RAY E ANDERSON JR

Today is July 25, 2021. This is my first post in some time. I have decided to start posting every Sunday or as the title explains “The Day Before Monday”. This title was provided to me by a good friend of mine who has been through some journeys with me.
So as I prepare for the week before me I reflect on the week behind me and the conversations I have had with my friends.

So at 11:19am this morning I receive a call from my friend Ben. The theme of our conversation centered around what message we want to send as it pertains to our lives.

I stated to Ben that I want to represent positive thoughts. I want people to walk away from talking to me feeling that life is bigger than the moment they are in. I explained to him that I will challenge myself to end all of our conversations on a positive note.

Today’s example was how to get people in touch with what inspires them. With this being the theme I explained to Ben that one of my earliest memories came when I was very young probably 2nd or 3rd grade.

I remember a neighborhood community center called “Model Cities” having some kind of neighborhood event that led to me being able to go to the Zoo. I remember my grandmother packing me two Bologna and Cheese sandwiches wrapped in aluminum foil with mustard on them and a can of soda. These details would play a role in my life some 30 something years later. I had a great time and remember just being in awe of the animals I was seeing as they appeared so different in person as opposed to tv.

Fast forward some 30 years and I remember no longer living in a financially challenged neighborhood and not having to pack my lunch however having the desire to go to the Zoo and do just that. I remember taking my then girlfriend to the Cape May Zoo in Cape May New Jersey after eating a nice breakfast on the Bay.

The day would turn out to be a wonderful day with the weather being perfect. The only issue was finding the Zoo as the directions were not clear. I was still in awe of the animals as if I had never saw them before.

Fast forward some five years later and me and my then girlfriend have gone our separate ways for some years now, however that is the one date that we both remember.

The beautiful thing about a trip to the Zoo for me is that it reminds me of how much I appreciated such a small thing when I was growing up in not such a good financial situation and more importantly how the excitement of being there has never changed for me as it is still as exciting. Most importantly I am still the same as I have never changed no matter how positively my financial situation has changed. I am still the boy with the Bologna and Cheese sandwiches.

Oh and as for those Bologna and Cheese sandwiches, I don’t eat beef any more so no Bologna and Cheese sandwiches for me but I have been known to pile the mustard on some turkey and cheese sandwiches wrap them in aluminum foil and go to town on those squashed sandwiches as I watch the peacocks go by.

Have a Great “Day Before Monday” and check out the Zoo if you can.

New Jersey doctor gives update on use of hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir on coronavirus patients

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The gig economy is revolutionizing the worldwide economy and the way we think about employment. More of us are taking control of our working lives, whether that’s earning some side income, using a gig marketplace, or building a career from freelance, temporary work.

The idea of a job for life now feels like a quaint relic — increased work mobility, technological changes, and shifts in how we see employment are all fuelling the massive upsurge in self-employment. Businesses are adapting too, using freelancers, gig workers, and an on-demand workforce to help them meet the challenges of the modern marketplace.

Whether you’re a dabbler in the gig economy, a part-time income earner, or you have a career built around freelancing, it’s vital to understand how the gig economy is changing. Read on to learn what it means for you.

The Main Ways to Take Part In the Gig Economy

There are several ways to get involved in the gig economy, and although some purists might argue about definitions, here are the four major areas as we see them:

• Traditional freelancing — creating a career around providing defined, contracted services for individuals and businesses. Freelancing is traditionally focused around creative professions like designers, writers, developers, photographers, etc.
• Gig marketplaces — these are the businesses getting most of the attention right now — Uber, Airbnb, Lyft, Fiverr, TaskRabbit, Postmates, Wonolo, etc.
• Self-Employed — this includes the self-employed like tradesmen, small business owners, and the like.
• Other areas — this is a “catch all” for other side hustles like blogging, selling on Amazon, Etsy, or ebay, affiliate marketing, and other income streams.

