I’ve been wanting to share a lot more here about the people and stories I find truly fascinating and inspiring, and first on that list is someone very unique that I’d like to shine a spotlight on:

• When we were organizing events together in Bangkok, he proved it was possible to do good and have a blast at the same time.
• He showed me the secret recipe for absolute guaranteed happiness as we volunteered with children throughout Thailand.
• He has written here to show us how to be an unconventional giver, and he leads by example.

My best friend up in Bangkok, and fellow DNA student—Dwight Turner—is the crazy changemaker behind the grassroots volunteer organization In Search of Sanuk. He is an inspirational and unique character in the strange chaotic melting pot that is Southeast Asia. His love for others, and his dedication to helping children and families in need shines brilliantly in the darkness. If you’ve been following me here at Thrilling Heroics for long, you will have seen his name before, but somebody with some skill finally picked up a video camera and followed him around Bangkok to get a real tactile feel for what he’s doing to make this little corner of the world a better place, working hard to help urban refugees in Thailand:

I’ll let this quick 4-minute documentary speak for itself, so watch it. If the video doesn’t appear for you, click here to watch it. It’s only a few moments of your time, and I promise it will be well spent.

To me, Dwight is a shining example of the entrepreneurs—or social inventors—who are creating new realities that will shape the next century. He’s a selfless, hard-working, global citizen who genuinely cares about making the world a better place, and people like him are doing it, a little bit at a time.

If this short documentary has you inspired, then find out more about Dwight’s project and begin your unconventional giving by donating today. Give just a few dollars, a small sum that could very well have a major impact on the lives of an underprivileged family living in poverty.

Dwight is just the first of many incredible social inventors and changemakers who I hope to highlight here in 2012… But  Bangkok certainly wouldn’t be the same without him.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The Young Social Entrepreneur Shaping the Future Helping At Risk Families in Bangkok

One of the biggest reasons for my trip home was to come spend time with my grandparents. My grandfather’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and gone downhill quite a bit in the last two years since I’ve been home to the U.S.

Robert McKibben has long been the strong, silent rock of the family when I think back, always prioritizing his family before himself. My parents were quite young when I was born, so my grandparents helped out a lot in raising me and my sister while my folks worked hard to support us. We’d see them nearly every day from when we were very young all through school, and in many ways, Grandpa was always working quietly behind the scenes to ensure everything went smoothly for his wife, his kids, and his grandkids. I never once saw him get angry, aggressive, or hardly even upset by anything. Always hard-working, always positive, always a problem solver. He even continued to work out well into his late 70s.

Now unfortunately old age has taken a lot from him, and he’s a very different person. He had to be moved out from his home, away from my grandmother, into a memory care “lodge” where there are caretakers to look after him and help him with simple things like eating, dressing, and bathing at times. It’s probably harder for the rest of the family to watch someone who has always been so strong change so drastically than it is for him.

He is frequently confused, can’t recall names (but he still tends to know who you’re talking about when others use names), he’s lost some of his vocabulary and usually doesn’t speak much. Sometimes he can’t recognize himself in photos. I think he remembers himself as a younger man sometimes, and often gets confused about “when” as well as where he is—Alzheimer’s is a incurable and terminal degenerative disease that literally turns the brain to mush over time. It destroys neurons and synapses in the brain, breaking connections between facts learned, faces, places, times, everything. From what I can tell, I think it makes people confuse memories with the present, reality with dreams. It’s akin to being in a bit of drunken state, or caught between waking and sleeping sometimes, when you’re not sure what’s real and what’s imagined.

My grandfather has trouble retaining new information, sometimes he can’t form new memories. Sometimes I’ll be telling him a story and I can’t tell whether he can recall information from 2 minutes earlier. He tries really hard. He listens very closely to what Grandma has to say, my dad, my uncle, me. He may not be able to recall my name offhand most of the time, but he still knows who all of his loved ones are from long-term memory, he’s happy to see family. When I come to visit him, he immediately gets up from his chair, he gives lots of hugs, he likes to let us know how much he loves us.

He doesn’t always understand why or how he got to where he is right now. On one of our days together, my dad and I went with him and some of the other folks from the retirement community and care facility where he lives to take them on a bit of a field trip to the aeronautics museum at a nearby Air Force base, where we’d been before the last time I visited. My grandpa has always been fascinated with airplanes and jets, and together with my dad we always went to a lot of air shows. But he frequently gets anxious after a short time, worries about where he is and how he’ll get home. He likes to hold a reassuring hand.

The biggest thing I worry about is that he doesn’t remember where his wife is… not too far away in the same condo they used to share together until recently, a few buildings over on the same grounds of their retirement community. But I worry that he might forget why he’s been separated from her, why he’s living alone now, or if she’s even around at all.

He’s frequently anxious, a bit disconnected, and sometimes recesses to almost childlike behavior, but I think it also maybe keeps him in a fairly consistent state of wonder. He still retains enough to understand what’s happening to him; sometimes he cracks a joke about how he’s going crazy. But he’s not aggressive or emotional like some who suffer Alzheimer’s. He’s still the well-balanced, even-tempered guy he’s always been. He has a lot of love to share, and a bit like someone with the uncorrupted mind of a child, he enjoys the simplest of things: frequent naps, looking at old photo albums, reminiscing about old stories I’ve never heard from before my time and from my youth, enjoying a simple lunch out with his wife and grandson, playing with Maggie the dog, who comes to visit them at the memory care lodge.

