TheSkoolofLife

The Skool Of Life What You Should Have Learned in School But Never Did ©2012 Srinivas Rao This version was published on 2012-06-20

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Contents The Script for Success

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There Are No Grades in the School of Life Redefining What it Means to Learn . . . . . . . Anything Worth Doing Requires the Courage to Fail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 failures that Have Brought me to Where I’m at Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . When Life Doesn’t Go According To Plan . . . Your Circumstances Today Don’t Determine What’s Possible Tomorrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . Life is Not a Final Exam . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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You Can’t Paint a Masterpiece on a Cluttered Canvas How Labels Destroy Your Potential . . . . . . . The Hidden Dangers of Other People’s Expectations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Hidden Power of Positive Expectation . . . Living life Uncluttered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What do You Want to Be When You Grow Up? Don’t get Caught up in the Ego-Driven Pursuit of a Life that Looks Good on Paper . . . . 5 Myths That Help Corporate America to Fuel Its Own Existence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Warning Signs That You’re About to End up in a Job You Hate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

10 14 20 26 29 33 38 42 46 49 50 55 60 64

CONTENTS

Career Choices and Signs of Success or Failure . How Making Too Many Life Plans Limits Your Potential . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Saddest Thing in Life is Wasted Potential .

ii 69 73 79

Chapter 4- Stop Apologizing For Your Crazy Wild Eyed Dreams 85 Forget Realistic and Start Thinking Through the 89 Lens of Possibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Only Way to Know How Serious You Are 92 About a Goal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How to Stay Motivated to Accomplish Your Goal 95 Sometimes You Take Two Steps Back in Order to Take Twenty Forward . . . . . . . . . . . 97 If You Want to See The Fruits of Your Labor Don’t Dig up The Seeds . . . . . . . . . . 100 Chapter 5 Lessons from the PlayGround Lessons from the Scenic Route . . . . . . . . . . Settling vs. Settling Down . . . . . . . . . . . . Nature Rewards Our Patience . . . . . . . . . . Choose a Life Made up of Experiences Instead of one Made up of Possessions . . . . . . . . Life’s Biggest Problems are the Biggest Blessings in Disguise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nobody Leaves This World With a Thing in Their Pockets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

102 113 115 119

Stop Waiting for Permission to Be Extraordinary There are no wrong answers . . . . . . . . . . .

130 132

121 124 128

CONTENTS

Why Conventional Wisdom Yields Convestional Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How Big of a Game Are You Playing? . . . . . . The Point of No Return . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Remember your True North . . . . . . . . . . . Education is a Never Ending Journey . . . . . . The Commencent Speech . . . . . . . . . . . .

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134 138 141 144 146 153

The Script for Success Go to school. Get good grades. Go to college. Get a good job. Go back to school. Get a better job and you have the formula for a happy and fulfilling life. If only it was that simple. The problem with this approach is that it’s a one size fits all approach for dealing with a scenario in which no two people are exactly alike. If it’s worked for you, then this book is not for you. My name is Srinivas Rao. I got a bachelors degree from a world class University and an MBA. What I have to show for all of this is a series of jobs I hated, two pieces of paper that hang in nice frames at my parents house, and a bill that keeps showing up every month. It’s what some people call an “education.” Here’s your diploma, would you like fries with that? When I finished graduate school in 2009 I had never felt more unprepared to deal with life. After nearly 10 years I’ve realized there are things you should have learned in school but never did. This book is about those things. I’ve learned most of those things by screwing up royally. After a series of failed relationships, a tumultuous career, and steadily declining health until a few years ago, I decided it was time for a different kind of education. No grades, no required reading, no assignments, and the freedom to ditch class, question authority, break all the rules and make rules that actually work for YOU. Welcome to the Skool of Life. Before we get started, I think it’s worth sharing a few class rules (Don’t worry, they’re not the kind you’re thinking of). 1

The Script for Success

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Keep an Open Mind Color Outside the Lines You Don’t Need Permission to Speak Add Rules You Feel Will Serve You Well I told ya these weren’t the kind of rules you’re thinking of.

Erasing the Rules on the Chalkboard Have you ever looked at your life and wondered “how did I end up here?” Despite all our grand plans, something goes wrong. We follow the scripts, the prescriptions, the formulas and expect it all to work. When it’s all said and done we find ourselves in a beautiful mess. So I can’t tell you what to do. That’s really up to you. What I can share with you is my observations, many of which fly in the face of conventional wisdom(something we’ll talk about in a later section). If you were expecting Life’s Little Instruction book, I’m sorry to disappoint you.

From the time you are five years old you are conditioned to follow a set of rules. Raise your hand before you talk Don’t Disrupt the Class The Teacher is Always Right Adults Know What They’re Talking About People Who Get A’s Are Smart People Who get Bad Grades Are Dumb As the list grows we stop questioning the rules. But what we don’t realize is that every single time we add to this list we are adding a new limitation into our lives. The


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rules, restrictions, formulas, and prescriptions that people live their lives by are where dreams go to die.

A Story About Limited Perspective After college and a few bad experiences with Indian girls, I decided that I was done with them once and for all. I told my friends that I would never date an Indian girl, and since then I haven’t. In the context of that story the most beautiful and perfect Indian girl I’ve ever seen could come into my life and I wouldn’t see her because I’d be viewing the world through the lens of that limitation. The rules on the chalkboard create lenses through which you view the world. The funny thing is they are not even your own rules. You didn’t make any of those decisions, but you live your life according to them. You write limitation into your life by following them If you feel the need to take a shot of whiskey, tequila or whatever you fancy after reading that, go for it. If in this moment you are angry, I cant’s say I blame you. I thought, how could anybody let me go through 34 years of life without telling me about this? Damn these people who held me back and made me follow their stupid prescriptions. That lasted for a while before I realized it wasn’t their fault because they are victims of the rules on the chalkboard as well. They thought the best thing they could do was pass them on and as a result they prepared us for a future that doesn’t exist. So all I can tell you is that I have no instructions, no formulas, or recipes for success. take my advice with a


grain of salt or a shot of tequila.

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There Are No Grades in the School of Life We all start out in life curious, creative, and brilliant. We want to know everything about the world around us and how it works. It’s a marvelous time in our lives. We continually ask why to the point of annoying the heck out of our parents, until they wave their arms in frustration and say “just because.” So, we stop asking why. Then we go to school where we can finally get some answers to all these questions. But, soon after we start something rather unfortunate happens. We raise our hands, give the wrong answers, and feel like idiots. Then we take tests. If we get A’s our high self esteem is reinforced. If we get F’s we start to really hate school. If we’re wrong enough times and get enough bad grades, we develop a fear of being wrong and our curiosity becomes a thing of the past. We equate failure with stupidity. We make a permanent decision based on a temporary experience. If you do happen to be a student who gets A’s, sometimes it’s worse because you become more concerned with your grades than actually learning something. In that process your tolerance for risk diminishes and you won’t risk being wrong. After all you’re one of the smart kids. Who wants to sit with those dunces in the corner of the room? We lose sight of our crazy wild eyed dreams. Out of fear of failure we start chasing ordinary and settle for a 5

There Are No Grades in the School of Life

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lifetime of mediocrity. But it’s only in the pursuit of those crazy wild eyed dreams that we tap into our full potential. ”Invention and discovery emanate from being able to try seemingly wild possibilities and work in the unknown; to be comfortable being wrong before being right; to live in the world as a keen observer, with an openness to experiences and ideas; to play with ideas without censoring oneself or others; to persist through dark valleys with a growth mind-set; to improvise ideas in collaboration and conversation with others; and, to have a willingness to be misunderstood, sometimes for long periods of time, despite conventional wisdom.” - Peter Sims, Little Bets Intelligence is not fixed and by developing a growth mindset we can become far more successful in every facet of our lives. ”Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford, has spent decades demonstrating that one of the crucial ingredients of successful education is the ability to learn from mistakes. Unfortunately, children are often taught the exact opposite. Instead of praising kids for trying hard, teachers typically praise them for their innate intelligence (being smart). Dweck has shown that this type of encouragement actually backfires, since it leads students to see mistakes as signs of stupidity and not as the building blocks of knowledge. The regrettable outcome is that kids never learn how to learn.” Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide When we focus on process rather than outcome, we dramatically increase our ability to progress. In other


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words, there are no grades in the Skool of Life. So, what does that mean for you? If there are no grades, that means you’re free to fail, free to learn from your failures, and free to improve. Liberating isn’t it? The self improvement gurus always tell you to ask the question “what would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail.” The problem with that question is that you can fail and if you’ve had a past, failure has a negative connotation. The question they should really be asking is “what would you do if the results didn’t matter.” In other words, what would do once you realize there are no grades in school of life? For the rest of this book, I want you to join me on a journey. Act like you are five instead of fifty. Suspend all fears, doubt, disbelief and release all your scripts at least until you finish reading the book. What we’re doing is setting the context for a world full of infinite possibility.


