Do you daydream about quitting your job and traveling around the world? What about taking it a step further and building a location independent career, so you can live and work wherever you want to?

I can remember the first time someone labelled me a “digital nomad” on a major blog… Two-and-a-half years ago these were the words of Corbett Barr—back when his site was still called Free Pursuits. Corbett listed me among the top 10 Digital Nomads to Learn From, alongside Tim Ferriss and Rolf Potts—two truly incredible writers who inspired me to follow my own path in life—as well as huge A-list bloggers Chris Brogan and Mike Elgan, and big names in the travel blogosphere including Christine Gilbert from Almost Fearless and Chris Guillebeau of Art of Nonconformity fame.

I wasn’t quite sure what I thought of the label at first, although I was immensely honored to be among such incredible company. I was excited! Reading Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek and Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding had been a turning point in my life—those two books opened my eyes to whole new possibilities and put a fire under my ass to create a life of my own design, and try my hardest to enjoy every moment of it.

Not long after in late 2009, Jonathan Mead used me as a case study in his manifesto The Zero Hour Workweek, which played off of the ideas in Tim’s book, but took them even further to encourage people to build businesses that basically allow them to get paid to be themselves. Soon I was being interviewed about my live-and-work-anywhere lifestyle, and people started calling my story inspiring, and asking me about my travel experiences and advice for overcoming travel obstacles.

Sometimes I’m a bit embarrassed by the buzzwords (digital nomad, location independent… and lifestyle design… there’s another one!) but eventually I embraced the title Corbett had bestowed upon me. Who’d have known that just two years later I’d be running a business course called Digital Nomad Academy with the help of Corbett himself and several other hugely successful remote-control entrepreneurs I look up to!

Like many people, sometimes I feel like the small (but growing) online niche we’re in is a bit too cliquey, too markety, and sometimes people get big egos, or they feel under pressure to maintain the appearance like they’ve got everything figured out and their lives are just so cool.

I know, because I’ve been there… but I’ll be the first to tell you, nobody has it all figured out. I’ve been broke as a joke many times along my journey, I’ve been stuck up a creek with no paddle many times on my travels, I’ve experienced immense business failures, I’ve been stabbed in the back, I’ve been discouraged. But, this is an incredible life we’ve all been given, and I’m grateful for the amazing adventures and obstacles I’ve experienced. I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything.

I’m even more thankful for the people around me who have helped fuel this adventure. It has its ups and downs for sure—I was defrauded and went through several down months. I wasn’t confident everything might not collapse at times. I took a break from blogging and let some of my friends use this platform to share their writing and their projects with you (I see no point writing unless I actually have something to say, but once I conquer the challenges laid out in front of me, maybe then I’ll have something of real value to share about them).

But despite the challenges of living an unconventional life, I have no plans to quit traveling, meeting new people, and having new experiences anytime soon, to stop experimenting with my own businesses, to ever go back to a 9-to-5 if I can avoid it, to move back home, or to stop blogging about this weird journey. Living life your own way, you will definitely be confronted with setbacks, and the journey will be more challenging than living according to someone else’s prescribed path. But it is absolutely, 100% worthwhile. 

My girlfriend and I are fortunate to live for now in one of the most beautiful regions in the world, in a three-story townhouse surrounded by forests and beautiful limestone mountains, all for a fraction of what it would cost back in California.

Emily and I recently spent a week in Singapore, and it was the most fun I’ve had in months! We were trying to decide what country to visit for a renewed visa and I decided I really wanted to visit old friends there. She teases me that I can’t travel anywhere unless I know someone there, and when I thought about it, I realized it’s not far from the truth.

Undoubtedly when most people think about travel, they tend to think of places, monuments and landmarks like the Acropolis of Athens, the Roman Colosseum, the Eiffel Tower, London’s Big Ben, Bangkok’s reclining Buddha, Krabi’s mountaintop Buddhist temple, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. Each of these are fantastic places I’ve been able to see on my travels. But what really has made my travels remarkable are the people I have met and the experiences I’ve shared with them.

I became very close with my French professor in high school, who was also a huge influence on me (as far as my interest in travel, culture, art, music and languages). The very first time I traveled outside the U.S. was a trip with some classmates to France, and what made it special was the wonderful family I lived with for a week on the Mediterranean coast in Cannes, as well as the time I spent with Mssr. Hodgins and my classmates wandering around Paris.

London is probably one of my top three favorite cities in the world to visit. Although I really enjoy wandering around on foot through London and sightseeing, it wasn’t the London Eye or the Houses of Parliament that kept me coming back… it was because I first traveled there on my own to visit my cousin Ian, who spent a year as an exchange student there, and it was the fun crowd of college students I got to know—James, the Toms, Sarah, Dav, Elaine, and many more—when I visited him for two weeks that made my experience so special.

I traveled to Spain for a three-week Christmas and New Year holiday with my friends Paul, Tim, and Ryan. Barcelona was a stunning city with great food, equaled by the gorgeous views and historical Old Town on Ibiza (and it’s nightlife), but what really made the trip special were the incredible friends we made—Meye and Barbara, two amazing women who took it upon themselves to show us all the best restaurants and pubs in town, introduced us to friends, showed us the parades and the local Catalans celebrations, and invited us into their homes for Christmas dinner!