This simple pleasure he takes in things—and I think his now more basic understanding of the world around him—gives him great insight that I think many of us usually distract ourselves from. We have so many distractions: the smart phone, the emails, the bills, the wife, the kids, the job, the money, the goals, the bad news on the TV every single day, the reality shows, our health, all our problems.

Bob McKibben doesn’t speak very often anymore, but when he does, sometimes he has the most profound things to say, showing how much love and appreciation he has for the people around him. One day last week, I encouraged Grandma to bring him over to their little condo so he could be back in a familiar setting, the three of us enjoyed a (rather delicious) pasta buffet together at the complex’s restaurant, and we spent some time in their old home just talking and looking at photographs. My dad came by after lunch so we could take Grandpa back to his place across the complex, and after we got him into the front seat, as he sat shotgun next to my dad while we drove across the property, he said:

“You two guys make life delightful.”

It was hard for me to hear his quiet words at first, and I had to ask my dad later what he had said, but I could tell right away that what he’d said was important.

Grandpa knows what path he’s headed down. But he’s not angry or upset by it—he simply understands the value of the time he has left, he enjoys the hell out of every moment he gets with the people he loves, and he’s thankful for the small things. Of everyone I interact with, even with his “problems”, he’s one of the most joyful.

Do you recognize the simple delights in your life?

For some of us, time with our loved ones is rare. Do you make time to appreciate the people you care about most, and to simply be gracious for your time with them? Even when it’s simple activities like sitting on the couch reminiscing, looking at old photos, having lunch.

Being joyful requires being in harmony with your surroundings, with the people in your life, and it requires acceptance of your situation. Life happens. Problems happen. And they will never go away, no matter how rich you get. Sometimes old age doesn’t treat you well, you get sick, and worse. But life’s progression is an inevitability, and challenges along the way are not something you should fear, but treat them as opportunities to learn and grow. Enjoying high quality of life doesn’t rely as much on money and material comfort as we might be led to believe, but more upon fulfilling your emotional needs.

I’m thankful to my grandpa for fulfilling my emotional needs, for making my life delightful, and for being big enough to give us recognition for fulfilling his too.

Life is all about your sacred connection to the people around you, and participating in and contributing to the larger human community. I recently came across the Hawai’ian practice called Hoʻoponopono, which I found very enlightening in this regard—a mental cleansing and an exercise designed for “putting things right” in your close relationships. Accept responsibility for the things around you, accept your life as it is right now, ask for forgiveness when you let your worries and your problems get in the way of your bond and your duty to others, cultivate a big bag of love to share with everyone around you, and be thankful for the little joys.

No matter what your circumstances, there are thousands of simple pleasures to be gracious for every day. Stop looking for problems and count all the little joys, the things you’re thankful for. Really, meditate on all the good things at the end of your day, no matter how small.

That’s what my terminal grandpa taught me.

What are you thankful for?

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: How to Be Joyful and Accept Life As It Is

Note: this article is massive, and it’s a bit more personal than I usually get, but I’ve summarized the lessons I’ve learned over the last six weeks about overcoming fear and dealing with unexpected life changes. My belief is that fear of the unknown is the only barrier between you and the life you want to have, so I’m certain almost everybody can get something out of this. Also, on a related note, if you want to take action to break each of your fears into much smaller, actionable items, to facilitate change and actually take control of your life, I highly recommend my friend Sean’s Overcoming the Fear of Uncertainty program.

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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

And How To Change Them, Obviously

This is another guest post from Jonny Gibaud, co-founder of Emergency Food Storage in the UK. Whenever he’s not trying to stop his various business boats from sinking, he writes about lifestyle design, business and sexy money at his blog thelifething.com. His new ebook CHOOSE: Master Of Money Or Slave To It is out now.

Image from Kushch Dmitry/Shutterstock

And so to the joys of money and all things green(ish).

Here are the 6 things that are currently keeping you poor both financially and in the most important capital of all—freedom.

Read Time: 3-4 Minutes or possibly 10, depending on your reading speed or if you are hung over.

The six things that are keeping you a poor non-nomad with tears in your eyes:

1. You Are Relying Solely On A Paycheck
2. You Are Living Like A Dead Fish
3. You Have A Poverty Mentality
4. You Are Playing By The Wrong Rules
5. You Are Relying On A Big Final Pension Payout
6. You Are Convincing Yourself That There Is More To Life Than Money

1. You Are Relying Solely On A Paycheck

No one has ever got rich by solely living on a paycheck, even the shifty-eyed bankers rely on excessive bonuses to buy their ivory back scratches. Check out Creating Multiple Steams of Income For A Super Sexy Life Of Wealth if you want to know exactly why.

By living on a paycheck, every year you are working from January to mid May and beyond for the government. Yep, for those first 5 months of hard slog, you are actually breaking your back for the government. All hail our glorious leaders.

Earned income, such as that from a paycheck, is the highest taxed income there is, up to 50% for some people. If you are only relying on a paycheck for income then your money is not working hard for you and you will never become rich.

Money Medical Patch Of Awesomeness: Get your lazy money to start working hard FOR you. Focus on building multiple streams of income that generate passive and portfolio income. This is income you are not selling your time on a per hour basis and is the lowest taxed income of all. The life of a smiling, happy and wealthy nomad is built around this core cash-flow.

