Sometimes I’m such a perfectionist that it keeps me from actually publishing anything (or even writing anything sometimes)! This time it’s been over a month. But today, I finally just want to share this incredible interview with you.

I recently spoke to Brian Johnson all about his thoughts on conscious entrepreneurship, optimal living, his lifestyle business, and how people can change the world. Brian is the creator of Philosopher’s Notes (which are short Cliff’s Notes-style summaries of all the lessons from teachers like Socrates, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, and the Buddha, all the way up through modern positive psychology books), chief evangelist at en*theos, and author of A Philosopher’s Notes.

He considers himself a modern Philosopher, or Lover of Wisdom. Brian is absolutely dedicated to inspiring the world with wisdom, and empowering people to live their greatest lives, and what drew me to him is his painstaking commitment to his mission. He’s perhaps the most productive and prolific guy I’m aware of—my polar opposite lately! Questions that drive him are:

What Makes Great People Great? How Can People Create Extraordinary Lives that Make a Difference in the World?

Brian dropped out of law school, and instead, eventually settled into the tech startup world as a founder/CEO, raising several million dollars for his businesses. But it was his decision to travel through Israel, Turkey, Greece, and more, and study philosophy, that paved the way for the path he would take. In 2004 he created the social networking site Zaadz, integrating his interests in philosophy and entrepreneurship, and creating a place for people interested in topics such as conscious living, yoga, meditation, and making a difference.

Working with investors like Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, Brian grew passionate about the idea of conscious business—that it’s about more than just the “bottom line”—and became convinced that you can get paid to do what you love to do.

He set about on his journey to earn his own “PhD in Optimal Living”, as he describes it, studying and condensing 100 classics, a project that evolved into Philosopher’s Notes. And now Brian and his wife Alexandra run a handful of small businesses under the banner of en*theos, a community who’s name stands for “radiant enthusiasm“, including Philosopher’s Notes, Rock Your Goddess Life, Optimal Living 101, Blissitations, and more.

Brian is a stellar example of someone who’s transitioned from startup business, raising millions and working with investors and large teams of employees at the height of the dot-com boom, to a highly successful lifestyle business that allows he and his wife to do meaningful work they truly enjoy, to make a huge difference in people’s lives, and to have a very enjoyable lifestyle, living in places like Bali, Indonesia for a year, and now in Los Angeles.

There are few conversations that will open your eyes a bit and permanently alter your outlook on life, but this was one of them for me. This interview was recorded in its entirety for our students at Digital Nomad Academy, so if you’re one of our members, make sure you log in here to listen in on the full 50-minute, in-depth interview with all the gory details!

Listen in to this abbreviated recording below to learn about:

• What it means to follow your bliss.
• How you must have a willingness to fail if you want to succeed.
• Why a Lifestyle Business is not about getting big quickly, it’s about sustainability and simplicity.
• The Multiple Stakeholder Model, and the importance of creating value and making contributions to your community.
• Why entrepreneurship is the major engine to change the world.
• What is Conscious Capitalism and the Multiple Bottom Line?

Download the MP3 here to listen on your own computer (right click and “Save As”)

Also listen in to learn the universal truths that Brian discovered across all of his studies of psychology, philosophy and optimal living. While most people focus on external motivators like fame, wealth, and beauty, learn how focusing on these principles is what will actually lead you to happiness and flourishing:

1. Optimism
2. Purpose
3. Self-Awareness
4. Goals
5. Action
6. Energy
7. Wisdom
8. Courage
9. Love
10. En*theos

Brian discusses what the ancient Greeks called arete—excellence, virtue, or striving to be your best self—and how when you overcome what he calls integrity gap and realize your full potential, there is no room for anxiety, stress, or depression in your life.

If you want to learn more, visit en*theos, and explore the 100 mini-chapters in Brian’s book A Philosopher’s Notes. Digital Nomad Academy students also get exclusive access to the full interview which includes:

• Brian’s Six Fundamentals of Creativity
• Productivity Tips: Three In-Depth Keys to How Brian Produces So Much Great Content
• A discussion about the Intersection between What You Love to Do, What You Are Really Good At, and What People Are Willing to Pay For.
• An answer to the question: How Do We Create Something that Truly Benefits Society?
• And much more!

If you want to get full access to this interview and many more like it…

…make sure you click here to sign up for our notification list at Digital Nomad Academy to be the first to learn when we open up our doors again soon for more students!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: How to Make a Difference in the World with Conscious Entrepreneurship: An Interview with Brian Johnson

Everyone wants to make a living doing what they love, but very few are ready to put in the effort that is required to make it happen.

You see, you are in charge of your life. You are responsible for how your life looks today and what your future will look like.

Now, I’m not saying you can control every aspect of your life, but I think you know what I mean. We are all responsible for what we do and don’t do in our lives.

One of the best decisions I ever made was to find and go after my passion with relentless determination.

It’s very simple, but not easy.

If you’re ready to take one single step every day, you can reach your goals and live the life of your dreams.

1. Get Clear

The first step towards turning passion into profit is to get clear about what you want.

For me, this means setting goals that are specific, realistic, and that have a deadline.

What do you truly want from life? Do you want to contribute to humanity with your art? Or do you want to travel the world, experience new cultures, and share what you’ve learned with the rest of us? You can create whatever you decide.