Greece, Turkey, and Italy are infused with history, vibrant culture, and amazing sights (especially for someone who studied history at university) but what made my travels there special were the memories and time I spent bonding with family.

When I first arrived in Thailand, it was two Thai friends I met—Poon and Om—who spent three days driving me all around Phuket on their motorbike showing me the sights.

Bangkok is a huge metropolis with great nightlife, great food, a big flag on the backpacker trail. But what made it so much fun for me was the people. I got caught up there for a year and a half eating cheap street food all the time with Migration Mark, Joel, Ryan, May, Nalin, Bank, and Aum, going out partying, and running fun monthly mixer events and volunteering with Dwight Turner, Christina, Craig Gonzales, and others. I remember the first day Sean Ogle landed in Asia, and we went with my sister and my friends Chris, Ryan, and Nick to explore the ancient ruins and Buddhas at Ayutthaya, coworking with David Walsh and Derek Johanson, planning a TEDx conference with Rob, Greg, Andrew, Chris, Karla, Fluke, and more.

Travel puts me face-to-face with friends—many friends I’ve known for many years from school or work, but also many who I’ve met and become friends with through running my business online.

In Bangkok, mostly through Twitter and the Bangkok Tweetups that Dwight and I would put on, I also was able to meet in person with awesome bloggers Dan Andrews, Adam Baker, Benny “the Irish Polyglot” Lewis, Gary Arndt, Matt Goult, Jodi Ettenberg, Jonny Gibaud, Marc Gold, Ross Hill, Kevin Revolinski, Wes Nations, Ryan Martin, Mark Powers, and many more.

Warning: I’ve linked to a lot of people in this post! But I want to share each and every one of them with you (I’m definitely missing more than a few, too) not to gloat… not because I’m some celebrity, but because I’ve been blessed to meet so many truly cool people from around the world—each of them working on their own unique, interesting things—and each of them has at some point or another in my travels made a profound impact on my journey in their own small way. Because of that, I do encourage you to check out each and every one of these folks and discover how they’re making the world a more interesting place. I owe it to them to share what they’re doing.

In Bali I met Kyle and Bessie Crum doing yoga in the rice paddies, Stuart McDonald eating ribs at Naughty Nuri’s, Jez Tryner for a drink, and spent time with my friends Jerm and Vie at their lovely condo.

In Kuala Lumpur I met Nomadic Matt Kepnes while wandering around hostels, Dwight and Mark and I met our travel buddy Agnes (who drove us at lightning speed at 11pm one night to see the cozy little town of Melaka, on a whim!) through Couchsurfing, and I met Hani Khaursar, Vishen Lakhiani, Brian Wong and others on a subsequent trip when I spoke at a conference.

Phnom Penh has been home to my two friends Brittany Sims and Caron Margarete who, along with some of Cambodia’s footballers showed me the town and made me feel right at home.

Here in Krabi, I spent considerable time climbing and beach partying with my friends Alicia, James, Vanessa, Peter, Jane & Toto, and I finally met in person with my blogger buddies Carlos Miceli, Colin Wright, Adventurous Kate McCulley, Backpacking Matt Kyhnn, and Shannon O’Donnell, who’ve all stopped by on their travels.

When I traveled back to the States this year, in Austin, I met up with Markus & Ashley, Nick Reese, Jenny Blake, Ridiculously Extraordinary Karol Gadja, Where is Jenny Leonard, Andy Drish, Andrew Norcross, Thursday Bram, Technomads Chris & Cherie, and many other good folks for a week of awesomeness while South by Southwest was on.

The San Francisco Bay Area is home to a host of inspiring folks like Ramit Sethi, Corbett Barr, Amber Zuckswert, Charlie Hoehn, Lorna Li, and serial entrepreneur Rajesh Setty (and I also had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Chris Ducker there, who usually plays an Englishman in the Philippines).

Los Angeles is or has been the stomping grounds of my very good friend Ryan, entrepreneur Jun Loayza, blogger Jonathan Mead, dating coach Jordan Harbinger, my friends Dariane Nabor, Laurenne Sala, and many other cool peoples.

In past trips to Singapore, I’ve met other cool nerds (like myself) Adrianna Tan, Ziqi Koey (who also just visited us here in Krabi!), Guyi Shen, and many more.

This trip, Emily and I had an incredibly fun time together…  we did all the touristy stuff: we walked all around the city on foot, stayed on the beautiful riverfront in Boat Quay, gorged ourselves on amazing delicious food from all around Southeast Asia and beyond, we hung out at the marina by night and took in all the city lights, wandered all around the big fancy new Marina Bay Sands resort and casino, went to a Salvador Dalí exhibit, to the cinema, briefly to a concert hall, and much more. But our time together there also reminded me that one of my biggest motivators is the people I get to share it with.

It was seeing my friend and singer Shimona Kee for her birthday and enjoying the hip young local music scene, having a lovely homemade dinner with Michelle at her impressive 16th-floor apartment, having a drink, a shisha and a catchup with my old friends John Berns and Martin, and getting to meet Derek Sivers in person (the very down-to-earth, engaging, but brilliant and wildly successful gentleman who founded CDBaby) to chat about travels, businesses, failures, and planting multiple flags (BTW you absolutely must watch this fascinating, short 8-part video series by Sivers). Getting to interact with, have fun with, learn from, and learn about all these fascinating people that are all doing their own interesting things—that’s what makes travel so much fun for me.

