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

Because I’ve been focused on getting my business on track, I’ve been a poor steward and haven’t added any value for you here in a while. I needed some motivation, so I’ve collected some of my favorite quotes here to check back and get my ass in gear when rough times have me frustrated or down. Hopefully you’ll find these inspiring and useful as well:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

—Mark Twain

“Live out of your imagination, not your history.”

—Stephen Covey

“You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

—Zig Ziglar

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

—Seneca

“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.”

—Napoleon Hill

“Doing the unrealistic is easier than doing the realistic.”

—Tim Ferriss

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”

—Henry Ford

“One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.”

—Tony Robbins

“Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action.”

—Napoleon Hill

“A good plan vigorously executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week.”

—George S. Patton

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

—Lao Tzu

“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”

—Mark Victor Hansen

“Too many of us wait to do the perfect thing, with the result we do nothing. The way to get ahead is to start now. While many of us are waiting until conditions are ‘just right’ before we go ahead, others are stumbling along, fortunately ignorant of the dangers that beset them. By the time we are, in our superior wisdom, decided to make a start, we discover that those who have gone fearlessly on before, have, in their blundering way, traveled a considerable distance. If you start now, you will know a lot next year that you don’t know now, and that you will not know next year, if you wait.”

—The William Feather Magazine (thanks to Steve Pavlina for this gem)

“First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.”

—Dale Carnegie

“It’s not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better, the credit belongs to the man of the arena who’s face is marred by dust, sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who knows the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at worst if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid soles who have never known neither victory nor defeat”

—Theodore Roosevelt (props to Andrew at Personal Hack for finding this one)

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”

—Winston Churchill

“Uncertainty and the prospect of failure can be very scary noises in the shadows. Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.”

—Tim Ferriss (Don’t be one of those people!)

“Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.”

—Wayne Dyer

“Reality is negotiable.”

—Tim Ferriss

“All achievement, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea!”

—Napoleon Hill

“Today, I have the opportunity to change everything. My whole life hinges on today’s actions. If I do not act today, if I do not grab control of my fate today, my life will take a completely different trajectory. One path leads to greatness, and the other path leads to a life where I will look back on today as the day where I could have spoken up, today as the day where I could have reached out. I will look back realizing that today was the one chance I had to change everything. I will not let this moment pass me by. I will act decisively, today.”

—Sid Savara

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

—Ayn Rand

What are your favorite quotes? What inspires you when you’re busy, frustrated, or need a boost in motivation?

Feature photo by Diego Cupolo

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 22 Inspirational Quotes for Living the Rockstar Life

“People excel at what they are passionate about.”

-Awesome guy Chuck M. Schwab, 1862 – 1939, who started in rags and became emperor of the U.S. Steel Corporation

photo credit: WTL photos

I feel guilty about not posting to the blog in the last few weeks, but I’ve been tremendously busy with freelance work, some frustrating personal issues, and of course the ever-present question: how to maintain three personal websites, continue writing for other publications, and build even more sites for my clients!

Here’s the executive decision: I think I’ve finally decided that Thrilling Heroics will become my centralized home on the net, and codymckibben.com will become a static about me page/portfolio/resume. So over the next day or so I’m transferring some of the older material from codymckibben.com over here and trying to eliminate any duplicate content, which means subscribers may see the feed get a little funky for the next two days. Sorry about that—but it might also give you a fun chance to jump into some of my older content and learn another thing or two about who this guy Cody McKibben is!

This new reshuffle will let you see a more personal side of me. And of course it means I’ll be restructuring my categories and focus to keep it as relevant as I can to personal development and Gen-Y issues, but hopefully you guys will also enjoy a little more humanized blog here at Thrilling Heroics. Plus I have lots of life adventures and career building tips to share with you! So stay tuned, and if you’re not already a TH subscriber, grab the RSS feed so you can be sure to drink from the fountain of knowledge when I commence blogging with a vengeance next week!

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with the powerful Tony Robbins quote below about success, as well as an awesome list of thoughts on prosperity from Steve at brip blap.

“People who succeed do not have fewer problems than people who fail. The only people without problems are those in cemeteries. It is not what happens to us that separates failures from successes. It is how we perceive it and what we do about what “happens” that makes the difference.”

