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Give Up Phone Number. Give Up Privacy.

Give Up Phone Number. Give Up Privacy.

by | Aug 16, 2019 | Privacy, Technology/Internet | 0 comments

I Shared My Phone Number. I Learned I Shouldn’t Have.

NYTImes Personal tech columnist asked security researchers what they could find out about him from just his cellphone number. Quite a lot, it turns out.

By Brian X. Chen, Via NYTimes

For most of our lives, we have been conditioned to share a piece of personal information without a moment’s hesitation: our phone number.

We punch in our digits at the grocery store to get a member discount or at the pharmacy to pick up medication. When we sign up to use apps and websites, they often ask for our phone number to verify our identity.

This column will encourage a new exercise. Before you hand over your number, ask yourself: Is it worth the risk?

This question is crucial now that our primary phone numbers have shifted from landlines to mobile devices, our most intimate tools, which often live with us around the clock. Our mobile phone numbers have become permanently attached to us because we rarely change them, porting them from job to job and place to place.

At the same time, the string of digits has increasingly become connected to apps and online services that are hooked into our personal lives. And it can lead to information from our offline worlds, including where we live and more.

In fact, your phone number may have now become an even stronger identifier than your full name. I recently found this out firsthand when I asked Fyde, a mobile security firm in Palo Alto, Calif., to use my digits to demonstrate the potential risks of sharing a phone number.

Emre Tezisci, a security researcher at Fyde with a background in telecommunications, took on the task with gusto. He and I had never met or talked. He quickly plugged my cellphone number into a public records directory. Soon, he had a full dossier on me — including my name and birth date, my address, the property taxes I pay and the names of members of my family.

From there, it could have easily gotten worse. Mr. Tezisci could have used that information to try to answer security questions to break into my online accounts. Or he could have targeted my family and me with sophisticated phishing attacks. He and the other researchers at Fyde opted not to do so, since such attacks are illegal.

“If you want to give out your number, you are taking additional risk that you might not be aware of,” said Sinan Eren, chief executive of Fyde. “Because of collisions in names due to the massive number of people online today, a phone number is a stronger identifier.”

There is no simple solution to this. In some situations, giving your digits to institutions like your bank provides an extra layer of security. But in most cases, the potential dangers and annoyances of handing out your number outweigh the benefits, as you will read below.

It took only an hour for my cellphone number to expose my life.

All that Mr. Tezisci, the researcher, had to do was plug my number into White Pages Premium, an online database that charges $5 a month for access to public records. He then did a thorough web search and followed a data trail — linking my name and address to information in other online background-checking tools and public records — to track down more details.

In an hour, this is what came up:

  • My current home address, its square footage, the cost of the property and the taxes I pay on it.

  • My past addresses from the last decade.

  • The full names of my mother, father, sister and aunt.

  • My past phone numbers, including the landline for my parents’ home.

  • Information about a property I previously owned, including its square footage and the mortgage taken out on it.

  • My lack of a criminal record.

While Fyde declined to hack into my accounts using the obtained information and my number, the company warned that there was plenty an attacker could do:

  • A hacker could try to reset my password for an online account by answering security questions like “What is your mother’s maiden name?” or “Which of the previous addresses did you live at?”

  • An attacker could use the personal information linked to my phone number to trick a customer service representative for my phone carrier into porting my number onto a new SIM card, thus hijacking my digits — a practice called SIM swapping.

  • A hijacker with control of my phone number could then break into my accounts if I had mechanisms in place to receive a security code in a text message when logging in to an online account.

  • A scammer could also use my hijacked phone number to trick members of my family into sharing their passwords or sending money.

  • A scammer could also target my phone number with phishing texts and robocalls.

  • An intruder could use knowledge of my phone number to call my voice mail inbox and try to crack the personal identification number to listen to my messages.

Marketers could also take advantage:

  • An ad tech agency could add my number to a detailed profile about me, linked to other information about my identity and web-browsing activities.

  • If I signed up for an internet service with my phone number, a brand that bought my digits from an ad firm could upload them into an ad tech tool to correlate the number with my online profile and serve targeted ads.

  • A shady marketing agency could add my number to a database to blast me with spam calls and text-messaged promotions.

There are some situations when sharing your phone number is reasonable.

When you enter your user name and password to get into your online banking account, the bank may call or text you with a temporary code that you must enter before you can log in. This is a security mechanism known as two-factor verification. In this situation, your phone number is a useful extra factor to prove you are who you say you are.