The Percentage of People Working in the Gig Economy

According to Intuit, the percentage of Americans in the gig economy was 34% in 2016, and is expected to grow to 43% by 2020. Consulting firm McKinsey says that there are currently around 68 millionfreelancers or self-employed in the US, with around4 million Americans providing work through gig marketplaces like Lyft or Airbnb.

The freelance economy is growing three times fasterthan the overall US workforce.

Reasons for Taking Part in the Gig Economy

There are many reasons for the shift to gig and freelance work. For many, low median incomes and increased living and housing costs necessitates a secondary income. Older freelancers are using freelance and gig earnings to supplement their savings and pension plans, with only 14% enrolled in retirement savings plans through an employer.

Although unemployment is low, automation is also a threat to many jobs. An Oxford University studysuggests that nearly half of American jobs will be threatened by automation over the next two decades. This is deeply felt in the workforce too, with 54% of the US workforce saying they were not confident their job would still exist in 20 years.

A combination of surveys from Intuit and LinkedIn tell us why gig workers and freelancers have made this a career choice:

• A portfolio of clients is more reliable than a single employer: 63%
• Earn more money and supplement income: 57%
• Create and control their own work and schedules: 46%
• Enhanced work and life balance: 35%

41% of freelancers surveyed said that they also have a permanent job in addition to their freelance work.

The Attitude of Gig Economy Workers

A significant majority of freelance and gig workers enjoy their work. The Intuit and LinkedIn surveys suggest:

• Highly-satisfied freelancers and gig economy workers: 50%
• Satisfied freelancers and gig economy workers: 17%
• Dissatisfied freelancers and gig economy workers: 23%
• Other: 10%

According to Forbes, 81% of on-demand workers plan to continue working in the gig economy. Nearly half of them plan to increase their freelance hours, while a third intend to work about as much. 63% of people are freelancing by choice, rather than necessity.

About 20 million freelancers do gig economy work because they are unable or unwilling to find better pay or jobs elsewhere. This implies that nearly 50 million are happy with the work they do and the pay their receive. Around 30% of part-time gig workers and freelancers would prefer a full-time job, according to a survey by Stride Health.

Ironically, the term “gig economy” isn’t actually preferred by the majority of freelancers and on-demand workers. One of the largest freelance marketplaces, Upwork, released a “Freelancing in America” report which said that 49% prefer “freelance economy,” 25% prefer “on-demand economy,” and 13% prefer “sharing economy.” “Gig economy” was preferred by only 10%.

Freelancers are also more likely to take part in ongoing education and training, with half re-skilling or updating their skills each year, compared to only a third of non-freelancers. 69% of freelancers also believe that freelancing is more respected as a career choice than it has been historically.

Growth in the Gig Economy

There are very positive signs that the freelance and gig economy is still growing rapidly.

• 71% of freelance workers said they had more workin 2017 than in 2016.
• 29% of freelancers worked full-time at a freelance career in 2017.
• Freelancers have an average of between four and five clients a month.
• Gig economy workers and freelancers contributed $1.4 trillion to the US economy annually.
• Growth in freelance workers is nearly doubling year-on-year, up from 1.3% in 2015 to 4.2% in 2017.
• If current trends continue, by 2027, more than half of the US workforce will do some form of freelance or gig work.
• The majority of gig economy and freelance job growth is driven by 18-34 year olds.
• 47% of Millennials freelance, more than any other generation.
• Businesses are increasingly hiring freelance workers to meet changes in demand, and to reduce labor costs like healthcare.

Earnings in the Gig Economy

One of the most interesting discoveries about the gig economy is how much people make from the gig economy marketplaces verus freelancing or running their own business. According to a survey from Earnest:

• For those doing gig-economy work as a side income, 85% made less than $500 a month.
• Airbnb hosts made more money than the other major marketplaces like Lyft, Uber, or TaskRabbit.
• Lyft and Uber drivers make around $400 a month.
• Over half of Airbnb hosts made more than $500 a month.
• TaskRabbit earners make three times what Fiverr earners do.
• Most Etsy and Fiverr earners made less than $100 a month from the side-gig.