-Tony Robbins, Unlimited Power

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Get Ready for Blogging with a Vengeance

Our beliefs about what we are and what we can be precisely determine what we will be…. What we believe to be true, what we believe is possible, becomes what’s true, becomes what’s possible…. Many people are passionate, but because of their limiting beliefs about who they are and what they can do, they never take the actions that could make their dream a reality. People who succeed know what they want and believe that they can get it.

—Tony Robbins in Unlimited Power: The New Science Of Personal Achievement

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Your Beliefs Shape Your Personal Power

My favorite positive affirmation is that there is NOTHING you cannot DO, or BE, or HAVE! I like to repeat that to myself daily. But one must do some dedicated goal-setting, and a lot of goal-getting to get there!

This was supposed to be a New Year’s post, but unanticipated changes due to my travel schedule forced me to postpone writing it. That’s okay though, travel will teach you a few valuable lessons about embracing change and rolling with the punches. The nice thing about resolutions is that New Year’s Eve isn’t the only time you can make them!

In fact, you can set positive new resolutions for your life anytime you choose! New Years just gives us a great opportunity to reflect on our achievements in the past year and set some meaningful new goals for the year ahead. But you can do this anytime you choose—you can make yearly goals on your birthday, or on tax day, or you can set resolutions every six months, every quarter, or you can even set monthly goals! You get the picture…

It’s already three weeks into the New Year, why should I set resolutions now?

The advent of a new year simply serves as a good reminder to reflect on all the progress you’ve made over the last 12 months and take what you’ve learned, and build a roadmap for the coming year and beyond.

It’s actually better that there has been time for the hype of the New Year to pass by. A lot of people intentionally avoid setting new goals on January 1st because they see New Years “resolutions” as oh-so-cliche. Or perhaps you set a traditional resolution and already fell off the wagon. Revisiting what “resolutions” mean now might give you an opportunity to set more meaningful goals this year. So, stay with me here and embrace the change. Don’t think of this as a New Years post. Instead, we are going to focus on goal-setting for this year.

We’ve already seen how powerful it can be when you set goals for yourself. You won’t succeed at every goal, but review your personal development progress at the end of each year to see how much you do accomplish! Simply setting the goals for yourself will greatly increase the likelihood that you’ll get much closer to your dream lifestyle in all these areas of your life.

But I can never keep my resolutions anyways. Why should I care?

So, as you can already see from my experience getting this post out much later than I intended, embracing change means that you don’t always get to do things exactly when you planned. But that’s okay, just because the timing changes doesn’t mean you should throw away the whole plan! Just having made the plan in the first place makes you about sixty percent more likely to follow through on the action than if you hadn’t made plans and set a time in your head in the first place. So the timing has changed. So what? You can still follow through. That’s what goal-setting is! It’s setting a plan—not a commandment set in stone. Don’t give up on your goals if you miss your timeline.

Another thing about your goals is that they may change over time, or things may happen that prevent you from achieving them. Or you may simply not put in the effort to complete all of your goals by the end of the year. But what matters most is that you set them. The act of making meaningful, clearly-defined goals, and writing them down, will put you ahead of 95% of people out there, and it will certainly point you much closer in the right direction toward attaining the lifestyle that you desire in the year ahead. I guarantee that if you set ten goals for yourself in 2008, simply the act of setting goals for yourself will put you MUCH closer to achieving your dreams! As Abraham Lincoln said, “A goal properly set is halfway reached.” Get clear on what you want to accomplish in the next year, and focus your energy towards those ends, and you’ll likely achieve many of your goals.

Okay, okay. So how do you actually do this?

Now it seems to be a popular thing to try to create 100 life goals or 100 goals for the new year. (Just do a Google search for “100 goals” and you’ll see how many communities there are out there talking about the number 100!) Maybe it’s just that the number ‘one-hundred’ has so much appeal… There’s nothing wrong with wanting to go about it that way I suppose, but I think that’s going about it backwards. You’ve already started out by adding another goal to the top of your pile of things to do: To create 100 goals! But does having any particular number of goals really objectively have any value to you? No. In fact, the number is fairly meaningless, so don’t start out with any particular number to reach.

Instead, try starting with the bigger picture in mind. As Stephen Covey said in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Begin with the end in mind.” To do this, we will examine what roles we play, and what we want those areas of our life to look like in a year from now.

Brainstorm your personal Roles & Areas of Focus

The necessary first step is to brainstorm your life roles, and other important personal areas of focus. Some goal-setting systems will tell you what categories to set goals for, but I believe you will come up with much more meaningful “categories” if you reflect personally about what roles you play and what areas of focus are most important to you. This is the system that Tony Robbins uses in his Personal Power seminars, and many other professional coaches (like my friend Tim Walther) use successfully in goal-setting workshops with thousands of people every year.