“A phone number is a better identifier than just your name, but sometimes you want that,” said Simon Thorpe, director of product for Twilio, a communications company that works with phone carriers on combating robocalls.

But which companies should you trust with your phone number? Here’s where things get tricky.

Plenty of tech companies let you use your phone number to protect your accounts from unauthorized access. But even some legitimate brands like Facebook have been scrutinized for improper use of phone numbers.

Last year, a study by the tech blog Gizmodo found that after a Facebook user set up two-step verification with his phone number, advertisers that uploaded his digits into Facebook’s database could match them to his Facebook profile and serve targeted ads. Separately, some people complained this year that the social network allowed them to look up a person’s Facebook profile just by typing a phone number into its search bar.

The company has removed the ability to find people’s profiles by entering their phone number, said Rochelle Nadhiri, a Facebook spokeswoman. She added that when a user set up two-step verification with a phone number, the company would not use the information to serve targeted ads.

But when large companies like Facebook abuse your digits, whom do you trust?

Unfortunately, there is no neat solution. It all involves work.

That includes first asking yourself whether the benefits of giving out your phone number outweigh the potential risks.

You might also want to set up a second phone number to cloak your personal digits altogether. You could share this second phone number with people and brands you don’t entirely trust. Apps like Google Voice and Burner let you create a different number that you can use for calls and texts.

As for two-factor authentication, most tech companies offer other verification options. They include apps that generate temporary security codes or a physical security key that can be plugged in. Generally, those are safer to use than a phone number.

Here’s a bonus piece of advice. If you have business cards with your personal number printed on them, shred them and order new ones with just your office line.

Eventually, I spoke to Mr. Tezisci about his experience tracking me. He said he was surprised by how easily a person could be targeted with a single set of numbers.

“I only spent an hour, and I was able to see all your addresses and all phone numbers,” he told me. “I think that’s scary, isn’t it? And I selected the legal options. If I were a scammer, I would have gone for your relatives.”

Brian X. Chen is the lead consumer technology writer. He reviews products and writes Tech Fix, a column about solving tech-related problems.

Seagulls: Birds of Consumption Made In Our Own Image

Seagulls: Birds of Consumption Made In Our Own Image

by | Aug 16, 2019 | Environment & Ecology, Nature, Society and Culture | 0 comments

You’d be forgiven to not believe rumors before reading this article, but this actually happens a lot. One angle that is missing from this coverage, however, comes from the American preoccupation with providing food at every turn of real estate where any sizable crowds converge.

I know it’s unrealistic to peg this all on food concessions, but if American mainstream culture wasn’t so steeped in limitless food consumption at every special event, occasion, celebration, physical area where any gatherings in general occur, the over saturated food vendor operations of every stripe, and growing, wouldn’t exist in the first place.

So much food is wasted in this country, whether directly from unbalanced crop management, commercial buyers, and dispensation to the public, or by sheer disregard for food portioning and value on a individual basis. Whole nations starve, or at best, struggle, while getting aid in the form of low quality carbohydrate staples, and/or, access to junk food, while we scare off seagulls so we feast and drink on a whim, at any moment, wherever we are, and then throw out half our food anyway.

Flying Assassins Are Called In to Combat Aggressive Gulls

A Jersey Shore town has come up with a creative but costly way to tame its marauding gulls.

Eric Swanson, the owner of East Coast Falcons, released a falcon, one of the birds of prey that are being used to frighten gulls in Ocean City, N.J.

 

By Nick Corasaniti, NY Times

OCEAN CITY, N.J. — They are deft predators of the French fried potato, able to pluck a fresh wedge in the milliseconds it takes a single fry to travel from its container to a human mouth.

Though gulls are as core to the Jersey Shore as a stereo blasting “Born to Run,” the birds that have been hunting the food stalls lining the boardwalk in Ocean City possess an extra level of voracious hunger, a fever pitch of aggression that stands out even in a state where pugnacity is considered a plus.

Their behavior has turned this popular oceanfront destination into a Hitchcockian dystopia of divebombing birds.

“I’ve seen them take on an entire pizza,” said Tom Baglini, 71, who lives in Ocean City with his wife, JoAnn. “I saw the guy and he had the box, and he took one slice out, and the bird came down, hit the slice, then hit the box, and the pie hit the ground, and then, like hundreds of birds just swarmed.”

Deciding it had had enough, Ocean City turned to an army of winged bouncers.

