The lotus-eaters are among us.

In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus and his men land on an island where the natives offer them the sweet lotus fruit to eat.

The men who taste it are immersed in pleasure and lose all desire to return home.

They forget their mission, their families, and everything that once mattered.

They want only to lie around in a pleasant fog, eating more lotus fruit, forever.

Sound like anything we know from the current day?

The insidious part about all this wonderful tech, binge-watching Netcraps and YouBoobs, mindless gaming, and other digital pleasures, is how subtly the numbness takes hold.

I hear people say this all the time, and it makes me want to cry inside:

How can you be bored? I'm never bored.

Well done, bozo, you might not be bored, but you've now replaced your ability to sit in a room mindfully with mindless escape.

People are never bored, but they aren't deeply fulfilled either.

The irony is that people are more quick to anger than ever, more depressed than ever, and guess what?

We're more bored than ever.

The very things we invented to cure boredom make us feel it even more strongly when we aren't hooked into them.

But here lies an opportunity for those of us willing to forego some of this endless, sparkly consumption…

While most people increasingly succumb to these mind-numbing digital worlds, you can do what few do.

You can see LACK of consumption as a doorway to a new kind of heaven.

A heaven in which you have the energy and focus again to create marvellous things that people fall in love with.

Art, brands, products, books, films and other creations.

Most people are lost and numb.

You can take advantage of this with relative ease.

Reducing your dopamine-smashing escapes by just 10% makes a huge difference.

This means saying no to more lotus fruit. It means sitting with feelings of boredom rather than immediately numbing them.

A meaningful life isn't always about pure pleasure, especially if you plan to create new things regularly.

The heat from friction is inevitable in building something that matters.

Most people avoid this because it doesn't feel good in the moment.

But you're not most people. You understand that the lotus-eaters traded their purpose for temporary comfort.

Their mission diminished with each bite.

You can choose differently.

My Online Writing Alchemy course will show you how to channel that creative energy into online writing that connects, builds influence, and creates opportunities that will compound over time.

While others scroll, you'll build something that lasts.

Learn more and get the course here.

Alex