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Why Successful People Are Not Hippies When They Practice Meditation

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For many years, I believed that meditation was for hippies or people that practiced the Buddhist faith. I turned down multiple opportunities to understand just how powerful meditation was. It was only when apps such as “Calm” and “Headspace” came out that I truly understood the power of meditation.

For me, I chose to use the Calm app and have been a subscriber for a while now. Until I had someone guiding me, I never quite knew how to practice meditation even though I was able to read about it. The apps that taught meditation made it accessible to so many more people.

I then began to read blogs and listen to podcasts that all spoke so highly about meditation. It seemed that there wasn’t a lot of successful people who didn’t practice meditation. Then an even more bizarre thing happened to me; I added someone on LinkedIn who ran a business called “Mr. Meditate.”

He told me of his former job working closely with lawyers and how they were all suffering from the effects of anxiety and stress. He then asked me if I would give him a testimonial to talk about the benefits of meditation in my own life and to encourage large organisations to pay for staff meditation.

Before I knew it, I became a sort of pin-up boy for meditation, and I have now shared with lots of people why meditation is not for hippies, and how everyone should practice it.

Here are six benefits you will get from meditation:

1. You can deal with major fear

Fear can destroy our goals and hold us back from success. Whether it’s public speaking or flying on planes that have caused a degree of fear in me, I have always used meditation as a cure. Before you embark on a fearful task, you should try meditating beforehand.

What meditation does is calm your mind down and relax you. Meditation also teaches you how to breathe and just how powerful the breath can be. No matter how sick I feel, I know I can always calm myself down with long, slow, deep breaths.

Breathing is literally the antidote to so many challenges in life, and it’s the reason why when you are nervous, people tell you to breathe. It’s an age old saying that we all say to each other but meditation will help show you just why breathing is so important.

2. You can return to now

Mental disorders like depression and anxiety are caused by a mind that either lives too much in the future or too much in the past. One of meditations benefits is that it can bring your mind back to now. The healthiest place for your mind to think from is the here and now. When you return to now your mind begins to settle down and focus on what you can change in the present.

When we begin to be present and return to the present, we maximise our chances of getting our mind into a state of flow. From a state of flow, we can achieve almost anything that our mind can conceive. In a state of flow, we can achieve the impossible and challenge conventional thinking.

3. You’ll increase your energy levels

As I began to write this blog post I started to feel a bit sleepy. As someone who doesn’t like to waste time and wants to spend as many hours on my passion as possible, I pulled out the iPhone Calm app. With only ten minutes of meditation, my energy levels were restored. Without meditation, you may not have got to read this post.

Meditation is proven to give you a much better rest than sleep. The beauty of meditation is that you don’t need to do long sessions. 10-15 minutes can often be enough to completely rejuvenate you.

All you need to do is bring your mind back to the present for even a few moments, and the effect can be game changing. I love to add a cup of green tea at the end of my meditation to truly recharge my brain so try doing the same and see if it helps you too.

4. You can have a break from self-talk

Self-talk can drive your mind crazy and take away a lot of your energy and time. Often my own self-talk is spent acting out how I would say something to someone or responding to a negative situation. When I get stuck in these thought patterns, I find that time passes really quickly.

Meditation will allow you to take a break from all the mind chatter and live with a head full of nothing for a bit. A head full of nothing can then begin to pull new ideas in because there is room for them without the self-talk.

Too much self-talk will not allow your positive thoughts to grow properly over time which will, in turn, limit your likelihood of success. Use meditation to change this paradigm and you will see just how beneficial a clear mind can be.

5. You’ll gain more control

It’s so easy for your life to become out of control. Control comes when you begin to be conscious of everything that is going on in your world. Meditation helps highlight all of your thoughts and just how out of control they can be.

It’s hilarious to me sometimes when I try and meditate, and I can’t focus for a minute without thoughts forcing their way into my head. This is normal when meditating and some days you will be in control, and other days your thoughts will dictate the entire session.

The more you practice meditation, the more in control you become of your life.

6. You’re calmer

I often associate the feeling of being calm with being in a tranquil spot of nature such as The Great Barrier Reef. What meditation does so well is calm you right now in the moment and bring you into a non-reactive state of thinking.

Many of us live our life just reacting to everything that is thrown in front of us and by meditating we can change this reality. When the mind is calm, our thoughts become more pure, and we can soak our thinking with an influx of positivity.