The city unleashed a posse of raptors — four hawks, two falcons and an owl — to take on the unruly gulls.

“It’s reached a point where you can’t eat on the boardwalk or beach without birds flying at your hands and face. It truly has become a safety hazard,” said Ocean City’s mayor, Jay A. Gillian. “I remain committed to doing whatever it takes to make sure the boardwalk and beach experience in Ocean City is safe, family friendly and enjoyable.”

Diana Juleg and her grandchildren listened as a falconer explained how the birds patrol the skies over the boardwalk. Credit: Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times

One of the few towns along the Jersey Shore where alcohol is not sold, Ocean City attracts roughly 150,000 visitors every summer to a beach idyll: a wide boardwalk filled with ice cream and pizza stands, fudge shops and salt water taffy stores, where the chatter of conversation is occasionally drowned out by the squeals from nearby amusement rides.

The squawk of gulls circling potential meals is a less welcome part of the background noise. But these days, the gulls must also keep an eye out for the sharp-clawed raptors roaming the skies.

Using birds of prey to control avian populations is a common tactic — deployed not just at beaches, but at airports, among other places — and is praised by many environmental groups as a humane way of taming out-of-control behavior.

“The best way to put nature back into balance is to bring back predators,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club. “Whether it’s hawks or falcons in urban areas to reduce pigeon populations, or sea gulls along the coast, it makes a lot more sense.”

Ocean City is paying $2,100 a day through Labor Day for the use of the trained raptors, which are provided by East Coast Falcons. Though the raptors are certainly capable of killing gulls, these have been trained just to frighten the gulls away. The program, which started in early August, has been effective enough that the hours the raptors are on duty each day has been extended.

“It’s reached a point where you can’t eat on the boardwalk or beach without birds flying at your hands and face,” said Jay A. Gillian, the Ocean City mayor. Credit: Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times

Erik Swanson, the owner of East Coast Falcons, has been training birds of prey for nearly 30 years. His animals have helped to clear out geese and other birds from flight paths near Kennedy International Airport, reduced a starling population that was threatening a blueberry farm and scattered pigeons and other birds away from landfills.

But the belligerence of the gulls in Ocean City surprised even this veteran bird expert.

“If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I don’t know if I would have even believed it,” Mr. Swanson said. “We were sitting there talking with the town manager and this girl walked out with a bucket of chicken or something, and she literally had more than 20 birds just start mobbing her.”

Fueled by the constant availability of food, Mr. Swanson said the gulls have developed advanced tactics.

Some of the gulls have learned to attack people, who drop their food once bitten.

“And then when the one does that, you have about 40 of them that all run in and try to eat the food,” Mr. Swanson said.

Though falcons can kill gulls, the birds from East Coast Falcons have been trained not to do so. Credit: Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times

Just about every regular visitor to Ocean City seems to have a gull story.

Darcy Krause, who lives in Philadelphia and has been visiting Ocean City for about 10 years, said a gull swooped down between her hand and her face and snatched a Wheat Thin cracker from her fingers without leaving a mark.

Ellen Ilconich, who lives in Marlton, N.J., had a gull hover over her sandwich and pluck out the deli meat inside.

The Baglinis watched the other day as a few gulls huddled under a beach umbrella, dug into an open beach bag while the owners were away, pulled out a bag of chips and enjoyed a feast on the sand. Two weeks earlier, a gull clutching an entire hero sandwich landed near their lawn.

Sue Lyons-Joell, who has been coming to Ocean City for more than 30 years, has developed a gull-proof system when she orders anything at the boardwalk: Cover the food, stay close to the stalls and never eat anything out in the open.

“A couple of years ago it got so bad we had to put a sign up at the register basically warning customers of the sea gulls stealing their food,” said Randy Levchuk, an owner of Jilly’s, a family-run business in Ocean City that manages a popular French fry stand, as well as several T-shirt shops.

 

 

Ocean City is paying $2,100 a day through Labor Day for the use of the trained raptors. Credit: Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times

His T-shirt business has also been affected by the gull invasion.

“People are coming because they got pooped on by one of the birds, and they have to buy a new shirt now,’’ Mr. Levchuk said. “It’s not a good experience for the person in Ocean City with how bad it’s gotten.”

The summer crowds will be gone after Labor Day, but the gulls are not just seasonal visitors.

Eric Stiles, the president and chief executive of New Jersey Audubon, said focusing on the summertime is a short-term “winnable solution.”