Think about your work, your family, your hobbies… What roles do you play? For example, when I brainstormed, my roles included freelance web designer, business owner, professional networker, peer mentor, writer, traveler, and artist. But perhaps you are a mother, a CEO, an accountant, rock climber, church member, or amateur filmmaker. The roles that we play are different and unique for each individual. But what “hats” do you wear? What roles are important to you that you want to improve upon in the next year?

Roles tend to sound like titles or jobs, even if you don’t get paid for them! They are how you relate to other people. But besides your roles, what other areas of focus are important to you personally? For most people this will include things like personal finances, health and recreation, social life, and so on. But maybe your areas of focus include nutrition, or spirituality, or professional development and training…

Take some time to brainstorm and reflect on what roles and areas of focus are most important in your life, and once you have them all written down on a piece of paper, imagine one-by-one what each of those areas of your life could “look like” in a year. This is called visualization, and it’s an important tool in attaining your desires. Visualize how much progress you could make towards positive relationships with your family. Or how much you could improve upon your strengths at work. Imagine yourself in a new profession, being paid to do something you love. Or even picture yourself on vacation to some beautiful exotic location! But don’t imagine these things passively—visualize yourself participating in making those changes…in experiencing those improvements and accomplishments. Write down a sentence or short paragraph next to each role and each area of focus about what that “picture” looks like.

Now set some goals!

Now that you have your big picture and you’ve thought about where you’re going with each of your personal roles, you finally have some direction. Visualizing what each of those areas of your life could look like one year from now should give you vivid images of what you want to DO, BE, and HAVE. So the final piece of the puzzle in making meaningful resolutions this year is to break those visualizations down into smaller steps you need to take to get there. What are the next actions that will get you closer to your desired outcomes? If you want to buy a new laptop, how much money should you set aside each month? If you want rock-hard abs, how many crunches are you going to do each day?

The best way to set goals that are longer-term than your weekly To Do list items is to start practicing SMART goals. SMART, in this case, is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. You can review these questions in your head as you set goals, or you may want to write them out for each major goal you set.

Specific — Is it something concrete, that you’ll know when you’ve completed it? This is one big reason why “resolutions” fail. People often set ambiguous goals that are too broad to be actionable or too unclear to know when you’ve fulfilled the requirements. For instance, a popular New Years’ resolution is “to get in shape.” But how are you going to achieve that? That is only a very murky version of the visualization that we’ve already practiced above. Now make it specific!

Measurable — How will you measure your progress at the end of the year, or how will you know when you’ve achieved your objective? Think about what specific criteria you’ll have to fulfill to reach the specific outcome you want. And a good way of measuring may be to keep a notebook of your progress toward the goal, or involving your friends in keeping you on track.

Attainable — Is it realistic and possible for you to achieve this in the year ahead, or are you reaching too far? Do you have too much on your plate already? Set goals that will make you stretch, and learn, and grow. But don’t set unrealistic, far-fetched goals that will only discourage you when you don’t meet them.

Relevant — This is actually my favorite of these questions to ask when you’re doing these mental exercises, and it is the first one that I ask because it is the best filter because I think it is the most important. Put simply, is the goal important? Is it really going to get you closer to your dreams, and is it really worth investing your energy in? Or should you focus on other, more important goals?

Time-Bound — When will you complete this goal? Specifically? By October? In Q1? On your birthday? Remember what I said about being flexible with changes in timing toward the beginning of this post, but attaching a time to your goals makes them immediate and important. Remind yourself regularly that you have a goal to meet. When do you plan to start, and what is your target date for completion?

You may come up with a hundred goals for 2008, or you may come up with just two or three really important goals for the year. I go through my list and eliminate all the non-SMART goals, and I try to focus on the ‘attainability’ aspect of my goals and think about how much I can realistically accomplish in just one year, so I have about 3-4 top concrete goals for each of my 10 roles/areas of focus.

