From Stuck to Inspired

Start by Putting Yourself in the Right Environment

In 2017 I had hit a low point in my life. I had been in a series of jobs that were unfulfilling and turned out to be quite differet than what I had hoped for. I knew I wanted to make a difference in the world beyond being a cog in the wheel, but I had no real direction. Focusing on why I didn’t fit into the work culture I kept finding myself in, I pursued freelancing. However, it was not what I ultimately wanted and somewhere deep inside I knew it.

It was that year I attended my first TedxMileHigh event. TedxMileHigh is Denver’s independently organized TED organization. This was the start of a new part of my life’s journey, attending events and engaging communities of people who represented the direction I wanted to move in life. I attended a lot of cultural and entrepreneurial events, met people and was exposed to a lot of interesting ideas. I had no viable idea of my own, but people were patient with me. They still let me engage, ask questions and have conversations. However, without a pursuit of my own, I would find myself, once again, at a large corporation where I was disappointed when reality didn’t meet expectations.

Then Give Yourself Time to Think

At the last TEDxMileHigh event before the pandemic, I heard many versions of the same story…

“I’m inspired by these talks. But, Monday I’m gonna go to work. Tuesday I’m gonna go to work. Then, Wednesday I’ll meet up with my well-meaning but risk averse friends and family and before I know it, I’ll be right back in the same mindset I had before, feeling stuck where I am.”

I wanted to help counter these messages, so I developed an idea for a podcast where I’d interview people who pursue their passions once a week. During an August 2020 backpacking trip, I had a very powerful spiritual experience. It would lead me to launch Action’s Antidotes: Your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. The podcast is a series of 30–45-minute interviews of people with interesting pursuits who are not “living by the script.”

Consistency

Recording this podcast weekly, and continuing to engage networking groups, even when they all had to be on Zoom, helped me establish a network of people who were far more likely to see things in a similar manner to the way I do and have more experience and success on their journeys. The two networking groups I am most involved in are a direct result of the podcast. The podcast gave me the credibility to become a member of a leads group called Elevated Results Group and I got involved with Conscious Business Connections after interviewing the founder on my podcast.

26% of podcasts on Spotify have only one episode. A lot of people have ideas, but don’t put any meaningful effort into them. Even those of us who want to make a difference beyond just making money (i.e. ConsciousPrenuers) need to be selective about who they give their time and energy to. If we were to engage everyone who had an idea and a set of complaints, there would be no energy left for our own businesses. Therefore, for most business owners, there is a necessary barrier to entry to get anything more from them than the 5-minute conversation at a networking event. The work I put into Action’s Antidotes overcame that barrier.

Trust Your Instinct

My journey to starting Reclaim Your Time took me back to an instinct I had a long time ago. In the late 2000s when I first started seeing people spend more time on Facebook and ignore the people in front of them to look at their smart phones, I knew it was not going to be a good thing for humanity. Subsequent issues with loneliness, anxiety, depression, violence and suicide confirmed this suspicion.

The pandemic brought me to a breaking point where I had to do something about my own technology addiction. It took a few tries, but in 2022, I was able to consistently keep my total screen time (all forms of screens, T.V., computer, phone, etc.) under 50 hours per week. This is over 40% less than the average American. With Reclaim Your Time, I am betting that after seeing movies like The Social Dilemma, losing friends to the divisiveness of online content and experiencing the kind of loneliness many of us have, many others are ready to follow me on this journey. The modern world is full of institutions that cause us to doubt our instincts. In most big corporations, people are encouraged to defer to the person above them on the “chain of command.” For many, this comes after years of conditioning through our education system to do what is assigned to them and take its evaluation as a measure of self-worth. When I think about this, I realize that I had to expose myself regularly to people who had adapted a different mindset, one around learning by doing and not waiting for the approval of an authority figure, for a few years before I was ready to start my true passion project.

Sometimes You Have to Shift Your Focus

For years, I was constantly trying to convince people that the amount of time we spend in front of screens, and the amount of time we spend alone, was a huge problem. Now, the world has come around. Or, at least, my early adapters have come around. What I need to convince them is that there is a solution and that this is something worth pursuing. I need to focus on the positive. I need to share stories about things like how I launched a podcast and trained for and completed Ride the Rockies all while having a fulltime job, or how I am building my business now. www.lessscreentime.com www.actions-antidotes.com

What we think about, whether positive or negative, is what we get more of. For a decade and a half, I spent far too much time thinking about all the things I don’t want, from technology addiction to bureaucracy, only to see it become more and more prevalent in the world with each passing year. Now, it’s time to focus on something different.

Stephen Jaye is originally from Long Island, New York, studied Meteorology in the Midwest and now lives in Devner, Colorado. His mission now is to help humanity move forward into a new healthier era through inspiration, community and spending less time in front of screens. In his spare time, he enjoys cycling, traveling and pretty much anything social and goofy.