Living in a calm state of mind is a way of life for me now. If you have never got to live in a calm state, then I empower you to make this a must in your life. Meditating will start the process of being more calm, but it’s up to you to carry the feeling on through the way you choose to live your life.

Everything you do each day is a choice. Success is about making smarter choices and meditation is one of those choices. Try it, embrace it, and enjoy what it feels like to calm your mind / life right down.

***My meditation tips***

  • Try to practice meditation every single day for no less than ten minutes. If you only do it once in a while, you won’t get the growth that regular meditation can give you.
  • Use an app to guide you through the process. Apps often have good instructions and relaxing background sounds that help deepen the meditation experience.
  • If you’re really hopeless at meditation, then try getting a coach or attending a meditation class. Sometimes it’s your environment that is stopping you from practicing meditation correctly.
  • Sit up straight with your feet flat on the floor. Lying down while meditating can make you fall asleep and you won’t be truly present.
  • As suggested before, drink a nice warm cup of green tea (or any tea) straight after your meditation session.
  • If you fly a lot like me, use the time on the plane to meditate. For long flights, try a whole hour of meditation. A longer session is an entirely different experience.
  • Share the benefits of meditation with other people you know and get the word out there.
Have you tried meditation? How has it helped you? Let me know in the comments section below or on my website timdenning.net and on my Facebook.
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Entrepreneurs

The Brutal Truth About Entrepreneurship with ADHD (And Why Most Advice Is Making It Worse)

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Image Credit: Joel Brown - Addicted2success

You’re not lazy. You’re not undisciplined… and you’re definitely not broken.

You’re an entrepreneur with ADHD, and right now you’re probably sitting on 19 unfinished projects, 47 open tabs, and a brain that feels like it’s running on 12 different radio stations at once.

You’ve read the books. You’ve tried the planners, the Pomodoro timers, the accountability groups. You’ve even hired coaches who promised to “fix” your focus. Yet here you are — brilliant ideas, massive potential, and a business that still feels like it’s one step away from collapsing under the weight of your own mind.

Here’s what almost nobody in the entrepreneurial space will admit:

The real struggle isn’t your ADHD. It’s that you’ve been trying to run a neurodivergent brain inside a neurotypical business model — and then beating yourself up when it doesn’t work.

Most advice for entrepreneurs was written by people whose brains work differently. They preach consistency, routines, long-term planning, and steady execution like those things are universal truths. For the ADHD entrepreneur, those “truths” feel like trying to swim upstream in cement. You can force it for a while (and you have), but eventually your brain rebels, the burnout hits, and you’re left feeling like a failure who just needs to “try harder.”

That cycle is quietly destroying more talented founders than cash flow problems or bad hires ever could.

The deeper layer most people never reach is this: your ADHD isn’t a bug in the system. It’s a different operating system entirely. And when you stop trying to install Windows on a Mac and start building everything around macOS, the game changes completely.

The Hidden Addiction That Keeps ADHD Entrepreneurs Stuck

You already know the surface symptoms — time blindness, rejection sensitivity, starting strong and fading fast, shiny object syndrome.

But the real trap is more insidious.

It’s the addiction to chaos and novelty.

Your brain is wired for dopamine. New ideas, big visions, last-minute sprints, high-stakes pressure — these things light you up like nothing else. The boring, repetitive, systems-building work that actually scales a business? It feels like torture.

So unconsciously, you keep your business in a state of controlled chaos. You say yes to too many things. You chase the next exciting opportunity. You avoid building the boring infrastructure because “I work better under pressure anyway.”

And every time the pressure gets too high, you crash, swear you’ll get organized next quarter, and repeat the cycle.

Meanwhile, the neurotypical advice keeps telling you to “just build better habits.” As if your brain is a poorly trained dog that needs more discipline instead of a high-performance race car that needs the right fuel and track.

This isn’t a character flaw. It’s neurology.

And until you stop treating your wiring as something to overcome and start treating it as your greatest strategic advantage, you’ll stay stuck in the same exhausting loop.

The Identity Shift That Changes Everything

The entrepreneurs with ADHD who finally break through don’t “fix” their brains.

They redesign their entire business to work with their brains.

They stop trying to become the consistent, routine-loving founder the gurus talk about. Instead, they become the architect of a system that leverages their natural strengths — hyperfocus, pattern recognition, creative problem-solving, relentless drive under pressure — while outsourcing or automating everything that drains them.