2. You Are Living Like A Dead Fish

If you have never read my article “Dead Fish Economics” you should. Not because I wrote it, or even because you have a slightly worrying obsession with dead fish. You should read it because it explains the three financial equations that people live by in life, and you WILL be living by one of them. Honest, scouts honour.

Money Medical Patch Of Awesomeness: If you are living like a dead fish or a floundering fish, you will never be rich. Check out how you are doing by reading the article and then start living more like a Happy Fish. Simple really…sort of.

3. You Have A Poverty Mentality

If you are big on saving, or squeezing the last penny out of each pound, or you think that the rich are somehow exploiting people for that money, then you are living with a poverty mentality mindset.

STOP THIS NOW. Seriously, right now. Please.

Money is not the root of all evil, the world of money is not a zero sum game, and you are not becoming richer by being more stingy with your cash.

To be rich and have the option of a nomadic lifestyle, you need to know how money works.

Money is like an electrical current which dies if it stops moving. If you hide it under the bed, inflation will eat it, it is only powerful when it is moving or, in other words, being invested.

The money game is not a zero sum game, there is more than enough money in the world. If you have more of it this does not mean someone else has to have less so don’t use this as an excuse for not living your dreams.

Being economical and stingy with your money will not make it multiply. Investing smartly and being generous will, AND will also create a richer life for all involved. More smiles all round.

Money Medical Patch Of Awesomeness: Get out of your poverty mentality, it is keeping you poor. Start to develop your Financial Intelligence and make money flourish in your hands like a well-watered little money tree of greatness.

4. You Are Playing By The Wrong Rules

You know there are a different set of rules for the rich than for you right? You didn’t? That’s unfortunate because you have been playing by the wrong set my friend, and it is keeping you poor, and dreams of distant shores, sandy beaches, and excellent surf will remain forever just out of your reach.

Those that understand the game of money, investing and wealth are playing a totally different game to you. It’s a better game, you don’t have to work as hard and it lets you experience the very best the world has to offer.

Do you want in on this game? Yeah, I thought you might. Well there is a price and that price is your time and effort in learning the game and the rules that govern it. It will take time, a lot of boldness and calculated risks but it can be done…by anyone.

Currently, you are playing the wrong game, and you are poor because of it. Lets change that.

Money Medical Patch Of Awesomeness: It’s your financial intelligence that will make you wealthy, so it is your financial intelligence that you need to develop to understand and play by the other rules of the rich. Start now. (Reading is a great first step.)

5. You Are Relying On A Big Final Pension Payout

Do you really know what a Pension scheme is? It’s a Ponzi scheme, a glorified pyramid scheme. Bernie Madoff went to prison for running a Ponzi scheme? He did, but pensions are the government’s ponzi scheme and the government can’t go to jail because, for starters, they won’t all fit. (This is open to debate.)

All the money that you put into your pension at the moment is going to pay the people who are retiring now. It is not being saved for you.

That’s okay, the next generation will pay for me though, right? Wrong. There will be less of them than there are of you when you retire and the money just won’t stretch. No more margaritas at 65 unless you take some drastic action.

But the money is invested and increases over time so we should still be okay? ‘Fraid not. The money should have been invested but it was actually used to pay for government spending. There is no investment in the pot anymore. Criminal but true.

So by the time I retire I won’t get paid? Correct, who knows if the next generation will get paid in the next 10 years.

Money Medical Patch Of Awesomeness: Pensions are a thing of the past. If you want to retire early you need to have your own sources of income and revenue and to do that you have to increase your Financial Intelligence so that you can create those income streams.

6. You Are Convincing Yourself That There Is More To Life Than Money

That is very true, there is more to life than money, but if you are using this as an excuse for why you are not rich then you are deluding yourself, and you will never be able to escape the rat race and pull on ya swimming trunks.

There are unhappy rich people and there are unhappy poor people, but having been and having talked to people who have been relatively rich and very poor in their lives, please trust me, being poor is no fun at all. You get to do a hell of a lot less surfing.

Money is an enhancer of people, experiences, opportunities and life. It won’t buy you happiness, but it will give you the freedom to travel, to be generous, to experience new things, to have free time and to enjoy life more.

Money Medical Patch Of Awesomeness: Money is important in life, so stop deluding yourself and start learning how to play the game of money so that you can have an enriched life. Here is a good place to start.

See you all on the beach.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 6 Things You Are Currently Doing That Are GUARANTEEING You Will NEVER Live A Rich Nomadic Lifestyle

a panorama view from the balcony of our new bungalow

Sometimes what you need to overcome a challenge is a state change. Tony Robbins talks about this when he discusses negative moods.

Change your external state, and you change your internal state.

If you’re feeling down, sad, or a bit upset, one of the simplest applications of this is to take a big deep breath, look up at the sky, and fake a big, goofy grin. Tony says that activating those muscles—and that part of your brain—is likely to manifest the real feelings of happiness and improved mood.

This state change is powerful, and it could be just the boost you need to shake a negative mood, or procrastination for example.

But sometimes you need something bigger and more lasting than a smile. To overcome a big hurdle, change a persistent negative behavior, or make some other kind of big leap in your personal development, maybe you need to change more than yourself… maybe you need to change your surroundings?

Sometimes it’s the people you surround yourself with (some say you become the average of the 5 people you hang out with the most), but very frequently it’s your environment.

If you’re in a slump, stuck in a rut, unproductive, unmotivated, or in a destructive cycle, you need to change your state somehow—that’s for sure.

Ask yourself: is your workspace uninspiring? Is your neighborhood dingy or depressing? Do you crave a change of scenery?