Examples of My Personal and Professional Development Goals for the New Year

In my own brainstorming, I found that my most important Roles included Web Designer/Consultant, Entrepreneur, Blogger, Peer Mentor, Traveler, and Artist. And other Areas of Focus for me included things like Social & Relationship-oriented goals, Health & Recreation, and Financial goals. After I settled on these nine top areas of importance for my life, I visualized how I’d ideally like to see each of those realms in a year from now… What sort of progress would I like to make? What things would I like to learn? How successful can I be in a year? And I not only asked these questions, but I tried to actually put myself in that future reality—what will it feel like? How will I get there? Is it truly important?

So, once I had the broader picture of where I’d like to be in a year (yet still very specific mental images), I worked backwards to think what smaller steps I’ll need to accomplish to get to that point. I tried to frame each of my goals into the three areas of things I want to BE, DO, or HAVE, and I tried to frame them in the affirmative, to reinforce to my own brain that I will accomplish these things this year! I also tried to phrase my goals positively, focusing on what I should do to get there, not what I want to do less of. Here are the 24 major goals I’ve set for myself this year, broken down by my Roles and Areas of Focus:

I. My goals as a Web Designer & Consultant

• I WILL HAVE a dedicated portfolio site for my web development work.
• I WILL HAVE a new Apple desktop computer.
• I WILL EARN $60K as a freelancer this year.

II. My goals as an Entrepreneur

• I WILL BE the owner of my own web consulting business.
• I WILL HAVE multiple streams of residual income (through products, training materials, and partnerships).

III. My goals as a Blogger

• I WILL WRITE at least one high-value article each week for Thrilling Heroics (52+).
• I WILL REDESIGN ThrillingHeroics.com.
• I WILL DO one interview each month for Thrilling Heroics.
• I WILL COMMENT on other relevant blogs for one hour each week.

IV. Career Development and goals as a Peer Mentor

• I WILL CREATE a dedicated Mastermind group website with forums to enable remote discussion of personal & professional development.
• I WILL COMMUNICATE with Mastermind members monthly to follow up on their goal-setting and career planning.
• I WILL READ one personal development book each month.

V. My goals as a Traveler

• I WILL COMMUNICATE with international friends once each quarter.
• I WILL PARTICIPATE in online traveler communities like The Thorn Tree Forums and The Couch Surfing Project.
• I WILL LIVE in Thailand for 3+ months.

VI. My goals as an Artist

• I WILL SELL my photography professionally via an online gallery or stock photography community.

VII. My Social and Relationship-related goals

• I WILL CONTACT old friends on their birthdays.
• I WILL ATTEND Burning Man.

VIII. My Health and Recreational goals

• I WILL DO 30+ pushups each day.
• I WILL DO 3 half-hour cardio workouts per week.
• I WILL HAVE a great road bike.

IX. My Financial goals

• I WILL ELIMINATE any credit card balances.
• I WILL HAVE a $2000 emergency fund.
• I WILL HAVE my own self-employed medical/dental/vision insurance.

Remember, the more specific you get, the more likely you are to actually achieve your goals! I went through all of my goals to see if they were each Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely, and if they weren’t, I’d throw them out. I won’t include each step for ALL of my 24 goals here because I don’t want to bore you! But, I’ll demonstrate with my first goal how I answered these questions in my head:

GOAL: I WILL HAVE a dedicated portfolio site for my web development work

1. Specific: I will create an online portfolio with client testimonials, service & product offerings, and business contact information.
2. Measurable: I’ll know this goal is completed when I have a freelance site on its own unique URL that directs potential clients properly to my pipeline.
3. Attainable: I have built numerous websites in the past, so I will easily be able to build myself a business site (it doesn’t have to start out perfect!)
4. Relevant: This is important in order to establish an online home for my business and build instant credibility with potential clients.
5. Timely: I will complete this project before the end of February, 2008.

Now that you’ve seen my own detailed example of brainstorming Roles & Areas of Focus, visualizing outcomes, and SMART goal-setting for 2008, what are your personal resolutions for the new year? What goals are important for you to achieve this year? If you haven’t already spent time thinking about meaningful resolutions for the year, brainstorm on this and let me know what you think of my process in the comments.

When setting your career and academic goals for your business advancement, consider one of these online degrees that will help you manage your time better.

Please hit that comment section below and share your thoughts… Good luck goal-setting!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Set Meaningful Personal & Professional Development Goals and Make Progress Towards Your Ideal Life

Duff earned his Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Lawrence University, and has earned a great deal of experience with several conscious businesses and non-profits in the Boulder, Colorado, area. He has also served over 60 Life Coaching clients worldwide in tackling personal challenges and achieving goals. Duff also writes a fantastic personal blog at http://duff.zaadz.com, which I highly recommend, and he recently wrote a useful GTD resource that took off in the blog world. In this exclusive interview, Duff shares some of his encouraging thoughts on business, philosophy, and empowerment.

