None Of This Is Normal, And That's Better News Than You Might Think

Here's a new book that explains why!

Hi! This is Everything Is Amazing.

There’s a popular meme that’s been haunting me for the last few years:

I have no idea who invented it, or drew the original it’s adapted from, or how long it’s actually been going. But as a Brit enduringly baffled by Brexit or what’s happening with international politics, when I see it, I think: “yeah - wow, every year since 2016, right?”

You’ve probably gathered by now from my idiot-dog-with-a-bone enthusiasm that I very much don’t believe our world is spiralling out of control - but this meme still gets to me, with its quietly whispered OH FOR PITY’S SAKE WHAT NOW, LOOK, PLEASE, CAN WE ALL JUST TRY BEING MORE NORMAL FOR A CHANGE?

Then I remember my archaeological training, and the history lessons that went with it.

Let’s imagine you’re an inhabitant of London in the year 1667.

Two years ago, the profound horror of the Great Plague was stalking the streets, taking at least one-sixth of your fellow Londoners with it.

Then, late last year, a small fire in a bakery in Pudding Lane got out of control, quickly leaping from house to house until it had burned down half of the old city, destroying St. Paul’s Cathedral along the way…

And now (“OH COME ON!”), in mid-1667, you’re hearing that the Dutch fleet has just sailed up the Thames, plundering and sinking English ships as it went, until it captured and towed away the jewel of the English navy, the flagship HMS Royal Charles.

On June 12th, in his not-yet-famous diary, Samuel Pepys writes:

“And, the truth is, I do fear so much that the whole kingdom is undone.”

A month later, he concludes:

"…in all things, in wisdom, courage, force, knowledge of our own streams, and success, the Dutch have the best of us, and do end the war with victory on their side".

It’s an incredibly humiliating turn of events, and it’s left England dangerously undermined in military power and prestige - suddenly making your country’s place in European politics feel alarmingly precarious.

As a Londoner, how would you be approaching the new year?

I reckon most of history is like this, if you looked hard enough at it.

But hey, that’s way too much to think about. What about now? What about all this? And to hell with the big stuff - what about down here, at ground level?

If you’re already feeling like 2026 is too much to handle, and you can’t quite muster the enthusiasm to tackle the rest of this year in the way you really wanted to - I think I have the perfect book for you.

It was out yesterday in the States, and it’s out tomorrow in the UK - and it’s by my friend Mr Steve Kamb, who is now writing on Substack here.

For the last five years, Steve has thrown himself into the philosophy, psychology and behavioural science of navigating failure and change, and he’s drawn on his 17 years of experience helping frantically over-busy people transform their health at Nerd Fitness (which he founded in 2009), to work out some good ways we can all get ourselves un-stuck.

It’s aimed primarily at anyone who has found themselves temporarily flattened by something in their lives - some chaotic wider event or cruel twist of personal fate that’s totally knocked the stuffing out of them. This is very much a practical book about how to get yourself up and moving again, rediscovering your energy and excitement as you go.

But it’s also a book about what you’re moving forward towards - and this is why I’ve got Steve’s permission to publish the following excerpt from its third chapter.

Take it away, Steve:

“In order for us to take our next step, we need a new life skill. One that might change your life like it did mine.

Enter ‘acceptance’.

As a recovering overachiever, I used to believe that acceptance is a sign of weakness. I thought it meant giving up all ambition, letting myself off the hook, and enabling lazy behaviour. So I made things worse instead: I set high standards and remained unbelievably critical of myself, always felt behind, and never felt ‘enough’. I know. Super fun!

Fortunately, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Acceptance is the most important skill that helped me navigate these last few years.

Instead of lamenting about life not going a certain way, or complaining that things didn’t work out the way I expected, acceptance taught me to see things for how they actually are.

Depending on when you read this, we might be in the middle of yet another once-in-a-lifetime, world-changing event that nobody saw coming. Personally, at the time of this writing, I could point to ten things that have me concerned.

I just paused to gesture wildly in every direction, so feel free to do the same.

The only truth is that we will never be able to accurately predict what life will throw at us next week, let alone next month or next year.

Which leaves us with two choices.

We can spend all day raging at the universe when things don’t go the way they should, or we can get to work accepting things for how they are now. We can get mad at ourselves for magically developing the skills to plan better, or we can learn to prepare for whatever life throws at us and say, “Okay, what’s next?”

We’ll start with the most common problem when it comes to acceptance, and then get into what to do about it.

The “Back to Normal” Fallacy: There Is No Normal

We have a normal morning routine. We have a normal work-week. We have a normal way of eating. We have a normal workout schedule.

When we think of “normal,” what we really mean is “predictable.” Knowable. Expected. Planned.

But then life happens.

Parents and caretakers know all too well that when a routine is thrown out the window, chaos reigns supreme. We feel like we’re caught in a storm, getting tossed around, desperately wanting for things to get “back to normal.”

A “normal” is where we have some semblance of control over our lives again. Because not being in control is uncomfortable.

The problem, of course, is that our lives aren’t completely our own. We have other complications like families or babies or dogs that “accidentally” ate the cat’s poop and then barfed on the carpet in the middle of the night.

For many of us, “normal” isn’t coming back any time soon. And we’re not doing ourselves any favors by waiting for life to be any different than it is right now.

The longer we wait for “back to normal,” the more we reinforce an “all or nothing” mindset. Worse, when we tell ourselves that we can only make progress when things are normal, we’re training ourselves to give up as soon as things get busy again.

Right now, “busy” is our new normal.

“Normal” is not synonymous with “predictable”.

If 80% of our days are spent dealing with unpredictable schedules with kids or work that’s chaotic, that’s the actual normal part!

The real unlocks start to happen once we embrace and accept the fact that right now, today, with all its messiness, is normal.”

I find this reframe incredibly helpful - and my only complaint is that I wasn’t aware of it five years ago, when I started growing this newsletter, because Steve hadn’t written this book yet.

(Thanks, Steve! Some friend you are.)

Abandoning this weird, human idea of “normal” is still monumentally tricky. It can come with managing a lot of grief and anger over a previous life you’re not returning to - and there’s a chapter of Steve’s book that looks at our incredible friend Jodi Ettenberg, who has had to manage some heartbreakingly cruel challenges regarding her health in recent years.

There’s also the ever-present fear of the unknown, and the exhausting stress of self-reinvention, including when you think you’ve finally “got somewhere” at last…

But it’s also hugely liberating, to realise that actually, this moment is actually nothing like the previous one, that everything is constantly in flux and always will be, that yes it really is possible for everything to be uncertain like this and for us to still stay upright (because *points at the whole of human history*) - and it’s also possible for us to take some of the stuff that’s already working and move forward with it, to make something better than anything that ever existed before.

(Was that old “normal” holding us back in some way? Maybe? Well - I guess there’s only one way of finding out!)

How To Try Again is such a great book - and if you’re feeling like your life is in need of the kind of shake-up that leaves you excited and re-energised for what’s next, I can’t recommend it to you enough.

Grab your copy by clicking below:

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Thanks, Steve!