Running my business online has meant I’ve built friendships with people all around the world. Interacting with people through Twitter alone has connected me to dozens and dozens of new people that I’ve actually become real friends and done business with.

The point is, I’m just an average dude—but because of the way I choose to live my life, the way I run my business, and the way I reach out to connect with other people out there, I’ve had an extraordinary experience making new friends all around the world. The tools I’ve used to build an international network of friends and colleagues are also available to you.

Being location-independent, running a business online, and being on the move—living my life this way has opened many doors to people and experiences I wouldn’t have back in my “normal” life, that I would have never dreamed I’d have. My passion and what drives my journey is the interesting people I meet… making new friends and having fun new experiences with them, learning from them, and growing with them. Your interests, what drives you, and the life you want to have may look entirely different to mine, but whatever they are, there are millions of people you can connect with out there in this small little world of ours. The amazing journey I have had, like many others, is only an example of what anyone could do. You only need to start opening doors.

What journey are you on? What are the people, places, and experiences that have meant the most to you along your path?

If you found this interesting, and if you’re anything like me, click here to get some incredibly awesome (and completely free) stuff to add to your toolbox and learn more about my philosophy. You won’t regret it→

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Setbacks, and What Motivates Me to Keep Exploring & Experimenting

###

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Maintaining relationships as a permanent traveler and entrepreneur has it’s challenges. I’ve been puzzled as to how to broach this topic here, but I recently parted ways with my (now ex-) girlfriend.

Nikki was (and always will be) a stunning, inspiring, ambitious woman. We met in Bangkok, she had built her own successful business, we saw four countries together in the last eight months alone, and together we got a beach house on beautiful Koh Phangan island in the south of Thailand. In many ways, we were the perfect travel couple. I thought I’d found the love of my life. So it’s hard to share with the whole world when you fuck something that good up.

Maybe we rushed into things. Maybe our hopes were too high. Maybe we were too alike—both A-type, hard-headed entrepreneurs, both accustomed to the ever-changing permanent travel lifestyle, and both very stubborn. We both had outside stresses, and moving from a busy city with literally hundreds of friends we could go out with nearly every day of the week, to sharing a home together for the first time, together nearly 24/7, on a small island where we didn’t know anyone, we had a few fights that escalated from bad to worse, and eventually I left Koh Phangan.

In retrospect, I don’t even remember what our arguments were about. Average disagreements, minor hurt feelings, money worries, but they would spiral out of control as we provoked each other to higher and higher stakes back and forth. Occasional fights are inevitable in long-term relationships. But perhaps we hadn’t had enough time to fully figure each other out, or maybe we both still need to learn how to handle those misunderstandings and disagreements properly with a more mature discourse.

Over the course of several months I had adjusted my business and scaled back on a lot of the projects I had been doing on my own (to clarify, she didn’t ask me to do this) to help her expand her magazine online and across Asia further. She had wanted me to potentially partner with her more officially on it, and we’d had plans to travel to South America in 2011 and do similar business there…

So when we went our separate ways, not only did I walk away from a girl that meant a tremendous amount to me, but I also became a homeless “digital drifter” again, and reverted back to solo entrepreneur. Because I had dropped a few big clients and discontinued some of the services I had been providing over the months, it’s put me at a crossroads in my business: what direction do I go? What opportunities do I get back into? Do I search for new clients or reinvent things and do something entirely new?

Not being in a committed relationship also puts me back in a position where I could almost go anywhere in the world, which is actually scary as hell. The decisions are paralyzing.

We’ve all had experiences like these—it was actually another breakup over three years ago that pushed me to move overseas—and I’ve had countless emails from readers in similar situations, who also experienced a breakup, or some other big life change.

But these big changes that we experience—losing someone you love (through a breakup, the death of someone you care about, or otherwise), having your career or your business thrown in disarray, experiencing a huge change in your living situation before you’re ready for it, trouble in your family, misunderstandings with your friends, and many other similar things—they can also bring out massive fears that—if you don’t overcome them—will put you in a rut for months or years, and may destroy you.

We may feel fear because of an experience that has happened in the past which triggers fear in the present. We might feel fear of uncertainty, or fear of the unknown. Or, we may even be frightened of doing what we’ve always wanted to do with our lives—a kind of nervous excitement, if you will.

[…] Fear is debilitating. It keeps us at a distance.  It stops us from moving forward.  It holds us back.

Our natural instinct when we begin to feel fear is avoidance.  Many people will go to unnatural extremes to avoid their fears, rather than dealing with their fear, and moving forward.”

–Brooke Ferguson

The Fear of Uncertainty

I am a firm believer that the only thing that holds you back from getting the things you want in this life is yourself—or, to be more precise, your fears.

Fear is a product of our evolution—it’s a survival response, a remnant from caveman days when we needed to remain alert and move our asses to avoid getting eaten by sabertooth tigers. But life in modern society is pretty cushy, and that inherent fear and anxiety response isn’t so useful anymore. At least I haven’t come across too many sabertooth tigers.

You’re never going to completely remove the fear. But you must master the fear if you want to be successful in life and attain your goals.

Most of us fear failure in some form or another. A lot of people stay in their 9-to-5 jobs because they fear the unknown—not having that paycheck to rely on, or they fear their own ability to go out and find enough paying clients to make a living. I experience that fear every month! Or you might fear that people will think your idea is stupid, that no one will buy. People will laugh at you because you choose to walk a different path—the unconventional path.

“Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.”

–Timothy Ferriss

But it’s not going to kill you to fail. Ask anyone successful how they got there, and they will undoubtedly tell you about the many, many failed ideas and failed attempts they made before they became an “overnight” success.

Failure doesn’t have the same sharp teeth and claws that it used to. If you’re trying to do big, remarkable things in business or in life, then failure is unavoidable. It’s part of the journey, part of the learning process. And in fact, failure is only going to teach you what you didn’t know already, and it will teach you lessons to apply in your next attempt at success.

One lesson that really made a huge impact on me early on, from Ramit Sethi, is that if you’re not failing at a few things each month, then you’re not trying hard enough. Ramit keeps a folder for failures, and he’s a New York Times bestselling author now.

Mountains from Molehills

Any big life change is going to feel like an insurmountable goal before you actually achieve it. The more you think about it without taking action and getting started, the more you will build it up to be a huge challenge in your head.

I remember before I finally pulled the trigger and packed my bags to live abroad in late 2008, I was scared shitless about leaving my comfortable surroundings. I thought I might end up spending a year in Asia in complete solitude. Boy did I turn out to be wrong though! I have friends now that I would never have back home—millionaires, media personalities, nightclub owners, authors, folks from all industries and from every corner of the world.

my 2nd day in Bangkok

I made it out to be a much bigger obstacle in my head than it really turned out to be. There were plenty of challenges, as I arrived in Beijing, China, just as the Bangkok airport was closed down by political demonstrations, and they wanted to turn me around and send me back to California.

But once I was moving towards my goal, once I was on the road traveling, I was surrounded by a completely new world—foreign languages I didn’t understand at all, different social norms—and it forced me to be resourceful. I had to learn and overcome the challenges, and in fact it increased the rate at which I was learning new things and becoming more resilient.

How to Royally Fuck Up a Sure Thing

Alright, so how to actually deal with the fear…

First, I want to tell you how not to deal with your fears. This is something that I’ve probably done over and over again, and one of these days I’ll have to learn that if I want a different outcome, I have to change my behavior. But I’ll share it here so hopefully you can learn a lesson from my failure.

So to go back to the breakup, a huge fear that I’ve recognized in myself is the fear that I’ll never find the kind of companionship I want—someone to share my life with. I’m not ready to settle down in one place, and I know I’m not mature enough to get hitched just yet, but I’m pretty serious when it comes to dating, and I’m looking for the right woman to join me on my unconventional journey through life—with all the ups and downs of travel and business thrown in there.

I tend to be extremely loyal when I find someone that fits—sometimes too much so. But a common fear that crops up in my relationships is that my other half isn’t as committed to the partnership.

In Nikki, I found someone who was exceptionally like-minded—she also enjoys the unleashed travel lifestyle and has the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. Very rare, but we understood each other pretty damn well. We made an incredible couple, and had a brilliantly fun time, something I’ll always be thankful for. We were almost sickeningly cute at times, I’m sure.

The huge mistake I made, though, was letting the fear take control at the first sign that something was wrong. Seth Godin calls it the lizard brain—the fight or flight tendency.

When we fought, all my biggest fears came out: that she would leave me, or maybe that I wasn’t good enough for her, and that even if we did work things out, get through the argument and come to an understanding, eventually there would come a time when I wasn’t able to keep her happy and the relationship would fall apart anyway.

So rather than fully committing myself to working things out, getting through the argument and working at it to come to an understanding, which is the mature thing I should have done, I let my past experiences dictate my behavior, and I acted out of fear. I said things I didn’t mean. And at the end, I was the douchebag who walked away from her, because I feared she would dump me, and I was desperate to avoid that pain (real or imagined).

I feared a certain outcome, so rather than working hard at it and being there the way I should have, I overreacted out of fear and prematurely severed the relationship because I feared an unknown future. When I realized what a mistake I’d made, I spent a week or two trying to persuade her back with logical reasoning. This is exactly the opposite of what you should do. There’s no reasoning with someone to love you; I’d already lost her trust.

“Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.”

–Peter Ustinov

Moral of the story: if you really want something, don’t let fear take the wheel and go into fight or flight mode. Don’t react and be a jackass when you fear an unknown outcome. Instead, stay reasonable, keep a cool head, hang in there and keep working hard, taking the steps necessary toward what you want. Because you never really know what will happen—you can’t predict the future—but a lot of people sabotage themselves, almost subconsciously, so that they don’t have to experience failure if they don’t get what they want.

This applies to relationships, but also to pretty much everything else too. Don’t do this!

Keep Your Options Open

No matter what fear you’re facing, the biggest element is that we all fear we will be ruined if we fail. Life will be over!

But that’s just not true. What you need is to figure out your options if everything goes horribly, a backup plan, if you will. A lot of times we have these fears because we don’t know what alternate options we have. So you need to spend some time and think about your options.

Tim Ferriss calls it fear-setting: you need to spend some time and think about your options if the worst case scenario happens. Try writing down exactly what would happen in the absolute worst case, if you completely and utterly fail at your goals. Then map out as many paths to recovery as you can, or alternate solutions to achieve your goal.

A few weeks after my breakup, I sat down and put together a mindmap with some of my biggest fears right now at this stage in my life: what direction to go with my business, money troubles, my fear of loneliness, and yes even the fear that I’ll never find the Mrs. Right.

