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Clay

Photo by Kirbmart1000
A few months ago, I met a guy named Leonard Knight who’s spent the last 20 years building a folk art masterpiece called "Salvation Mountain." Leonard lives in the back of his pickup truck and usually sleeps under the stars. Visitors bring him food, paint, and minor donations, and Leonard continues to work on his adobe mountain and ~200 other folk art projects meant to convey the message that "God Loves Everyone." Leonard’s mountain has been likened to an epic work of folk art “comparable to the Watts Towers,” is entered it into the Congressional Record as a national treasure, and was also featured in the movie Into the Wild.

While I don’t seek to emulate Leonard’s lifestyle, I very much respect him for having the guts to peruse his dreams. Leonard’s life is highly unconventional and wouldn’t work for most of us, but it got me thinking about . . .

The Diversity of Lifestyle Design

When I think about lifestyle design, I usually think about automated income, mini-retirements, making money online, traveling the world, and the 4-Hour Work Week. The truth, however, is that there are an unlimited number of tools in the lifestyle design arsenal.  Lifestyle design is as old as life itself.

The philosophy of lifestyle design is actually quite simple.  It suggests that there are limitless ways to arrange and configure your life and that the logistics of living are much more flexible than most of us can imagine.

There is one [movie line] that stands out for me. It comes from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, when the Charlie Sheen character — a promising big shot in the stock market — is telling his girlfriend about his dreams. "I think if I can make a bundle of cash before I’m thirty and get out of this racket," he says, "I’ll be able to ride my motorcycle across China." When I first saw this scene … I nearly fell out of my seat in astonishment. Charlie Sheen or anyone else could work for eight months as a toilet cleaner and have enough money to ride a motorcycle across China. The thing is, most Americans probably wouldn’t find this movie scene odd.
-Rolf Potts

Rolf Potts has perfected the art of long term world travel, Dan Clements can run a business from anywhere while roving the globe with his wife and children, Lea Woodward has freelanced from every continent, Doug Mayle and his wife are traveling across the world in a sailboat, Mark Hayword runs a bed and breakfast on the Island of Culebra, and Tim Ferriss works the famed 4-Hour-Work Week. I admire the real-life adventures of these excellent writers. I also think it’s important to acknowledge that these stories only convey part of the picture.

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photo by Djloche

I’ve spent a past life or two kicking against the pricks of growth.  Things have since improved about 1,000% because I’ve come to terms with my habit of . . .

Eating New Contexts for Breakfast

My soul is rooted in a homeland, but I eat new contexts for breakfast. There’s a city where I’ll lay deep roots, but I still chew up/spit out new learning environments; I down them like rolls of Smarties(TM).

It’s not that I’m a badass, I just like kicking it Henry Thoreau style:

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
-Henry David Thoreau

Put me in a new job, in a new learning environment, or a new situation and I’ll start drenching myself in that context.  If I’m in a new city, I’ll go skinny-dipping in its rivers and lakes, visit its grimy underbelly, walk the streets of its neighborhoods, drink its tap water, and go to every possible block party. If it’s a new job, I’ll often try to meet everyone in the company, go to all the trainings, take on new projects, move up the ladder.  I’m not alone in this, and chances are that at one time or another, you’ve “been there, done that.”

We all know the drill: You drench yourself in a situation, you wallow in the mud of humanity, wipe the grime all over yourself. You breathe it in, you live it, you grow from it. And then one day, like that, you wake up and discover its time to move on.

It’s not that you’ve grown out of a given situation, or grown above it or beyond it.  It’s often that grown away from it.  And this growing away is often painful because . . .

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I have a legitimate introduction coming your way. Before I get to that, I hope you’ll to watch the vomit-inducing video below, produced by The Secret’s author.

Highlights from the Video: “I am a money magnet” “Everything I touch turns to gold” “I have more riches than King Solomon’s mines” “Money falls like an avalanche over me” “There is more money being printed for me right now” “I have the best of everything” “I know that when I ask for what I want, no matter what it is that I want, the answer must be, “your wish is my command.”

OK, done? Cool. We’ll be getting back to this video later. In the meantime, let’s talk about how . . .

Goals Can be Our Worst Enemies

You know how it goes. Back in the day you were excited about your goal.

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Photo by Tetine

Russian dolls come in sets. They are nested wooden figures of decreasing size placed one inside another. Each wooden doll, except for the smallest one, can be pulled apart to reveal a smaller doll. 

Russian dolls are a good metaphor for goals, and every so often I come across a goal that is, metaphorically speaking, the biggest of a series of Russian dolls.  These goals seem to hold within them numerous other goals.  The picture below is one such visual goal:

To many, this image is of nothing more than a homely building in a cold place. From my perspective, however, this image is a visual goal that has galvanized me for the last three weeks.  The pictured building awakens different facets of me to a vision that’s been developing for some time.  This photograph is parsimonious. It is powerful.  It is a visual goal that encapsulates several smaller goals.  One glance at it is a powerful reminder of all the goals nested within.