How I Gave Up City Life for Island Paradise

I’d been based in Bangkok for the last year and a half—and it’s an incredible city. The people I met there are what kept me wanting to stay—incredible, entrepreneurial, interesting folks from all corners of the globe. It was the first truly big city that I’d lived in for any good amount of time—the nightlife, the food, and the sights, are stimulating—there is something for everyone, and always new experiences to try.

But after that amount of time, I wasn’t excited by my surroundings anymore. I was distracted by the noises of the city, 24 hours a day. I found my simple studio apartment dull and solitary, and I realized that staring at the freeway out my window for a year and a half wasn’t an inspiring environment to turn out my best work. I wanted to get away from the heavy traffic, the trash in the streets, the pollution in the air…

I felt this way and didn’t realize it for a long time, and in retrospect, it sapped my productivity, decreased the quality of the work I’d been putting out over the last six months, and probably put me in a foul mood all to frequently.

All this, and throw in the bloody protests outside our doorstep, and finally my girlfriend and I decided it was time to change our scenery. Nikki had found an incredible bungalow in Koh Phangan, an island in the south of Thailand, on the hillside overlooking the beach and the ocean. After almost 21 months in Thailand, I’m finally living on the beach like I’d daydreamed of before I moved abroad!

Watch the video below for a walkthrough of our new home in this beautiful beach paradise. I’ve been a bit quiet the last couple weeks while we’ve been settling into our new home.

Beach Living in Koh Phangan, Thailand

It is an incredible find—we live on the island famous for the Full Moon Party (but on the quiet side of the island on a resort beach) and all of this for only about $480 per month! And even that’s split two ways between us!

Since moving here, we’ve been working diligently (and productively!) on her magazine and other work projects together. And I’ve even kicked my worst habit: it’s only a start, but I haven’t touched a cigarette in three weeks! Whereas the dirty, crowded, hustling streets of Bangkok made me want to smoke, here I’ve been able to let go of a lot of city stresses and live more healthily. (More on my goal to quit smoking in future months, but wish me the best for now!)

If you dream of living somewhere incredible like this—it is easily within your grasp. There are hundreds of thousands of little gems like this just waiting to be found all throughout Asia, South America, and even nestled where you least expect them in your home country.

If you do need a good kick in the ass, something to light a fire under your butt to start thinking outside the box, get out of the office, and get out of your hometown, then stay tuned for our videos here at Thrilling Heroics, and check out the new Backpacker Video Diaries videos Nikki and I are producing together. Four gals from my hometown (Sacramento, California) go traveling throughout Southeast Asia (and eventually South America) for over a year—having a hilarious, adventurous time.

Even if you only relocate for a short sabbatical or a mini-retirement, what’s holding you back from experimenting with traveling and living abroad?

In any case, remember the importance of changing your state when you’re struggling, and if you’re not happy with your life, take a critical look at your surroundings and ask yourself whether you need a change of scenery.

Maybe you just need to get out of the city. Or maybe you need to get out on the road less traveled for a while.

You don’t necessarily have to travel—especially not across the globe like I have. But one thing’s true: travel will push you to reexamine your preconceived ideas about the world—the very first step in freeing you to make the changes necessary to achieve the life that you desire.

At the very least be real with yourself. Are you boxing yourself in somewhere that doesn’t make you happy? Are you convincing yourself to stay in one place when you really don’t have to?

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Change your Life with a Change of Scenery

Today my friend Hani Khaursar is sharing a short guest article to tell you about the upcoming Guerrilla Entrepreneur Seminar where I’ll be speaking in Kuala Lumpur next week, August 4th at the Grand Millennium Hotel. If you’re in Malaysia (or not too far away), make sure you reserve a seat to come participate in the conference & network with rockstar entrepreneurs, startups, personal branding experts, authors, and more. If you’re not in the region, you can still check out the free Guerrilla Entrepreneur talks online!

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I first heard the idea of Blisscipline from amazing Brian Johnson last year when I met him in Bali. Dr. Michael Beckwith defined it as “a discipline you do so often that it no longer is a discipline, but a blisscipline.”

But my definition of Blisscipline is:

The discipline of only pursuing your Bliss”

So if you practice Blisscipline, then you make it your priority to pursue things that bring you bliss daily.

My friend and former employer Vishen Lakhiani loved the word so much that he used it when he shared the stage with the Dalai Lama and Richard Branson in Calgary, Canada, in 2009! (How much of an ego boost is that?)

The point of this article isn’t to impress you with my stellar skills in defining made up words. I wanted to tell you about the reason behind the Blisscipline Blog. I really wanted a place to document and interview all the amazing people I’ve met who are living a life of Blisscipline. I wanted to show people that it is possible to be Blissciplined and successful.

From the Blisscipline Blog comes the Guerrilla Entrepreneur Seminar, a seminar to empower entrepreneurs to break free from the norms of entrepreneurship and to embrace 21st Century Entrepreneurship, which is about making money, doing something you’re passionate about, having a life of balance, being a part of something bigger than yourself, giving back to the world, and having experiences money can’t buy!

I am super excited about this seminar (you can check out the website here: http://www.GEseries.com) as I’ve managed to get many entrepreneurs who live on the cutting edge to come speak at it (including the super Cody McKibben—master of this blog). I’ve made sure that the GE Series won’t be fluffy, feel good talks, but practical tools and strategies that you can apply immediately in your life and business—just the way I like it!