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Redefining What it Means to Learn “In school you get a lesson and there’a test. In life you get a test and there’s a lesson”-anonymous In order to really start making progress, we need to redefine what it means to learn. Throughout life you’ve probably believed that reading something and being able to explain what you read to another person is learning. That’s more or less what traditional education has defined as learning. And when you’re unable to do it you believe that you have failed. I’ve got some good news for you. That’s not learning. That’s memorization and it might get you through school, but it won’t get you through life. So you haven’t actually failed because you haven’t really learned anything. If I brought you to the beach with me, you could watch me surf for hours, listen to my explanation of how to get up on your surfboard, and catch a wave. The minute we got in the water it would all be worthless. It’s almost guaranteed that you would wipe out. But that’s how you learn to surf. You have to be willing to fall in order to stand. You learn more from your mistakes than you ever do from your successes. Failure has taught me more than my education ever has. Let me share a story with you. I’m not naturally athletic by any stretch of the imagination. In fact the only thing I’ve ever been known for throughout my life is my athletic ineptitude and lack of coordination. I was the most improved player on my 7th grade basketball team, and the worst snowboarder of all my friends that I tried to learn with in college. At the age


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of 34, it’s an entirely different story. I’m not phenomenal, but those friends from college couldn’t hold a candle to me in either sport because I learned how to do both through nothing but persistence. I’m not sure why but in adult life, strangers in bars are like the teachers we never had in school. They always seem to have some drunken pearl of wisdom that makes a difference in our lives. For me it was the guy who told me to go surfing 50 times because I’d be too invested to quit. Maybe it’s his fault that surfing has ruined my life :). If you want to know how I learned to surf, it’s pretty simple. I showed up, got my ass handed to me, thought I was going to drown, and eventually after showing up enough times I could stand on a surf board. In school, this would be the equivalent of getting F’s on everything and claiming that you are learning. In life that’s how you learn. We’ve been conditioned to fear failure for so long that real learning comes to a screeching halt and that is an unfortunate tragedy that sends people into the pursuit of being average and mediocre when they were meant to be extraordinary. So let’s start redefining what it means to learn.


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Anything Worth Doing Requires the Courage to Fail “A Lifetime of Mediocrity is a High Price to Pay for Your Safety” – Todd Henry How many things have you given up on or not even tried in in your life because you were afraid you’d fail? As we get older we become experts at creating self imposed limitations.We chain together words and sentences to construct scenarios that have no basis in reality which keep us from stepping into the unknown and taking the chances that open up a world of possibilities. As you go through life you’re going to continually experience circumstances and run across people that try to take the wind out of your sails. They’ll try to force you to put your dreams back in a box as opposed to out in the world where they belong. We tend to get so caught up in what people think of us that we end up giving them permission to control our lives. It’s kind of insane when you think about it. Fear of what people will say, fear of failure, fear of things not going according to plan, and the fear of failing to meet our own standards all paralyze us when it comes to leaving our mark on the world. Even if you take action on your crazy wild eyed dreams, actions taken from a place of fear will lead to a suboptimal performance.


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The Wipeouts are Never as Bad As You Think I’ve been surfing religiously for close to 4 years. But a few months ago something happened. I had become paralyzed by fear on some of the bigger days. The funny thing is I’d surfed many days just as big when I was living in Costa Rica. For some strange reason, I hit a slump. I couldn’t get myself to take off on some of the more challenging waves. The result, 3-4 hours in the water and only one wave to show for it. The first time it happen I wrote it is off as a bad session. But when it happen a few times in a row I knew something was wrong. So I decided to do some digging into how to overcome my fear of bigger waves. I came across an interesting article about the fact that surfing had one of the lowest injury rates of any sport. The chances of getting hurt in the water are not that high (assuming you know what you’re doing). The next time I went out to surf, I decided to just go for it on some bigger waves and I wiped out several times. While it shook me up a little I realized that I always resurfaced without a bruise. It taught me a valuable lesson. The wipeouts are never as bad as you think. So how does this apply to you? You may not be a surfer, but when your wave comes you have to go for it. It’s possible you’ll fail, but believe me when I say that the worst case scenario rarely occurs. While every leap of faith may not pay off, all it takes is one good wave for the world to forget about your failures and shine a light on your success.


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There are few things as rewarding as leaving your mark on the world and knowing that you’ve left people better off than when you found them.

My friend who is an amazing singer I was having lunch with one of my oldest friends, her husband, and her 16 month old son. As we were walking down the Santa Monica Promenade we stopped to listen to a street performer who was an amazing singer. My friend also happens be an incredibly talented singer. I asked her “do you still sing?” She said “in the shower and to my son. Where am I going to sing as an adult?” For a moment I thought she had a good point. Then it occurred to me that we live in LA, a city where people are continually on the look out for talent, and you have an endless supply of open mic nights at your disposal. So, I told her that she should do go to an open mic night and sing. The funny thing is despite her talent, she was overcome by self doubt. Even the most talented of people find themselves struggling with the courage to fail. But if we can remember that [to our fear of uncertainty there is a flip side then we tap into how amazing we all really are. The ability to take risks, shake our wipeouts and move on from them is how we can avoid the life of mediocrity that nobody was ever meant to live.

My Friend Who Won’t Push Publish I have a friend who has setup her blog, and has even done a good amount of writing. She has material ready to go, but


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her fear of whether or not it’s good enough has kept her from pushing publish. She’s been waiting for a guarantee and the reality of blazing a trail that puts you on the scenic route through life is that there are no guarantees. The only way to find out is to put your message out into the world. Chances are it won’t resonate with everybody, but it doesn’t have to. You might encounter the darkest of hours. It might be impossible to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but you absolutely have to believe it’s there. Because when you finally do see a light at the end of tunnel you’ll realize that[ the payoff was worth anything you had to go through. In that moment you’ll realize that to have lived any other way would have been completely insane.


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8 failures that Have Brought me to Where I’m at Today A few years I was having lunch with an old friend from business school who I hadn’t seen in 6 months. She asked me about what I ad been up to so I started to tell her what I had been up to and she reminded me of the fact there had been a few things that I thought were the end of the world when they happened. It made me to start to think about all of the “failures” that have brought me to the place I am today.

Rejected By Northwestern School of Music If you’re unfamiliar with my blog, you may not know that I was almost a music major in college. I played the tuba for almost 15 years. In high school, one of my dreams was to attend Northwestern University. I still remember the day of the audition. I was in Evanston in the middle of February and my audition was at 3pm. The weather sucked and I wandered around Evanston only to realize that a high school kid with no friends in this town couldn’t spend more than 3 hours there. So, I went to the music building around noon after I was completely frozen and spent a few hours practicing. My audition was not a complete disaster, but I knew I was not going to be attending Northwestern in the fall. In retrospect, considering I can’t stand the cold, it was a blessing in disguise. I also can’t imagine spending my life as a professional tuba player. You have to wait for somebody to die for a spot to open up in an orchestra.


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###Graduated Berkeley with 2.97 GPA I don’t know if I’m alone here, but I wasn’t very happy in college. After the first year, the optimism I had entered school with started to fade. My dream of being a top student and getting straight A’s was more or less shot when I got a C in an economics class and finished the school year with a less than stellar GPA. The next 3 years were a battle of ups and downs. My sophomore year my roommate drank an entire bottle of scotch in one and ended up hospitalized for depression and his depression rubbed off on me. Every attempt at a new major or new subject area resulted in less than stellar grades. By the time I was a junior I declared a major that I had no interest in as a means to an end. I was an environmental economics and policy major. I don’t know a damn thing about any of that today. My social life more or less centered around the Indian community at Berkeley and my senior year I was an officer for the Indian student club at Berkeley, an organization with over 1000 members. So that definitely put a light on my social life. But, the idea that I was going to graduate college without ever meeting anybody absolutely terrified me. Then at the end of my senior year, my roommate of two years, some of my closest friends and I had a huge falling out. To add to all this I had taken on such a heavy course load, attempted to take 5 finals 4 days and got a D in a class, the sunk my GPA below 3.0. I suppose it’s fitting that 12 years later I’m writing a book titled The Skool of Life. That ruled out almost any job that reputable companies recruited for. After 4.5 years, shitty grades, and no


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girlfriend I was more than happy to be done with Berkeley. Oddly, after all this I still love going back to Berkeley because there were alot of good times too. I’m more fond of Berkeley now than I was when I was in school. It took this experience to make me realize I was completely dependent on other people for my happiness and that’s a really dangerous place to be.

Fired from my Very First Job Out of College My very first job out of college was for a software startup. For 9 months I slaved away for 13 hours a day, generated sales for no commissions and got fired 5 days before Christmas. To add to that I developed a severe case of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I was demoralized by the experience but like many things it turned out to be a huge blessing in disguise.

Rejected by Every Business School I applied to After all these years of working, I finally decided it was time to apply to business school. I hired a business school admissions consultant who decided to help me write an essay about what he described as “this crucible called a career.” I had far too many jobs for somebody that was under 30. How that was going to make a convincing case to a business school admissions officer that I knew what I wanted was going to be a challenge. I took the GMAT 3 times and finally topped out at 640. By the time April rolled around I had been rejected by all the business schools


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I applied to, so I submitted an application to Pepperdine 2 weeks before their deadline and was accepted. It was my last resort and I was not too pleased with that.

Turned down for a summer internship by Harrahs: I entered business school in the Fall of 2007 with the intention of working in the entertainment industry and “getting as far away from this internet bullshit as possible(ironic huh).” I quickly learned that I had no desire to work in the entertainment industry and instead became convinced that my calling was to go and work in gaming industry. After all I had mastered getting free drinks and getting treated like a VIP everywhere you go. So, it seemed this would be a natural fit. Harrah’s didn’t recruit at Pepperdine so I got on Linkedin in September and started building a network of contacts by conducting informational interviews (a skill that would come full circle 2 years later). By the time February had rolled around I had built a small army of contacts in Harrah’s. I went to their annual MBA poker tournament and by the end of it I was on everybody’s radar. 3 weeks went by and I didn’t hear a thing. Finally I got an email saying that I had been selected for an interview. I was ecstatic and i aced the first two interviews and was invited to one of their properties for an on-site interview. When I got to the interview I had to take a standardized test similar to the GMAT that the company used to evaluate all MBA candidates. I aced the interview but bombed the test. That was the end of my shot at


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Harrahs. Not Receiving a Job Offer After my Summer Internship at Intuit:With Harrahs no longer an option, I was blessed with the opportunity to be a social media strategy intern at Intuit. I figured if I couldn’t’ do Harrah’s at least I would make good money and have a great name on my resume. In the 3 months that I was at Intuit I took a deep dive into everything social media, started about 3 failed blogs and did a few other things. But at the end of my summer internship my boss informed me that they would not be making an offer because I didn’t demonstrate the leadership qualities they had hoped for and I was somewhat selfish. To his credit, he told me that he was doing me a favor and that I was an idea guy that needed to do things that enabled me to have more ownership of things. I guess he was right and I’m pretty grateful that he didn’t make me an offer. Personally taxes don’t excite me that much and if it didn’t involve jail time I would be glad not to pay them. ###Not finding a job after business school I think was the ultimate blessing in disguise more than any of my other failures. When I look back at that, I realize it all happen for a reason. It all happened exactly the way it was supposed to. So, what the hell is the point to all this? Is it that I want to share my sob story with you? No, not at all. In fact if anything I hope that you will see one lesson that I finally understand. Often, the path to success is paved with massive amounts of failure. Today I’m on a completely different trajectory. You wouldn’t be reading this book today if it hadn’t been for those failures. It’s possible I may have been sitting in an office somewhere writing marketing


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plans for tax software. Life throws us lots of curve balls and we won’t always hit home runs. Fail sooner, fail more, and you’ll succeed sooner and succeed more.


