Grit Won’t Fix It. But Have You Tried a Bracelet?
What do you get when you mix white silicone, pink ink, and an ADHD brain that loves confetti ideas? Something WAY cooler than a business card. Three hundred silicone bracelets landed on my doorstep this week. Each one stamped with my website and two undeniable truths: BRAIN’S JOB ≠ HAPPINESS THOUGHTS & FEELINGS ≠ FACTS And yes, I’ll be stacking them up my arm like I’m at a Taylor Swift concert, handing them out like friendship bracelets. Ridiculous? Absolutely. Strategic? More than you’d think. Resilience doesn’t come from chasing KPIs, RVUs, or whatever alphabet soup of metrics we’re supposed to worship this week. And it sure doesn’t come from convincing ourselves that someday—when life finally “calms down”—we’ll finally do something kind for ourselves. Spoiler: it never calms down. Resilience shows up when our fried nervous systems get yanked out of survival mode and reminded that joy is legal. That silliness counts. That play is allowed. Our brains aren’t built to care about our happiness. Their job is scanning for danger and keeping us alive. Which means those intrusive, looping thoughts? They’re not truth. They’re not facts. They’re just noise. A nervous system in overdrive can’t tell the difference between A TIGER IS ATTACKING MY FACE and MY GAS LIGHT IS ON. That’s where the bracelet comes in. Every time we glance down and see that band, it interrupts the loop. It reminds us: This thought isn’t truth. It cues our nervous systems: We’re safe enough to breathe. To laugh. To play. And the science backs it: So no, it’s not “just” a bracelet. It’s a strategy disguised as silly. My work isn’t about giving people more rules to follow. It’s about helping smart, exhausted humans remember: survival isn’t joy. Thoughts aren’t truth. We can outgame the brain.That’s why I ordered 300 bracelets. Not as swag. As a reminder that sometimes resilience is nothing more than a ferocious commitment to being joyful.