Once I did this, I actually realized how many friends I had coming through to visit, how much fun was in store, I realized how many different business opportunities were already open to me, and new income streams I could start if I put in the effort, I even realized a lot of the positive things about my breakup and being on my own again. It made a huge difference in my attitude, and gave me the energy to look for new possibilities and keep pressing forward.

Once you define your worst possible outcome, and brainstorm solutions for it, you’ll see that in most cases failure will be much easier to come back from than you might fear. This should help remove a lot of the uncertainty for you in any area of your life.

Surround Yourself with Good People

I was exceptionally fortunate that I had a good friend not far from where I was: Brooke Ferguson was just a few hours away in Krabi, Thailand. I took a bus to see her, she helped me get my feet back on the ground now that I was homeless, she listened to all my braindump about what had happened, gave me lots of helpful insight, and we even got some momentum going on an exciting new project.

Several friends have actually come to visit in the last two months: Craig Gonzales, who wrote here about friendship and location independence recently, Colin Wright, Carlos Miceli, Ross Hill, Dwight Turner, Matt Goult, and others. Some were there when I needed someone to discuss my breakup and my fears with, and slowly, through many conversations, I was able to learn some important lessons and understand my mistakes a bit better.

Markus from LivingOnImpulse.com & Dwight from InSearchOfSanuk.com

Some of them were there when I just wanted to go out for drinks and a fun time. A couple joined me on the renowned rock climbing routes in Railay Beach, Krabi (which itself, like skydiving, deals with my fear of heights. Staying active, or getting involved in a new activity can be a great way to challenge yourself in new ways and overcome unique challenges that you can then also apply in other parts of your life. Like losing a toenail after four hours of climbing, and then having to climb through pitch black caves and abseil down a 100-foot limestone cliff barefoot!)

abseiling barefoot over West Railay Beach

A rare few will excel at helping guide you through your own mental process, which is exactly what Markus Urban was able to do with me when we met for a few days of food, drinks, adventure, fun, and deep conversations.

Don’t compound your fears by staying isolated from the world. Often, if you can talk things through with people who you trust, they’ll help you see new things you didn’t see on your own. Getting the support of good friends, or family, can help infuse you with the courage you need to overcome your fears. And remaining present, honest and open to old and new people around you will frequently present new opportunities that weren’t there before.

Stare Fear in the Eye

It’s likely that what you fear most is what you must do. Steve Pavlina says that whatever you fear is not really an obstacle, but a challenge that you must face:

“The reward for facing fear is that you get to be fully alive. When you turn towards your fear, you feel the breath of life blowing straight at you, and it’s very refreshing. You feel awake and energized. It’s not that you become an adrenaline junky. You simply realize that you can’t let fear stand in your way if you want to live your life consciously. Being afraid of something is no excuse for not doing it.”

–Steve Pavlina

All the big things you want to accomplish will stir up your fears to some degree, and it’s only by confronting those fears head-on that you’ll ever overcome them and achieve anything remarkable. If something seems impossible, then break it down into smaller parts, and start today on the first one that will get you going the direction you want to go.

By breaking down your huge fears into small pieces and taking action every day, you’ll start to build up resilience and tenacity in the face of those fears. And every time you have a small breakthrough or a victory over something you fear, you’ll gain more and more momentum to continue on and take on bigger and bigger challenges.

I finally decided to take initiative on a big, impossible dream I have of hosting some kind of an entrepreneurship, personal development and lifestyle design summit in the Southern California desert—a sort of unconference and retreat with inspiring, like-minded people who want to create radical change in their lives and build meaningful businesses.

As soon as I started sharing this idea with the right kind of people—a few folks who I really look up to and a few individuals who crossed paths by serendipity and shared an understanding of what change I want to make in the world—I started to get positive feedback from some who are also interested to participate and make something happen, which has given me new motivation to put in the attention and effort and make this one of my central projects in the coming months. (More on this soon, but if you want to learn from and collaborate with some remarkable people for a week in Palm Springs, say around mid-April when Coachella Music & Arts Festival is on, drop me a line.)

And in the dating arena, I’ve simply forced myself to keep being social, going out and meeting new people, bonding with new friends, and already I’ve found that there are plenty of great women out there to meet and plenty of potential for new relationships when the time is right, and maybe my huge fear that I’ll spend eternity alone isn’t true after all.

Are You Avoiding Doing Something Out of Fear?

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

–Wayne Gretzky

Consider what you have to lose by not taking action. Will you get another chance at this? Are you happy with things as they are now, or are you miserable? Will you choose unhappiness over uncertainty?

The key to achieving your wildest goals in life is to overcome the fears that hold you back, and to question your assumptions. The more certainty you require in life, the more you will be let down and unhappy. The people who succeed are the ones who accept that much of life is uncertain, and every day will serve up new challenges. Sometimes you’ll feel prepared to handle them, but most of the time you probably won’t. You must learn to adapt quickly to change, seek out how you can turn uncertainty to your benefit, and stop being a victim—but instead start looking for the lessons you can learn from life’s challenges to make you stronger.

Here are four lessons I’ve learned as I’ve overcome big challenges and faced my fears:

1. If you feel pulled towards something, embrace it and race toward it.
2. Big life changes are never as scary as you make them out to be in your head at first.
3. No matter what happens, you will adapt to new surroundings and new things in your life surprisingly quickly.
4. Even if your plans don’t unfold how you want them to, at the very least you will experience growth and learn valuable lessons along the way.