There is always a way to turn your passion into profit if you’re determined enough to make it happen.

2. Take Action

Next, you need to be willing to take massive action. You need to be willing to take steps every single day towards achieving your goals.

If your goal is to travel the world, find out exactly how much money you need, what you need, and how you need to do it. If your goal is to travel to Thailand and live there for a year, find out how much airfare is, how much the cost of living is, and everything else that’s essential.

Then ask yourself what you have to do to make it happen. Start executing even if you don’t know exactly how it will all work out.

Something magical happens when you take action. Never underestimate the power of the universe.

3. Model People

One of the most powerful tips I can give you is to model people. What I mean by this is to find people that are doing exactly what you want to be doing, and do what they did.

If you do what successful people have done to become successful, you will become successful. It is inevitable.

This may mean emailing someone and becoming their friend. For some people it may mean joining a training course where you can get access to people that are already living the kind of life you want to live.

Whatever it is, avoid making excuses and take action. There will be no perfect time to go after your dreams, so you might as well start now.

4. Destroy Your Obstacles

Once you have a very clear goal of what you want to achieve, take a clean sheet of paper and write down the obstacles you think you will face on the path toward your goal.

What this does is it anticipates the bad stuff that will happen, and it lets you come up with solutions before you even bump into the obstacles.

This usually eliminates most of the obstacles right away, and makes the whole journey smoother.

5. Face Your Fears

Going after your passion is not a walk in the park. If it was, more people would live a life of passion and fulfillment.

Facing your fears is a simple as being determined to get to your goals with fears or no fears.

You can either succumb to your fears and live a life of mediocrity, or you can face your fears and live a life of true freedom. The choice is yours.

6. Baby Steps

Most people underestimate how much progress they can make in a few years just by taking one small step every single day towards their goals.

When you have your plan, and you have your obstacles in front of you, it’s time to brainstorm ideas of what steps you can take today to get closer to making a living doing what you love. Nothing remarkable needs to happen; you just have to start the journey toward your dreams.

7. Patience

This journey takes a lot of patience.

You will run into a lot of obstacles, you will have to face your fears, as things probably won’t go as smoothly as you’d like them to go. It’s all a part of the journey. And none of it really matters when you love what you do.

Turning your passion into profit is something that everyone can do, but not everyone has the determination or willpower to make it happen.

It is up to you to decide whether you want to live up to your full potential or not.

Henri Junttila writes at Wake Up Cloud, where you can get his free course: Find Your Passion in 5 Days or Less. And if you liked this article, you will enjoy one of Henri’s top articles, 33 Powerful Ways of Overcoming Fear.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 7 Simple Steps to Turn Your Passion Into Profit

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

Chris Ducker is my go-to guy that I trust when it comes to outsourcing and virtual assistants. We met through Twitter and the blogosphere and over the last several months I’ve gotten to know him quite well.

Chris is an experienced sales and marketing professional originally from London, who’s now the CEO of the Live2Sell Group of Companies, a thriving offshore outsourcing provider and call center operation in Cebu City, Philippines, where they’ve grown exponentially from about 7 employees to a massive firm with 217 staff and growing!

Chris is on a mission to be a full-time Virtual CEO by the end of 2010, to get his business to the point where he can work from home with his family, and he documents his journey at Virtual Business Lifestyle.

Chris recently interviewed me for VBL, but this time I sat down to chat with him about his businesses, how he turned his life around 180 degrees from near bankruptcy to thriving success, the key differences between hiring freelance virtual assistants and hiring an outsourcing service provider, and his mission to remove himself from the office and become a Virtual CEO before the end of the year:

0:45 – All about Chris’ Virtual Business Lifestyle
1:40 – How Chris ended up living and working in Cebu, Philippines
4:20 – Rags to riches, going from lots of debt to great financial success
6:56 – Why Chris wants to free himself from the office and become a Virtual CEO
11:25 – Work-life balance and what Chris’ mobile lifestyle with his family looks like
14:45 – All about Chris’ business process outsourcing firm and call center and his personal web PA company
17:47 – The quality of the workforce in the Philippines and the scalability power of outsourcing
22:45 – Home-based freelance outsourcers and keys to finding great virtual assistants
25:14 – The benefits of going with outsourcing companies
26:33 Chris’ new match-making service to help you find reliable home-based virtual assistants
28:19 – Expat life in the Philippines and the low cost of living in Asia (see Chris’ blog post What’s it Like to Live and Work in the Philippines?)

Late last week, Chris and his team launched their new Virtual Assistant match-making service, Virtual Staff Finder. In a nutshell, it bridges the gap between entrepreneurs that want a hard-working, experienced home-based VA, but one that is filtered and vetted in a more professional way. They do the background checks, test applicants online and give you the top three candidates to interview. For people who want to hire outsourcers, it eliminates all the guesswork, and you basically don’t have to do anything but make the final ‘hire’ decision.

I’ll be using Chris’ new service myself in the weeks ahead, as I’ve had my share of headaches searching job listing sites and trying to find the best virtual assistants through other means. You can check it out by visiting VirtualStaffFinder.com—where you can also get your hands on his new free eBook “The Top 10 Virtual Assistant Tips”! And if you do decide to hire your own VA with Virtual Staff Finder’s help, make sure you use this link to let them know I sent you their way and they should treat you with extra love!

