advice

Dropping Anchor

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After six years of travelling the world, I’m dropping anchor for a while.

After six years of living out of a suitcase, and constantly searching for a Wi-Fi signal, I’m done.

After six years of being jobless and homeless, I’m turning my life 180˚. I bought a home, and I’m starting a business.

I can’t wait to wake up in a bed only I have slept in, drink coffee out of my cup that only my lips have touched, read the paper in my language, not worry about where to find a Wi-Fi signal, eat breakfast when I damn well please, not search the room to make sure I’m leaving anything behind, make friends I’ll see again, and surround myself with my touchstones.

When I read articles about how to live the nomad life, I get angry because they are selling a dream, it’s not a reality. They are confusing living a vacation lifestyle with the truth of disconnecting. They assume so damn much and that’s because dreamers, not doers, write most of those articles praising the detachment lifestyle.

So, without further ado, here’s the actuality of the nomad lifestyle from a certified doer:

➤ Prepare to miss your people. A lot. Skype, text, FB doesn’t cure it.

➤ Prepare to miss holidays, funerals, and weddings.

➤ Prepare for people to detach from you, without your permission.

➤ Prepare for a lot of loneliness, which is different than being alone.

➤ Prepare to never feel grounded.

➤ Prepare to appreciate you can never return home again. You WILL change and nothing will ever be the same.

 Prepare to be frustrated on a regular basis.

➤ Prepare to drop your English language skills to a Grade 9 level; the level most people with English as a second language speak.

➤ Prepare to understand that no one wants to hear about your travels (other than surface information you can fit in two sentences), no one wants to see your photos, no one wants to hear how you have grown, and mostly, they aren’t interested in how you’ve changed.

➤ Prepare to return to being out of step with people back home. The local news stories, the new TV show, current movies, food and clothing trends, and so on. Your worldview doesn’t fit in your hometown.

➤ Prepare to miss having a schedule.

➤ Prepare for other people not to know what a Coach purse is and the value of said Coach purse. For all they knew, it was a $9.99 special from Walmart, but they don’t know what a Walmart is, either. Ditto when you return home.

Prepare to miss things you thought you would never miss.

★ Prepare to miss going on a vacation. I haven’t been on a proper vacation in five years. Yes, I’ve travelled, but travelling is different than a vacation. A beach vacation or a cruise where you have no cares in the world, save for your drink running empty. The next time I pack a suitcase, it will be to go on a vacation.

When I sold everything, except for the precious items stored in a sea can, I thought I was free. My life was going to be wonderful, fluttering around the world with two suitcases and a dog. Well, truth be told, we are never free; our passports, our travel visas, our money can, and will, still hold you hostage.

You still have to pay to sleep somewhere, to eat something, to move. Free is not free. You still have to wash dishes, they just aren’t yours. You still have to fill the car up; it’s just not yours. You still have to vacuum and do laundry. You still have to pay for mobile phone service; it’s just a different number now.

I’ve seen so much, learned so much, had so many amazing experiences. Guess what? No one cares.

None of these experiences matter if you have no one to share life with; and not just anyone, your person. It’s a thin line between freedom and loneliness.

Which brings me to the real reason I’m dropping anchor. It’s time to find someone who cares, moreover, wants to experience all the beauty of the world with me.

It’s time to stand still long enough so my person can find me.

I miss so many things; from my stable life and from my travelling life – but none as much as sharing a life with a partner.

➤➤➤ I have stopped running away and have started running towards. And it feels good. 

 

Living in The Past

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Everyday, everyone lives in the past.

You live in the past every waking moment.

I live in the past every living moment.

The past surrounds you. Everything around you is the evidence of the past. Of your past. Every. Little. Thing. So stop telling me to quit living in the past. Even you can’t stop living in the past.

“Wait,” but you plead, “I live in the present, in the now. Like Oprah told me.”

You don’t. You live in the past. Living in the now is a huge New Age lie. It’s impossible to live in the now.

The now is now. Now. Now. No, now. Now. Now. Urgh! Now…

Living in the now is unobtainable. You can live for this moment and in this moment, but you don’t live in the now.

You live in the past. Even tomorrow you will be living in the past.

Every decision and choice you have made in your past, you live with. Now. Now. Now.

Everything you are happy with, you made that choice in the past. Everything you are not so happy with, you also made that choice in the past.