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When Life Doesn’t Go According To Plan If you’ve been on this planet very long, you’ve probably realized by now that life doesn’t always ago according to plan. I was taught this lesson the summer between my junior and senior year of college by a young salesman at Sun Microsystems with a new baby on the way. I learned this lesson when I graduated from business school 10 years later. Just because you are taught something it doesn’t mean you’ve learned it. I walked into his office with visions of grandeur about my career in sales and he said “I bet you have it all planned out. Well what you think your life will be like five years from now going to be completely different than you think. To say that my life hasn’t gone according to plan would be putting it lightly. I had a very different idea for what my life would look like at the age of 34. I thought I’d be married with kids on a steady climb up the corporate ladder. But somewhere along the way, I took [one turn in a different direction and ended up taking the scenic route through life. People cite a few key moments as defining in their lives. In many cases those defining moments are often the ones they’ve planned for and dreamt about as long as they can remember. For some people it’s the day they get married and for others the day they have kids. I can’t speak to either of these since I don’t have kids and I’m not married. For me, the defining moments have been the ones


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I never planned for, dreamt about or expected.

Defining Moments of Serendipity The First Wave It’s odd to think that my first wave was something that almost never happened considering how that moment redefined my life and completely changed my trajectory. The original plan to spend New Year’s with all of my friends from my study abroad program fell apart because everyone ran out of money and decided to head home. If they had stuck around, I probably would have never caught that wave. It was only a brief moment, but it changed my life forever and for the better. Sometimes things will turn out better than you had planned for.

Writing this Book If you told me 10 years ago that one day I would write a book titled The Skool of Life, I would have laughed int your face. If you told me that book we be a self help or personal development book I would have really thought you were full of it.

Walking Away from a Job in Two Weeks Sometimes the scariest moments or the biggest risks in our lives are the defining moments that change our trajectory forever. After a 6 month job search I walked away from a job in two weeks. I didn’t give a notice or resign. I just walked out of the office and sent the company an email


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the next day letting them know I wouldn’t be returning. Within days, the critics, naysayers, and voices of reason emerged. But the noise died down quickly and they all returned to defending the status quo. That was a turning point for me and everything that followed has been an unforgettable journey.

The Beauty of the Unknown I have absolutely no idea what lies ahead. Am I nervous? Hell yes. But what I do know based on a few other experiences is that opportunity tends to unfold when we’re willing to take a leap of faith. You’ll see things that you may have been blind to prior to taking the first step because now you’re standing in a different place and looking at the same situation from a whole new angle. Sometimes, life’s greatest experiences lie in midst of the unknown.

Playing the Hand You’ve Been Dealt It’s easy to use the circumstances of your life as an excuse for leaving your fate in someone else’s hands. However, you do have a choice in the matter. In the movie Rounders there’s a great quote from Matt Damon where he says “If you put a guy like me in a room like that, the cards don’t even matter.” I don’t know much about poker, but from what I hear it’s about playing the hand you’ve been dealt. Maybe we should have the same attitude towards life. I know it’s easier said than done and sometimes I have trouble following my own advice.


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Let’s face it. **You have two choices, you can spend your life planning to live or actually living it. I’m going with the latter . I’ll let the chips fall where they may because at least in the end it’ll be a damn good story. ** The Late Bloomer Syndrome As a society we have a somewhat unhealthy obsession with timelines and deadlines. • • • • •

Finish school by 18 Finish college by your 20's Get Married before you're 30 Have Kids Buy a house

It becomes a little ridiculous when you realize you can complete the list with the day you die. Don’t get me wrong. The most valuable asset you have at your disposal is time, but we also have created a number of self imposed limitations as a byproduct of this need keep up with the rat race. We have to ask ourselves does it matter how long it takes to accomplish something of significance or is it more important that we actually accomplished it? I’m a late bloomer by most standards:

• I didn’t have a girlfriend until I was 25 • I started to come out of my shell around 27 • I didn't discover my love for writing and creating thing my 30's.

Almost every boss I had wrote me off as lazy, or unmotivated. One of my particular favorites was the guy


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who told me that I didn’t seem like the type of person who was interested in controlling my own destiny. I really owe him for lighting that fire under my ass and making me realize that I’d never be truly in control of my own destiny as long as I was working for him. • When I was an intern with Intuit’s Turbotax group my boss said “we’ve never had an intern as selfish as you.” But you have to wonder if there’s a difference between being selfish and doing work that matters to you. I’d like to think the work I’m doing how is having a greater positive impact on people than being a marketing manager for online tax software ever could have. I’m surrounded by a bunch of 20-something Gen Y lifestyle designers all living on their own terms, and I’m on the path to doing the same. As a byproduct of the culture of expectations I’ve been brought up in, many of my friends are married, having kids, etc, etc. I find myself fighting my own demons about this from time to time. But I recently came to a profound realization. Life is sometimes like the second wave in a set With the countless hours I spend living like a fish, I’ve noticed that more often than not, the second wave in a set is bigger and often better. In their desire to get on a wave as quickly as possible, many people will actually go for the first one. A handful will make it. The ones that don’t find themselves scrambling back to the line up so the second wave doesn’t pummel them. I will usually wait for the second wave and because people are scrambling to get back to the take off point, there’s nobody in the way and the wave is mine for the taking. After that realization, I started


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to see my life and all its events as nothing more than the second wave in a set. Sometimes the fact that your goals in life take longer than originally expected is actually a good thing:

• When I worked at Intuit, I got an hour of time with the he undergrad interns I grilled him about how he got to where he most important thing the taught me was the he got passed up tw romotion when he was at Proctor at Gamble. However, he said the iness cycles he got to witness because of getting passed up ende one of the greatest advantages he had later on his career when w . • If it hadn't been for some of my career struggles after I would never have started my blog, wrote this book, or done man ings I've done over the last 3 years

When your hopes, goals, and dreams are taking longer than expected, don’t discount the fact that you’re probably acquiring the wisdom to achieve goals and dreams far beyond what you can possibly imagine today.


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Your Circumstances Today Don’t Determine What’s Possible Tomorrow You may not be where you want to be with your life today. • You might not have the job you love. • You might not be earning the income you want or be in the relationship you want to be in. In other words, the situation is less than ideal. I only know this because I’m living it at the moment. However when you come to terms with the notion that permanence is an illusion, then it becomes quite apparent that your circumstances today don’t determine what’s possible tomorrow. It’s nothing more than a backdrop and you can either focus on the backdrop or the scene you’re trying to produce. The problem with viewing the world through the lens of your current circumstances is that you act accordingly. When you focus on the fact that you hate your job, or don’t have the job you want you perpetuate the existence of those circumstances because what you focus on grows. You choose relationships that are showing all the signs of one that will eventually self destruct. You take action out of fear and any action taken out of fear produces a suboptimal result. Sometimes our circumstances will cause us to lose hope. We don’t see anything but the dark days that lie


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ahead of us. But it’s in our darkest hours that character is built. The worst thing you can do is not take any steps forward.

Your Choices and Actions Will Determine What’s Possible While the circumstances of today don’t determine what’s possible your actions do. You may not be in control of the circumstances, but you are in complete control of the actions you take. That’s where you actually have a choice. What you do with each day is really a response to your circumstances. • On a rainy day, I might not be able to surf. But I could write a 1000 words or hit the mountains for a snowboard lesson. • I may not to be able to change my income with the wave of a magic wand, but I can take the first step in changing the situation. Each step you take in the direction of a goal or a dream will reveal new possibilities that you were unaware of before.

How you get there doesn’t really Matter Many people will criticize the choices you make on the path to pursuing your dreams. Don’t live your life according to their expectations. They are not the ones who are going to live with the consequences of your actions. What’s more important to you? What people think about your situation today or that you ultimately end up where you want to. The journey is often unglamorous, filled with days that will test your patience and build your character. The


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question you have to ask yourself is what you’re willing to go through?

What Are you Willing to Give Up? Getting what you really want out of life is about what you’re willing to give up as much as it is about what you’re willing to do. Ask yourself, what are you willing to sacrifice? • Will you give up your temporary comfort for long term satisfaction? • Will you give up your need for the approval of others to get where you want to go? • Are you willing to make a short term sacrifice for a long term gain? These are by no means easy questions to answer. A big part of what keeps us stuck is that we’re comfortable. The reality of life is that no progress occurs in your comfort zone. So get ready to be uncomfortable if you want to start pushing your limits. The memories of your struggles, your uphill battles and miserable journey are fleeting. Once you’re past them, just look forward and remember that your circumstances today don’t determine what’s possible tomorrow.


