing the work is good. Yes, the same work you do now. With a twist.
Creating your content matters. Building your audience matters. Selling your offers matters. Sharing your advice to help people do whatever it is you help them do? Building a business that supports yourself and the people in your life? That. Matters.
To serve others in any way is a form of resistance to people that wish you harm, that wish you’d wallow in the zone between two competing thoughts, stuck there thanks to their flooding the zone with so much noise, you can’t tell what’s what or who’s who or when we ought to go where and how.
And why?
No thank you. We make things better when we make better things. Copy/paste that sentiment to all the things we do.
But we need to make some cuts too.
What needs to get cut entirely is the endless online puffery and the brute force approach to marketing. The emphasis on “look at me” without any care to say “let’s help you.” The bait and switching, the clickbait and sensationalism, the use of words as nothing more than a hollow substance spat out by a bot in order to fill some half-melted containers some call content with slop at scale.
(We’ve done this to words? Words! Do you KNOW what WORDS can DO when treated with RESPECT for the craft and the audience? My word…)
So yeah. That ends now. If we’re going to do the work in this moment, that’s gone.
What ends too is wrapping ourselves in each new trend trying to declare we’re the expert overnight, and DMs feigning interest in others only to pummel them with a sales pitch 1 second later, and PR outreach claiming you love the show and have listened a great deal of it but whoops you said you love “How Stories Happen with Jay Acunzo” when writing TO Jay Acunzo, and you clearly don’t understand we dissect 1 signature story each episode and the show is about how to tell better stories (who’d have guessed from the NAME OF THE SHOW?) and so, no, I’m not interested in my 6th pitch this week listing 26 bullets of “topics they could speak on,” and BTW, while we’re on the subject of pitching podcasters—yanno what? Let’s just move on…
Ahem. That ends now.
What ends isn’t the work. It’s the hollow, letter-of-the-law execution of marketing, sucking its soul away til all that’s left is … stuff. Mediocrity produced at breathtaking scale. What ends is the people who play coy when called out. “What, THIS old tactic? Spam? Oh you’re JOSHING, you big silly! I thought you’d LOVE to hear about our innovative new…”
That has to end.
What also ends is AI-driven auto-commenting. (lol jk that’s gonna get worse. Thanks, LinkedIn! Who knew a product strategy of “how bad can we make them hate this place without them leaving?” would work this well!)
If we’re going to keep doing the work at a time like this, and let me say this on no uncertain terms for my business kin:
Stop doing marketing TO people. Start making things FOR them.
We can see right through the hollow stuff, and we don’t want it in this moment (or ever).
And if you’re nodding along, then please be prepared, because this goes one step further: We need you to stop holding back too. Stop reserving your true thoughts for drinks with friends, for closed-door meetings full of grumbles, for your own internal narrator.
That voice you admire? The one who speaks from the heart?
That’s you now.
No more careful couching of your ideas and wordsmithing ever-so-delicately to sound a certain way or mimic a certain style from others, never finding your own. No more shrugging and going, “Yeah, I don’t love the tactic, but it’s what they say works.” No more wondering what others have to say. What do YOU have to say, and more importantly, how would you uniquely say it?
Lead with intuition. Examine your frustrations and give them language. Spark your curiosity and pursue it. Relentlessly. Loudly. Constantly.
If we’re going to do the work in a moment like this, we’re going to do it from the heart, unchecked and unashamed.
So get out there. Do the work. Just don’t hold back. Not anymore. Now is not the time for that.
You have plenty of stories. You just aren’t telling them. They don’t need to be grand or newsworthy. They need to be grounded and noteworthy. We all have those. Great storytellers don’t need to experience anything extraordinary. We know how to find meaning in the ordinary. We know how to live life and make observations and ask deeper questions, then turn that material into stories.
As Ira Glass says, great stories happen to those who can tell them. It’s a craft. I say, throw yourself into yours. Turns out AI and people both run on LLMs. AIs have large language models. People have little life moments. Are you using yours? It’s the only unfair advantage you’ve got.
Do the work. Just don’t doubt it. Turn the dial towards “I’m showing up,” and break the lever clean off.
No more THWIPPING, not more waiting, no more internal debating, and no more holding back your true voice.
I’m done with the whiplash. No more back and forth between whether or not I should do my work, could do my work, would do my work. I’m doing it. I’m pushing ahead with more gusto than ever. But I’m putting service to others front and center. I’m putting generosity and abundance mindset above selfishness and scarcity thinking. I’m going to do the work the only way I know how: by sharing stories, more honestly and openly; by dissecting the craft, more consistently and joyfully; by empowering others, however I can—yes, clients as usual, but also by platforming more voices and lending my skills to others who need it, especially now.
I hope you’ll join me, and if you don’t, that’s A-OK by me (everyone has to do what they have to do), but I hope you’ll support those you admire who do show up. And I hope you find your own little way to contribute your genius and gifts to someone, anyone, who needs it.
The work is actually important—but not the work we’re trained to do. Not this diminished, flattened version of us. Not this heartless, soulless slop. That serves no one, and it simply doesn’t meet the moment—ever, but especially now.
If you have a little, give a little. If you have a lot, give a lot. Very well. I’m going to give a lot, and I’m also going to build a lot, so I can give even more.
I’m going to do the work.
Don’t massage your message. Don’t stop telling stories. Don’t diminish your voice.
Forget reach. RESONATE.
Go on. Get to it. Bring your full power. The world needs it, and it needs it from you.
Ready? Take a breath. I’m right beside you. Let’s get back out there.
Once more, from the heart.