The willingness to risk the comfort of the familiar in order to find your true happiness is the path to living a remarkable life.

“Winners expect and embrace failure as something that will remain constant throughout their lives. No matter how successful they are in whatever they do, they will have the failures to go alongside it.

Every winner out there has had to first become a Master of Failure before enjoying the winning side of life.”

–Kevin Abdulrahman

There always have been and always will be a small subset of the population who lead remarkable lives. They choose not to allow fear—of the unknown, of uncertainty, of failure—to hold them back from doing big things. They take action in the face of fear. The question is: will you choose to be one of them? Will you overcome your fears and live a remarkable life?

If So, the World Is Your Oyster!

Image: Anton Balazh

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: How to Keep Kicking Ass When You Lose Everything

Dear friends and family,

My year abroad has been an incredible experience. Although I miss home and all the people I left behind, I’ve had the time of my life, met fascinating people, been able to do some incredible things, and have grown in many ways. Since I moved to Thailand about 13 months ago, I have largely attained the travel goals I set out for myself and learned the things I’d wanted to learn. I’ve adjusted to the slower pace of life in Thailand, and the more laissez-faire attitude.

Mai Pen Rai

I watch tourists who just landed and can’t relax, can’t get off their Crackberry addiction, and get frustrated when the waitress (who can’t speak any English) gets their special order wrong. As a long-term traveler, you begin to understand the local customs, you learn to go with the flow, laugh at the vast language barrier and frequent mix-ups, take challenges as they come, and basically just enjoy whatever life throws at you. You learn to stop freaking out about misunderstandings, problems, and the unexpected. You learn to have a “jai yen”—a cool heart.

Failures

I failed at quite a few things this year. I attempted (mostly unsuccessfully) to reposition my social web development business to consult mainly with non-profit organizations and social entrepreneurs. I didn’t reach my income goals (not by a long-shot). Quite the opposite, I was very nearly a pauper for a majority of the year! But when you start to make friends, be ready for the right opportunities, and search for alternative ways to do what you want to do, you don’t need a lot of money to live well. Especially in Southeast Asia.

I sold nearly everything I owned last November and have learned to enjoy a minimalist life of simplicity, with few possessions. It’s a portable lifestyle with few distractions that allows me to spend more time concentrating on work, reading, writing, and spending quality time with my friends. I’ve been able to thrive with only about $700–1000 a month in living expenses, transitioned to a cash-only economy, and what money I do earn I typically spend on travel and other experiences, rather than things.

The Unexpected

I’ve had a lot of unexpected growth and unusual experiences. Come to Asia and you’ll see families of five crammed on clumsy motorbikes weaving precariously through traffic, elephants in the streets, quirky red-light districts where students, monks, and prostitutes share the same sidewalk, you’ll eat fried bugs, and much much weirder stuff I’m sure.

I live in the heart of Bangkok, in a building with five of my best friends. I hang out almost daily with a refugee who fled religious persecution in China (but you can call by his name, Ryan!) I pay extra for the fastest “high-speed” DSL in Thailand and spend most of my days at home working on the laptop. I know the minimart owner downstairs, the salon & massage shop owner up the street, and the owner of the wine bar/bistro across the soi. I couldn’t ask for more.

The Fun Part

I’ve dated a few beautiful Thai girls (and picked up a good amount of the language). I’ve dated a few travelers. I got to feel like James Bond. My friend Dwight Turner and I discovered a way to drink beer to benefit charity(!), catalyzed a monthly staple in the Bangkok event scene, and hosted massive parties at posh clubs way out of my league.

I worked with Dwight to develop a strong internet presence for his grassroots Bangkok volunteer organization, and spent a significant amount of time helping raise money, volunteer with kids, and make a difference.

Successes

Thanks to all of you guys, I built a real community of engaged, loyal readers here at Thrilling Heroics, with thousands of RSS subscribers, Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and over 12k+ visitors per month. I rank in the top 60,000 sites on the web, which is quite an accomplishment when you’re competing with thousands of millions.

I’ve experimented quite a bit with my businesses and work. I taught business English to masters’ students at Mahidol University School of Management for five weeks. I currently am involved in organizing the TEDx conference that we’ll be bringing to Bangkok in February, one of my dreams! The last few months, I’ve been working with some awesome awesome partners on an exciting new project/business for the new year (more on that next week).

Some other random stuff I’ve done while traveling this year:

• I climbed over 1,000 steps to reach a temple on a mountain top in Prachuap…



• …where I defended some girls from Coke-addicted attack monkeys.
• I’ve spent an afternoon learning from and sharing a meal with a Buddhist monk.



• I got stranded in the Thai countryside on the way to a friend’s hometown in northeastern Thailand when our car broke down.
• I dragged my parents to Asia and spent 2 weeks living in luxury on the gorgeous beaches of Phuket & Krabi with them.



• I took LOTS of jumping photos!



• I spent my birthday week celebrating at posh rooftop bars that would cost hundreds of dollars back home, and hanging out with gorgeous women!



• I traveled with good friends and saw the Mekong river in Laos, the breathtaking ancient wonder of the world—the Angkor Wat temples in Camobodia—and the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur—two of the world’s tallest buildings.