This is the layer most ADHD entrepreneurs never reach because it requires something terrifying: accepting that you are never going to be “normal” at entrepreneurship… and that’s exactly why you can win bigger than most.

Your ability to see connections others miss. Your tolerance for uncertainty. Your capacity to go all-in when something lights you up. These aren’t liabilities. They’re unfair advantages in a world that rewards speed, creativity, and bold moves.

The shift is simple but brutal:

Stop trying to manage your ADHD. Start designing your business around it.

How to Actually Build a Business That Works With Your Brain

  1. Stop fighting your energy cycles — weaponize them. Most ADHD entrepreneurs try to force 8-hour focused days. That’s insane. Instead, track when your brain actually works best (for many it’s 10pm-2am or random 4-hour hyperfocus bursts). Build your schedule around those windows. Protect them like gold. Do the deep, high-leverage work then. Use the low-energy periods for admin, calls, or recovery.
  2. Build “chaos containers,” not rigid systems. Traditional project management tools feel like cages. Create loose but effective structures that give your brain freedom. Use tools like Notion with massive flexibility, or body-doubling (working alongside someone virtually), or even hiring a “chaos wrangler” — an assistant who thrives on turning your scattered ideas into executable plans.
  3. Turn your rejection sensitivity into rocket fuel. That intense fear of letting people down or looking stupid? Channel it into creating ridiculously high standards for your customer experience or product quality. Use it as fuel instead of letting it paralyze you.
  4. Outsource the parts that make you want to die. The execution, follow-through, and maintenance phases are where most ADHD entrepreneurs lose. Hire or partner with people who love the details. Your job is vision, strategy, and big swings. Let someone else own the spreadsheets.
  5. Create external pressure on your own terms. Deadlines and public commitments work wonders for the ADHD brain. Use them strategically — announce launches, create beta groups, or work with coaches who understand neurodivergence instead of fighting it.

The entrepreneurs with ADHD who are quietly crushing it right now aren’t the ones who finally became “disciplined.” They’re the ones who stopped apologizing for how their brain works and started building empires that are specifically engineered for it.

They have teams that handle the boring stuff. They have systems that flex with their energy instead of fighting it. They’ve turned their “flaws” into the exact reasons their businesses stand out.

Your ADHD brain is not the enemy. The enemy was trying to play the game by rules that were never designed for you.

The moment you accept that and start designing everything… your calendar, your team, your offers, your processes — around how you actually operate, the struggle doesn’t disappear… but it becomes manageable, even exhilarating.

You were never meant to fit the mold. You were meant to break it and build something better.

The world doesn’t need another cookie-cutter entrepreneur. It needs the chaotic, brilliant, all-in, slightly unhinged visionaries who can only operate at full power when the game is built for them.

That’s you.

Stop trying to fix yourself. Start building the business that was always meant to be run by a mind like yours.

Your next breakthrough isn’t going to come from working harder or being more consistent. It’s going to come from finally giving yourself permission to work differently.

And when you do that? Watch what happens.

The same brain that once felt like a curse becomes the exact reason your business becomes unstoppable.

You’ve got this. Not despite the ADHD. Because of it.

If you want to learn more from me or send me a personal message I’ll respond to you on Instagram at https://instagram.com/iamjoelbrown speak soon!

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Health & Fitness

The Health Planning Habits That Support Long-Term Success

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Image Credit: Joel Brown - Addicted2success

Most people think about health planning only when something forces them to.

A medical bill arrives unexpectedly. An insurance issue appears during treatment. A diagnosis changes how future care needs are viewed. Suddenly health planning becomes urgent instead of preventative.

The problem is that long-term health stability is usually shaped by smaller habits built quietly over time, not just by major decisions during emergencies.

That includes physical health habits, of course, but it also includes how people approach insurance coverage, preventative care, financial preparation, and long-term healthcare planning before problems become immediate.

The families who navigate healthcare stress most effectively are often not the ones avoiding every issue entirely. More often, they’re the ones who built systems early enough to make difficult situations feel more manageable later.

Consistency Matters More Than Perfection

A lot of health advice still revolves around extreme change.

Perfect diets. Aggressive routines. Complete lifestyle overhauls.