So tell us about the new startup, Falling Fruit TV. What separates you guys from the pack, and what is your mission?

Falling Fruit is a podcast network that is creating free audio and video shows on topics of personal and global transformation. We have shows ranging from how to change the world through business, to how to change your health through alternative medicine, as well as a popular show for serious meditators called Buddhist Geeks, and a new show exploring what it means to be a man, with many more to come. Our shows are currently audio-only, but we have some video podcasts in the works too, which are going to be HOT!

Our mission statement is “Through providing leading-edge media content, Falling Fruit connects, informs, and empowers world citizens who want to become effective agents of change.” Pretty lofty I know, but us Millennials tend to be pretty optimistic.

And for those not hip to podcasting yet, a podcast is an audio or video show broadcast over the web that you can subscribe to, usually through iTunes, usually for free, and then iTunes automatically downloads the newest episodes to your computer and/or iPod or other media player. We love new technology at Falling Fruit, and aim to use it for “technospiritual” ends, in other words asking the question “how can this cool new tech thing I’m drooling over actually be used to do good in the world?”

You co-host the Conscious Business show at Falling Fruit. What are some of the current trends in conscious business–and which organizations are on the cutting edge that we should keep an eye on?

Conscious Business is a name we’ve put on a number of emerging trends in the business world, especially trends for businesses that are addressing environmental and social justice issues, as well as businesses that are encouraging their employees to self-actualize.

One interesting thing to keep an eye on is the blurring of the line between for-profit and non-profit. The “triple bottom line” concept (people, profit, planet) is one example, where for-profit companies are actually creating metrics and pushing for new legal structures to hold themselves accountable to more than just quarterly profits. Another is “for-benefit,” the best example I know of being my friend Mathew’s business, eConsciousMarket.com, which is a “philanthropic eco-marketplace,” selling only socially and environmentally responsible goods, and 50% of profits go to the non-profit of your choice.

Another wild thing I’ve been noticing is how much innovation is occurring on the environmentally responsible end of things. We recently interviewed Joshua Onysko, founder of Pangea Organics, on our show. Pangea is almost not a business but an example of a business–they are innovating for the point of inspiring other businesses, to show them what is socially and environmentally possible while making a very significant profit.

My friend Christiana wrote up a great summary of other similar trends that’s worth reading.

Personally, I’m keeping an eye on Whole Foods. John Mackey has created an incredibly forward-thinking organization that has dramatically changed the grocery and health food industries.

You mentioned another show at Falling Fruit called Buddhist Geeks, and I know you practice Vipassana meditation. Please tell us more about Bhuddism and business. Do you think that it’s possible to reconcile a Buddhist philosophy with a mentality of career success and wealth-building?

I do practice Vipassana, and the teacher in my tradition, S.N. Goenka, was a businessman before becoming a Vipassana teacher. He too wrestled with the greed and corruption in the business world, and anyone who takes Buddhist teachings seriously will have to come to their own integration.

Personally, I don’t see any inherent contradiction between career success and insight into the fundamental nature of life, if you understand the purpose of business, which I believe is to serve human needs. Now keeping that in mind, we all have a need for food, and if you habitually overeat, then you are not truly meeting your needs for nourishment and health. A certain amount of wealth will feed your own needs — happiness studies in the US have shown that after about $36,000 in income, a person is no more happy if they make more money. However, it’s hard to fund a new venture without a stockpile of extra cash! Falling Fruit was started in large part because two of our friends had access to trust funds, which helped kick off the project. The purpose of large amounts of accumulated wealth is not to overstuff yourself with luxury, but to feed new things — new businesses, new projects, and yes, to feed people too, via philanthropy and the creation of new jobs!

Plus the definition of career success seems to be changing. A lot of young people are being raised by parents who have accumulated all they ever wanted and yet are obviously unfulfilled. We don’t want to go through their suffering, so we are looking to have our cake and eat it too, to make a good living AND to live out our passions AND have 2 months off a year to meditate and do personal development AND to serve the world in the highest ways we can possibly imagine. Nothing else feels like “success” anymore.

How can Generation Y best set about making positive changes in their lives and in the world through their careers?

There are so many ways! Now more than ever. Let me give you a little of my personal history first.

