So, gender's a big issue right now, huh? Amirite? Yep, hold onto your hats. I'm going there.

First, the stuff I remember from sociology class back in the day.

• Sex is the biological stuff you were born with. It's the physical definition that decides things like how you pee and your tolerance for different medications. This stuff is important by the way. However you self-identify, you still need to have somewhere on your record that you were born a particular sex so that meds don't kill you. Anti-depressants and anti-psychotic meds are an example. Also, alcohol is metabolised differently depending on the sex you were born. Women have less alcohol dehydrogenase - the enzyme responsible for the breakdown of alcohol. So if you transition from female to male, you're still likely to get liver damage if you drink the same volumes as someone who was born male. Sex is usually, but not always, a binary arrangement. You're male or female. When this is not the case (about one time in every...

Don't keep it real. Let life move through you in dynamic ways. 

• What could you focus on today?
• What if your ego just stopped mattering for a day? 
• What if you did something that makes you nervous because you're not strong there?
• What if, for the next five minutes, you just sit in gratitude for the fact that you are alive and breathing?
• Breathe. Be. You are good enough. Now is all that matters right now, and right now, you are everything you need to be. 

I'd planned to write something very different today, but when this news appeared in my FB feed, creating a link between TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) and dementia, I knew it was important to blog about it.

This issue is important so let's get going...

Before I share my thoughts on this, I'm not a doctor. Do your own research. This is not medical advice. This is what I've learnt from my own research and experience. Ask Google to help. There's been a LOT of research and I didn't want to link away from my site to bajillion research docs, so if you're interested in the specifics you can search. What's here is a summary of the key points.

That being said, let's dive into this subject because if you are, or have been, involved in anything from boxing to team sports you need to understand that while the exercise component of that may have done your body good, the constant blows to the head - particularly in the case of things like boxing, and headers in football (soccer) - may...

Before I announce the winner of the very first Indiepreneur Academy Commenter of Note Award I'd like to challenge you all. I'm doing a 14 day challenge, starting today, to complete a course I started a while back that features an exclusive interview I did with the legendary Brendon Burchard. 

In fact, I think it would be pretty cool if I gave that course away to the next Commenter of Note. There's no limit to the number of times you can win this award, by the way, so if this blog inspires you... get commenting! I also pay attention to people sharing the blog and posting about it on social media. Let's get this new community BUZZING! 

Anyway, if you'd like to challenge yourself to do something epic over the next 14 days, too, start now! Let me know in the comments what you chose to complete in the next two weeks.

And The Winner Is...

Linda Mae Vorthman! Congratulations on being our first winner! 

Listen. The Tide Pod 'challenge' and various other challenges, ranging from dangerous foods to prophylactic snorting are quite clearly barking mad, but they're viral and mind viruses have a way of switching off logic. 

Couple of things about this...

Stop blaming Millennials for the Tide Pod thing. Clearly you can't pin THIS one on them. For some reason everything utterly daft on the internet gets blamed on Millennials/Gen Y but it seems to be Gen Z behind this.

By the way... Gen X here. We're a tiny little cohort nobody notices, so we snuck under the radar with our nonsense (although you use our aceeeeed smiley every day.  You're welcome). 

Second... this is what happens with hormones. People crave drama and intense emotion and connection. When I was a teenager that meant raves, ecstasy and acid. Not for me, I hasten to add. Yes to the raves. Even organised a few. No to the drugs. But I was one of the only people I knew who didn't partake in the...

When you came into this world, all shiny and new, and people proclaimed about the miracle of your creation, do you truly believe that your existence on this planet was destined to be living in a cage 9-5, hitting buttons for treats like a lab rat?

I don't think so. If you haven't watched Office Space yet, please do. It will explain everything that's wrong with cubicle life. If you have, the likelihood is that you too obsess over the photocopier or stapler, or want to trip over the annoying person who tells you off for having 'a case of the Mondays'. 

So, how do you break free and escape the cubicle? Here are some tips:

1. Work out how much it matters that you do. Are you still at the 'I could do a little side hustle for a couple of hours a week and eventually move out of this cubicle' stage, or have you progressed to the 'I don't care what it takes. I will borrow money, sell my car, and go without shoes to leave this low paying soul-sucking dump' stage? If the latter,...

Listen, I'm not some great basketball expert but I'm a total word nerd, and I know poetry when I witness it. Whether it's on the page, on the stage or on a basketball court, when the scansion's on fleek and doesn't skip a beat, you've got to bear witness. 

So, here's the scoop on the LeBron/Shakespeare thang. Watch the guy play. Seriously. I'll wait. Audio starts a few seconds in. If you're not a basketball fan, you can get a sense of the guy within the first minute of watching him, so just do that and I'll get on to how this helps you even if you've never seen basketball in your life. Bear with me on this. What I'm about to say will make so much more sense when you see this poetry in motion... 

The LeBronspeare Business Model

What LeBron and Shakespeare have in common is four-fold:

• Standing on the shoulders of giants
• Having a sense of their own greatness, but also raising those around them
• Using the GOOD aspects of ego, but coming primarily from their 'higher selves'
• ...

Everything has a marketing department. If you're a solopreneur, it's you. If you're the Catholic Church, it's The Vatican. Catholicism is the 'product' and the marketing department for that is The Vatican. It's kind of like 'Head Office' or 'Corporate'. Then, the churches are sort of like affiliate marketers. They follow the rules set by Corporate and teach people the message of Catholicism.

The thing is that the marketing department at Corporate has done really well with fear marketing when it's come to lead generation. Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith has said that fear pushes you until a vision pulls you. Catholicism is certainly not short of visions, but most people are not there yet. They've not had a powerful enough connection with God to be pulled towards a spiritual vision, but they'll fill pews on a Sunday if it keeps them out of Hell. They'll confess their sins if it saves them from the eternal fires of damnation. They'll throw notes on a plate to save...

Automation has been a freaking godsend on Twitter over the years, but it's going away now. Recent political scandals involving data scraping and bots have thrown into sharp relief the extent to which misuse of automation can adversely affect culture. Given the drop in Facebook's value when the Cambridge Analytica story broke, it makes sense that Twitter would want to protect itself from future issues around the use of non-human interaction to shift what trends and, ultimately, shift opinion in a way that is undemocratic. 

Goodbye Marketers!

So, it's goodbye to marketers then? Not as such. As I've always said, ethical influence is the bee's knees, the bee's butt, and every other part of the bee's anatomy. It's unethical influence that's messing things up on social media. 

Think of it like a party. It's your 21st birthday and your parents are going out of town for the night. They're letting you use their house for your party. If you invite all your friends, they're...