Also (and I’m really excited about this) when you attend the seminar, you get to be part of the Guerrilla tribe and get to view all the talks during the seminar plus all the extra talks we’ve had (I’ve taped them all) online, for free, at your leisure! I’ve always wished that seminars did this, so I can pay attention to the speaker and absorb instead of constantly taking notes.

If you want to come for the entrepreneurship conference, email me (hani at personalbrandingasia dot com) and I’ll give you a special rate for the ticket, just for reading this blog (tickets are at RM349 / US$109). Please make sure you say that you heard about it from Thrilling Heroics or Cody McKibben.

Before I go, I’d just like to invite you all to live a life of Blisscipline, because you never know where it will take you!

xoxo
Hani

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The Pursuit of Bliss

Today I’m really excited to unveil an exciting new community for twentysomethings, college students, and young professionals who want to shatter the ‘template’ lifestyle and live an awesome life on their own damn terms!

Work where you want… Live how you want… Be who you want to be.

Untemplater is the culmination of nearly four months of hard work with some incredibly cool co-founders: Jun Loayza from Viralogy.com; Adam Baker, nomadic family man at Man Vs. Debt; the philosophically-brilliant Carlos Miceli of OwlSparks; published author and consultant Monica O’Brien; and our rad web developer Andrew Norcross. We’ve also got dozens of fabulous writers lined up—young entrepreneurs, lifestyle designers, digital nomads, and more—who will share their personal stories and guidance on how to design your ideal lifestyle and career.

There are many blogs and books meant to teach and inspire you to leave your corporate existence in order to pursue a venture that you’re “passionate” about. Most of these sites mean well and are inspirational, but they’re written by gurus who’ve already “made it” and aren’t in touch with your reality, or they’re written by pure theorists—people who haven’t actually put their lessons to action—they talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.

Untemplater, on the other hand, is composed of real people who are in the trenches, working hard to live the life that we want to live. It’s not easy, nor is it glamorous. You’ll see our pain, struggles, successes, and failures as we create an existence that we are proud of and enjoy 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

We are MBAs; we are husbands, wives, and fathers; we are scrappy entrepreneurs, authors, and freelancers. We live all over the globe. We’re a small group of unconventional folks who hope to build a thriving community for anyone who ever sought more out of life—and we hope to help you learn how to sidestep the traditional life to find the career, relationships, and lifestyle that makes you come alive!

Grab a Bunch of Awesome Free Shit!

Jump in, read the free download we’ve put together for you that examines the Untemplater lifestyle and shows you six unconventional, remarkable lifestyle case studies.

[Also check out my first feature post at Untemplater to watch my lifestyle design video success story since reading The Four Hour Workweek in 2007]

We’ve also partnered with some incredible folks like Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Chris Brogan to give away tons of great business books, as well as a few $500 seats in Josh Kauffman’s Personal MBA Business Crash Course! Starting tomorrow and for the rest of the week, we will be hosting giveaway contests to win all kinds of stuff, so sign up for our exclusive Untemplater Insider email list and stay tuned to Untemplater.com throughout the week to participate!

Join our rebellion against the status quo at Untemplater and learn how you can Work Where You Want to Work, Live How You Want to Live, and Be Who You Want to Be in 2010.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Take Back Control of Your Life in 2010!

My friend Dwight is slowly convincing me that I’m a philanthropist.

I’ve talked before about the impact Dwight Turner is making in Bangkok—making it easy for people to volunteer and contribute to charitable causes in Thailand. We have gone to hand out food to the homeless near Democracy Monument here in Bangkok, we’ve taken the great kids at Chonburi Children’s Center to the beach, we’ve volunteered with the infants and toddlers at Friends For All Children (F.F.A.C.) nursery, we’ve held events to raise money for an urban garden installation project here in Bangkok and for medical aide for refugees. Dwight’s hard work has even earned him the attention of CNN’s new local Asia site.

I’ve met incredible people with touching stories. I’ve made incredible friends with some of the other volunteers.

To commemorate September 11th this year, In Search of Sanuk hosted Bangkok’s Twestival celebration. Twestival is a Twitter-inspired social event where attendees can meet other Twitter users (much like our monthly Bangkok Tweetup), but also be a part of a global awareness and fundraising campaign for charitable causes around the world. We raised money for two orphanages near the Burmese border—Baan Unrak and Baan Dada.

The event was spectacular. Over 350 people came out to party on the Fraser Suites’ poolside rooftop bar and support our cause. People recorded and shared our social media-powered event live. We raised over $2400 US, which can go a long way in Southeast Asia. The founders of Digital Democracy even showed up to interview volunteers Jen, Danielle, and myself about emerging technologies in Thailand and about how the global Twitter event was helping make a social change:

So here’s the secret: Some of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had have been volunteering with children throughout Thailand.

A few days after the event successfully wrapped, Dwight and I took a 7-hour van ride to hand-deliver donations and visit the two children’s homes with our travel buddies Mark, Joel and Agnes.

Baan Unrak and Baan Dada educate and empower orphaned or otherwise impoverished kids—not only Thais but also Karen and Mon refugees who’ve been driven from their homes and persecuted by the Burmese military dictatorship. The children are instructed in playing musical instruments, sewing, fixing motorbikes, art, languages and technical skills. They’re taught to respect all people, creatures, religion and to practice vegetarianism. The homes also provide jobs for refugees and local families who help care for the children, assist with farming, construction and weaving projects.

