Latest posts from Danny Brown

Enjoy the latest posts from Danny Brown, and feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments after the post.

When You’re 7 Years Old and Your World Dies Around You

In the early summer of 1976, my life was as any 7-year-old kid’s life should be – fun, making new adventures, and looking forward to a long, glorious school holiday.

Then, in the space of nine weeks, that world came tumbling down.

I lost both my grandfathers and my step-dad – one grandfather and my step-dad to cancer, my other grandfather to natural causes.

While that was undoubtedly traumatic, it was the loss of my schoolfriend, Corinne, that hit me the hardest.

She died of an asthma attack during the summer holidays. One minute she was outside playing with her friends, the next she was gone. When I found out, it broke me.

I’d later compartmentalize that her death hit me hardest because I knew my grandad and step-dad were dying, and my other grandad died simply of old age, so I was “expecting” their deaths.

Corinne, though, was the same age as me – a child, enjoying the summer holiday. Kids don’t die (or, at least I didn’t think they did).

The summer of ’76 was a cruel awakening for me on that front.

The Loss of Innocence and the Recognition of Mortality

I was reminded of that summer by recent conversations with my son, Ewan, who turns seven in May.

Both he and his 5-year-old sister, Salem, are beginning to see little pieces of “the death puzzle”, either through shows or movies we watch, or characters in video games we play together (Brothers being a prime example).

One evening, a couple of weeks ago, Ewan and I were sitting at the table colouring, and he came straight out and asked,

Daddy, what’s going to happen to me and Salem when you and mommy die?

This caught me completely off-guard, and for a moment I really didn’t know what to say. Then, I put my pencil down and looked at Ewan, and we started talking.

I asked him if he thought we were going to die soon, to which he replied he didn’t think so.

I then asked him why he thought both mommy and I would die at the same time, leaving him and his sister all alone. He replied he didn’t think we would, but we might.

After a few more questions, during which he thought I’d die first because I’m older, I kind of had an idea on what to say and replied with this.

We know people die. We know some die before others, while some live longer than others. But I promise you, while I’m alive I’ll do my best to stay alive a long time, so that when I do die, you’ll have your own children to keep you company and happy.

This seemed to placate him, and we went back to colouring, and the death question hasn’t come up since.

As we coloured together, I was happy that we seemed to have passed that particular question okay, but I was also sad.

Ewan’s growing acknowledgment of death was, to me, a sign of his innocent outlook on the world beginning to change, and that he knew that the life he has now won’t always be the same life ahead.

Accepting the Future, Living the Now

However, as much as the conversation left me somewhat sad, it also made me recommit to leading a deliberate life where every moment counts.

Today, I feel healthy (if not quite the fighting weight of my younger days) and I feel good about life and where we’re at in it. I have a home full of love and a circle of friends for whom I truly care.

But that wasn’t always the case, and it could slip away at any moment.

Hearing my son worry about his mother and father dying, and leaving him and his sister all alone was a jarring experience. But it’s one that can’t – and shouldn’t – be brushed aside as something away in the future.

My promise to Ewan, about living for as long as I can, is one I intend to keep. If I do, wonderful – if I don’t… well, hopefully, I get the chance to prepare Ewan and Salem for that inevitability, and remove some of the fear and unknown.

While I am here, though, the goal is simple and can be summed up in three words – love, life, live.

Show those around you how much they mean to you, and love without conditions,
Appreciate life is a borrowed time, and spend that time well,
Live intentionally, and live it with those that make it count.

If those three words can be experienced as much as possible, then hopefully that will make for a lifetime of memories that more than outlive the passing of the physical when it arrives.

Which, at the end of the day, is all any of us can ever ask for.

Forget Being More Human, Just Be People

We?ve just come out of the mass production age. For a couple of centuries, we?ve been sold the idea of mass. Of normal.

Of process.

Not surprisingly it spilled over from factories into every part of our lives.

We were told to produce lots of “a thing”, then aggressively sell it, rather than make what people want.

Told to set strict parameters around tasks, jobs, and even careers ? you can do this (tick), arrive at 8, leave at 5, with money docked for being a minute late.