“But it’s not a perennial solution,” he said. “It’s not something you do for 30 days and the problem is solved forever.”

Still, so far, the introduction of the raptors seems to have improved the conduct of the gulls.

Families were enjoying soft-serve cones near a Kohr Bros Frozen Custard shop on a recent day, and the few gulls perched on the edge of the store roof were leaving them alone — for now.

Nearby, P.J. Simonis, a falconer who is part of Mr. Swanson’s team, was carrying a 17-week-old Harris hawk on his arm. The bird had just finished eating food left inside a cage, which was placed in clear view of the gulls.

“Just this bird feeding on the boardwalk,’’ he said, “has freaked them out.’’

The introduction of the raptors seems to have improved the behavior of the gulls. Credit: Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times

Happiness is an emotion NOT a destination.

Happiness is an emotion NOT a destination.

by | Jul 22, 2019 | Life & Timing, Personal Improvement, Psychology | 0 comments

I like who I am. I don’t have major issues of character or personality problems. I’m guilty of no great transgressions, emotional assaults, nor profound negative behavior towards anyone in my life. Certainly nothing consciously deliberate. I think I am a pretty damn decent good person.

The enduring struggles and areas in my life that could use improvement are things I clearly recognize and don’t like about myself, nor my trajectory to date. Being introspective from adolescence, its always been tough absorbing my own levels of self generated personal critique, Still, to survive with any sense of emotional stability, and to avoid damaging depression, I’ve had to forgive myself as I move along life’s timeline. I really have no choice if I want to maintain purposeful self esteem going forward.

I try to space out these type of posts as follows below. There are more than enough of self help lectures out there for all of us, but this particular offering speaks to me right now..

If you’re struggling with anything, or many things, and find yourself slipping into guilt, lack of self worth, or repressing important feelings due to fear of judgement, or rejection from others, try reading the content that follows written by Sarah Steckler, who I randomly discovered recently.

From her pics and limited background info, Sarah seems remarkably young to have the insight she presents here. So much so, that I actually consider/ed her being a marketing prop to pull traffic and business from the target demographic she represents. Is this far fetched? Maybe. Maybe not. Nothing is beyond online dishonesty these days. Nothing. So why not this? 

But, here’s the thing. what’s written here, whether by Sarah, or someone else behind her, is good stuff. Its valuable. That matters. If you need something, someone, to help you feel okay about yourself, try reading.

Post below copied from Mindful Productivity Blog

Why I no longer focus on gratitude lists or being more “positive”

Oh the controversy!

Gratitude lists are everything right now.

Feeling blue?

Write down 3 things you’re grateful for

Really upset about something?

Focus on the positive and everything you DO have

Research studies like this one have even proved that we can rewire our brains by thinking more positive thoughts.

So why on earth am I writing a blog post / rant about something that’s been scientifically PROVEN to be beneficial to us?

Like most people I’ve been through a slew of ups and downs, horrible experiences, terrible times, really low lows, and some really high highs, but I’ve noticed something about the way others treat me through all of these – and how we react to others when they aren’t being positive, grateful, and “spreading love and light” all over social media.

We seem to have this visceral reaction to negative things.

So much so that websites and even news organizations have devoted themselves to “good” and “positive” only stories.

This isn’t a bad thing especially when mainstream media and news can tend to err on the side of doomsday stories.

We all need a little reminder that the humanity side of things still exists and that not everything is going completely wrong.

The issue is that we’ve taken a full swing into a dangerous territory. There’s a sense of safety and comfort in only listening to the good, focusing on the positive, and quite frankly, avoiding the negative, and sometimes even avoiding the reality of things.

constantpositivity.png

And chances are that you’ve experienced this or been a part of the problem (don’t worry, I have, too).

Post anything positive and inline with what “mainstream happiness” might look or feel like and the likes will POUR in.

Get real with something, express frustration, and people get uncomfortable.

In fact, we get so uncomfortable with other people’s “negativity” that we start shaming them in indirect ways.

We say things like:

  • “Look at the bright side”

  • “This won’t matter in 5 years so don’t worry about it now”

  • “You should be more positive”

  • “You really have nothing to complain about”

  • “Be grateful for what you have”

All of these comments tend to come from a good place. But for a moment let’s examine the root of where they exist.

They are ego driven. Meaning we typically want other people to feel better not because of their situation but more often because their negativity, or the ways in which they are sharing their personal experience is uncomfortable to us.