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Life is Not a Final Exam In all the years since I’ve graduated from college I’ve had a recurring dream in which I show up for a final exam that I’m completely unprepared for and likely to fail. Sometimes I find myself back in high school and others I find myself back in college. Needless to say, it always rattles my nerves until I wake up, realize it was all a dream, remember that I graduated, my two degrees are hanging on the wall at my parents house and the bill still shows up every month. It turns out this is a common dream and it stems from a feeling that we’re unprepared for something that lies ahead. 10 Years after completing my education I still have this dream. The last time I had this dream I found myself in my high school Spanish class, and the classroom had been converted to a photography classroom. My teacher was handing out the final exam for a class I had never attended. As usual I woke up relieved that it had been a dream. It got me thinking that maybe we live life as if it is a final exam. We put so much pressure on ourselves to perform that that failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we walk through life as if we’ve got something to prove, we kill the natural creativity and brilliance that flows from a mind that is free of this pressure. By letting it go, we come to terms with the fact that there are no grades in the school of life and we start to play for our love of the game. We become absorbed in our passions and or pursuit of them evolves from a necessary evil into a labor love. Time ceases to exist and we’re left with footprints on the


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imagination the last a life time. School has conditioned us into the idea that failure is a bad thing for so long that as we go through life our tolerance for risk declines, and we stop pushing the limits of what we’re capable of. As a result, there’s quite a bit of wasted potential in the world and not enough people willing to take a leap of faith. But consider the following: • • • h • .

The first time you attempted to walk you took a leap of The first time your parents left you at school you took The first time you fell in love with somebody, it requi

The first time you try to learn any new skill it require

The Problem with a Final Exam When you fail a final exam, you get an F and your fate is sealed. The very fact that we call it a “final” exam implies that it’s a permanent label which destroys your potential. Let’s say you’ve always wanted to learn how to paint. So you sign up for an art course. You struggle throughout the course. At the end of eight weeks you take a final exam, you fail, and your fate is sealed. You were not meant to be an artist. A permanent decision is based upon a temporary circumstance. The arbitrary label of letter grades kills possibility and we quit. What we don’t know is what would happen if we kept going long after we failed the first time. A while back I had a conversation with my friend Ashely Ambirge who most people will agree is one of the most


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amazing writers in the blogosphere. It turns out that she didn’t actually get an A in her college English course. Imagine the brilliance we’d all be missing out on if she bought into the labels of those metrics and measurements. How many brilliant minds have we missed out on in the world because somebody got a grade on a final exam which made them believe that they weren’t good at something? When you fail in life you actually have an opportunity to learn something and your results aren’t final.

Nothing is Permanent If there’s anything that 34 years on this planet has taught me, it’s that nothing is permanent. Tattoos can be removed, the economy will get worse and get better, and sometimes it takes a fall from grace to rise from the ashes. It’s not uncommon for a person’s worst experiences in life to be the best thing that happened to them sometime in the near future. So don’t be too concerned about the situations that seem to trouble you. They’re all temporary and will eventually pass.

There are No Grades in The School of Life “The difference between school and life? In school you’re taught a lesson, then given a test. In life you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.” – Anonymous In the real world there are no grades other than the ones you give yourself. You can be a straight A-student, the class clown or the average joe. The beauty of life is that it’s not something arbitrary. It’s up to you who you want to be.


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I’d recommend a balance between all three if you intend to have the happiest and most fulfilling life possible.

You Can’t Paint a Masterpiece on a Cluttered Canvas “You don’t have to be great to start. But you have to start to be great” – Joe Sabah To really get on board with this idea that you can’t paint a masterpiece on a cluttered canvas, we need to look at just how cluttered the one you’re working with is. The cluttering begins at a very early age. • ** You go to school, you get a bad grade, and you decide that you’re not smart. Paint splotch #1. ** • ** You get to junior high and now there are “popular” kids and you’re not one of them. So you decide that you’re a nerd, not cool, or something along those lines. Paint splotch #2** • High school rolls around, you get past puberty, and all of a sudden you have a severely increased interest in the opposite sex. So you declare your eternal love to somebody, get rejected, and now you’re not good with boys or girls. Paint splotch #3. • You get to college hoping to finally be free of the person you were in high school and it doesn’t go according to plan. So now you just suck. Paint splotch #4. 33

You Can’t Paint a Masterpiece on a Cluttered Canvas

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• You graduate, wild eyed optimistic, and ready to change the world. You get a dose of reality and abandon your plans to collect a paycheck, payback those piles of debt, and just survive. You’re just not meant to be extraordinary. Paint Splotch #5. Are you starting to notice a pattern here? You have an experience and you make it meaning something. You start to see the world through that lens. Your life becomes a cluttered canvas viewed through the filters of your past experiences. If you’re like some people, you read than and are angry. “Why the hell didn’t anybody tell me before?” If you’re like others it’s a wakeup call. You realize that YOU gave all those experiences the meaning they had and you can change the meaning or make them all meaningless, and the paint splotches disappear and you’re left with a blank canvas. Now you’re ready to create a masterpiece. Unconventional wisdom is necessary in order to produce extraordinary results. When you set out on the path to accomplish anything worth doing it can seem like you have to overcome impossible odds. But what you have to realize is that anybody who has done something extraordinary made the decision to stop chasing ordinary and just started taking one step forward at a time. Most people had no idea how they would get there. They just know that nothing is going to stop them. While the first few steps might seem insignificant, action tends to have a compounding effect over time. You’re


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planting seeds and watering them every single day. You keep learning, refining, and evolving. Don’t dwell on the past too often because every day ahead of you is a blank canvas, and when you dwell on the past you clutter that canvas. You can’t create a masterpiece on top of a cluttered canvas. Maybe you won’t change the world in a day. But over the course of a year you could build the foundation to do it. And over the course of a lifetime you could make a dent in the universe. How We Create Prisons Made Up of Words,Thoughts, Routines and Rituals Words have an incredible power. Without them we would look out into the world and see nothing but darkness. Try thinking about ANYTHING and separating words from it, and you’ll find it’s impossible. That is why it’s important to choose your words wisely because they construct reality. Most of us construct prisons over paradise with our words. What’s even worse is that we choose every single word. Several months back one of my regular readers who challenges me quite a bit left a comment saying “Srini, lately everything you write seems coated in pessimism.” At first I was annoyed by the comment, but I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe there was a grain of truth to what he was saying. After taking a closer look I realized I was using my words to paint a picture that was going to really limit possibility in the future and he was right. So choose your words wisely. • When I lived in Costa Rica, it took me almost


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6 weeks to realize that I hadn’t come close to embracing the life that was at my disposal • I limited every trip to two days and only weekends even though I was free to travel whenever I wanted • I worked in the confines of the 8 hour workday which made no sense. • I spent my 33rd birthday holed up in a condo drinking by myself when I could have spent it in a hostel partying. • I limited my self to two main surf spots when I had the whole country at my fingertips. What’s odd is that nobody had restricted me other than myself. The guys who I was working with even said “we thought you’d stay in Tamarindo and party for your birthday.” I wrote the story of how isolated I had been feeling and in many ways I brought my own box into existence. This is how much our rituals and routines can imprison us. I live a life where Mondays and weekends really have no meaning. In fact there’s almost no sense of time other than the one that I choose to create. I could have done what I was doing from anywhere where there is an internet connection, yet I limited myself to the confines of a condo in a 100 person town. Our social programming is so strong that even unplugged from the matrix we tend to behave according to


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its rules. Working Monday through Friday was a ritual that I had kept for so much of my life, that it was initially a hard habit to break. In many ways I was like a slave set free from routines and rituals, but addicted to the life I had been trying to escape. When people asked me about my life there, the story had always been I live in a town of 100 people, I surf and I work on my online business. It wasn’t what I had hoped it would be. Words created that reality and words changed it. Within the context of that story I created a prison made up of words and thoughts. We do that in so many areas of our lives and we’re left scratching our heads as to why things aren’t the way we want them to be. According to the Three Laws of Performance our actions correlate to how situations occur to us. It occurred to me that I was isolated and a bit trapped. As a result I limited myself by cutting trips short, doing nothing but working, and living a small percentage of the life that’s ad my disposal. All of a sudden it just occurred to me that I had NOTHING tying me down. Have you been creating prisons made up of words and thoughts? You’ll surprise yourself if you take a closer look at the way you’re living.


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How Labels Destroy Your Potential By the time we reach our adolescence we’ve learned plenty about ourselves, most of which is based on the feedback, labels and judgements of other people. This goes on for so long that by the time we get out of college we almost have no sense of who we really are. We’re just the combination of all the labels that people have given us. Chances are that you have been labeled any one of these things below and even spent your life trying to live up the good ones and overcome the bad ones. In this exhausting way of living life you lose sight of the fact you’re amazing just the way you are. But let’s talk about these labels in more detail.

Book Smart Discount the fact that I got into Berkeley and got good grades in high school and nobody would call me book smart. My book smarts plummeted when I got to college and there was no need to celebrate my 2.97 GPA (even though I drank a glass of champagne at 10am after my last final). But I never stopped trying to be book smart because all of my friends were and so are most of the people in my family. I come from a long line of academics and I’ve had the audacity to believe that the Skool of Life is a more valuable education. It completely held back everything I had inside and I spent the better part of my youth trying to fit into somebody else’s box. But even if you’re labeled


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booksmart there’s a downside. It implies that your not street smart or don’t have any common sense (yeah, they said THAT about me too). So the label places a limitation on you and you live with in the walls of your book smarts.

