YouTube stopped paying me on Friday 😔

Oct 28

On Friday evening, YouTube sent me an email to say they'd stopped paying me.

My sleep meditations are all still up. You can still play them. But the ad money from them, which is most of how I earn a living, is switched off for now. The reason they gave was "repetitive content".

I'll keep the business bit short, because it isn't really what this email is about. For the past year I've made one brand new meditation every week, plus a second version of one that already exists, with a different background sound, or stretched to eight hours for people who want it playing all night. I made the second versions because you kept asking for them. YouTube's system read them as repeats. I think a human will see what I was doing once they look. I'm confident about that. It's a question of when, not if.

Now… this isn't the worst thing that's ever happened to me, not by a long stretch. It's a setback. It'll probably cost me some money in the meantime, but money comes, and money goes. I know that at this stage in my life. I've lost money before, and I've learnt not to get too upset about it.

What I want to tell you about is what I did in the two days after I read the email.

The fighter turned up first

My first feeling wasn't fear. It was closer to excitement. Right. Here's a challenge.

I went straight into doing mode and fixing mode. Research, research, research. I read the terms and conditions properly. I worked out exactly what they wanted. I got my plan straight.

And then, about an hour later, a different voice turned up.

"You deserve some fun. You haven't had a drink in over a month. Go on."

So I had some wine. Quite a lot of wine, if I'm honest. And lots of crap food. And then I did the same thing again the next day.

And then a third voice turned up. The procrastinator. "I'll do it later." So I checked out. I ignored the problem for about two days.

And as I write this, I've only just started the appeal.

Then I swung the other way

If you've been reading these for a while, you'll know what happened next.

I'm writing this on day one of a water fast.

It's probably not what the Buddha had in mind when he talked about the middle path. I don't think he meant "swing violently from one side to the other and call it balance." But that's how I've often handled a hard week. Indulge for a couple of days, then pull myself back into line, hard.

Here's the bit I found interesting.

I don't feel guilty about the wine. I feel fine. I don't feel that upset about YouTube messing with my income. I do feel mildly irritated that I have to sit down and explain myself to a faceless organisation when I know I do what I do for good reasons. I'm a bit annoyed that news like that arrives as an email.

But none of that is what the wine was for.

The wine was for the discomfort. That very ordinary feeling of knowing there's a job to do that you don't want to do, and a conversation you don't want to have, and the only way out is through.

And rather than sit with that for an afternoon, I bought myself two or three days off from it.

With interest.

Why the treat turns up right then

The body side of this is quite simple. Something lands, the nervous system goes on alert, and alert is uncomfortable. The body wants that feeling gone, and it isn't fussy about how.

A glass of wine takes the edge off in about ten minutes. So does a block of chocolate. So does an hour of scrolling. So does, for a lot of us, opening the laptop and working until midnight. They're all the same move. A quick way to stop feeling something, with a bill that arrives later.

And I don't think it's weakness; I think it's habit. If, somewhere along the way, you learned that uncomfortable feelings were things to get past rather than things to have, then the treat is just the fastest way past. For a lot of us, it worked for years. It still works… for a couple of hours at a time.

The problem is only what it costs. The feeling doesn't go anywhere. It waits. And it's usually a bit bigger when you come back to it, because now there's some catching up to do as well.

Three things I'd try

Here's the honest bit. I don't fully know what my advice is 😂

Because for me, burying my head in the sand for a few days does seem to work. I come out the other side, and I feel okay. It costs me a few days, and this time it's cost me an appeal I still haven't written, but I do come out of it.

So I'm not going to tell you never to check out. I'm going to tell you two things I'd do differently next time, and I'll finish with the tool I actually used (sort of!).

Tool 1. Ask the treat what it's for.

The moment you hear "you deserve this", before you pour the wine, open the packet or pick up the phone, ask yourself one question. "What am I trying not to feel right now?"

Then answer in one straightforward sentence. Not "I'm stressed." The actual thing. "I'm dreading writing that email." "I'm embarrassed I got it wrong." "I don't want to find out what they'll say."

You can still have the treat afterwards. This isn't about stopping you. It's about making the trade visible, so you know what you're buying and what you're paying with.

If I'd asked on Friday, my answer would have been something like, "I don't want to spend my weekend explaining myself to a company that just called my work repetitive." That's the whole feeling. Said out loud, it's a lot smaller than two days of wine.

Why it works: the doctor Gabor Maté has a line I keep coming back to. He says the question isn't "why the addiction?" but "why the pain?" I'm not necessarily calling two days of wine an addiction (but probably the escaping part is the addiction). Find the pain, and the treat makes a lot more sense.

Tool 2. Give the urge ten minutes.

When the pull towards the fridge, the bottle or the laptop arrives, don't fight it and don't follow it. Set a timer for ten minutes.

For those ten minutes, pay attention to the urge the way you'd watch weather. Where is it in your body? Chest, throat, hands, jaw. How strong is it, from one to ten? Then keep watching, breathing slowly, with the out-breath a little longer than the in-breath, and notice what the urge does. Most of the time it climbs, peaks, and starts coming down on its own.

When the timer goes, choose again. If you still want the wine, have the wine. The difference is that now it's a decision rather than a reflex.

Say the email landed at four and by six you're standing in front of the fridge. Ten minutes. Watch the urge rise to a seven, hover there, and drop to a four. Then decide.

Why it works: this is urge surfing, from the psychologist Alan Marlatt, who developed it for people in recovery. Urges behave like waves. They build, crest and pass, usually within half an hour, if you don't feed them. Every time you ride one out, your nervous system learns that the feeling passes on its own. Which, over time, is what takes the power out of the treat (this is exactly what I do during my fasts, by the way).

Tool 3. Decide when you're coming back before you go.

If you're going to check out, check out on purpose. And this was a version of what I did. Before the first glass, say out loud (or phone your best friend who is about to go to bed, then jump in an Uber 😂) the day and the time you're back. "I'm off until tomorrow. Sunday at nine I open the laptop and start the thing I'm avoiding." Then put that thing in your calendar for that slot, so the return has a job attached to it, not just a date. I almost nailed that one… I just got to it on Tuesday rather than Sunday.

Why it works: the difference between a rest and an escape is whether you know when it ends. A break with a return time is a break. A break with no return time is avoidance, and avoidance is what keeps the feeling waiting for you. The decision does most of the work, because the decision is the bit avoidance skips.

Where I am with it

I checked out for two days, not two weeks. There was a time in my life where it would have been weeks.

That's progress. Not the kind that makes a good story. The real kind.

And this week I taught the first class of a meditation course I'm running, and it was lovely to see so many people on the call. Life carried on, which it has a habit of doing.

As always, the main thing I learnt was about how I cope with stress... and how I avoid it altogether.

So here's one for this week. The next time you hear "you deserve this", ask the treat what it's for. You can still have the treat. Just know what you're buying.

Chibs 💙

PS. Tired & Wired is my small community for people who are tired of running on empty. We meet live every week, and this is exactly the kind of thing we work on together. If you're curious, the door's here → https://www.skool.com/chibs