Make sure to scope out all the invaluable content Chris has on his site Virtual Business Lifestyle. A couple of my favorites:

• How to Utilize Virtual Assistants to Help Create, Market and Sell Your ‘4HWW’ Style Muse!
• What’s it Like to Live and Work in the Philippines?
• Personal Branding and The Art of Self Promotion
• The Virtual Business Lifestyle Top 12 “Lifestyle Design” Blogs

You can also connect with Chris below:

• Get the Virtual Business Lifestyle podcast on iTunes
• Join the VBL Facebook page
• Connect with Chris Ducker on Twitter

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Outsourcing to the Philippines and Building Your Virtual Business Lifestyle with Chris Ducker

Feature photo by Bing Ramos

Today’s guest post is courtesy of Richard at Lifestyle Design Unleashed.

When a surgeon goes to do an operation there are a number of pieces of equipment that he or she will most likely need. Scalpels. Clamps. Trays. And so on. If they go in with a skateboard, a banana and a doorbell instead then the surgeon is obviously going to be far less likely to be able to make a success of the operation.

And so it follows with lifestyle design. There are a number of traits which, if you can implement them, will help you greatly in designing and then creating your ideal lifestyle, so I thought it might be beneficial now to run over a few of these to serve as thinking points for you.

I’d love to hear your opinions and feedback on these elements, so I encourage you to leave a comment at the end of this post and also to suggest any traits that you think I’ve missed out.

Motivation To Make Changes

The first key to successful lifestyle design is having the motivation to make changes. I assume that if you’re here now, reading this blog, then that is you. But I’m not just talking about a passing interest in designing your lifestyle—instead I mean a burning motivation that keeps you awake at night dreaming about the possibilities.

I heard a useful phrase recently which went something along the lines of “a dog on the hunt doesn’t stop to scratch its fleas”. In other words there are always going to be small annoyances or things that get in your way while you’re on this lifestyle design journey, but if you have enough motivation and you’re focused on the end game then these minor issues won’t slow you down.

Passion For Life

There are two aspects of lifestyle design really—the negative and the positive. The negative elements are all those things you want to escape from, to avoid, to eliminate. Maybe that’s a boring job. Maybe that’s debt. Maybe it’s something as simple as a cold climate.

But the other side are the positives. What are you going to add into your lifestyle? When you’ve got rid of all those negatives, what positives are you going to add in?

What countries would you like to visit? What new skills would you like to learn? What food would you like to try, what languages do you want to learn? Who do you want to meet and what do you want to achieve?

Too many people know what they don’t want (I want to be able to quit my job) but struggle with what they do want to do. Remember that eliminating your job by setting up a lifestyle business, for example, by its very definition, opens up a huge amount of free time, and you’ve got to do something with it.

It’s worth, then, considering what you will do. Maybe go to some evening classes to see what appeals to you. Maybe go and meet some new people and just get chatting until you start thinking “wow, I’d love to try that”.

Find the things you’re really passionate about in case you aren’t already aware which will create even more motivation to make the necessary changes to your life.

A Vision Of Your Potential Life

I remember listening to an audio tape years ago which included information on an architect. When he designed a house he could visualize it so strongly that apparently he would go out to the plot of land with his clients and walk them through the house in such detail it was like the house was already built.

He could see every aspect of it in his mind’s eye. He joked that it seemed too real to him that sometimes he would knock his elbow on a piece of furniture!

This vision—this ability to see your potential future in your mind’s eye in glorious Technicolor—is yet another step in achieving your goals. After all, if you don’t know what you’re aiming for, how will you know when you get there?

So don’t just make a list of what you want to eliminate and what you want to add into your life. Imagine yourself actually living that life. What does your home look like? Where is it located? What do you look like? What do you do? Who do you know? Make this vision so strong that you too can walk into imaginary furniture.

Debt Free

Debt has a nasty way of taking away options. And the fewer options you have the less freedom and control over your life you have. If you’re up to your eyeballs in debt, then you may well be stuck in your job until you’ve paid it off. You may not be able to afford the vacation you want, or to buy that house you dream of. Debt repayments can eat up a lot of your monthly income, which means you need to earn more.

Without debt though, all those monthly repayments disappear. Depending on your point of view, you either need to earn less (meaning your lifestyle business can support you that much sooner) or you have more expendable income to spend on the things you really want.

In short, getting out of debt is an essential part of the lifestyle design project.

What else is important for your lifestyle design journey? Please leave your feedback and visit Richard at LifestyleDesignUnleashed.com

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Success Traits For Effective Lifestyle Design

Anyone motivated to be successful—to really make an impact with your life—has a list of things they want to do. Things to have, things to be. Places they want to go, people they’d love to meet.

You may not have a list of life goals all written down on paper. You probably keep an immediate to-do list, you might have some of your long-term life goals written down on scraps of paper or word doc lists on your computer here and there, but you know at the very least you have those things somewhere in the back of your mind.