Trouble Maker/Renegades/Maverick/Misfits I can’t help but wonder how many people let this turn into a self fulfilling prophecy after they’ve been labeled as one of these. One of my readers, Betsy, left a comment about a kindergartener who drew a purple cow and was reprimanded by his teacher. It’s tragic to kill creativity at such an early age. A purple cow is what causes somebody to stop and pay attention. This idea of breaking rules makes people nervous because it forces them to confront the fact the they haven’t conformed. It’s even possible they’re the victims of the labels they’ve been given in life. But are they really trouble makers or people who are on the verge of bringing a much needed change into the world? It’s interesting because once you give somebody a label or receive one it’s hard not to see it. Just think of the time when a friend told you about how annoying somebody was and all of a sudden you start noticing all their annoying qualities. Once you seen somebody through the lens of a label it’s impossible not to see it. That’s the power of words.


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Unmotivated I had a boss once who told me that I was unmotivated and not the type of person that seemed interested in controlling my own destiny. The irony was the he had worked at the same company for 20 years. Once he gave me that label there was no escaping it because that’s all he would see. With a label like this he only saw what I was on the surface. He couldn’t see any potential. I don’t think people are necessarily unmotivated, but bored out of their mind. Give somebody work that they enjoy and it’s no longer a problem of motivation.

Stupid When I was a kid one of my relatives said to my parents “he’s smart, but she (referring to my sister) will surpass him in life.” I never forgot that to this day. By the standards of the culture of expectations that I live in the assessment would be spot on. We use measurements and metrics like grades through life to evaluate people and essentially label them and in the process we slowly destroy their potential. The joy of learning fades and we just come to terms with the fact that maybe we are in fact “stupid.” Yet, the most important realization we could have come to is that overachievers are in severe danger of screwing themselves up.


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Charismatic I’ve only been given this label a handful of times yet, I’ve spent almost a decade trying to live up to it and failing miserably. I can’t help but think by abandoning the label I might actually achieve what I’m trying to achieve. The strange thing is that we can all see the world through different lenses and someone who appears charismatic through one person’s eyes might be a complete douchebag (eloquent I know) to another. Labels can amplify the best and worst things about people in ways we don’t even realize. But the real person, the one capable of absolutely anything is the one underneath the labels that we’ve given them. Are you labeling people in your life: your kids, your parents, your friends, your co-workers? Would changing the labels you’ve given them change your experience of dealing with them? Take a peak under the surface and see what you find.


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The Hidden Dangers of Other People’s Expectations Almost all of us are impacted by the expectations of the people around us. But letting those expectations become the guiding force in your life, is a really exhausting way to live. Your mind is in a constant battle between who other people think you should be and who you want to be. If you’re not careful you’ll become a victim of the hidden dangers of these expectations. For as far back as I can remember it was important to know the answer. If you didn’t know the answer, there were consequences. You got ridiculed in front of the class, or on a test your grades reflected that accordingly. But very few people have the courage to stand up and say I have NO DAMN IDEA. School would forbid this and as a result we end up living our lives as a byproduct of our need to continually come up with an answer. If you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I could probably tell you a few different versions.

A Pilot If there’s one thing that always fascinated me as a child it was airplanes. It didn’t hurt that I spent the better part of my childhood globetrotting. I was absolutely fascinated by the way they took off and on a trip to India when we stayed with one of my mom’s uncles who lived near an airport, I would watch the airplanes takeoff and land every single day. To this day anytime I drive by an airport and see a


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747 that’s headed to some international destination I can’t help but think what it would be like to be on it. I’m not sure what happened, but that childhood dream of flying planes soon became an afterthought.

A Doctor As an Indian kid anything creative as a career is more or less discouraged. We’re told fairly early on that these kinds of things make nice hobbies, but there’s no future in them. So we focus our efforts on things like math and sciences (two things I coincidentally suck at). But from an early age I’ve been trying to force square pegs into round holes and scratching my head as to why things haven’t exactly gone according to plan. I’m not sure who it was or why they thought this, but somebody thought that I should become a doctor. Of course they did since we’re Indian. So through no actual choice of my own it was decided that I would become a doctor and from that point forward I went through life letting people know that I wanted to be a doctor. The Gumball Business A childhood friend of mine peaked my interest in business and so did every movie I watched that had some millionaire business man in it. Little did I know that the fantasy and the reality of working your way to the top of the corporate ladder are completely different. But in the back of my mind I had figured I’m bound to be a businessman of some sort. So I continually kept my eyes open for opportunities. As luck would have it they opened Sam’s Club in College Station, Texas sometime in


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1991. While walking through the store I saw a box of sour gumballs that cost 7 bucks. I convinced my dad to buy me the gumballs and assured him I’d return his 7 bucks the next day. The next day I went to school with a brown paper bag and started my first business, selling 10 cent gumballs. By lunchtime I had run out of my product and was taking orders for the next day. $18 a day in profit was not bad for an 8th grader. Within a few days I had even recruited a sales force by getting a popular friend, and a friend who was an athlete so we’d have the jocks, the nerds (the people I knew), and popular kids covered. Within weeks my business was shutdown due to the fact that I was violating the rules of our school. Clearly this issue with authority started at a very early age.

A Tuba Playing Doctor By my junior year in high school I had again been convinced of the virtues of becoming a doctor and why any other career would really be a waste with no consideration for the fact that I hated everything about hospitals, and I was absolutely terrible at science. My interest in music caused me to apply to a few schools as a music major (but this was only to improve my chances of getting in). I can’t say I’m unhappy that I decided not to become a professional tuba player since you have to wait for somebody to die in order for a spot to open up in an orchestra. I’m not being facetious. It’s just that there’s only 1 tuba player in a professional orchestra, and let’s face it, playing the tuba doesn’t exactly get you labeled one of the cool kids.


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A Salesmen Somehow despite all this madness, I squeaked out good enough grades all through high school and got accepted to Berkeley. Still convinced that my calling in life was to be some corporate hot shot, I spent two years getting less than stellar grades which prevented me from getting into the business school. My junior year in the midst of trying to find a major solely as the means to an end, a friend turned me on to an entrepreneurship course called Venture Design. The whole class was a one semester project where you wrote a business plan for a company. It turned out I had a talent for being on stage and presenting, and the professors in the class labeled me a “hell of a salesmen.” So, I got this idea in my head that my calling in life was to go into sales. What followed after graduation was a series of jobs I hated with a passion but tried to convince myself I was meant to do. Again, this was based on the advice of that professor who noted my talent for sales. 7 Years, two degrees, and a mountain of debt later I realized that I had been completely disillusioned. There have really been two things I really enjoyed when I look back over the course of the last 10 years. I enjoyed building things and sharing my ideas and visions with other people. Perhaps if I’d started with that in mind, I might have used my time a bit more wisely. So what’s the point? Just be aware of the hidden dangers of other people’s expectations.


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The Hidden Power of Positive Expectation In the same way that other people’s expectations can derail us when negative, they can set us on that path to accomplishing extraordinary things when they’re positive. At the heart of any story about a world class athlete, musician, or student was a coach, parent or teacher who reinforced positive expectation. In my own life, when it comes to my greatest accomplishments, the positive expectations of other people played a role. People Who’ve Had a Profound Impact on my Life

My Junior High Band Director I never had any particular talent for music. It’s not in my blood, so I couldn’t credit genetics for the progress I made. I didn’t really grow up playing an instrument, unless you count the walkman my dad gave me. When I joined the band in 6th grade, I played the trombone because my parents couldn’t afford to buy me an instrument and the school provided trombones. If you heard me play the trombone, you would probably cringe as most parents do when their kids start to play an instrument. When the band director asked me what the flags on music notes meant, I told him they were for decorations. Not exactly, Mozart in the making. The next year something interesting happened. I switched instruments from the Trombone to the Tuba. The day I picked up the instrument my band director told me “You’re going to be in All-state band


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someday.” I still can’t understand why he thought that considering there was nothing to indicate this on the day I started playing the instrument. But, that expectation lit a fire under my ass and before I knew it I found myself doing everything I could to meet that expectation. I would come in after school every single day to practice (which also gave me an opportunity to ditch football practice where I was getting the hell beat out of me by guys three times my size). I would practice up to three hours a day much to the dismay of my sister. (A tuba is really loud) The next few years went something like this:

• 7th Grade: Missed all-region band by one chair • 8th Grade: First Chair in All Region Band • 9th Grade: Missed all-state by one chair • 10th Grade: Principal Tuba in All State Band • 11th Grade: Principal Tuba in All State Band • 12th Grade: 5th chair in all state band (I was busy get t came next) • Accepted the USC School of Music

Professional tuba playing was not really in my future. But the expectations of that band director drove all my actions from the day I heard his words of encouragement. So, to parents, teachers, and anybody: Believe in the extraordinary potential of your students, kids, and friends. Tell them, and their actions and results will align accordingly. Every single time you tell them things like “not everybody can be the next…Steve Jobs, Michael Jackson, insert successful person ” you kill a little bit of their hope.


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You have the gift of words and with those words you can alter the future for somebody.

My Business School Professor The day I graduated from business school was an anticlimactic day in my life. I couldn’t understand why my parents had invited relatives from around the world to attend this event considering, I had no job lined up, and I was about to hit rock bottom. But the one thing I remember was the encouraging words of my marketing professor. My parents were taking pictures and she told them “I have a feeling about this one, he’s going to do something special.” I’m not sure if I really have lived up to those words quite yet, but I realize that what she was telling me was to stop waiting for permission to be extraordinary. I can’t help but wonder what might have happen if the same boss who had told me “I don’t think you’re cut out for sales” had told me “I think you’ve got it in you to be a sales superstar.” Our negative expectations of people destroy their potential and bring out the worst in them.

The People Who Read my Blog Over the last few years I’ve received more than 100 emails from people who have read my blog. Those emails ignited the fire inside me of that lead to finally sitting down and writing this book. Words have a tremendous power to alter action, perception and experience. Choose them wisely. Class dismissed.