I was a Philosophy major, and almost a Psychology and Environmental Studies triple-major. When I graduated college in 2001, I was a member of something like 5 activist groups (several of which I started), and figured that all business is run by greedy, environment-killing capitalist pigs. So naturally I couldn’t find any work, and ended up in telephone tech support, which I hated with a passion. Luckily I did like people and solving problems though, so I was able to survive long enough doing this and web design work to figure out what I was good at and how I could make money while making a difference.

Along the way I found that business is not evil by definition, and that many people in business actually want to serve the fulfillment of human needs. Also many new exciting trends were emerging that were creating opportunities for people like me who want to make a difference but not starve working for a non-profit startup (which I did for a while), and who want to change the way business operates to make it more environmentally and socially responsible.

Here are my the top 3 things Millennial kids can do to change the world through work:

1. Know yourself. Engage in a study of your strengths and weaknesses. Take strengths assessment tests like Martin Seligman’s signature strengths assessment, or the Discover Your Strengths book, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the Enneagram, etc. Learn exactly what it is that you are good at, passionate about and love, and do these things.

Account for your weaknesses by partnering with people who are good at those things, then figure out how to avoid ever doing those things on the job. There are already far too many people doing someone else’s job! Design your career path consciously, and then follow opportunities.

2. Follow your bliss. Keep doing what you love. The world needs people who are ALIVE, who are living at their full potential. Don’t settle for a crappy job, position, or project! Start a business, or two, or three. Every day ask yourself, “What do I want? What do I want to do today? What do I want to create today? What huge problem could I solve with my creativity and ingenuity? What great group could I organize?”

Don’t fall for the line of BS that you “have to” do X, Y, and Z. There’s almost nothing that you have to do nowadays. All the rules have been broken. Ask “what if?” questions often. “What if we could create houses that didn’t consume energy but actually produced energy back onto the grid?” “What if I could get paid to read personal development books?” (What my friend Brian Johnson is asking.) Great things happen from great questions like these.

3. Study marketing. Great ideas that nobody hears about don’t impact the world. Your idea must be good and cool to succeed. Plus you need to market yourself — be willing to brag about your passions and your goals, and your accomplishments if you have any.

The median age at Falling Fruit is 25. Until recently our president was one of the youngest guys in our company. Don’t believe the crap that “you are too young to start a business” or to do whatever it is you want to do. Dream big, and find a way! The world needs what you have to offer.

Tell us more about your life coaching practice. What methods do you use to help your clients achieve personal growth?

Coaching is wonderful work, really. It’s the kind of work where after a session you pinch yourself and say “I just got paid for that??” I help people become more alive and live their full potential — it’s my favorite conversation! And I’ve been lucky enough to work with 60+ clients all over the world so far.

I’ve been obsessed with personal growth work for as long as I can remember. So I use whatever intuitively seems appropriate for my clients. But more specifically, I help people get productive and organized using David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology (see my GTD checklist here). I also use a bunch of stuff I learned from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Tony Robbins, personality typing models like the Enneagram, as well as just general goal-setting and belief management tools and techniques. For a summary of tons of little techniques, I recommend The Success Principles by Jack Canfield, or checking out my friend Brian Johnson’s website ThinkArete.com, where he has 500+ “big ideas” — summaries of books and teachers — available for reading and listening! Lately I’ve been reading some wackier but very interesting stuff from Robert Anton Wilson like Prometheus Rising, which blew my mind when I read it last week.

What I find most amazing about the work is how our maps of reality keep us from experiencing joy and aliveness, and keep us from achieving what we want, and how incredibly flexible these maps truly are.

What does GTD mean for you? How do you use it in your business and personal life?

GTD has been a lifesaver for me. I’m an idea guy. You know those ideas that could change your life and the world if you applied them? Well I get like 5 an hour — faaaaar too many to ever actually apply!

GTD keeps me real. “What’s the next action?” and the “someday-maybe” list have been wonderful at getting me to take my ideas and put them into action, or to shelf them for another day. And I keep my email inbox to 0 or close to it every day now, which keeps me sane, and sometimes even peaceful at work. I can’t fathom having more than 20 emails in my inbox now. I came back from a meditation retreat recently and had 257, and I cleared them out in a couple hours right away.