We were seen as imperfect cogs in a machine. To be thrown out and replaced if we didn?t fit.

See the mindset. See where it came from?

Now we?re in a different world.

One where things are made up, like ourselves, of lots of little building blocks which can be rearranged.

One where things scale, just as humans grow.

One where sharing and connecting is encouraged ? no more ?eyes front, listen to the teacher?.

We?re beginning to learn how to be people again. Lose the hierarchy, the regime, the rules.

But many of us are stuck. We fitted that square hole. We knew where we stood.

We could fit in and outcompete the people with different ideas.

Now the playing field has been tilted, the original thinkers will win.

The people people, not the machine people.

Bring it on.

The Evolution of a Blog and the Evolution of You

If you use the app Timehop, you’ll know that one of its cool strengths is how it reminds you of something you’d completely forgotten about from years gone by.

This could be an embarrassing haircut, a sweet moment with a child, or a recollection of a friend long since gone.

Inadvertently, it can also show you how you’ve evolved as a blogger, as I found out with a memory it shared with me today from six years ago.

This was my blog design from 2011. I think the reason Timehop shared it as a memory was that I’d just gone through a redesign, and shared a picture of it on Facebook.

When I saw this memory, it made me smile as I thought of how busy it looked compared to today’s iteration.

Ch…Ch…Ch…Changes

Back then, I was all about content around the topics of social media and marketing, and all the things that represented – personal branding, heavy on the social proof numbers, and multiple calls to action.

I guess that suited my goals at the time, but as I look back at it now, I cringe a little when I see how much focus I put on the social proof side of things (how many followers, subscribers, and shares I got).

It wasn’t long after that time that I started to lose interest in blogging about social media in particular, and trying to compete with the content mill approach?where everyone was going for the eyeballs with easy content and snappy soundbites.

This led to a big change in direction and publishing a post in 2014 that advised long-time readers they may want to unsubscribe. Which, as every blogging/content marketing guru will tell you, is the worst thing you can do. Yeah, right… 😉

Indeed, when I wrote that post, the feedback I got from it, both in the comments after the post and emails from non-commenters, showed that perhaps readers were getting sick of that kind of lazy content too.

Since then, the content here has continued to try and focus on more meaningful and personal stuff, and that’s often meant my well-known itchy finger syndrome coming to the fore when it comes to the design to present the content from.

So, from the impetus of that Timehop memory, I decided to take a trip down memory lane using the Internet Archive: Wayback Machine. And, man, have there been some changes… 🙂

The thing I notice the most is that since writing that post about taking a different direction, the design has complemented that goal.

Whereas before it was all about selling expertise, knowledge, books, etc, now it was all about content, you, the world, and making time for the important things in life.

The Evolution of You

When I shared the Timehop memory on a post over on Facebook, a few of my friends shared their take on how they’ve evolved, or are trying to.

From how they’ve gone a similar route of reflection and rethinking, to wondering whether to restart their blogging after a long hiatus.

And that’s the beauty of blogging. Much like in the decisions we make that change how we live our lives, blogging is a constant state of flux that grows as we do.

What we started out as many years before is now completely different from where we are today.

Things like our voice, our passion, even the things that make us tick – they all change as we do. It’s all part of the same evolution – the natural growth and change of perspective that we all experience.

The important thing is to recognize the need to change, and know that it’s okay.

You don’t need to toe the line, or compete with blogger X or podcaster Y. You don’t need to chase an audience that isn’t there, and never will be.

Instead, be passionate about what you create, be decisive in how that comes to the fore, and be open to the knowledge that what you create today may look very different to what you create tomorrow.

That’s how we keep our creativity alive – regardless of how many incarnations it takes to get there… 😉

Introducing Turn Off the Overwhelm (lead a deliberate life)

?Love people, use things. The opposite never works.??Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus, The Minimalists.

Throughout my adult life (or at least the majority of it), I?ve tried to be someone who places more value on people and experiences over materialism and the status quo.

This means looking at how the every day can be a catalyst for an opportunity to learn and share in the beauty of collective connections, and what we can take away from these experiences.