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Living life Uncluttered Let’s wrap this chapter up with the gist of it all and clear the canvas once and for all so you can get to work on the masterpiece. Every word you write, read, or hear will have an impact on the way you view life. Sometimes they won’t even be your own words. But think of this way. Each word is a color, and each sentence the stroke of your paintbrush, and the picture you paint is the meaning you’ve assigned to the whole damn thing. Take away the meaning you’ve assigned to all of it, good and bad, stop resisting everything, and the canvas goes blank. Liberated? Scared shitless? Excited and Optimistic? Wait just a little bit. Eating too fast causes indigestion. Speeding causes car accidents. Give it some time, we just cleared the canvas. Don’t screw it up so quickly with false meaning.

What do You Want to Be When You Grow Up? Despite what the news, the economists, and the media may tell you, we’re at a very fortunate time in our history. We’ve gone from a world where people are looking for jobs to one where people are searching for an opportunity to be remarkable. It’s no longer enough to get a great name on your resume, collect a paycheck and get a corner office. Thank God. Groundbreaking, world changing ideas die in the confines of cubicles while staring at computer screens.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs It turns out that meeting our basic needs of food, water, and shelter which is what the pursuit of a paycheck helps us accomplish will only get us so far. At the top of the pyramid in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is self actualization. So what heck does this jargon really mean? One of our deepest needs is to do work that really matters. We’re all determined to leave our mark on the world, and we damn well should be. Considering we spend a minimum of 5 out of 7 days a week at a job, I think we need to spend a bit more time thinking about what we want be when we grow up. Stop saying “it’s just a job.” It’s more than that. This might be a wake up call for you, but I want you to consider that you didn’t even chose your career path. You ended up on it because some well intentioned person (i.e. parents, teachers, society) valued safety, security, and 50

What do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

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comfort more than anything. They shifted the hierarchy of needs and put a lower priority at the top of the pyramid. So is it any surprise that we’re unfulfilled in our careers? (Insert stuff by Felix Dennis) The result is thousands of people in jobs they hate, waiting for the lottery ticket that allows them to bid farewell to that jackass you might call a boss. Don’t get me wrong, I think there are people who love their jobs. But I don’t think there are enough in the world. We need more. The world would be a better place if more people loved their jobs. The traffic jams, long lines at the grocery store, and all the other everyday things we complain about wouldn’t drive us so nuts if more people were doing work that mattered and work they loved.

So, What do You Want to Be When You Grow Up? Do you remember when we were kids and when people asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up, we had answers that were absolutely amazing. We all wanted to be rockstars, ballerinas, firemen, super heroes, and all sorts of things that seemed completely free of a world based on rules and other peoples expectations. When was the last time you thought about what you wanted to be when you grew up? Well I’ve got news for you. IT’S NOT TOO LATE. My friend Michelle Ward has built a business out of helping out adults figure out what they want to be when they grow up. She’s the WhenIgrowUpCoach.


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Practicality is Overrated I know plenty of practical people. Most of them are sleepwalking through life with the emergency break on. They’ve lost sight of the difference between living and being alive. Roll down the windows, blast your favorite tunes while the wind blows through your hair, and step on the gas pedal. Who said our dreams had to be practical? • Want to be a rockstar? Go to your local music shop, buy a guitar, sign up for lessons and then practice for 10,000 hours. • I see 60 year old guys in the water who started surfing less than a year ago. When I see that I realize that age is a self imposed limitation. There’s a guy named Dorian (aka Doc) Paskowitz who has been surfing forever. He’s over 80 years old and still surfs everyday. Mind blowing. We give up far too easily on our childhood dreams because they seem ridiculous or unrealistic when we become adults. Children live life through the lens of the their imagination while adults live the though the lens of knowledge. Knowledge has limits while imagination is unlimited. I had this completely insane idea: live in Costa Rica, surf perfect waves, and write about the experience on my blog. That idea turned into reality faster than I ever thought possible.


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Insane ideas make history. Most ideas are considered insane until they start working. Then they are labeled genius. I’ve got news for you. You’re a freaking GENIUS. As we’ve said before you’re amazing just the way you are. So go down the rabbit hole and don’t worry where you’ll end up. Chances are it will be a hell of alot more interesting than if you keep playing it safe. Remember, your tolerance for risk not only impacts your success but it may very well determine just how interesting your life will be.

Push the Limits I have an obsessive personality, the kind that will cause me to leave a country to chase an obsession. Most of my friends say that I don’t have limits and moderation is not part of my vocabulary. Fortunately I’ve found healthier ways to express it. I want you to push your limits far beyond your comfort zone. You know why? Once you do that you’ll set a new bar for your comfort zone. Then you’ll be coming from a different place and a different view will open up to you. Things you haven’t seen before will become apparent to you and you’ll accomplish even more. � ###Actions You Can Take • ** 1) Suspend disbelief and Write Down The Description of your Dream Career** • ** 2) Search the Internet for somebody who is living it. These days it’s easy to connect with like minded individuals**


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• 3) Find out how they did it • 4) Act on the Best ideas • 5) Rinse, Wash, Repeat until you have your dream career Sounds a bit simplified right? If got too specific I’d narrow your possibilities. You need room for inventing the future.


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Don’t get Caught up in the Ego-Driven Pursuit of a Life that Looks Good on Paper I wake up every evening With a big smile on my face And it never feels out of place And you’re still probably working At a nine to five pace I wonder how bad that tastes When you see my face Hope it gives you hell Hope it gives you hell When you walk my way Hope it gives you hell Hope it gives you hell Now where’s your picket fence love And where’s that shiny car And did it ever get you far You never seemed so tense love I’ve never seen you fall so hard Do you know where you are -All American Rejects, Gives You Hell A year ago I was in Malibu surfing with a friend who was close to graduating from business school at Pepperdine. He said something that hit me like a ton of bricks. He said “I just want to get a job that looks good on paper.” As an undergrad, I went to a school where people were all about looking good on paper and most of them do. They’re all investment bankers, consultants, graduates of Top 10 MBA programs and more. On the Indian dating web site Shaadi.com there’s even a section labeled “bio-data” which is more or less a resume (aka how good you look on paper). We’re deciding who to date based on their accolades? That should be a cause for concern. Looking good on paper is a rather dangerous trap. Let’s say you successfully achieve looking good on paper. Then


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what? Is it really going to fulfill you?

A life that Looks Good on Paper Unfortunately as a society we actually encourage the pursuit of a life that looks good on paper. I come from a community that drills this into your head from the time you are old enough to start thinking about school. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to find a second grader who is making plans to go to Harvard. Here’s a broad strokes view of this path:

1. Attend Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, insert our choice 2. Get your first job at a consulting firm, investment ba gious first job or go to top grad school, med school or law scho 3. Work for a few years and return to top school of your c 4. Return to the working world for a more prestigious job

I got the first step of this right and then I screwed the rest of it up completely. I didn’t get a prestigious job out of college, I ended up at a second tier graduate school, and when people ask what I do for a living, it sounds like I have a job that’s “made up”. Oddly enough for the first time in my life, I feel completely fulfilled with my career. I love the work that I do. Sometime ago I gave up the pursuit of what looks good on paper. I came to the realization that there is tremendous power in creating your own definitions for success. But on paper it doesn’t compare to the MD’s, Harvard MBAs and six figure salaries. The only letters at the end


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of my name are RAO, which happens to be my last name. Yeah, I have an MBA, but it’s never been on a business card, resume or any other document because it’s not who I am. Ask me what I do and here’s what Danielle Laporte would call my cocktail party line: “I’m host and co-founder of BlogcastFM, a show about business and marketing where I interview best selling authors, internet entrepreneurs, and people who are changing the world. I also write about the things you should have learned in school but never did” Better yet, check out this work of art by my friend Ameena Falchetto

Brand Visualization

Beats the crap out of all those additional letters at the end of my name.

A Life That Actually is Good For many people, a tanking economy has made them realize that they’ve hated what they were doing and they have started to create a life of their dreams. For others, they are basically eager to get back on the path of a life that looks good on paper by submitting resumes and trying to get their foot in the door so they can continue their climb up


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the corporate ladder.###Ego Driven Pursuits of Impressive Credentials: When I look back at why I wanted a life that looked good on paper it was largely driven by my ego. All my friends had those letters at the end of their name along with big brands on their resumes. I saw it is a competition when I should have just played an entirely different game. All of these are “prestigious” accomplishments and I felt like I needed these. When I look at the life I lead, I realize that if I had a life that looked good on paper, this is actually what it would look like: • • • •

Work Take Have Keep

80+ hours a week a vacation once a year lots of money that I never get to enjoy thinking about the fact that I hate what I do

In comparison, this is what it actually looks like: • • • •

Surf Everyday Do work that I enjoy so much that I don’t even think in Have more than enough money to enjoy life and keep incr Keep thinking to myself “I can’t believe this is my li

Rewarding Conformity For a long time we’ve rewarded people for fitting in and this really is the gist of what Seth Godin talks about in his book, Linchpin. The people who got ahead were the ones who showed up, didn’t challenge the status quo, and did


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their best to fit the company mold. We rewarded people more for effort than we did for results. But that’s rapidly changing. Personally I think if you work 80 hours a week and don’t accomplish anything you’re not a hard worker. You suck at managing time. Today we’ve finally stopped doing that and the people who’ve spent their life trying to fit in are faced with one of their greatest challenges, thinking for themselves. ###The Best Time in History For those of us who struggled to fit in, struggled to keep up, and always felt that our calling was something different, our time has come. All of the limitations of technical knowledge, access to information and more are on the verge of being completely wiped out. The screw-ups, misfits, and troublemakers, are some of the most successful people around. They’re the ones changing the world. I’ll leave you with one final thought. Before you pursue a life that looks good on paper, make sure you know what it’s actually going to look like in the physical world. Be careful that you haven’t bought into an ego driven illusion that has been programmed into your mind for so long that you’ve stopped questioning it.