I’ve challenged myself with yearly goals at the New Year in the last couple years, and I’ve mapped out plans for my businesses and different projects. I don’t frequently achieve everything on my lists, but as my friend Ramit says, if you’re not failing at a couple things each month, you’re not trying hard enough. And I’ve found that sharing those goals publicly gives me additional motivation and accountability to follow through, and sometimes friends and readers can offer words of advice, help, or partnership on some goals.

I’ve had some pieces of the puzzle in the works for a long time, but I hadn’t put together a comprehensive “bucket list” of things I want to do before I die until recently. It wasn’t until Sean Ogle recently wrote about bucket lists, and how to identify the most important life goals that will enable you to achieve the other items on your list—the travel goals, the possessions, the fun stuff—that I finally got motivated to really solidify my whole life list and put it out here to share with the world.

Several friends and bloggers have compiled great bucket lists that have helped inspire some of the things I decided to put on my list. There’s a mix of places I’d love to jet set, landmarks I’d like to see, adventures I’d like to have, experiences I hope to share with specific friends and family, and of course I immediately took Sean’s advice and prioritized the importance of the enabling goals that will make everything else possible.

So without further ado, here’s my bucket list—or, 84 adventures you can follow me on here at Thrilling Heroics:

Enabling Goals

1. Develop an online business that earns over $3000/month in passive income.
2. Build a blog with 10,000+ subscribers.
3. Write an ebook or launch a digital product that earns $6000+.
4. (Self-)publish a book.
5. Achieve debt freedom.
6. Get an article published in the print edition of Esquire, GQ, Wired, Details, or Maxim magazine.
7. Leverage my blog audience to make a major positive impact in at least 10 peoples lives.
8. Speak at South by Southwest Interactive and stick around for the music festival in Austin, Texas.
9. Set up a corporation in Singapore.
10. Make at least $120K in a given year.
11. Get a second passport, and maybe a third too.
12. Complete my Personal MBA.
13. Attend an official TED Conference. (Already had the honor of helping plan the locally-organized TEDxBKK!)
14. Sell my photography and other creative artwork. (Working on it…)
15. Organize a lifestyle designer/blogger summit in Asia.

Adventures to Have & Things to Do

1. Learn to rock climb in Railay Beach, Krabi.
2. Climb up to the mountaintop Wat Tum Sua Temple in Krabi, Thailand.
3. Learn to sail.
4. Climb a volcano.
5. Eat slow-roasted suckling pig in Bangkok’s Chinatown.
6. Spend a week with friends at Burning Man in the Nevada desert.
7. Go skydiving. Go skydiving again.
8. Learn to play guitar.
9. Achieve fluency in French.
10. Achieve fluency in Spanish.
11. Get ripped with The Hollywood Physique.
12. Replace my morning coffee with Yerba Maté for at least a week.
13. Get a tattoo in memory of my late friend Chris Cravens, with a design by my best friend Patrick.
14. Take my dad to eat real Kobe beef at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant CUT in Los Angeles.
15. Spend a whole lot more time with my grandfather and learn about his life before he leaves us.
16. Raise another dog. (Sadly, my family’s 14-year-old golden retriever passed away while I was abroad earlier this year.)
17. Take my best friend Patrick to a Daft Punk concert.
18. Share a beer with Carlos Miceli in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
19. Live abroad for at least 3 months in another part of the world (South America, another SEAsia country?).
20. Live in San Diego, California.
21. Work for a month at a winery—like, in the fields, growing grapes.
22. Drive the Pacific Coast Highway in a convertible Lamborghini.
23. Camp under the stars on the beach and see the sun rise.
24. Participate in the world’s biggest water fight during Thailand’s New Year’s festivities (Songkran).
25. Do a beach photoshoot with a swimsuit model.
26. Go to a shooting range and fire off a Kalashnikov rifle and a Desert Eagle .50 Action Express. More importantly, learn to disassemble & reassemble them.
27. Drive a Tesla Roadster.
28. Take a gondola along the Venice canals in Italy.
29. Ride camel back across the Sahara desert.
30. Take a Serengeti safari in Tanzania and Kenya.
31. Trek through the jungle on the back of an elephant.
32. See the view from the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (twice).
33. See the view from the top of Corcovado Mountain in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
34. Party on Ibiza for New Year’s Eve in Spain’s Ballearic Islands.
35. Go to the Glastonbury Festival in England and see Stonehenge.
36. Participate in the Brazilian Carnaval celebration.
37. See what Mardi Gras and Voodoo Fest are all about in New Orleans, Louisiana.
38. Learn a martial art.
39. Learn to surf.
40. Learn to DJ or mix electronic music.
41. Own a Kawasaki or Yamaha motorcycle.
42. Buy and restore a 1965 or 1966 Shelby Mustang GT350.
43. Stay in an over-the-water bungalow in beautiful Bora Bora in the French Polynesian islands.
44. Spontaneously walk into the airport and randomly buy a same-day ticket to wherever looks appealing.
45. Drive the Amalfi coast near Sorrento, Italy.
46. Rent a villa on Lake Como or Lake Lugano with friends.
47. Own a small bar or restaurant with live music.
48. Leave any wealth or assets I have when I go out to people who really deserve and need them.

