Always Do

Always Do

By Scott NicollEducationSelf-Improvement
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Always Do episodes

  • Ep. 31: Riding the Wave
    • Some days just suck.
    • What can you do?
    • Take a nap
    • Move your body
    • Get outside
    • Stop what you are doing
    • Connect with people
    • Change your location
    • Dance
      • 7 min
    • Ep. 29: Overthinking is an Addiction
      • #1 Overthinking is an Addiction
      • #2 We Like Dopamine
      • #3 Overthinkers Are Still Deciding. Please Hold, We Will Be With You Shortly
      • #4 The Shame is Real
      • #5 The Overthinking Cycle
      • How to Stop Overthinking
        • 14 min
      • Ep. 28: Passion, Passion, Passion
        1. What you are good at: simply, you are good enough to make meaningful progress, ability for mastery, the “Stretch Zone”.
        2. What the world needs: 1) Work that helps others, and/or 2) It solves people’s problems, and/or 3) give people their time back: this is purpose and meaning.
        3. What you can be paid for: You can get paid what you believe is fair. Research suggests that this is $75,000 for household income and $45,000 if you are single. Money matters, but not as much as we think.
        4. What you love: that includes Flow or the “Stretch Zone”, engagement in your work, signature strengths, fits your personal life (ie. work hours, flexibility, remote, work relationships, culture, etc.), autonomy - you feel you have control over what you do and your contribution
          • Get good at something that helps others, solves problems and leaves the world better than you found it. Do what contributes to the world.
          • The Combination: It is right in front of you but you just haven’t tried enough things yet to expose it. You don’t find anything. You create it from within by being vulnerable enough to try things that will bring it out from being hidden.
            • 18 min
          • Ep. 27: The G.I. Joe Fallacy
            • The G.I. Joe Fallacy: The mistaken idea that “knowing” is enough to change your behavior
              • 50% of our happiness can be attributed to Genetic set points; 10% to “life circumstance”; 40% from thoughts and actions
                • 12 min
              • Ep. 26: How Travel Changes You
                • “Sometimes, the greatest changes aren’t forced on us at all. Sometimes, we leave our ordinary worlds behind in search of more because we are have grown unsatisfied with what we know. The mind wanders from the confines of regular thinking, drifting far beyond reality’s accepted rules. This is a self-initiated kind of stress. These people struggle to stay small enough for ordinary worlds to contain them. Growth is an exciting challenge. Curiosity calls them to do something greater – to become something more. The present moment is plagued by the awareness that there is more to see. There are still undiscovered ways to exist.”
                • "I wonder how people spend their whole lives never questioning what lies just a short plane ride away. That is a life I could never fathom for myself: to ignore the nagging curiosity about what else is out there waiting to be known.” - Gregory Diehl
                  • 15 min
                • Ep. 25: Little-t Trauma. What Is It?

                  “Youth can not know how age thinks and feels, but old men are guilty if they forget what it is to be young.” Albus Dumbledore

                  • There is no existence without darkness. That is life’s guarantee.
                  • Big-T trauma
                  • It is so easy to see little-t trauma and simply think that it is just the way things are: bullying or getting bullied at school, parents yelling at each other often, parents yelling at a child often and excessively, teasing and sarcasm, expecting perfection, not accepting a child for who they are, emotionally distant and unavailable parents, parents that are more friends than parents, divorce, hitting children, using excessive fear and threats with children, and the list goes on.
                  • Adversity is good. Little-t, not so good.
                  • The point is this: little-t trauma is a constant in life, for all of us. All humans all of the time and at any age. And everyone’s will look and feel different.
                  • As adults, we deal with it. Most of us do it in unhealthy ways, like drinking, drugs, promiscuity, gossip, binge watching shows, social media, any distraction that feels good, anger, people-pleasing, working jobs we hate. And some in healthy ways, like exercise, meaningful connection, passion projects, new and meaningful experiences, journaling, walking, hiking, therapy.
                  • But children, they adapt.
                  • If you’ve experienced little-t in your life, which you absolutely have, you need to look back on it. Meet it. Face it. Sit with it. Talk to it. Work through it.
                  • If I am certain of anything I am certain of this: we are all here sharing this thing we call life, this human experience, and we are way, way more similar in our experiences than we think we are. And like it or not, we need each other.
                    • 24 min
                  • Ep. 24: Seed Oils are NOT Inflammatory

                    Seed oils are NOT inflammatory. Where did this fear start?