Hanging out with kids like these is a transformative experience. They are some of the poorest people in the world, often living in crummy conditions, many have lost their families, yet they are the most cheerful and gracious little people you’ll ever meet.

Words cannot describe, so I’ll let this video do the job for me. This is a montage of many of the great kids I’ve had the opportunity to share time with while helping out at Baan Dada, Baan Unrak, F.F.A.C., Chonburi Center, and more.

Whatever you do, watch this video:

Spending time with children in need will change your life. Once you begin to understand the loss some of them have experienced, the disadvantage they are at—and yet they still exude love—it should cause you to reevaluate how you look at your own life. You can’t help but smile around some of these kids.

The only activity I’ve found yet that is guaranteed to keep a smile on my face.

Find children in need (they are everywhere, unfortunately). Go and give generously with your time and any other resources you can share.

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This message is dedicated to a gracious, playful little tyke who lost his life way before his time. Ali Baba lost a battle with disease on Thursday, September 17th, just two days after we said goodbye to him and the other children at Baan Dada. The loss was unbearable and affected a lot of us. Rest in peace, friend.

Ali Baba

If you’d like to make a donation on his behalf, the home is building a new medical clinic and needs your help. You can sponsor a child’s food and healthcare needs for three months for only $187. Donate to Baan Dada.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: My Secret Recipe for 100% Guaranteed Happiness

Last week I encouraged business owners to concentrate on your passion rather than on making money. In The Monk and the Riddle, Randy Komisar points out the challenges that await you if you don’t consciously build your life around doing work that you’re passionate about:

“Personal risks include the risk of working with people you don’t respect; the risk of working for a company whose values are inconsistent with your own; the risk of compromising what’s important; the risk of doing something you don’t care about; and the risk of doing something that fails to express—or even contradicts—who you are. And then there is the most dangerous risk of all—the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”

Komisar’s book is geared towards entrepreneurs. What if you’re not entrepreneurially inclined though—what control do you have over creating a career that makes you happy and fulfilled?

If You Go to Work for Someone Else, You Damned Well Better Pick the Right Workplace!

If you’re gonna spend your career working for someone else, do it where the corporate culture is awesome. I’ve been wanting to talk about Tony Hsieh and his company Zappos for this very reason.

A while back I read an article by Inc. Magazine writer Max Chafkin called “Get Happy: How Tony Hsieh uses relentless innovation, stellar service, and a staff of believers to make Zappos.com an e-commerce juggernaut—and one of the most blissed-out businesses in America.”

Hsieh helped found the online shoe retailer in 1999, and it has since grown to over a billion dollars in gross annual sales. They’re so successful in fact, Amazon has just negotiated to acquire them (thankfully Hsieh will continue to run things his way and infuse the company with his awesome management style).

Zappos has been notable in the past few years for their innovative service (absolutely free shipping and returns) and successful use of new media to connect with customers. After sharing a note about how impressed I was with the Inc. article on my Twitter account, I immediately received a personal note from someone on their Zappos_service account with a cheerful offer to set up a tour of the Zappos facilities next time I stop in Las Vegas! (They’ll pick you up at your hotel for a fun, free tour of the company headquarters.)

In my opinion, even more important than their stellar customer service, Tony Hsieh has decided that his business revolves around happiness, which he studies with the dedication of a laboratory researcher. “What would make you happier in your life?” Hsieh asks the writer. He is fond of asking employees, customers, and everyone he meets, “On a scale from 1 to 10, how happy are you right now?”

And it shows in the company’s whacky, uninhibited corporate culture. You can follow Tony’s musings on Twitter, job interviews and company meetings often take place over drinks in nearby Vegas bars and hotspots, and every employee is encouraged to be themselves! (What an idea!) It looks like most employees wear their dyed hair, tattoos, piercings, and other unique styles with pride. They have no call scripts and are given the freedom to troubleshoot customer complaints on a case-by-case basis. One of the 10 crowd-sourced core values of the company is to “Create fun and a little weirdness”!

Salaries are modest (starting pay between about $8 to $12), but the real attraction to working for Zappos is the work environment. To weed out the folks who aren’t committed to a fun, weird work culture, each and every new employee is offered $2,000 plus time worked to walk away after their first month of training. For those who stick around, Zappos invests serious bank in their personal development—with classes, business books, public speaking and personal finance courses for example.

All of this is to say: if you are less inclined to work for yourself and more inclined to go to a job like a majority of folks are, ask yourself what’s important to you at work. You’ll spend the majority of your hours at your desk, in your cubicle, or wherever that puts you, so I suggest you find an innovative company that values it’s employees’ happiness and encourages a fun, meaningful, unique workplace culture.

To learn more about Tony Hsieh and how he got his start, also check out this recent interview Jun Loayza did! Tony’s advice to anyone planning their career right now:

“I would say rather than focus on what will make you the most money or be best for your career, figure out what you would be passionate for 10 years and go pursue that. A lot of people work hard at building a career so that one day down the road they think it will bring them happiness. And most of the time, when they finally accomplish their goal, they realize that it doesn’t really end up bringing happiness or fulfillment for the long term.”

Rather than preparing for the template career like everyone else, and saving for years to one day do what you’re really passionate about, just get started doing what you’re really passionate about now!

Feature photo credit: Randy Stewart

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: How to Stay Happy If You Work for Someone Else

Business shouldn’t just be about making money. Entrepreneurs should approach business as their opportunity to create a legacy—their chance to add something to the world and leave a positive impact.