• I saw the skulls of tens of thousands of victims of genocide and witnessed school classrooms turned into torture chambers.
• I mastered the Asian squat toilet.



• I saw elephants dancing, and went elephant trekking in the jungle.



• I survived political protests in my neighborhood, with automatic gunfire, gasoline bombs, Molotov cocktails, and tear gas flying around.



• I visited home, roadtripped with some close friends from Northern California to the SoCal desert to go to my favorite three-day outdoor music festival—Coachella—to see Paul McCartney, The Crystal Method, M.I.A., The Killers, The Chemical Brothers, Thievery Corporation, Groove Armada, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and more play at the Empire Polo Fields (and we won VIP tickets for life!).



• I discovered paradise.



• I adopted a Thai mom who made us lunch on the beach in Krabi every day.
• I shook hands with people who lost their homes, their jobs, their limbs, and their families in the tsunami.
• I volunteered with a large children’s home in the Thai countryside and took all the kids to the beach in Pattaya.



• I dined on sidewalks and in alleyways for a year.



• I got to meet Chris Guillebeau, Nomadic Matt, Chris “Travelhappy” Mitchell, Chris “MyEggNoodles” Osborne, Jonny Gibaud, Mark Eckenrode, Caron Margarete & Brittany Sims in person. I also spent a lot of time with my blogging buddies Migration Mark and Brooke “Business Backpacker” Ferguson.



• I helped raise and deliver thousands of dollars to two orphanages near the Burmese border…and got to spend some cherished time with one boy a week before he lost his life to a struggle with sickness.



• With a diet consisting mostly of incredibly delicious Thai noodle & rice dishes and fresh papaya salad, I lost about 25 pounds without even trying.
• I added Beijing, Hong Kong, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, and Japan (although I didn’t see more than the airport) to my passport.
• I became close friends with many fun, eccentric Canadian, American, English, Swiss, German, Australian, Mexican, Italian, and Swedish expats—backpackers, climbers, divers, English teachers, aid workers, fundraisers, journalists, photographers, club owners, news editors, UN workers, artists, musicians, resort owners, technologists, lawyers, chefs, investment bankers, refugees, business magnates and beach bums.

Do I plan on quitting the untemplate lifestyle and moving home anytime soon? Hell no. I’ll visit California probably in March and/or April, return here to Thailand (as long as they’ll let me stay), and possibly spend some time in Argentina. More on that next week.

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”

—Ayn Rand

Merry Christmas! Please let me know how your year was with a comment below.

I’ll be missing you all, but hope you have great holidays, and hope you come for a visit in 2010!

Cody McKibben
23 December, 2009
Ao Nang, Thailand

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Reflections After a Year Living Abroad

Ramit Sethi was one of the earliest bloggers to inspire me when I first started writing Thrilling Heroics and building my online network. He was a graduate of Stanford University who’d studied technology and psychology, co-founded Silicon Valley startup PBworks, and was writing the hugely successful I Will Teach You To Be Rich blog to show college students and young professionals how to take control of their personal finances and get into entrepreneurship.

Although he’s based in the Bay Area, I reached out to him and learned that he’s originally from my hometown in Northern California. The first time I met Ramit in person was one chilly winter day in 2006 when he was in Sacramento to visit his family, and I had the chance to interview him about his education, entrepreneurship experience, and his perspectives on new media.

One of the first bold moves Ramit made in his career was to call up Seth Godin and negotiate a job opportunity with him! He later consulted with Omidyar Network, the philanthropic social innovation firm started by Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar. He got himself featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, NPR, ABC News, CNBC, and more, sharing personal finance tips and bolstering his readership at I Will Teach You To Be Rich to over 250,000 visitors per month!

In March, Ramit published his book by the same title, which instantly hit #1 on Amazon and made him a NYT bestselling author. His educational background in social psychology translated well into a book that helps you make real behavioral change:

At last, for a generation that’s materially ambitious yet financially clueless comes I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Ramit Sethi’s 6-week personal finance program for 20-to-35-year-olds. A completely practical approach delivered with a nonjudgmental style that makes readers want to do what Sethi says, it is based around the four pillars of personal finance—banking, saving, budgeting, and investing—and the wealth-building ideas of personal entrepreneurship.

These days Ramit hangs out with Tim Ferriss (check out his feature on the 4-Hour Workweek blog about the psychology of money and how to set up an automated personal finance system, with great excerpts from Ramit’s book).

How could you ask for a better twentysomething role model for personal finance and entrepreneurship success?

I met up with Ramit a time or two in San Francisco since first meeting him in 2006, but I’ve been wanting to catch up with him for a video interview for a while now to see what has changed in the last three years. Just my luck, this week he’s turning the six-week personal finance program in his best-selling book into a real online bootcamp where he’ll take you by the hand through a step-by-step online curriculum to automate and optimize your finances before the end of 2009, so I offered to help him promote the bootcamp if he’d sit down and answer some questions for you guys here.

Check out the video interview below for the following:

• Learn more about the I Will Teach You To Be Rich 6-Week Personal Finance Bootcamp
• Entrepreneurship, experimentation & failure
• How the things you spend your money on reflect your values
• How Ramit negotiated a book deal from his blog
• How he promoted his book to #1 on Amazon and the New York Times bestseller list
• Personal finance & entrepreneurship tips for travelers & expats
• Learn about the I Will Teach You To Be Rich Scholarship for Social Innovation

To learn more about Ramit Sethi, social psychology, technology in business, scrappy startups, and x-man abilities, make sure you also read my 2006 interview with him.