In reality, most long-term health success comes from consistency people can realistically maintain for years instead of months. Small preventative habits tend to matter more than dramatic short-term efforts that collapse under pressure.

That principle applies financially too.

People often spend more time researching investment strategies than understanding their healthcare coverage or preparing for future medical costs. But healthcare instability can disrupt long-term financial plans surprisingly quickly when households are unprepared for how expensive even routine care can become over time.

The practical side of health planning is becoming harder to separate from overall financial planning now than it used to be.

Preventative Planning Reduces More Stress Than People Realize

One overlooked benefit of health planning is emotional stability.

People who understand their coverage, maintain preventative care routines, and think ahead about healthcare decisions often describe feeling less overwhelmed when unexpected situations happen. The goal is not eliminating uncertainty entirely. That’s unrealistic.

The goal is reducing how chaotic healthcare decisions feel under pressure.

That’s one reason broader conversations tied to healthcare and health insurance have expanded significantly over the last several years. Rising costs, changing coverage structures, and increasing healthcare complexity have made long-term planning more important for average households than many people expected.

Healthcare is no longer something most families can comfortably approach reactively forever.

People Underestimate How Quickly Healthcare Costs Compound

One reason health planning habits matter so much is that healthcare costs rarely arrive in one dramatic moment alone.

More often, they build gradually:

  • recurring prescriptions
  • specialist visits
  • ongoing treatment plans
  • insurance deductible increases
  • long-term care considerations
  • unexpected procedures layered on top of existing expenses

Families often absorb these costs incrementally until they realize how much financial pressure accumulated over time.

That gradual buildup is part of what makes proactive planning valuable. People who think ahead about coverage structures, emergency savings, provider networks, and preventative care tend to adapt more smoothly when healthcare needs eventually increase later in life.

The difficult part is that many households delay these conversations because they feel healthy right now.

Healthcare Decisions Have Become More Complicated

Another challenge is that healthcare systems themselves continue evolving quickly.

Insurance structures change. Telehealth expands. Employer-sponsored benefits shift. Prescription pricing fluctuates. Patients now carry more responsibility for understanding deductibles, provider networks, and out-of-pocket exposure than previous generations often did.

That complexity creates decision fatigue.

Even relatively organized households sometimes feel uncertain about whether they’re making good healthcare choices because the systems themselves are difficult to navigate confidently. A lot of current health insurance trends discussions reflect this larger issue, healthcare planning is becoming less about isolated medical events and more about long-term sustainability across entire households.

People want predictability, but healthcare systems increasingly feel harder to predict.

The Most Effective Health Habits Usually Feel Boring

One thing people rarely admit is that good long-term planning habits are often not particularly exciting.

Scheduling preventative appointments. Reviewing insurance annually. Building emergency savings slowly. Staying physically active consistently. Maintaining realistic routines instead of dramatic cycles of burnout and reset.

None of those habits feel dramatic at the moment.

But over long periods, they create stability that becomes incredibly valuable once life gets complicated. The people who navigate healthcare stress most effectively are often the ones who built ordinary systems early instead of waiting for perfect motivation later.

That applies financially and physically at the same time.

Why Long-Term Success Depends on Adaptability

Health planning is ultimately difficult because people’s lives keep changing.

Careers shift. Families grow. Aging parents require support. Medical needs evolve. Financial priorities change over decades in ways nobody predicts perfectly in advance.

That’s why the strongest long-term health planning habits are usually flexible rather than rigid.

The goal is not building a flawless plan that never changes. It’s creating enough structure, awareness, and preparation that future adjustments become manageable instead of overwhelming.

Most people cannot control every future health outcome. They can, however, build habits that make uncertainty easier to navigate when it eventually arrives.

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Life

Why Moving to a New City Can Change Your Mindset

Discover how moving to a new city boosts neuroplasticity, builds resilience, and reshapes your mindset

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How relocation changes your mindset

Relocation is always a challenge. Rebuilding and restarting your life requires you to step outside of your comfort zone. (more…)

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Change Your Mindset

The Hidden Reason You Can’t Stay Consistent

If motivation keeps failing you, the real issue isn’t discipline. It’s the identity shaping your habits and long-term success.

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Identity-based habits

Success often looks like a time-management problem. You buy a planner, set reminders, and hope that next week will be different. For a few days, it works. Then stress hits, motivation drops, and old patterns return. (more…)

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