A simple way to find some right when everything feels wrong

People often ask me for tips on keeping one’s head up and on plugging along — usually pertaining to the self-employed, entrepreneurial, do your own thing path — and for comfort when considering leaving behind a Golden Handcuffs job. The job that on paper is fantastic. The salary. The title. The swanky office. The benefits. The growth potential. But the job that in your heart is not the one.

To both asks, I suggest keeping a goodness folder, digital or analog, that’s filled with sources of pride, confidence, and joy for yourself.

Whenever I’m having one of those days, when I wonder if what I do matters, when I question why I do what I do when there are seemingly much easier journeys to journey, I peek inside my folder. It never fails. “Ohhhhhh yeah. That’s why.”

This is also a reminder to not only keep goodness but to organize it in a way that it’s easily found. The last thing you want to encounter is a need for goodness being met with stress and angst because you can’t locate said goodness. Being the minimalist, app-lover that I am, I’m all for digitizing goodness and dumping it into an Evernote note (this tool makes it uber-easy). But if you wanna manilla folder your letters and photos and such, you do you.

Seems silly that something this simple works. But it does.

A peek inside my folder