Look around you; your body is based on the choices you made yesterday, last week, last month, last year. Like what you see? Great! Keep it up. Don’t like what you see? If your body is not the way you would prefer, it’s only because of the choices you have made in the past. Change your tomorrow’s past for your body, today. Start some type of improvement today and the evidence of your better choices in the past will come to life tomorrow.

A hangover is the best analogy I can think of for this. That moment you woke up, you did nothing wrong. You were sleeping, how could you have done something wrong? Living, or rather sleeping, in the now shouldn’t have given you a headache and upset stomach. Yet you wake up with a hangover because of your past choice to drink alcohol.

You are living in the now with a hangover from drinking in your past. If you could live in the now, wouldn’t you just erase your hangover from your mind by living with a bright, shiny morning? Impossible. Your day starts out living in your past.

Happy in your relationship? Great! Keep it up. Not so happy or not in a relationship? What choices did you make in the past that have you were you are today? Did you realize you should have left years ago? Are you single but not mingling? Have you let things slide?

Career? Yep, all past decisions. Did you drop out of school? Did you pass up that promotion? Did you work hard at a degree that was viable? Did you work those extra hours that are paying off now? Did you enter a questionable business model? Did you follow your heart?

Finances? Did you ring up your credit cards? Overextend on your mortgage? Gamble? Overspend? Start a savings account? Diligent with a budget? Financially secure? Your finances are directly attributed to your past choices and decisions, good or bad.

The money in your bank or not in your bank is one of the clearest material indication of your choices, hands down. (Even a sudden lotto winning is proof you bought a ticket, a past decision.)

Every waking hour is a reminder of your past. Every breathing moment is living in your past. Consequences of your choices, good or bad. Without exception.

What you choose this moment, this now, will be birthed into the next moment, next day, next week, next month, next year.

So you don’t live in the now, you choose in the now.

You don’t live in the moment, you choose in the moment.

But you always live in the past.

All the places we don’t want to be

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Aristotle

Goals are garbage.

Goals can create stress and heartache.

Goals can make you feel worthless.

If you have a goal to lose 50 pounds and only lose 45, will you consider yourself a disappointment?

If you have a goal to walk 10,000 steps a day and only reach 8,500, have you bombed?

If you have a goal to have a career, house, wife, and a family by age 30 and you managed to have a house, spouse, and family but your career is slow getting off the ground, is it futile to carry on when you are 31?

Hitting the goal post doesn’t count in any game.

Goals are dreams with a deadline. Nope, goals are nightmares that handcuff us to perceived happiness. Once I reach X goal, then I’ll be happy. Or rich. Or skinny. Or accomplished.

➠ Then how are we to accomplish anything? Aren’t goals, directions? Roadmaps?

What if you decided half way towards your goal, that it’s the wrong goal? Are all your efforts then a waste of time? In my books, that was the best time spent as sometimes figuring out what we don’t want is more important than wondering what we do want, but some would consider that effort a failure to reach your goal.

So what do we use instead of goals, to realize our ambitions and dreams, and to move forward?

 Habits. Habits trump goals each and every time.

If your goal was to lose 50 pounds, why not change that to wanting to become healthy? If you change your habits, if you become healthy, the weight will automatically drop off, with seemingly no effort whatsoever. And you will still be the winner even if you drop 35, 42, 47 or 49.5 pounds.

The very definition of habit is something we do unconsciously.

To lose 50 pounds, and keep it off, you have to change the habits that got you to where you are 50 pounds overweight. Normally that’s because, over time, you consumed more food than your body needed.

But too many drastic changes of habits are also doomed to failure. That’s why extreme diets, cold turkey quitting smoking or starting an exercise plan of going to the gym every day for an hour never work. Your subconscious mind is stronger than your willpower and you will revert back to your destructive habits. And that’s why it’s so important to concentrate on changing your subconscious mind habits.

 The secret to obtaining each and everything you have ever wanted is small, consistent, incremental changes in your habits, not setting goals.

Want to lose weight and keep it off? Today, start with eating less. Eat what you want, when you want, but less of it, even if it means every time you eat, eat just one less bite.

Leave one bite of the donut. Leave one chip in the bag. Leave that one bite on your plate. Leave that last gulp in the cup. Order the small fries instead of large. Maybe don’t go for seconds. (Note: Throw out the part you don’t eat. Don’t keep it to tempt you later.)