                    In fact, seed oils appear to provide substantial benefits. It's saturated fat you'll want to re-examine in your life.


                    "For heart health, you want to replace saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats, especially the long-chain polyunsaturated fats," Angelone says. "These fatty acids have a very positive effect on the cardiovascular system." The two most common polyunsaturated fatty acids in plant oils are the omega-3 fatty acid alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) and the omega-6 fatty acid linoleic acid (LA). Both ALA and LA are essential nutrients, meaning the human body can't make them so they must come from food. More than 50% of the fatty acids in cottonseed, soybean, corn, sunflower, safflower, walnut, grapeseed, and flaxseed oil are polyunsaturated.

                    LA can be converted in the body to the longer-chain arachidonic acid (ARA), which is a precursor of prostaglandins that promote inflammation, blood clotting, and blood pressure–raising vasoconstriction.1 It would seem reasonable, then, to worry that dietary LA could be bad for cardiovascular health, but that doesn't appear to be the case. A systematic review of randomized controlled trials found no evidence that LA increased inflammatory markers, and a 2011 review reported dietary LA intake wasn't related to tissue levels of ARA.1 "Inflammation isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's crucial for healing," Angelone says. "People think omega-6s are bad and omega-3s are good, but we need both in balance to keep our immune systems running properly. Omega-6 starts the healing process by alerting the immune system to a problem, then omega-3 takes over."


                    *This is not health advice. Talk to your doctor if you make any health changes. Eat foods in moderation people!*

                    26 min
                  • Ep. 23: The Contract

                    “You have the life you’re willing to put up with.” Gary John Bishop

                    Creating a "Daily Contract" with yourself just might be the boost you need to get things done.

                    11 min
                  • Ep. 22: Technology, The Future, and NO Phone

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                    “Technology isn’t bad. If you know what you want in life, technology can help you get it. But if you don’t know what you want in life, it will be all too easy for technology to shape your aims for you and take control of your life. Especially as technology gets better at understanding humans, you might increasingly find yourself serving it, instead of it serving you. Have you seen those zombies who roam the streets with their faces glued to their smartphones? Do you think they control the technology, or does the technology control them?

                    Should you rely on yourself, then? That sounds great on Sesame Street or in an old-fashioned Disney film, but in real life it doesn’t work so well. Even Disney is coming to realise it. Just like Riley Andersen, most people hardly know themselves, and when they try to ‘listen to themselves’ they easily become prey to external manipulations. The voice we hear inside our heads was never trustworthy, because it always reflected state propaganda, ideological brainwashing and commercial advertisement, not to mention biochemical bugs.

                    As biotechnology and machine learning improve, it will become easier to manipulate people’s deepest emotions and desires, and it will become more dangerous than ever to just follow your heart. When Coca-Cola, Amazon, Baidu or the government knows how to pull the strings of your heart and press the buttons of your brain, could you still tell the difference between your self and their marketing experts?

                    To succeed in such a daunting task, you will need to work very hard on getting to know your operating system better. To know what you are, and what you want from life. This is, of course, the oldest advice in the book: know thyself.” Yuval Noah Harari. “21 Lessons for the 21st Century.”

                    28 min

                  About Always Do

                  From the publisher's feed

                  The ALWAYS DO Podcast with me, Scott Nicoll, ventures into my life and the journey of the struggle: from a lost, stuck, overthinking drinker who took zero action to finding health, happiness, and all the answers in Always Doing What I Said I Would Do. Ramblings about all things a beginning entrepreneur might face, and how to stop thinking, just start and always do.