This contrasts sharply with traditional freelancing. According to CareerCast, full-time freelancers can make significant yearly amounts, making them more mindful of their net income like big businesses would:

• Accountant – $67,290.
• Carpenter – $42,090.
• Delivery Truck Driver – $27,760.
• Interpreter/Translator – $44,343.
• Management Analyst – $81,320.
• Web Developer – $65,100.
• Software Developer – more than $100,000 per year.

As creators of one of a successful on-demand worker marketplace, we’re delighted to see this growth in the freelance economy. If you’re considering it as a secondary, or even primary income, we hope you’re inspired too.

An anxious mind is a strong, powerful mind, as anyone who has tried to rationalise themselves out of anxiety will tell you. An anxious mind can outrun, outpower and outwit rationality and logic any day of the week. What if you could harness the strength and power of that fiercely protective mind and use it to work for you instead of against you?

Anxiety exists on a spectrum and we all experience it at some level. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t. Anxiety is a very normal response from a strong, healthy brain that thinks there might be trouble about, and instantly responds by making us stronger, faster, more powerful, more alert versions of ourselves.

Like any good thing though, too much is too much. When the brain is oversensitive to threat, it puts us on high alert even when there is no need to be. This is when anxiety becomes intrusive and hard to live with. It turns from the gentle security guard who shows up when needed, to the crasher who steals the joy, tells stories about nameless dangerous things, and cozies up beside you so close it’s hard to breathe, think and be.

Why is anxiety so powerful?

Anxiety is there to keep us safe. It is a call to action to fight or flee so we can move through danger. It’s there to keep us out of the way of trouble so the signals it sends have to be strong. The problem is that those signals aren’t always accurate. Anxiety is instinctive and automatic. It’s been practising its moves for thousands of years. That’s the thing about evolution – sometimes it works for us, sometimes it makes us vulnerable to anxiety.

Anxiety was never meant to get in our way, but rather, to get us out of the way of danger. The part of the brain that drives anxiety thinks it’s doing the right thing. The more we fight it, the harder it will work to convince us that there’s danger and that we need to act.

So if fighting an anxious mind doesn’t work, what then?

We know that an anxious mind is a strong, powerful mind. What if we could harness the strength and power of that fiercely protective mind and use it to work for us instead of against us? As strong as a mind can be in its experience of anxiety, it can be equally strong in calming it. Anxiety might still show up, but rather than appearing as the wolf at the door and sending your fiercely protective brain into a panic, it can be greeted more in the way of, ‘Oh hey there – I know you. Take a seat over there.’

We know that over time, mindfulness works to build and strengthen a brain against anxiety, but there are aspects of mindfulness that can be used in the midst of anxiety to find calm. With practice, they can be called on at will to turn down the volume on anxious thoughts and feelings, and any other symptoms that anxiety tends to keep company with.

But go gently …

Changing mindset involves small, repeated steps. Each step builds on the one before it, and this takes time. That’s okay though – there’s no hurry. Remember, your mind has been doing what it’s doing for a while and it will take a while to unlearn its habits.

Those habits have had a good reason for being there. Anxious thoughts and anxious feelings keep us alive. They put us on standby to deal with anything that gets in the way. It’s going to take some convincing to show them that actually, the only thing getting in the way, are them.

Don’t try to do all of these strategies at once. Trying to keep a hold of so many different things will make your mind do the equivalent of throwing its hands in the air and walking away. Instead, choose one at a time and do it for a short while at a time. Small steps, but important ones. If you try to do them all at once, there is the risk of it feeling too hard. When things feel difficult, it is normal to run back to what’s familiar. The way around this is to go gently. Here’s how …

Dealing with Anxiety – Using the power of an anxious mind.

Anxiety is the power of the mind against the mind. That power is your greatest asset – and it’s an exceptional one. Now to claim it back so you can use it in a way that will build and strengthen you.