“[Entrepreneurship is] the chance to turn ideas into viable enterprises that can change the world and to prosper in the process.”

Today I want to point your attention to Randy Komisar, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in Silicon Valley, California. I spent the last two weeks reading through his book The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living.

Komisar has been an influential collaborator in at least a dozen innovative Valley companies like Claris, LucasArts, Crystal Dynamics, WebTV, GlobalGiving, TiVo, GO Corporation and Apple. The Monk and the Riddle is an eye-opening look into the mind of a Valley venture capitalist, but it also serves as an unconventional philosophy about the motivation behind work and integrating what you do with what you truly believe.

“I admire people who are willing to bet everything on a belief. Some of these risk takers…have a profound impact on what happens in the world. They place bets on the future, often against fantastic odds.”

The fact is a lot of entrepreneurs want to build something that will make them rich. But to be truly successful at what you do, you must make it about something you’re truly passionate about—something that you’ll get out of bed excited to do each day. Komisar asks the question, “What would you be willing to do for the rest of your life?”

“…business isn’t primarily a financial institution. It’s a creative institution. Like painting and sculpting, business can be a venue for personal expression and artistry, at its heart more like a canvas than a spreadsheet. Why? Because business is about change.”

Komisar also introduces readers to what he calls the “Deferred Life Plan,” which is what most people mold their lives around. Step 1) Do what you have to do, then, eventually, Step 2) Do what you want to do. You build a career, build a business, and hope to earn enough so that finally, one day, you can retire and do what you really want to do with your time—whether that’s spending more time with friends and family, traveling, focusing on your hobbies, or giving back through some sort of charitable work. We sacrifice our time and energy now in the hopes that we’ll get a big payoff and have more freedom to do what we’re passionate about in retirement.

But why not just start doing what you really want to do with your life? Why waste 30 or 40 years doing something mediocre, something that pays the bills but doesn’t get you excited? Something that isn’t fun?

“It’s the romance, not the finance that makes business worth pursuing.”

What would make you willing to stick with your current business for the rest of your life? What changes would you need to make it a real mission business? Or if you’re just starting, how can you build a legacy project from the beginning?

This is a fantastic book if you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or want a peek into the mind of a hugely successful investor and “virtual CEO” about how to transform an average business into something that will truly fulfill people’s needs and become a huge success. Komisar explains the necessity of being a leader who can “develop a compelling vision worth following.” (Steve Spalding wrote about sharing your story in another great recent article.) If you need to re-orient the way you look at work and transform the focus of your life and your business into something you’re passionate about, grab this book.

Randy is also a lecturer at Stanford University, and you can watch some great discussions on entrepreneurship, innovation, philanthropy and more at the Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner. (If you’re interested on his take on applying an entrepreneurial discipline to social missions, also check out this discussion with Stanford Social Innovation Review.)

How can you turn your passion into something that will also earn you a living? How can you build a legacy with your business?

Feature photo by Dwight Turner

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: It’s Not All About Money—Building a Business is your Chance to Make a Difference

Hyped-up concepts like The Secret, Tim Ferriss’ 4 Hour Workweek, and Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 Hour Rule” in recent years all really boil down to one simple teaching: You can either sit around and wait for cool shit to happen to you, or you can take a pro-active role in opening your life up to possibility. This is something that traces back through most of the major personal development thought leaders throughout the last century: it is a central principle in all of my Most-Important Books (MIBs), in Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, in Napoleon Hill’s work in the 1920s, and probably waay before that.

Create your own luck and open yourself up to opportunities.

It’s the same reason that I am so passionate about helping people use the relatively-new power of the web to build blogs and brand themselves. This is the first time in history when we, as individuals, can easily compete with the big brands to build our reputation and authority, build businesses, and create global communities of like-minded people. I love showing people how to use blogs and social media to cultivate opportunities for themselves because they are what have empowered me to be so successful. But the web is not the only way to open up your life to great opportunities.

I subscribe to the maxim which says there is no such thing as luck, but that rather you create your own luck. And you do it by being as prepared as you can for opportunity when it arises. The wider you cast your net, the more likely you’ll be able to take advantage of those opportunities that present themselves in your life.

If you find yourself unfulfilled, it’s likely because something—your job, your relationship, your friends, the place you live—isn’t fully meeting your needs. That’s not to say your significant other or your friends aren’t great people. But you need to go out there and find fulfillment. Unfortunately, no one else is going to ensure your needs are met—we’ve all got to look out for ourselves first. If you’re lacking, if you’re unhappy or depressed, it ain’t easy and it ain’t fun, but you are responsible for going out and getting your needs met.

If we’re talking about a close relationship or a job, it’s always hard to give up the time and energy you’ve put into something you care so much about. But if it doesn’t completely meet your needs, you’ll have to risk the comfort and the years you put into something in exchange for the chance at becoming truly happy and fulfilled.

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

The key to living remarkably—living according to your own passions and desires—is overcoming many of the fears and beliefs that are socially programmed into us. To embark on this journey of complete fulfillment, you have to examine and question your assumptions. For example, ask yourself questions like these:

• Who says you can’t talk to people you don’t know in the bar/club?
• Who says you have to hang out with people in your age/race/income group?
• Who says you can’t leave a 7-year relationship if you’re unhappy with it?
• Who says living abroad is more dangerous or difficult than living in the town you grew up in?
• Who says you have to do what all the cool kids are doing (or follow a conventional career path/lifestyle)?