Feature photo from You 2.0

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Ramit Sethi Shows You How to Negotiate, Automate & Perspirate Your Way to Financial Success

…It’s always better to try a swan dive and deliver a colossal belly flop than to step timidly off the board while holding your nose.

—Management guru Tom Peters, in Fast Company Magazine (October 2003)

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: One Good Reason Not to Fear Failure

“I don’t know if there is another place on the planet where people are so full of possibility – whether it be the possibility of reinventing themselves by a change in thinking…or body…or starting a business with which they expect to change the world and become rich.”

I think I love Ron’s musings about Silicon Valley and the Bay Area because they reflect my own. I am SO drawn to that region because of the tremendous number of creative people! It is a hotbed for startups, entrepreneurs, and young-at-heart companies–the kind I love, that toss out the traditional rules! There seems to be (at least a bit) more sense of collaboration as opposed to competition. People are less afraid of failure. They are more passionate about their ideas, and doing whatever is necessary to make them become reality! These are not people who give up easily.

And it’s not to say that the region is the only one with determined, creative professionals. I think what actually happens is that those sorts of people are attracted from all over the world to come and work together in this centralized area. Actually, I KNOW this is the case. When I’ve visited Stanford, and interviewed with small companies down there, I meet people from all around the globe. It is a creative center. Take a minute to read Ron’s thoughts as he visits Silicon Valley.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Excuse Me While I Slip Into a More Comfortable Paradigm

I’ve been meaning to share my travels to Stanford for a few days, so I’ll start from the beginning. Last weekend, February 24th, was the national opening ceremony for E-Week at Stanford University. I travelled down to Palo Alto with my roommate Steve, where we stayed with our buddy Patrick Briggs (the Zazzler).

At the E-Week kickoff, Jonathan Ortmans (National Executive Director of EntrepreneurshipWeek USA) stressed the value of entrepreneurs to the US and world economy, citing that entrepreneurs especially reflect the pioneering spirit of the early American colonizers. An entrepreneurial career definitely highlights the difference between merely taking a job that someone else provides for you and making a job for yourself! It is a move back toward the self-made legacy of great American heroes like Ben Franklin, for one.

Next we heard from John Hennessey, president of Stanford University. Hennessey is one academic who has an entrepreneurial legacy himself, as he transferred his important research in microprocessor technology to actual industry application by co-founding MIPS Technologies (he also sits on the boards of Google and Cisco). President Hennessey explained that fostering an entrepreneurial atmosphere does five important things: it 1) increases people’s creativity and willingness to think outside the box, 2) encourages individuals to follow their passion and therefore excel at what they do, 3) creates a community that embraces and leads change, 4) encourages people to have a “glass half full” approach to problems and see them as potential opportunities, and 5) increases people’s willingness to take on and overcome challenges by building excellent teams. This entrepreneurial atmosphere is definitely prevalent throughout Silicon Valley–which is why I feel myself drawn there. It is one community of people who do not let fear of failure prevent them from giving their BIG ideas a shot! And they are great at assembling quality teams to tackle problems-as-opportunities.

Carl Schramm (President and CEO, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation) surprised some of the audience when he said that 70% of college students will start a business at some point in their lives. He referenced the common statistic that while our grandparents may have had on average four jobs over their career, we will have something like 13! And who is responsible for creating all those new jobs? Entrepreneurs, of course! Schramm is author of The Entrepreneurial Imperative and calls entrepreneurship the US’ “competitive secret,” which allows us to stay ahead of developing nations economically (who knows for how long?). He says that startups “birth the new” and give security to others by creating jobs, and they posses the only key to creating wealth! This presents an interesting new way to look at economic models that I hadn’t really approached before: without the for-profit businessman to virtually create capital, governments could not operate (no one to tax), and the non-profit foundations would not have any money to give to their causes. So without individuals to start up businesses, there can be no government, no philanthropy, no charity…

Finally Steve Jurvetson (Partner in the VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson) shared some insight into what ties philanthropy, raising families, creating art and literature, and entrepreneurship together–people’s desire to create some kind of a legacy that will last beyond our short time here on earth. He recommends students pay close attention for uniqueness, persistence, and infectious enthusiasm in their classmates (his peer Jim Yang went on to start up Yahoo!) because successful entrepreneurs are rarely lone rangers, but more often come in dynamic duos as he says. Most importantly, he says to look for ways you can harness what you’ve learned from past experiences in new and perhaps unfamiliar territory. That is why I try not to let job descriptions discourage me when I am looking for something new–I feel that my accumulated experience across many different job types will lend itself to being a flexible team-worker in different settings even if I haven’t worked in that field before. And I hope that my experience leading teams successfully in my academic career, recruiting and assembling student teams, and creating my own leadership projects in a position where I’m not officially given a lot of seniority, will translate well into being a fair and effective leader in business. You take the lessons you learn, and just apply them in a new setting.

In the end, I really felt like these guys opened my eyes to a few new ways of looking at entrepreneurship and how it benefits society. In a capitalist community, it really spurs all progress, and is responsible for all wealth- and job-creation. Carl Schramm says that all entrepreneurs are social entrepreneurs for these reasons.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: E-Week at Stanford