Places to Travel & Landmarks to See

1. The ancient temples at Angkor Wat, Cambodia
2. The Acropolis and Parthenon in Athens, Greece
   
3. The Sistine Chapel and Vatican City in Rome, Italy
4. The pyramids at Giza, Egypt
5. Machu Picchu in Peru
6. The home of the Oracle at Delphi, Greece
7. The Taj Mahal
8. The ancient city of Petra, carved into canyon walls in southern Jordan
9. The Karnak temple and the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, Egypt
10. The Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza near Cancun, Mexico
11. Iguazu Falls on the Argentina/Brazil border
12. The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy
13. The Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
14. The Banaue Rice Terraces in the Philippines
15. The Borobudur stuppa in Java, Indonesia
16. Gorgeous Zion National Park, Utah
17. Niagara Falls lit up at night
18. Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet
19. Jerusalem’s Old City
20. The Hagia Sofia mosque in Istanbul, Turkey
21. The abbey of Mont-St-Michel in France

You’ll notice I’ve included a few things I’ve already accomplished. I’ve also taken Sean’s advice to have a few things that will be easier to achieve, and a few goals I can obtain in the very near future. I think when you make your own list it’s important to recognize the big things you’ve already done that you’d always dreamed of, and include a few “gimme” goals so you can start off strong and stay motivated.

Of course I expect that my feelings about some items on the list may change throughout the course of my life. I may not achieve everything, some of my goals will change, or I may add new items to the list. But, it’s a starting point and it’s something I can always refer back to to remind me what I want to accomplish.

Of course if there’s anything you can help me achieve, or something you want to join in on for example, leave a shout out and we’ll talk! OR if you dig what I do here at Thrilling Heroics, click here to make a donation to my Life List Fund, help me achieve some of my dangerously ambitious goals, and follow me on these adventures!

What’s on Your List?

Read Sean’s 10 Tips for Creating a Successful Bucket List, and his Bucket List Management tips, and also take a look at my lengthy breakdown of how to establish meaningful personal and professional goals for yourself in all the important realms of your life. It’s written to help you establish yearly goals, but the principles can be applied to building your own life goals list too.

If you have a bucket list already, share it. If not, take a look at the above articles and get on it! Your time here is short, so remember to value every day you have and make the most of it.

Featured image by divemasterking2000

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: My Bucket List: Awesome Goals for a Thrillingly Heroic Life

What does success mean to you?

Success is being able to live and work anywhere you want.

Success is making a difference in other peoples’ lives.

Success is unique for every individual, and you have to define it for yourself.

There is no dollar-amount on your paycheck, no job title, no luxury car or status symbol that objectively demonstrates that you’ve “made it”. Success, above all, requires that you set your own unique, meaningful goals and work hard to achieve them.

Jonny Gibaud from TheLifeThing.com has been working hard over the last month to bring together an awesome lineup of young bloggers from around the world and asked them two simple questions:

What is Success? and How Do You Achieve It?

Jonny asked me to contribute something to the book, along with these cool friends of Thrilling Heroics:

• Greg from Rock Star Lifestyle Design
• Colin from Exile Lifestyle
• Ashley from The Middle Finger Project
• Carlos from Owl Sparks
• Matt from Life Without Pants
• Bud from A Boundless World
• Gordie from Lifestyle Design for You
• Henri from Wakeup Cloud
• Sid from SidSavara.com
• Jun from JunLoayza.com
• Raam from RaamDev.com
• Brenton from BrentonGieser.com
• Diggy from Unleash Reality

And many more.

The SUCCESS ebook brings together 30 great perspectives on what Success really is and most importantly, how you achieve it.

“Written by successful people, for successful people, ‘SUCCESS’ was created to bring together and form a group of incredible global individuals united by a shared passion for Success.”

Dowload the new ebook here for free.

Network with others and win a copy of Source Control

Additionally, you can join the Facebook group or participate in the group’s Twitter contest from Monday, February 1st, through Sunday the 14th for a chance to win a copy of Source Control, which focuses on teaching you to outsource your life to make you more successful.

Interested? Here is how to enter a Twitter submission: Just tweet in fewer than 140 characters what your idea of success is.  Your tweet should look like this: “#SuccessIs:  _______  www.downloadsuccess.info”  (don’t forget the hashtag and the link so Jonny can track anyone who participates)

Enjoy the free ebook, leave your feedback on the Facebook page, and share what your definition of success is in the comments below.

In your own words: What Is Success and How Do You Achieve It?

Photo courtesy of nattu

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 30 Global Perspectives on SUCCESS

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

Feature photo by chanchan222

For readers from the States, I wish you a happy Thanksgiving! A few months ago, I was thinking about all the individuals who have helped shape the course of my life and the person I am today. I’ve been extremely fortunate to have the guidance of some brilliant minds and to surround myself with motivated, creative, innovative people.

They say your character and your achievements are influenced most by the people you surround yourself with. There have even been studies that show your income bracket is likely to be equal to the average of that of your five closest friends. So who are you surrounding yourself with?

Today I wanted to share my gratitude to my many teachers, mentors, role models, and friends who have influenced my life and given me their support. It’s important to acknowledge those who help foster your abilities and empower you to pursue the life you want.

Alec Hodgins

A French Canadian who taught English in France for years and then migrated to the US to teach French! I was lucky to be in his class for three years in high school. Alec was the most influential teacher I ever had in school, always advocating the unconventional path. He was the one who inspired my fascination with world cultures, languages, and travel. My first travel abroad was on a class trip with him to Cannes & Paris, France, and he first got me drooling over photos of Thailand when he took his wife and son there in 2000.