1. Be present. Be where you are, not where your anxiety wants to take you.

   Anxiety works by using a solid collection of ‘what-ifs’ and ‘maybes’ to haul even the strongest, bravest mind from a present that feels manageable and calm, to a future that feels uncertain and threatening. Experiment with staying fully present in the moment. Anchor yourself by opening up your senses. What do you see, feel, hear, taste, know? Stay with what is actually happening, rather than what might happen. If this feels uncomfortable, put a time limit on it, let’s say, two minutes to start with. Spend this time fully experiencing the world as it is around you now.

   Every time you do this, you will be strengthening your ability to pull back from the anxious thoughts that steal you away from the safety and security of where you are. Try to get into a regular practice each day, for however long you can – two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes – it doesn’t matter. There’s no right amount, but the longer the better. The main thing is to keep doing it. The brain strengthens and rewires with experience, and this is an experience that is so strengthening and healthy, your brain will love for it.

   Try: ‘Right now, I’m here and I’m safe. I see the sky. I feel the breeze against my skin. I hear my footsteps’

2. Be patient. Don’t be in a hurry to change your thoughts and feelings.

   Thoughts and feelings will come, they will stay, and then they will go. No thought or feeling stays forever. Be patient and know that whatever you are feeling, or whatever you are thinking, it will pass.

   Experiment with being fully present, without needing to push away any thoughts or feelings. There is no anxious feeling and no anxious thought that is stronger than you. However big they feel, you will always be stronger and more resilient. Be patient. Be open. Be curious. See what wisdom lies at the end of your anxious thoughts and feelings if you stay with them, rather than fight them. Let them stay for long enough to realise that you have no need for them today.

    Try: ‘An anxious thought. That’s okay – you’ll leave when you’re ready.’

3. Be an observer. Watch your thoughts and feelings without engaging with them.

   Anxiety has a way of drawing you in and making you engage with every anxious thought that comes in thinking distance of you. It’s exhausting! Experiment with standing back and watching your thoughts as an observer, knowing that when they are ready, they will pass. Sometimes we need to engage with thoughts and feelings, and sometimes we need to stand back and wait for them move on. Try imagining your thoughts and feelings as a bubble, and then watch them float by.

   Experiment with letting them be, without needing to change them, understand them, or talk yourself out of them. Imagine them hovering in the air around you, without becoming a part of you. Just let them be, without holding on too tightly. When they are ready to go, let them go. Think of it like this – rather than standing in the middle of a thunderstorm, trying to change the direction of the wind, imagine yourself watching that storm through a window, knowing that it will pass.

   Try: ‘There’s a thought about what might happen if it rains on the holiday. Look at that. Didn’t know that was there.’

   ‘A feeling about going to the interview. Interesting.’

4. Trust your anxiety. Know that it won’t hurt you.

   There are a lot of reasons anxiety feels so awful. Two of the big ones are because it comes with a bunch of ‘unknowns’, and because the physical feelings don’t make sense. A curious, strong, thoughtful mind will try to put these feelings and thoughts in context, because the idea that they are free-floating and not attached to anything feels even worse. You might find yourself wondering if your physical symptoms are a sign of something more serious. You might wonder if that ‘bad feeling’ means something bad is actually going to happen. You might worry about the worry (this is common with anxiety) – what’s driving it, how to you stop it.  that your anxiety isn’t a sign of something bigger. This is hard to do but the more you practice it, the stronger you will be at calming your anxious thoughts and not believing the messages they contact. Anxiety is there as a warning, not a prediction. Feel the security and safety of what that means for you.

   Try: ‘My heart feels as though it is pounding through my chest. This is anxiety. It’s not a symptom of something bigger. I’m safe.’