Our business has been infused with GTD. We’ve created an incredible number of processes around the production of our shows, covering every detail, and always focusing on greater efficiency. Our website has only been up for a couple months, but we’re already a month or two ahead on most our shows! I can’t take credit for the efficiency though, we’ve got a great team of people much more productive than I am. I use GTD to keep up!

But it’s not just the system of GTD, it’s the discipline. At the GTD Roadmap seminar I attended, David Allen talked about how it takes about 2 years to fully implement the system. I think it’s maybe more like 5 years, but maybe I’m a slow learner. But I figure I’m going to be doing things for the rest of my life, I may as well do them productively!

And at the end of the day, “productivity” is about what you are producing in the world — what goals and dreams you are making real…and how! GTD can help make your dreams real and help you enjoy the process too.

And I’m interested in this concept you have about our “maps of reality” and how they can prevent us from achieving individual and collective happiness. I too have a lot of passion for helping people overcome fears and reach for their dreams. Please tell us more about your thoughts on experiencing joy and aliveness, as you say above, and reaching other BIG goals.

Well, according to Buddhism, achievement of your goals is temporary, because everything is subject to the law of impermanence. So the challenge with achieving happiness and other big goals is that if you were to ever achieve them, life would keep on changing and then you’d be unhappy again!

But Buddhism is not a pessimistic philosophy. The recommendation is to practice equanimity with subtle subjective experience with the aim of achieving total equanimity and emptiness (Nirvana), which of course also changes, but life is different at that point. I’m aiming for that in my practice, but it will of course take time. A Buddhist teacher and author I respect suggests that full enlightenment can definitely be done with regular meditation retreats and daily practice though!

In the meantime, temporary happiness can also come from flow, a state of total engagement with what you are doing, where the challenge meets your ability. Anyone can do this by discovering their passions and then going for them wholeheartedly. Simply ask yourself “What do I really, really want?” and then “What’s the next physical action I can take to get a little closer?” I’m big on visualizing and goal-setting, and creating mindmaps and written plans to achieving my goals. I set yearly personal goals, and set goals and intentions for other areas of my life whenever I feel dissatisfied or like I’m “settling” for less than the best. It requires continuous revisiting! But your life will be full of passion, you will sleep satisfied that you gave your best, and when you die you will know you lived and loved fully.

Alright, and the big question: what are 5 things that students and young professionals can do to prepare for a conscious life and career?

I don’t know if these things will help you attain worldly success, but they will certainly lead to a more conscious, fun, and interesting life and career!

1. Engage in personal growth. Deeply examine yourself and your experience, whether through psychoanalysis, Vipassana meditation, the Enneagram, ecstatic dance, philosophy, interpreting your dreams, psychedelic drugs, or whatever. Really know that someday you will die, and choose to live fully now. Figure out why it is you are here, your purpose for living, then go about living that purpose in everything you do, every single day. Study success, and how to make your goals and dreams real. Hang out with people you want to become more like. Cut out bad habits like watching TV and endlessly surfing the web. Develop good habits like meditating and exercising daily.

If you aren’t growing, chances are you are dying (slowly and invisibly).

2. Question everything. You’ve got to learn to create. In order to do so, you’ve got to learn to question. The world is a place full of opportunity and abundance, but in order to access it, you must be free of limiting beliefs and ideas about the world. Get curious about everything! Go out and explore! Ask “why must these two things be at odds?” Try to integrate everything and see what happens. Do something weird and outrageous daily.

3. Assume wild success. Henry Ford said “Whether you think you can do a thing, or you think you can’t, you’re probably right.” Ask “what if…?” questions daily. Assume that you can have it all, that you can get paid to do what you’d happily pay to do, that there are multiple solutions to this impossible problem, that of course it’s possible and profitable to make a product that brings the entire developing world out of poverty. Whatever you want most for the world or yourself, assume that it could be even more successful than you imagine and then go about making it real! The world needs people to think this way if we are to overcome the complex and “impossible” problems of today.

4. Get things done. It’s ok if your head’s in the clouds as long as your feet are still on the ground. This is called growth! Learn and practice GTD. Every day take 5 actions towards your most important goal. Keep your email inbox at 0. Get your typing speed up. Learn the disciplines of the digital age while you are young!

5. Serve people. In business and in life, you will be more successful and feel wonderful if you are serving the needs of others in all that you do. Make a habit of “networking” by asking yourself whom you could contact today and create extra value for. Reach out to people you don’t know and offer them something that could help them reach their goals!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: An Interview with Duff McDuffee of Falling Fruit TV