Lesson learned: You don’t have to color inside the lines all the time.

Alan Haynes

My photography teacher in high school, again for three years. In another life, I was a professional photographer (now it’s mostly a hobby, but I have a travel photo site coming soon). Alan connected me with my very first job, working in a darkroom, and showed me that it was possible to earn a great living if you split your time as an artist and as a teacher, to pass on your craft to the next generation.

Lesson learned: It’s okay to pursue your creative passion professionally.

Nicole Pefley

I met Nicole in middle school and our paths have intertwined ever since. She’s been a two-time Coachellian with me, we have a shared love for travel, French, music, and other assorted weird experiences. After high school, she lived in Paris for many months, and then spent a year studying in Brazil, so she was a great example for me to follow when I chose to live abroad for a while. Recently, she’s followed in Alec Hodgins footsteps and began teaching French at our old high school.

Lesson learned: We’ve both found you really can be a drifter for a few years after school, explore your interests, and eventually land on your feet.

Ramit Sethi

I’ve mentioned Ramit a few times recently. He was the first big blogger I reached out to when I started building my online presence in 2006, and I found out we’re from the same town! He’s a perfect role model for gen-y bloggers and entrepreneurs—he’s a year older than me, a graduate of Stanford University, and a successful tech startup co-founder. He’s worked with bigshots like Seth Godin and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, and now he’s a New York Times bestselling author!

Lesson learned: Nobody’s going to give you handout. But there’s no harm in asking for what you want.

Jeffrey Skoll

Jeff Skoll was the first president of eBay and founder of movie production company Participant Media (responsible for bringing An Inconvenient Truth to the world). He’s been an active voice at Stanford’s Center for Social Innovation, and took his wealth from his success at eBay to become a philanthropist and support innovative entrepreneurship and social change with the Skoll Foundation. I’ve never spoken to Jeff, but he has always served as a great social entrepreneur role model for me.

Lesson learned: You can make a damn good living and make a difference at the same time.

Warren Buffett

The “Oracle of Omaha” is known around the world as one of the world’s most talented investors and money managers, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and the richest person in the world (up until 2008, worth about $62 billion). Buffett started out with the money he earned as a newspaper boy to buy his first assets, and despite his now immense fortune, he still lives in a home he purchased for $50K in the 1950s and embraces a frugal lifestyle. In 2006, I had the opportunity to meet him briefly, just weeks after his announcement that he’d be giving away 85 percent of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Lesson learned: If the wealthiest investor & philanthropist in the world grew his business from just a few dollars from his paper route, you can too.

Rajesh Setty

I connected with Raj through his blog Life Beyond Code in my early days of blogging. As a serial entrepreneur, he tends to be involved as a co-founder, investor, or board member in about eight companies at any given time. He shares his wealth of business experience and motivational wisdom through his blog, Twitter, speaking engagements, and his books, and he was a huge influence on me when I first started my freelance side business which later grew into Thrilling Heroics Consulting.

Lesson learned: Business isn’t about a product, it’s about the people you work with, the relationships you build, and the dedication you show to your customer.

Timothy Ferriss

My interest in coming to Southeast Asia was fueled by reading Tim Ferriss’ inspiring NYT Bestseller The 4 Hour Workweek. Ferriss noted that Thailand and Argentina were two of the world’s best remaining destinations where Americans can easily stretch their dollar, and that if you spend the time to build a business that you can run from anywhere, you can easily leverage the idea of geo-arbitrage—earning in a strong currency while you live somewhere with a low cost-of-living. Though I’ve never met Tim, his ideas and experiments have certainly influenced a lot of my business decisions since reading his book!

Lesson learned: You don’t have to wait until retirement to create the lifestyle of your dreams. Also, nobody ever said you have to follow the rules.

Jacqueline Novogratz

Founder & CEO of Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture fund that invests philanthropic capital and trains the next generation of business leaders in South Asia and East Africa to build thriving businesses focused on delivering affordable healthcare, water, housing and energy to the poor. She delivers a few incredibly pursuasive TED Talks and is a shining example of some of the social entrepreneurs that are trying to lead social progress for the developing world. (Side note: Jacqueline is married to TED‘s founder Chris Anderson, another inspirational figure who has proven that that ideas can change the world. I’m excited to bring Chris’ vision to Thailand in Febraury with TEDx BKK!)

Lesson learned: Entrepreneurial approaches can be applied to solve the problems of global poverty.

Matt Mullenweg

At just 25-years-old, Matt Mullenweg has developed a company that is changing the way businesses interact with their clients online. His company created the WordPress blog platform, which makes it easy for anyone to get started publishing online, and which is what I have built my two businesses around—Thrilling Heroics Consulting and FreelanceWP—to help make online publishing more accessible to everyone and help innovators and changemakers spread their message to the world. Matt is a huge advocate of open-source development, which is making great software more quickly and easily possible, and transforming how we think about ownership.

Lesson learned: Share your best ideas with the world freely to empower the largest possible community, and it will come back to you many-fold.