Once that becomes easy or habit, leave two bites, two chips, two gulps.

Once that becomes an easy habit, leave three bites, or ¼ of the serving.

Continue the process – a little bit at a time – until it becomes a natural habit to eat ½ (or less) of everything you are eating now. Still have pizza, but now one slice is just as satisfying as two. Or two as four, if that’s your case.

Do you not think your body would respond and create a weight-loss situation?

And more importantly, without a goal, there is no end to this habit improvement. You can continue this habit until you are healthy, happy, and content that this is where you want to live for now. You simply stop improving the habit, with no worries of reverting back to your previous unwanted habit.

Whether that takes a week, or two, or a month or six is up to you; don’t believe the hype of ‘it takes 21, 30, 60, 90 days to change a habit.’ The only thing you have to do is improve your new habit a little bit every day, consistently.

Maybe once you’ve solidified the quantity habit, then you move on start to make better food choices if you haven’t naturally done so already. Maybe as you lose weight, you feel like walking or moving your body a little bit more.

➠ Does this feel like success to you? Does this feel doable? Doesn’t this feel better? Doesn’t this feel easier? 

The choice is yours, but you must make the changes small, consistent, and incremental. And build on each habit change.

I promise you, if all you do is this one change of habit, of quantity, you will eventually make a difference in the shape of your body.

How else could you implement this in your life?

Quitting smoking? How about cutting out one cigarette in a day, the easiest one to cut out, the one you wouldn’t miss that much. Once it feels natural that you don’t miss it, cut out another one. Live with that until it feels natural, and repeat the process until you are down to a few cigarettes a day. Quitting completely from this point will be much easier, don’t you think? Or you may decide that smoking a couple of well-timed cigarettes a day is fine.

Want to stop watching so much TV? Spending a lot of time on Facebook? Use your timer to slowly, incrementally, shave off minutes.

Get your finances in order? What’s one item you can cut out this month? Netflix? Now next month? Bring one lunch a week to work? And the month after that? Review your cable package? In a year, you will have shaved off twelve items; think of the money you will be saving! But if you did that all at once, a sense of lack would set in your subconscious mind and it would be very painful.

I know it’s easy to forget because it seems so natural now, but every unconscious habit you have now, evolved over time. You weren’t born brushing your teeth. You weren’t born overeating. You weren’t born smoking.

You weren’t born turning on the TV immediately after work. You weren’t born drinking too much alcohol, doing recreational drugs, or biting your nails. You weren’t born overspending.

All habits are a process of training the unconscious mind, no exceptions. Some habits were implemented quickly, such as a drug addiction and smoking, but most evolved over time. You didn’t start eating three donuts; it started after one, for whatever reason, wasn’t enough so you reached for the second, which then eventually became a three-donut habit at coffee break.

Habits will get you to anywhere you want to be and keep you there.

And all the places we don’t want to be.

You Can’t Get There From Here

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You can’t cry your way to happiness.

You can’t eat your way to weight loss.

You can’t sleep yourself into energy.

You can’t spend your way to wealth.

You can’t hold a grudge and have forgiveness.

You can’t find a partner by hiding inside.

You can’t get there from here.

If you want a change in your life, you have to change something.

Start small. Starting with small steps eventually creates a path to get you to where you want to be; repeated small steps along the same route construct a clearing for us to continue towards our destination.

I started on my trail to happiness by ‘unlovinging’ my previous partner 1% a day. That’s all I did; every night before I went to sleep, I told myself when I woke up, I would love him 1% less. (I wasn’t sure how it worked or what that really meant, but that wasn’t the point.)

It wasn’t long before I stopped crying everyday and I started to notice I wasn’t missing him as much anymore. And just like that, one day I didn’t love him anymore. It wasn’t a dramatic flash when I first realized I didn’t love him anymore; it was more like a ‘did I leave the iron on?’ moment.

If someone would have said, “Just stop loving him”, that wouldn’t have worked; I couldn’t get there from where I was living. You can’t just stop loving someone you love.

Like attracts like.  Small steps will attract additional small steps, permitting you to take the bigger steps towards where you want to be.

If you have an unhappy aspect in your life, start with small changes, even as small as 1% and watch them add up to 100%, without much additional effort on your part. But the caveat is you must act, you must have the action, no one can do it for you.