I lost my Dad when I was 23 and for the 8 or so months following his death I went on a positivity rampage. I pushed all of my pain, anger, and fear aside and decided to make it my mission to show anyone and everyone that death doesn’t have to mean sadness.

I lost 50lbs, I went out with friends non-stop, I posted endless Pinterest quotes and told everyone that everyday they have a choice to feel happy.

And for a while it worked…. kind of.

The trouble began when I realized that I was suppressing certain emotions, I was “dealing” with my grief instead of experiencing it and allowing it.

  • I broke out in hives anytime I was alone from the stress and grief alone and quickly took benadryl and returned to Pinterest land to make them go away.

  • I endured extreme stomach pains and had a hard time eating for months after his death and instead of really diving deep into the pain, I told myself to be stronger and drank bottles of Pepto.

Here’s the thing about human emotions, they exist and one isn’t any better than the other.

Also, all of them are fleeting so saying things like “happiness is a choice” is silly in a lot of ways because that choice often results in the denial of other emotions that are present.

happier.png

It’s a lot like saying “holding your breath is a choice” – you can hold your breath right now, anytime really. When you’re sad when you hear something you don’t like, when you stub your toe, when someone dies. It’s always your choice to do so but you’re also cutting off your oxygen supply and you can’t do it forever.

There are some great ways to reframe things and gratitude plays an important role in creating more sustainable happiness in our lives but if it’s done in a way that excludes all of the other endless human emotions and experiences, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

It’s really hard to run while holding your breath and it’s really hard to move through grieve, adapt to change, and work through frustration if you try to sugarcoat it with striving to choose happiness over giving yourself permission to feel various emotions, thoughts, and feelings.

My husband and I move a great deal. I’ve moved over 17 times in the past 10 years. Every time we experience change, remove someone from our lives, and someone new, try something new, start a new job, move to a new part of the country, or out of the country for that matter, our mind, body, and soul needs time to adjust.

Heck even if you never move, life will present situations and circumstances that put you outside of your comfort zone.

And when those things happen and all you hear is “be more positive” or “keep your newsfeed clear or negative things” it becomes increasingly isolating and depressing to try and navigate.

I see this happen often. The people that post the good things and never share the bad. Not just on their Facebook account but in real life. We think that people will only value our existence or welcome our presence if we’re always positive, if we never complain, if we always have something good to share and bring to the conversation.

True happiness isn’t the act of choosing to be happy, it’s the art and allowance of accepting human emotions, observing them, and being okay with them being a part of our lives.

constantpositivity (1).png

Emotions are beautiful signs and signals from our bodies and minds. They let us know when boundaries are being pushed that we didn’t know existed. They alert us to pain that still needs to be taken care of, soothed, and mended. They remind us that suffering and sadness are just as much a part of existing as joy, compassion, and love.

Which brings me to some major myths and assumptions we make all the damn time:

Myth #1: If you have something good, you can’t have something bad

Just because you have things to be grateful for doesn’t mean you can’t have things that feel off, upsetting, uncomfortable, or not aligned with what you truly want.

Myth #2: If you have something that someone else doesn’t, you should never complain

After losing my Dad I had people apologize to me when they’d complain or mention their alcoholic father, or the lack of relationship with their Dad. They’d say things like “shit I’m sorry, here I am complaining about my Dad and he’s still alive.

I would say “just because your Dad is still alive doesn’t mean you can’t experience grief from your relationship with him, and it also doesn’t mean your feelings aren’t valid.”

Myth #3: The best way to feel better is to focus on the positive

While there are solid and scientifically founded ways of creating neural pathways in your brain that habitually lean toward the positive, the only way out of things is through them.

Your broken leg won’t heal by merely wishing it to do so (although maybe a bit faster – who knows). Incorporating the positive can definitely boost your experience, but focusing on the positive and ignoring the rest takes away the experience of learning how to cope, adapt, and improve on handling difficult emotions and circumstances.

(Susan David talks more about the “tyranny of positivity” and her book Emotional Agility here)

Myth #4: If you’re not happy, something is wrong with you

There’s such a big push for happiness these days. Endless books on how to be happier, how to be a certain % happier, how to be happier in different locations. And while I won’t discredit the merit within those books and that many of those things do in fact help and improve life, it can start to make you feel like there’s something wrong with you if you’re not happy.

How often do you hear yourself saying “I just feel so off, I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”

Hint: Nothing is wrong with you. You’re a human being who is human being, feeling, and experiencing.