Paul Dickey

Paul joined E*Trade after high school and became senior internal auditor, working around the world and overseeing a team of employees with advanced degrees. We met in college when he returned to get his own Bachelor’s degree, lived together for nearly a year, and traveled to Spain together with friends. Paul led a campaign to implement leadership studies at Sac State, was president of several student organizations, and together we attended many entrepreneurship conferences, organized monthly Saturday art walks in Sacramento, launched the U.S.’ fourth university Toastmasters chapter, and networked with tons of other entrepreneurs. He’s got a few business plans laid out, a submission with the patent office, and real estate property.

Lesson learned: Set your life goals and manage your time appropriately, and you can maximize your involvement in different entrepreneurial opportunities to guarantee your success.

Chris Guillebeau

After Tim Ferriss, Chris Guillebeau has perhaps been the most influential writer encouraging the masses to think differently and pursue unconventional, remarkable lifestyles. Chris is on a mission to travel to every country in the world (he’s already visited 122), and since starting his blog The Art of Nonconformity a little under 2 years ago, he has managed to create a full-time income for himself just from his writing projects. He even has great tips on how to travel to rogue states and “off-limits” places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, Libya, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and North Korea. I got the chance to meet him on his way through Bangkok in February, and have often been inspired by his thoughts on entrepreneurship, success, and changing the world.

Lesson learned: You really can go anywhere you want, and create your own wealth along the way.

Dwight Turner

Dwight and I met briefly in college. When I learned he had taught for a year in Thailand, we became fast friends and eventually both ended up back in Bangkok together. Dwight’s In Search Of Sanuk is a grassroots charity organization that makes it easy for anyone to contribute their time or donations to make a difference for orphans and refugees here in Thailand. He housed me when I first moved out here, has supported me through a lot of the challenges of getting used to expat/entrepreneur life, and together we’ve done a lot of traveling, volunteering, and bringing cool people from different walks of life together for the monthly Bangkok Tweetup, charity mixers, and other social events.

Lesson learned: It’s easier than you might think to mobilize a community to create social change.

Vanessa Rubin

An incredible young woman I was lucky to meet this year here in Bangkok—Vanessa is an aid worker who has spent nearly a decade working on humanitarian projects (frequently as a food & hunger advisor) in places like Nepal, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, & Bangladesh—she’s full of life, an avid rock climber, and earlier this year she was filmed for the BBC’s TV series Extreme Dreams on an expedition to scale Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador. She came to Thailand to review progress made by Care International since the 2004 tsunami.

Lesson learned: Always reach for new heights and seek ways to improve the lives of others, but never neglect yourself either.

Larry McKibben

My dad has been the biggest supporter of my unconventional entrepreneur & digital nomad lifestyle. Though I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way, he has often been the one to encourage me and give me the pep-talk I need. Although he didn’t finish his college degree the first time around, he has had an extremely successful twenty-year career in retail sales and training and quickly worked his way to earning an envy-inducing salary. He’s always been dedicated to his family and a great example of a hard worker.

Lesson learned: With enough dedication, you don’t have to let perceived barriers-to-entry prevent you from being successful.

So who are the teachers that had the most impact on you? Who are your mentors? What supportive friends and role models are you thankful for?

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Show Thanks For Your Teachers, Mentors & Role Models

Feature photo by Diego Cupolo.

This guest post comes from Jonny Gibaud, who writes at TheLifeThing.com

School – Work – Eat Some Strawberry Pie – Die.

Surely there is more to life and living than this? because if not then I want out. Shall we just take a moment to remind ourselves of the road “most traveled” and why getting out of the un-winnable rat race, whether by leaving the track completely or just moving to the outside lane where the views are better, should be high on our life goal list?

This Beautiful Thing Called Life

Life is not simply about surviving, for making do and settling for less then the best. Life is not something to be endured or regretted. Life is not being stuck in the middle of six lanes of traffic going in a direction you really don’t want to go with an aggressive backseat driver.

Life, conversely, is like imported Italian ice cream. Something to be enjoyed, to be experienced, to be toyed with, risked, investigated, challenged, experimented on and, over all, “Devoured” with lots of mess around the facial region.

Life is too short and too expansive to be trapped on autopilot on the superhighway that is the “Road Most Traveled.” How can we slam on the brakes and get off? How can we avoid falling into the trap of following the “Road most Traveled”, and instead go for a wander along the “Path” that is least followed? Away from the pollution and the noise, it is a much more beautiful experience.

The Road “Most” Traveled

I have found, in my experience, that the road “most” traveled is generally job-focused.

It is the old cliche of “go to school to get an education in order to get into college so that you can get a good job and start a good career, spend 50 years of your life working hard and then spend a few of the last years having fun with your walking stick before kicking the bucket.”

I don’t know about you but, like four-day-old seafood, that’s just not doing it for me.

In this case, the term “Job” can be supplemented for any individual aspect of a person’s life that takes an uneven share of a person’s focus.

Like farting in public, it just so happens that jobs and careers tend to be the main single-focus offenders to most people.

Life is not just about a career or any other single aspect of living, and yet those riding along on the road most traveled tend to focus solely on this facet whether this be a career, your relationships, your goals, your 10 Pin Bowling prowess or any of the many things other things people focus on.