Because you can get to there from here, eventually.

Is This Really Necessary?

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Is this really necessary?

Is this really necessary?

This year, the New Year Eve festivities in Paris will be a laser show from and on the Arc de Triomphe.

One Parisan lady, obviously not impressed, expressed her dismay by simply stating, “Is that really necessary?”

My daughter and I both laughed and it has become our touchstone quote throughout our whole Christmas trip to Paris. And it got me wondering, what a fabulous way to live, always asking if something is really necessary.

Think about it – how streamlined and efficient your whole life would be and become, only by using four simple words.

Buying something new? Is it really necessary?

Spending money on frivolity? It is really necessary?

Have someone in your life that is more effort than they are worth? Are they really necessary?

Name brands? Are they really necessary?

The amount of food/snacks you are about to eat? Is that really necessary?

A full cart at Costco? Is that really necessary?

That bottle of supplements? That new exercise fad? That diet book? Are they really necessary?

Adding to your debt? Is that really necessary?

Another glass of wine? Yes.

And so on.

By removing the unnecessary from your life, you allow the necessary more room to be useful, pleasurable, and balanced.

In debt? This question alone will help you magically return to sanity, help you to stop spending, using the extra money to pay down your balance and then to stay out of debt.

Overweight and out of shape? Is it necessary to eat so much, rely on the magic diet/gizmo, taking the escalator/elevator or vehicle everywhere? Even ask yourself if the gym membership is necessary.

Stressed to the max? Is it necessary to work so much, take on so much, get involved so much?

In a bad or one-sided relationship? Is it necessary to keep this person in your life?

House full of stuff and cluttered? Is it necessary to keep buying more? Is it even necessary to keep it all?

Who needs resolutions when you have one guiding question all year around?

Using the “Is this really necessary?” as the first and most important question for everything you do, you will find that when it comes to yearly New Year’s resolutions, they won’t ever be necessary.

Just Shut Your Cake Hole

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no-free-advice-590

People like to hand out free advice or opinion, especially if you are going through a life event. Unless you have been specifically asked, such as “What do you think?” or “What would you do?” please, for the love of Gods, keep your opinion to yourself.

People just want to be helpful, I get that. But have you ever considered your particular quip might be the third or fourth person that day who has chimed in? Do you like to be reminded how wrong or stupid you are, two, three, or four times in a day?

Or that the person has figured shit out but hasn’t said anything?

Or that you may just be adding fuel to the fire?

OR that your advice is just plain dumb?

Not to mention that one person who feels it’s their duty to inform me with a tidbit or gossip about my previous partner. That’s just an asshole thing to do. Unless I ask you about him, shut your cake hole, would ya? Newsflash: I don’t care. Also, I don’t care. In addition, I don’t care. [Also makes me wonder if you are passing information along to him about me. Hmmm…]

I’m not exactly sure why some people feel they are Dr. Phil or CNN, spewing crappy advice or news at will. But it’s annoying as hell. So stop it.

Sure, if you know I’m about to sign a document that will wipe out my savings, stop me. If I’m about to get messed up in a scam, please, say something! If you feel I’m in danger, by all means, speak up. But for the life skills and day-to-day living and struggles, let me be. Let me learn MY way.

I have stopped telling people my personal battles in fear that I’m doing it wrong. In fear I’m stuck listening to their advice ad nauseam. But especially in fear that I will have to cross off one more friend.

If you know someone who is struggling, whether it’s an illness or a life event, do your best to refrain from telling them what to do or what you think they should do. If they trust you enough to talk to you about their problems, just listen.

Just listen, without mentally forming your reply. Be that person who is a witness to the words and thoughts that are expressed. Be that person that acknowledges the pain, sorrow and worries – a simple yes nodding motion will do. Be that person they know won’t tell them they are doing it wrong.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions, most people like to know you are interested in hearing their thoughts. And most people won’t answer if they don’t want to, but for the most part, they like the questions, it shows you are paying attention.

And NEVER, EVER, EVER, say or reply with, “Everything happens for a reason.” Ever. There is never a good time for that rubbish saying. Well, maybe that one instance in time which is appropriate, Never O’Clock. But other than that…

Just listen for their specific request for your opinion before handing out yours. Otherwise, the only words they want and need to hear from you are, “How do you like your coffee?” or better, “Shall I open another bottle?”