I’m guilty of this too, though. We assume that feeling upset, irritable, aggravated, or less than stellar means we’re doing something wrong. I have so much to be grateful for, how in the world could I ever feel anything but happy?!

Yet we don’t ask ourselves the same question for other emotions.

:: I’m not angry today! What is wrong with me?

:: I’m not crying right now, what did I do?!

Happiness is an emotion NOT a destination.

happiness.png

Striving for endless happiness will in fact, make you more unhappy. Being in denial that other emotions and human experiences exist will make you endlessly miserable.

Myth #5: If you’re not happy, you’re choosing it

I really don’t know if there’s a sentiment I hate more than “choose happiness” – it sounds so easy, so fluffy, and so naive.

I’m sure people will disagree with me.

I know there are ways to “manifest” abundance and happiness.

But if you think for one moment that if you’re not happy, it’s your choice, you’re forgetting about the fact that the world also does happen TO you.

And yes I’m pushing back on this. I’ve read endless books about how the universe is always happening “for” us. Shifting your perspective can make a huge difference and I truly believe I’ve manifested many things in my life.

However, a lot of people take this to another extreme where they think that if anything bad happens it’s their fault. Or that they “attracted” it.

Self-fulfilling prophecy is a hell of a lot different than tragedy, psychopaths, and circumstances that flat out suck. In other words, thinking you can’t do something and then not trying is a way of “attracting” a result or lack of one whereas someone being an asshole or hitting your car is a circumstance and an event.

This could be a whole other blog post. My point is that we cannot choose our emotions. They happen, what we can choose is how we react to them. So in a nutshell, you cannot choose happiness, but you can choose how you react to emotions that lead to a more fulfilling life.

It’s a matter of prolonging a state of mind when we feel good and observing, resolving, and letting go of things when they don’t serve us.

Myth #6: If it won’t matter 5 years from now, it shouldn’t matter now

I’ve started saying this more lately and then realized how shitty it can sound on the other end. There are definitely things that don’t need to be complained about. Small things, things you CAN choose to let go of that don’t involve ignoring signals from your psyche. Like some jerk cutting in front of you in line.

But then there are things that in the present moment really DO suck and that require time to process, that sometimes mean sharing that experience, and that become a lot more difficult when others tell us we shouldn’t be feeling it or expressing it.

This act by the way, of people telling others to “be more positive” or “think about how they attracted something” or my all time favorite “I’m so sorry for your loss but they are in a better place now” is called Light Washing or whitewashing negative thoughts. It’s a pretty shitty way of victim blaming especially when people are going through heavy emotions, tragic events, or need time to process.

I bring this up not because I think everyone who says these cliche statements is an A-hole (I’ve said them, too) but because we need to raise awareness that there’s a collective fear of the negative when really it’s just the human experience and it’s not all that bad.

I’ve said things before like “fear doesn’t serve us” when really it actually…DOES. So does guilt, anger, resentment, and so forth. The key is knowing HOW to observe them, how long to stay with them, and learning how to navigate them instead of letting them take over the steering wheel.

So what do I do instead of endless gratitude lists?

For the record I do still write down things I’m grateful for and I do still reframe “negative” things.

But instead of sugar coating them with positivity or ignoring the difficult things, I get real with the reality of all of them.

Here’s my process: (something I’ve been doing since I was 10 years old, seriously, although I didn’t call it a *$&% it list” back then)

1 Write a “Fuck it” list

Sometimes these lists get REALLY long. I list out things that really bother me, things I can’t seem to get un-angry about, things I wish would change, things I don’t like about my current situation, new place of residence, or how I’m being treated. I go WILD, no apologies, no worry over feeling guilty about being so “negative” – I just let it ALL out.

2 Cross off things I can immediately let go of after acknowledging them

After going through this process I feel lighter, more at ease, and after a few minutes of huffing and puffing I have a solid awareness of what I can really let go of and what really doesn’t matter. In other words, things I don’t have to give a fuck about or give any more mental energy to.

3 Highlight the things that REALLY still bug me

Some things aren’t so easy to let go of. I highlight these.

4 Make a sub list of what I can do about the things that stick

From here I take the top 3 things that are really pissing me off (that I still GAF about) and write down ways I can feel better or things I can do to take ACTION toward improving them.

This does a few things:

  • It puts me back into a state of empowerment

  • It gives me the power of choice and decisiveness which reduces overwhelm

  • It shows me what’s possible and takes away most feelings of defeat or helplessness