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5 Myths That Help Corporate America to Fuel Its Own Existence Two years ago, I gave a speech to students at Pepperdine University titled “Don’t Look for a job, Look for an opportunity to be remarkable.” You can watch on my blog at the following URL: I ended the talk by saying that inevitably when you start to blaze your own trail, make your own rules and veer off the tried and true path that skeptics will emerge. One of my classmates caught the speech on Facebook and in our exchange he sent me a message that struck me: He said “It might take a while, but eventually you realize you’ve been had by this whole system of going to a school and getting a job.” There is a sad truth to what he said and by the time most people realize it, they feel like there’s nothing they can do. The good news is that you can do something. But first we need to get a few things straight.

5 Myths That Help Corporate America to Fuel Its Own Existence 9 to 5 jobs are Stable Somewhere along the way you got convinced that a 9 to 5 job is stable. From experience I can tell you it’s only stable until a company decides to go through a layoff. People will try to convince you of the virtues of their cubicle farm only until the rug gets pulled out from under them. When somebody else is in control of your income is that really


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stable? Sure there’s short term risk in an entrepreneurial venture. But isn’t the risk worth it considering the long term risk is letting somebody else control your financial future? It’s something that I encourage the skeptics on the sideline to consider. My friend Nicole Crimaldi started a site called MsCareerGirl which she eventually turned into a full time business, but in our very first conversation she said something that I’ve always remembered. “Having something on the side is a bit like having an insurance policy on your career. I worry for people who don’t”

I can climb the ladder and I’ll get my payday: Let’s look at the numbers. In a company of several thousand employees there is 1 CEO, a few vice presidents, a shitload of middle managers, and even more cogs. I’m sorry to burst your bubble but I’m an Indian person who sucks at math and even I realize those are some piss poor odds. I had a friend who worked at Apple for about 12 years. I remember when he hit the 10 year mark. I asked him what happens at the 10 year mark and he said “they give you a really nice pen. I got one at the 5 year mark too.” Apparently you get another one at your 25 year mark. I’m not trying to single out Apple, but just giving you an example. To top it all off, what you’re actually doing is working in order to make somebody else rich. This might sound harsh, but this is like playing career roulette. Are you really going to bet your whole life on one job? The


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day and age of climbing the corporate ladder and getting your corneroffice are coming to an end. A lawn chair on the beach beats the hell out of a Herman Miller chair in a corner office facing a brick wall.

If I make enough money and have enough things I’ll be happy The majority of possessions depreciate in value almost immediately after your purchase. The cycle of buying our happiness is vicious, but it helps to sustain the economy. It’s twisted, but it’s unfortunately true. The corporate world benefits because people will not only work at jobs in order to buy their happiness, they’ll even help to keep this cycle going without realizing it. Experiences will always be more fulfilling than possessions.

Not everybody can be Steve Jobs, Mark Cuban, Richard Branson, Chris Guillebeau…insert successful person of your choice Not everybody needs to be any of those people. In all honesty, when I heard these words from my dad, I nearly lost it. I couldn’t believe that my own father would tell me “not everybody can be Steve Jobs. You shouldn’t have such lofty goals.” But it’s really not his fault. Nobody ever told him anything different. That kind of thinking is exactly what enables the corporate american fire to keep burning. The more people that think like that, the more they’ll take jobs that are not necessarily what they want, and the more


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fuel corporate America gets for its existence. You don’t need to be any of those people. You just need to find a way to live life on your own terms.

This whole chase your dreams and pave your own path thing is a FAD. Technically corporate America hasn’t said this. But it was one of the reactions I got from the students after my talk at Pepperdine. I think fads don’t result in millions of people finding their true calling and the numbers essentially tell us that this is not just a fad. The world as we know it is changing and there are those who will embrace the change and those who will be fighting an uphill battle when they get left behind. The skeptics on the sidelines are always going to be there. Sometimes those skeptics are the evil voices inside our heads (aka the Lizard brain). So do yourself a favor and keep them on the sideline. When you’re in the end zone, wave to them with a big goofy grin on your face. Chances are they’ll eventually be on the field trying to catch up with you.


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5 Warning Signs That You’re About to End up in a Job You Hate “Ignore your Intuition at your Own Peril” - Danielle Laporte Finding a job you love is more of an art than a science. The emergence of creative coaches, spiritual teachers, and hippy feel good business leaders should be an indication of that. It’s the wakeup call we’ve needed forever. But this problem with finding work you love started long before your first job. People pick college majors based on what they think will get them hired. The success of a career office at any college or business school is not based on how much a student loves their first job, but the percentage of students who get jobs. So, place 100% of students in jobs they hate, and according to the numbers the career office has done a GREAT job. With that begins a career of nothing but jobs you hate, until you become aware of the warnings signs. So how do you change it? Hire people who give a damn. Hire people who are so passionate about other people’s true potential that they get off on seeing other people thrive. The ultimate measure of a career or business coaches success should be their clients happiness.

Your Gut Instinct is Usually Spot On Maybe it’s because I’ve dealt with a tumultuous career and irritable bowel syndrome for such a long time. Perhaps it’s because in the past when I didn’t it ended up coming back


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to bite me in the ass. These days I trust my gut instinct far more than ever. I was recently at a second round interview for what I thought could very well put an end to the search for a dream job. I didn’t mind the potential 13 hour work days. I didn’t mind what would be an extensive amount of travel. I didn’t mind the fact that I would probably be a one-man band expected to produce like a grammy winner. Those things didn’t bother me at all. But about 30 minutes into it I was overcome with a very familiar uncomfortable feeling. “I don’t fit in here and I get the sense I’d be setting up myself to fail if I took this job”. Every time I’ve felt this way in the past, I nearly ended up getting fired from my job.” As I heard words and phrases such as “casual friday” and “if we say 8:00, we don’t mean 8:15” I couldn’t help but start to feel imprisoned and feel that my creative abilities which peaked their interest in the first place would be stifled by forcing square pegs into round holes. It seemed clear to me that one of the guys in the room had already made up his mind about me and if I did get an offer I’d be facing an uphill battle from the day I started. Rather than listen to our own voice, we tend to listen to the voice of reason or even worse the voice of others. As a result our own voice gets drowned out, and we start putting on a front to gain the approval of others. While I do think soliciting opinions of people who are credible is worthwhile, I think that the way to end up with the most favorable circumstances in your life is to trust your gut. When you don’t it usually backfires. This doesn’t just apply to jobs, but to nearly everything in your life.


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5 Things That Will Cause You to End Up in a Job You Hate A few months back I was talking to my dad about an upcoming interview and he had some of his own advice to share. It got me thinking about the role we play in ending up in jobs we hate.

1. Act Interested Without knowing anything about the position I was applying for, my dad said “make sure you act interested.” It got me thinking about just how often people act interested in a position even when they’re not. A tough job market has caused people to do things they might never do and completely forget about the difference between settling and settling down. This is a recipe for disaster and ultimately your lack of interest will show in the quality of your work. So don’t act interested if you’re truly not.

2. Chase Money I’d be lying to you if I told you money didn’t matter to me and that it wouldn’t play any role in a decision I would make about what job to take. But, don’t forget that being a paycheck player can be detrimental to your future. I lost close to 5 years of my life after my first job for an extra $5000 in salary. To make matters worse the company issued a 20% across the board pay cut three weeks after I joined. That being said, if a position has a salary that would barely enable you to live, then it’s worth the wait for something better.


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3. Tell the Interviewer what they Want to Hear I think that most people are not truly honest during interviews. They prepare scripted answers, rehearse them, and put on an act in hopes that the hiring manager will like them. Even if you do manage to get a job offer under this scenario, the whole thing is a sham. The foundation of your relationship with that person is based on a series of lies. Ultimately there’s no way that’s going to lead you down a successful career path.

4. Desperation Some people believe desperate times call for desperate measures. I believe that there’s tremendous power in hitting rock bottom. Out of desperation we tend to make extremely poor choices, so choosing a job out of desperation nearly guarantees that you’ll not only hate your job, but probably not be very good at it. People rarely focus on the creation of value when they are desperate. They end up in survival mode and do just enough to get by. It’s also likely that if you choose a job out of desperation you’ll be starting the job thinking about when you’ll get to leave it. If you’ve got one foot out the door the day you walk through it, it’s unlikely you’ll do your best work.

5. Prestige There are people I know who believe that a big brand name on their resume is the key to their kingdom. I even told a friend once that I could probably go and offer a group of


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MBA students a job at some big company, tell them the salary, and without even telling them what the position was, most would gladly accept. Of course the joke would be on them because they would get paid 90k a year to clean toilets at Disney, Google or insert big company. These people are completely caught up in the ego driven pursuit of a life that looks good on paper. I think that you have to be honest with yourself and with your potential employer if you want to end up with a job that you love and you’ll be good at. If you do any of these 5 things your foundation for the future is essentially a house of cards. So, before you start preparing for your next interview, give some consideration to how things might turn out if you were completely authentic. How about a no bullshit interview for a change? Expose all your cards.


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Career Choices and Signs of Success or Failure A year ago a friend of mine was in Santa Barbara for a job interview. On Friday night I drove up to meet him and spent the weekend exploring Santa Barbara. Over the course of weekend we chatted quite a bit about the job opportunity and the factors that determined whether or not he would accept the job. At the end of the weekend, after going back and forth quite a bit, he was still undecided. But, he had managed to isolate the only factor that was an issue. Did he want to move to Santa Barbara from San Francisco? While it is a move to a small town, it’s not exactly a place that sucks. As we talked more about whether or not he should take the job, I started to think about would make somebody fail or succeed in any role.

Signs of Failure It’s a paycheck If you have the mentality that “it’s a paycheck”, there’s a good chance that you won’t be successful at the job. If you are a paycheck player then you are not going to find the position that you take rewarding on any level other than financially. Don’t forget that deep seated need to do work that really matters.