The pictured building houses a condo that I would like to own. The photo, however, represents much more than property ownership. Here’s why . . . Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Jonathan Mead of JonathanMead.com.

Boredom

In The 4-Hour Work Week, author Tim Ferriss suggests that the opposite of happiness is boredom and that what really drives our happiness is the ability to find continual excitement.

I’m in agreement with Tim; the opposite of happiness isn’t sadness, depression, anxiety, guilt or anger. These feelings aren’t desirable, but they’re also not the antithesis of happiness. Lack of fulfillment, I believe, is the opposite of happiness.

Many people have conceptually explored the path to happiness and I’m surely not the first to observe the importance of asking the right questions.  Our results are generally good when we positively frame inquiries by asking questions such as "what can I do to make things better?" or "what can I do to improve this situation?"  However, when we negatively frame our thoughts with questions like: "why do bad things always happen to me," or "why am I so unlucky," we only manage to reinforce our negative experiences.

Changing our Goals

Many societally conditionally goals — such as "get out of debt," "buy a new car," and "create a college fund," — can be fine and noble, but they often do not make us come alive.  What would really make your day, I mean, if you could do anything? Think about that for a second.

If you dig deep within to answer this question, I bet your answer might be something a little different than the average idea of a "great day." If you really answer this question from your soul, you’ll discover aspirations that really move you. Here are a few of mine:

• Ski down a killer slope in Park City, Utah
• Take a Tantra class
• Read a great novel for the first time
• Go on a group meditation or retreat
• Play music with others, lose track of time, and get lost in sound

You see, when all our goals revolve around efficiency, money, looks, networking, etc., we lose track of why we wanted these things in the first place. Indeed, we often envision such goals because we want more time and energy to do things that truly excite us and bring deep fulfilling happiness. I challenge you to incorporate goals and aspirations that really excite and move you. Don’t get caught up in mundane, socially acceptable goals. Find out what really inspires you and make a commitment to live your life with a deeper level of satisfaction starting today.

Jonathan is the author of the blog JonathanMead.com, focused on finding Authenticity, Clarity and Balance in all aspects of our lives. His articles include 10 Way to Make Time for the Important and 7 Lessons from the World’s Greatest Minds.

Technorati Tags: 4-Hour Work Week, 4HWW, continual excitement, goal setting, happiness, opposite of happiness, Tim Ferriss

Note: This article is perhaps my longest, but the principles contained herein stand to be of real help. In this spirit, I’m willing to offer technical support to anyone who needs it. I’ll try to answer as many questions as possible via the comments, but if worse comes to worst I’m willing to offer phone support. I might also try and post a video demonstration/tutorial if there is a need. Just let me know.

Introduction

Goal movies are Steven Covey’s concept of “beginning with the end in mind” on steroids. The essential idea is that images can be used and manipulated to help your subconscious believe you can attain things previously thought impossible.  Getting your subconscious to buy into a goal radically empowers you to materialize the goal in real life. The video to the right is an excellent example of a goal movie that I found just today (click here to see it if you’re reading this from an RSS feed).

This goal movie was created using a free program called Memories on Web. And for $37, MindMovies will show you how to produce similar mini-films (they’ve produced good how-to videos). Much of what I’m about to share with you was learned via my Mind Movies experience, but rather than sending you to the MindMoives website via an affiliate link, I’ll show you how to do it yourself.

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It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.
-Helen Keller

There is an old saying that says, "[i]f you can lift a calf every day, when you become an adult you can lift a cow. But don’t ever stop." This saying can be traced back to the legendary wrestler Milo of Croton, who introduced the “calf” workout in the 6^th 20century B.C.

The Calf Workout

It was said that, as a boy, Milo trained for the Olympics by daily lifting a baby calf above his shoulders and carrying it. As the calf grew, so did Milo. By his teens, Milo was carrying a fully grown bull on his shoulders, and he purportedly entered his first Olympic event carrying a bull across the Olympic track.

Although it is quite possible to lift a newborn calf, and strongmen such as H. Mann have been known to lift full-grown bulls, the story of Milo is questionable. Here’s a story that’s not… Read the rest of this entry »

“Everything has [already] been said yet few have taken advantage of it. Since all our knowledge is essentially banal, it can only be of value to minds that are not.”
-Raoul Vaneigem

In 2005, NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman injected a bestselling hit, The World is Flat, into the national psyche. The book’s 5th “flatting” factor is outsourcing. Friedman argues that the practice enables companies to componentize manufacturing and service efforts, thus making each component more efficient and cost effective.

In August of 2005, author A.J. Jacobs (author of The Know-It-All and The Year of Living Biblically) read Friedman’s book and thought to himself, “why should Fortune 500 firms have all the fun?” “Why can’t I join in on the biggest business trend of the new century?” “Why can’t I outsource my low-end tasks? Why can’t I outsource my life?” He then goes on to write a notable piece of cultural history for Esquire called My Outsourced Life (notable because it later catches on in a big way). In My Outsourced Life, Jacobs outsources everything from worrying and spousal relations, to email and work related research. It’s an entertaining read and one that I recommend.

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