5. Trust yourself. You are strong. You are resourceful. You will cope. You always have.

   Trust that whatever happens, you can deal with it – because you can, you absolutely can. This might not feel real for you at first, and that’s okay. Go with it and see what the experience has to give you. This is a learning process and it will take time. Underlying all worry, anxiety and stress is fear that we won’t be able to cope. Fear of failure, for example isn’t fear of the failure but fear that you won’t cope with the failure. Ditto for rejection, making a wrong decision – anything. You will cope. You’ve proven it over and over. See what happens when you move towards trusting that. If it doesn’t feel real, pretend until it does. From the outside it will look the same anyway.

   Try: ‘Whatever happens, I will cope. I always have.’ 

6. Meet your anxiety where it is, without needing you or it to be different.

   It’s paradoxical, but sometimes, the more we try to change something the more energy we give it, and the more it stays the same. (Keep telling yourself not to think of pink gorillas. Try really hard not to think of them. Keep telling yourself to stop thinking of pink gorillas. See how that works?) Anxious thoughts take up a lot of precious head space. They draw on our feelings, focus, thoughts and imagination. The more we try to make sense of them and control them, the more they feed into anxiety. Instead, experiment with being with your anxiety as it is, without needing to change it. Acceptance doesn’t make a feeling stronger or more enduring. It stops giving it energy.

   What you focus on is what becomes powerful. The more you focus on something, the more it flourishes and expands.Try to be with your anxiety without pushing against it. Don’t force it to go or to be different than it is. This will let you understand your anxiety more, which will bring it out of the dark and into a space in which you can deal with it.

   This isn’t easy, but it’s powerful. Try it in little bits and work up from there. Start with letting your feelings be as they are for two minutes, or however long feels okay for you. Sit with them, without needing them to be different. Then if you want to, after that you can give them your attention and try to turn them into something else. When you can, let them be as they are again. See how this feels, then when you’re ready, work up to longer.

   Try: ‘I am having a worried thought. My hands are clammy. My mouth is dry. This is anxiety]. And that’s okay.’

7. Clear your filter.

   Messages and experiences from the past have a way of changing the filter through which we look at the rest of the world. This is the way it works for all of us – anxiety or no anxiety.

   Try to approach experiences and moments as though you are experiencing them for the first time. Even if you have been in many similar situations before, none of them will be exactly like this one. Notice the differences between what is and what has been. With every experience, you are changed somehow – wiser, braver, stronger, more capable, sometimes more anxious, more worried, more fearful. Be open to the new possibilities that can come from this new experience, because that’s what it is – a new experience.

   For example, if you have had a painful breakup, there might be a tendency to hold back from loving wholeheartedly again. New people and new relationships might feel risky. This is completely understandable, and staying away is a move that will keep you safe, but it will close down the possibilities and promise that are waiting for you to find them. Growth happens when we open ourselves up to ‘what is’, rather than letting new experiences be coloured by ‘what has been’.

   Try: ‘This is a brand new experience. I’m open to discovering what will unfold for me here.’

   ‘This reminds me of all the times I’ve had to meet new people. These people are different. I’m different. This experience is different.’

8. Surrender. Let go of the need for certainty, even if it’s just for a moment.

   The future is always uncertain, so anxiety has a pretty easy time of causing a stir. Not everything will go to plan and that’s okay, but the more we try to control things, the more we tend to realise how little control we have. This will feel uncomfortable at first, so start with surrendering to the uncertainty for a small amount of time. Experiment with letting go of needing to control the moment, the future, the past, or the people around you. The more you are able to lean in to your uncertainty and tolerate it, the less power it will have over you.

   Try: ‘I don’t know what will happen if I have to change plans. And that’s okay.’

And finally …

Think of these strategies like drops in a bucket. The first time you try them, you might not notice much. Same with the second time, and the third time. Eventually though, the more you experiment with them and the more you use them, the more capacity you will have to harness the strength of your wild and beautiful mind and make it work more in your favour. You will learn that you will always have what it takes and that anxiety is a feeling that comes and then it will go, just like a bad weather day. You’re a fighter – you’ve been fighting anxiety and winning for a while now. You’re strong, brave and resilient and you have everything you need inside you to deal with anything that might stand in your way.