Whether you are driving a Ferrari or a Banger, on the road most traveled you’re all going to end up in the same place.

I understand the logic for people focusing on their career early on, then maybe shifting focus to their family after that and then finally shifting focus to themselves when all the kids have left home, it’s just that this approach tends to lead to a very unbalanced life all the way through, where one aspect is focused on to the detriment of the other aspects of life.

This single focus of just one section of a person’s life, having it as the center of existence to one degree or another, is the key indicator of the road “most” traveled and leads to an unbalanced and ultimately, in my humble opinion, less interesting and overall fulfilling existence.

So what is the alternative? Well, here is a suggestion.

The Path “Least Traveled”

There will be uneven ground, there will be potholes, there might even be the odd wild cat, and yet all this is worth it because there will be spectacular views.

The path least traveled is just that, a path – a more risky and thus generally more eventful journey than the road tarmacked for the majority.

The path less traveled is like a Tightrope walking Cat performing in a very strong head wind. It is “Balance”-focused.

A “balanced” approach to life is not about not focusing on a job or any other single aspect of life but conversely focuses on seeing a job or career or any other aspect of one’s life as exactly that, one aspect of their life, not the aspect.

The path least traveled focuses on ensuring a healthy balance between all aspects of one’s life so that, in the same way that eating some greens with your red meat, you will enhance the experience.

The path “least traveled” understands that life is not and should not be defined by a single focus, but that ultimate happiness comes from experiencing everything life has to offer, at every stage.

Puffer Fish Jobs

Like the puffer fish, a job can give the illusion of being a monster with spines that requires your full attention, but in reality it is but a tiddler in the vast ocean of your potential experience.

A job, while important, is but a small part of everything that makes you who you are, and yet how many of us spend up to 100 hours a week or more focusing on careers to the detriment of all the other things that life has to offer. Your job will eventually be taken over by someone else, the company will go on without you, and you will be forgotten about fairly shortly after you leave. It is a brutal truth.

Unfortunately that is just the nature of the beast that is corporate life, it has sharp teeth, a rather bad nature and a very poor memory.

Knowing this then, are the hours you are pouring into this one avenue of your life really that well invested?

Is spending up to a 100 hours a week focusing on one small part of your life really time well invested?

People who travel the path less traveled see their career or any single aspect of their life as just one small part of their journey and existence and not the sole focus.

The path “least traveled” is an unconventional approach and people are right to say that with this more balanced approach one will probably not be able to build empires, reach the lofty career heights, be involved in every moment of their kid’s lives or spend a couple of years of pure self-focused retirement. This is true but…

It is worth remembering that empires do not last, careers are fleeting, children will not want you in their lives 100% of the time and retirements, like office parties, are vastly over-planned and under-executed.

The Key To A Full And Successful Existence

The key to a full and successful life is always to have balance. If you are currently doing 80 on the “Road Most Traveled” maybe it’s time to reflect on exactly how this is shaping your life and whether straying from the road and moving to the “Path Least Traveled”, having more balance in how you spend your time, finance and focus would improve your quality of life.

I have found that, in the most part, so-coined “Life Designers” are quite good at living in the moment and experiencing as many aspects of life as possible in balance, no matter what stage of life they are at. We could learn a lot from these guys on how to enjoy life and live more fully involved with everything it has to offer, no matter what your age or situation.

-If nothing else why not try it, if it’s not for you it is very easy to find your way back to the road again: just follow the noise.

Jonny Gibaud writes for the love of Helping People, Inspiring People, and Katie Holmes. He honed his unique writing style through his refusal to read for fear the words would attack him and borrowed his life philosophies from the local stray terrier but plans to give aspects of them back.

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A Reminder About Ramit Sethi’s Personal Finance Bootcamp

Remember to check out my video interview with Ramit Sethi from I Will Teach You To Be Rich. Ramit has been the personal finance king for over four years, and his book is now a New York Times best-seller. If you want to get your finances in shape for 2010, sign up for his 6-week bootcamp through Thrilling Heroics and get $75 off (details here). Here’s what you’ll get:

• Week 1 – Unearth secret credit card hacks. Find better credit cards and negotiate with your credit card companies. Get perks from free airline flights to free hotel stays with “secret” credit card hacks you aren’t currently using. Get a plan in place to pay off your credit card debt once and for all!
• Week 2 – Stick it to the big banks. Negotiate fees and get rid of them with step-by-step scripts. Use the support of Ramit’s community to switch banks if necessary.
• Week 3 – Retire early and happy. Why your friends haven’t invested; how to become rich on $100/month; how to legally evade taxes!
• Week 4 – Spend guilt-free on the things you love. How to get out of the joy-fear-guilt cycle of debt spending. How to spend money on what you love and cut back on everything else.
• Week 5 – Automate your way to freedom. Spend just a few hours a month managing your money, and stop letting it manage you. Special techniques for those who are freelancing, self-employed, or who have irregular income!
• Week 6 – Invest like a pro without taking the risks. How to automate your investing so your money works for you. The top ten mistakes people make when investing — are you making one of these? Running the numbers on investment strategies (with Ramit’s help!)

Click here to see Ramit’s detailed video interview or sign up for his personal finance bootcamp!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The Road “Most” Traveled Is Frickin’ Dangerous Man

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

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