I?m not always successful ? but then that?s why life is called an adventure. It?s a never-ending ride of lessons learned that we hopefully grow from by the time the ride is over.

This is the reasoning behind my new project?Turn Off the Overwhelm,.

Our daily lives are overwhelmed with noise and distraction, serving only to remove us from the kind of connections and interactions that make us truly human.

We need to make our lives simpler so we have more time to connect to the experiences that truly matter, and lead a more deliberate life.

By turning off the overwhelm, we can foster deeper, more meaningful connections that offer more than just a brief memory, and create a series of lasting moments of a life well lived.

The goal of Turn Off the Overwhelm is to help you lead a more deliberate life through a shared vision to turn off the noise and return focus to ourselves and those around us.

[clickToTweet tweet=”We need to make our lives simpler so we can connect to what truly matters, #turnofftheoverwhelm” quote=”We need to make our lives simpler so we can connect to the experiences that truly matter, ” theme=”style1″]

Throughout life, we have a choice. We can either choose to put self and material living first, or we can live a deliberate life where others are our priority, and the things and experiences we collect are ones that bear meaning.

I hope you?ll find what you?re looking for on the site or, at the very least, get an idea of where to look. You can subscribe directly here.

Here?s to meaningful lives.

The most valuable things are the ones that make our lives simpler so we have more time to connect to the experiences that truly matter, and lead a more deliberate life.

Love People, And Use Things

This weekend just gone saw the annual Family Day holiday in most of Canada. A government-endorsed public holiday, Family Day was created to “…celebrate the importance of families and family life to people and their communities.”

It’s one of the many reasons I love my adopted home (I moved here from the UK in 2006) – after all, how many countries actually offer a paid day off to spend with your family and celebrate family life?

Especially in today’s work climate, where the family can take a back seat to long hours and long commutes, as people go where the work is and that’s not always close to home.

So, yes, Family Day is a welcome respite from the overwhelms of everyday life.

Over the weekend, I took the time to watch Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things on Netflix.

This is something I’d been wanting to watch for a while since I’ve definitely seen a change in how I look at life and what’s truly important in it.

Living Deliberately

As my young family has grown (my son will be 7 years old soon, my daughter just turned 5), and I’ve seen close friends suffer deeply personal losses, my priorities have changed immensely.

Whereas I used to be all about online chatter and was a heavy user of Twitter and Google+ back in the day, now I don’t use either channel.

Instead, I limit my online use to Facebook, where I can stay connected to close friends and friends that are a little further away geographically, and this blog right here.

Instead of seeking some self-important validation through online “followers”, I want to foster deeper, more meaningful connections that offer more than just vacuous soundbites and so-called social proof.

In short, I want to live a deliberate life that has meaning in at least 90% of all that I do (hey, there’s always room for non-essential video game fun!).

Love People, and Use Things

As I watched the Minimalism documentary, so much of it connected with this mindset change.

The realization that we buy into a template of a life that isn’t really ours – the cars, the electronics, the big house full of unused products, the pressure of meeting a deadline that won’t mean the end of the world if missed.

By buying into this template, we ignore the most important template of all – us, and the world we inhabit.

Things take import over people, and we begin to use each other to rise to an invisible dais that we feel makes us more complete. In short, we use people to get more things.

Yet, as one of many wonderful quotes from the documentary share,

…we need to love people and use things. Because the opposite of that never works.

Think about that. “Love people and use things.”

It’s not a hard concept and yet it’s such a powerful one if we take the time to buy into it, and take action to make it happen each day, with every interaction we have.

Build up, instead of dragging down
Use technology to speak with, not dictate to
Smile instead of an angry look
Surround yourself with meaning, not meanness.

Things are material objects that more often than not simply foster immaterial needs.

The most valuable things are the ones that make our lives simpler so we have more time to connect to the things and experiences that truly matter, and lead a more deliberate life.

“Love people, and use things. Because the opposite of that never works.”

Wise words, indeed.

Note: since publishing this article, I’ve launched my new project, Turn Off the Overwhelm, which goes deeper into the thinking behind this post. I’d love for you to check it out.