Many of us have beliefs like these ingrained in us and may not even realize it, but we allow our social conditioning to dictate how we live our lives. Ask yourself what evidence there is to actually back up these assumptions. Most of these beliefs and social “rules” are unfounded.

Anytime you see a majority of people behaving a certain way, ask yourself if it’s really necessary—if it really aligns with your personal beliefs and passions—before you jump on the bandwagon. Are you doing this because of peer pressure? (Yes, peer pressure still exists when you are 35 or 65!) Or are you avoiding doing something out of fear? Don’t let social rules dictate how you live your life.

Here are a few principles I’ve learned from making some huge changes myself, overhauling my life, and moving abroad:

1. If you feel pulled toward something, race towards it. A friend of mine was recently telling me how she feels stagnant living in our hometown and has been thinking a lot about what it would be like to live in Boston. She likes the city and has extended family nearby. My advice was to recognize that she’s attracted there and embrace it!
2. Big life changes are not as scary as they seem initially. Before I left for Thailand, I was scared shitless! Pulling up all your roots, packing up everything you own (or selling it all!), and putting yourself at the mercy of the unknown is never easy. But whether it’s a move, a breakup, or a career change, we frequently make things out to be much bigger in our heads than they turn out to be in reality.
3. Human beings adapt to new environments really fast. Whether you want to leave your cubicle to start a business of your own, establish new social circles, or travel the world, one thing I’ve learned is that you will get used to a new lifestyle, routine, or surroundings incredibly quickly. Extreme example: I adapted to being surrounded by riots, soldiers and gunfire and overcame any initial fear much quicker than I would have imagined.
4. Even if your goal doesn’t pan out as planned, you’ll still experience valuable personal growth. I told my friend who wants to move to Boston, even if she were to end up completely lonely (and what are the chances she won’t make any friends) and it’s not what she hoped for, taking action to make a huge life change that you’re compelled to make will force you to grow and develop in ways you didn’t anticipate. That’s the most fun part!

Hopefully these principles can help you in your own quest for happiness.

There always have been and always will be a small subset of the population who lead remarkable lives. They choose not to allow social conditioning to hold them back from doing big things. They examine their desires, their passions, and their needs and ask scary questions. They take action. The question is: will you choose to be one of them? Will you lead a remarkable life?

NEXT STEPS:

• Steve Pavlina has a really interesting article on getting your needs fulfilled.
• I highly recommend Jonathan Mead’s awesome Reclaim Your Dreams ebook on Illuminated Mind.
• Finally, stay tuned to Thrilling Heroics for more about overcoming fear and living the life you want!

Featured photo credit: TuTuWoN

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Live a Remarkable Life

In keeping with the Twitter community’s new tradition, #FollowFriday, I thought I’d start compiling some useful lists of the folks I find most interesting to follow on Twitter and why. Today I’d like to share eleven thought leaders who are constantly challenging assumptions, examining human thinking and the brain, de-mystifying happiness and success, and challenging us to grow into more conscious individuals.

Tony Robbins (@tonyrobbins)

“The Official Tony Robbins Account.” If you’re not yet familiar with this motivational master, check out TonyRobbins.com.

Steve Pavlina (@stevepavlina)

“I’m a human alarm clock. I wake up people who are sleeping through life.” Author of Personal Development for Smart People and StevePavlina.com.

Eben Pagan (@ebenpagan)

“Interested in brain science, psychology, raw food, great music, challenging myself, philosophy, yoga, changing the world.” Known to some as David DeAngelo, Eben started out as a dating coach and internet marketer. Check out his blog.

Leo Babauta (@zen_habits)

“Zen Habits blogger, author of The Power of Less (http://thepowerofless.com).” Leo has one of the longest-running and most successful blogs on productivity and simplicity: Zen Habits.

Rajesh Setty (@UpbeatNow)

“Bringing Ideas to Life. With Love! Rajesh is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley.” Author of Upbeat: Cultivating the Right Attitude to Thrive in Tough Times and LifeBeyondCode.com.

Duff McDuffee (@duffmcduffee)

“I help people dissolve internal “resistance” with a gentle process called Core Transformation. I tweet philosophy, and dance–wildly.” Duff’s an awesome life coach with a lot of original ideas! Check out Precision Change.

Gregory Lent (@gregorylent)

“Emptiness consultant, transformation ecologist, artist, economist … pro-intelligence.” Gregory is constantly challenging assumptions and examining the way people think. See Post Linearity.

Gretchen Rubin (@gretchenrubin)

“Writing a book and a blog, The Happiness Project.” Gretchen is the queen of happy! Visit The Happiness Project.

Alex Shalman (@AlexShalman)

“Personal Development Mutant | Want To Be In Dental School | Here To Rock Your Twitterverse.” Check out Alex’s great personal development blog.

Jonathan Mead (@jonathanmead)

“Idea pusher. Finder of truth.” Jonathan runs an incredible personal development site called Illuminated Mind.

Robyn McMaster (@RobynMcMaster)

“Rejuvenating business with brain based approaches.” Robyn is the Senior VP of the MITA Brain Based Center and author of the Brain Based Biz blog.

In these rough economic times, following these leaders’ perspectives will help you see the positive side and seek creative new solutions in work, relationships, and life!

Can’t get enough Thrilling Heroics? You can follow me on Twitter too: @codymckibb

photo credit: notsogoodphotography

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 11 Incredible Positive Thinkers You Should Follow on Twitter