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It’s temporary One thing my friend said about another opportunity that he was considering was “It’s not like I plan to be there for that long anyways.” In that moment I knew that he should move to Santa Barbara because he had already talked himself into leaving his other job before he even started. If you are entering a new job with an exit plan, then it’s probably not the right job for you. ####Lack of Excitement If you don’t have any excitement about the role that you are in, that’s another sign of failure. The “at least it’s a job” mentality is also another sure sign that you won’t be successful. AT this level of motivation you’ll probably do just enough to keep yourself from getting fired. There’s really no way that’s going to turn into a thriving career.

Feeling Uncomfortable with your Boss A few years back I interviewed at two different companies. One company grilled me, considered not hiring me, and gave me an overall feeling of discomfort. The second company turned around an offer in 24 hours and kept increasing the offer in the hopes that I would take it. I even liked the manager at the second company better. But, I chose the first company. In the end, my initial instincts about the first manager were dead on. He ended up being a difficult manager and almost fired me. Fortunately he didn’t get that opportunity thanks to my departure to business school. The lesson I learned from this is that it’s important to trust in the connection you have with a potential supervisor.


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Signs of Success #### Camaraderie with Coworkers One of the most important things I find in any working environment is camaraderie with coworkers. I’m not sure who wrote about it, but I remember an author saying that people with friends at work are much more likely to succeed and be happier in the work place.

Long term thinking/Presence When my friend talked about his new opportunity in Santa Barbara he talked about a 5 year time frame. That’s very different from the mentality of “It’s temporary.” The other thing that is important is that you are focused on what it is you are working on in the moment. Ironically, too much focus on the future and promotion/career growth will actually slow your progress.

Creativity Creativity is something most people tend to thrive on. If you are stuck in a routine where everyday is exactly the same, then you are likely to start hating your job.

Thirst for knowledge A genuine thirst for knowledge is another sign of success in a role. If you are constantly reading upon industry information, looking for opportunities to develop yourself, and grow your skills in your particular role, then it’s a great sign of success. Choosing the right job is a daunting task. There are so


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many things that are difficult to predict, but trusting your instinct is the best advice I can give about a job search. If you trust whatever makes you feel the best, that’s likely the right decision. As for my friend, he’s been happily living in Santa Barbara and working at a job that he loves doing work that matters.


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How Making Too Many Life Plans Limits Your Potential I could probably share close to 1000 pages of career advice with you based on my experiences, but even if you were armed with all that knowledge, you’d still be limited by one thing. Life is unpredictable and shit happens. The self help gurus, the pundits, the published authors, and so called thought leaders have been telling us for years to make plans, set goals and do everything you can to accomplish those goals. Write it all down. Kick ass and take names. But they left something out. It’s probably not going to work out the way you envision it will. They rarely tell you that you have to be willing to stray from the plan and ride the wave in the direction its taking you. There will be unexpected twists and turns on any road. They didn’t tell you that with your mind set on a certain future, you’ve just written limitation into your life. At the age of 21, summer after my junior year in college I was sitting in the office of a sales manager at Sun Microsystems where I was an intern. I had setup an informational interview with him even though I was a web development intern, because I was convinced that sales was my calling in life. It’s a conversation I’ll never forget because the guy told me “I bet you have it all planned out and think you know what it’s all going to look like by the time you turn 25.” I was caught up in visions of expense accounts, commission checks, president’s clubs, and all the


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other perks of sales. None of this went according to plan just as he said it wouldn’t. Nine years later I found myself sitting in the office of the director of marketing at Intuit with a familiar feeling. Despite my best efforts, I had finished the internship and the company had decided not to make an offer. I had it all planned out. Get my MBA. Get a 90k a year salary, get that big brand name on my resume, and eventually the corner office. That didn’t work out. But my boss said something to me that was catalyst for many things. He said “I don’t feel guilty not making you an offer because I’m not even sure you would have accepted. But what you should know is that I’ve removed the one safety net that you had. Now anything is possible.” Fear, Comfort and Safety Nets are insidious career killers that keep people from reaching their true potential.

Fear Fear in any aspect of our lives holds us back so much and keeps us from reaching our true potential. If you’ve seen the movie Office Space, you probably remember the scene where Peter Says “when you motivate people by fear they’ll do just enough to get by. That’s my only real motivation is not to get hassled.” Sadly, there are many managers today who seem to do this. I spent 2 years not challenging the status quo out of fear and out of the desire to fit in, and in the end it was a big mistake. My boss only knew how to motivate by fear and in the end he didn’t when any points with me. If you’re paralyzed by fear in your current


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position, it’s time to make a change.

Comfort This is almost worse than fear. Getting comfortable means we’ve become static. In many ways I think that when people get comfortable in the position they are in, they really impede their ability to progress. The reason is that comfortable is really easy. You don’t have to do anything and you can still remain comfortable. The problem is the day that somebody decides to pull your comfortable chair out from underneath you, you’re going to fall flat on your ass. Most of you know that I decided that there was a time to fold and time to hold when I quit a job I hated in two weeks. That was after 6 months of unemployment. If I had gotten comfortable there, things would be really different today and I’d be pretty miserable. The times in my life when I’ve been extremely comfortable with everything I have going on are the times when I’ve had the least amount of personal and professional growth. In the times when I’ve had my back against the wall I’ve made quantum leaps.

Safety Nets When my boss at Intuit removed the safety net, he altered the course of my life in a profound way. You might not be reading this book today it hadn’t been for that experience. Speaking of opportunities, a sponsored podcast that reaches thousands of people, a 6 month rent free stint in Costa Rica, and a passion that lights my eyes up are just a few of the things that happen when my safety net disappeared.


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When you’re stuck in the box of all your plans, you shut off infinite possibility. When opportunity presents itself you’re blind to it because you’re so set on sticking to your path. You end up a victim of tunnel vision. God forbid you end up on the scenic route and get lost along the way. At least with your plans, you know where you’re headed. Or do you? A friend of mine gave me some advice that struck me when he said “just plan for success and don’t give any thought to how or when it’s going to happen.” It’s easier said than done and if you take this leap of faith you’ll more than likely find yourself standing on the edge of success with adversity as the catalyst. ###It’s OK if You Don’t Have the Answers If there’s one thing that we learn in school that really doesn’t seem to help us all that much in life it’s having all the answers. You know that smart kid that you want to punch in the face because he always knows the answer to the teacher’s question? I was raised to be that kid. For a good amount of my life I always had the answer. Then I finished college and I thought the answer was the ego driven pursuit of a life that looks good on paper. When people sense that you don’t know what you want to do with your life, it really seems to bother them. They expect you to have answers. My dad once asked me “so how long do you plan to work like this or live like this? I think you need to find a normal/stable job.” I’ve had the answer my whole life and most of the time I was WRONG. But we can’t really blame ourselves. When we say the words “I don’t know” when a teacher calls us on us, because of all the meaning we’ve given that


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phrase, it’s almost as bad as raising your hand and saying “I’m an idiot.” We’re so brainwashed into the importance of knowing the answer that we start to adopt the kind of beliefs that are detrimental to our well being. In fact we’ll go so far as to settle rather than settle down because we’re so damn concerned about knowing the answers and making sure we meet other people’s expectations. It’s a never ending cycle of compensating for what you think you lack, even though you’re amazing just the way you are. It’s actually kind of sick when you think about. Think about what it does to our confidence when we say “I don’t know.” But imagine standing up sand saying “I don’t have a fucking clue” with confidence. I don’t have all the answers anymore and it’s more fun that way.

Are We Really Meant to do Just One Thing? When I initially asked people what they wanted to be when they grew up,Matt Koenig from 1yearSabbatical.com left a really interesting answer. He had never wanted to be just one thing when he grew up, so he wasn’t. He’d had a variety of careers ranging from biologist to photographer. Some people might question his sense of direction. But I think he might be on to something. Perhaps that’s why there’s not a sense of satisfaction in many jobs. As human beings we’re multi-dimensional and it seems almost natural to explore. Why would we be born with so many amazing abilities if we were only meant to use a portion of them? Sometimes we get set on a path far too early in life, which doesn’t allow us to take a turn in a different


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direction. I can honestly relate to Matt. I don’t know if there was just one thing that I was meant to do. I seem to have gone through a few careers myself over the last 10 years, and can’t help but think that Matt was spot on when he said “variety is the spice of life.” In almost every area of our lives we tend to embrace this notion of variety. We travel to different countries. We try different foods. In some cases we date different people. We have multiple friends from different walks of life. But when it comes to our careers we’re forced to choose a direction often before we even realize what we really want out of life. I always thought I wanted to climb the corporate ladder, be a hotshot executive, and rule the boardroom. Then I attended a few meetings in corporate America and realized with my attention span, I’d probably want to gouge my eyes out if that’s what being a hotshot executive was all about. Fortunately, we’re at a time in our history where our options are limitless and we have the option to be career nomads, exploring based on our interests. So before you start making too many plans, remember that we really have no idea how it’s all going to turn out.


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The Saddest Thing in Life is Wasted Potential If you’re a workaholic, this is something you need to read. Despite our our past experiences, our background, or upbringing we all have the same exact potential. It’s UNLIIMITED. Unfortunately few people live up to their true potential because they’re too busy watching life pass them by. In the words of Ferris Bueller “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you might miss it.” Time is our most valuable asset, and yet we waste it as though we have an unlimited balance. But when you start to spend your time doing things that really matter to you, you get your time back.

Are You Asleep at the Wheel on the Road of Life? I was riding the subway into downtown San Francisco one morning for a meeting and I couldn’t help but notice a girl on the subway who was falling asleep standing up. She seemed exhausted, worn, and burned out. It made me start to ask myself some questions: • Is this what people really think it takes to succeed? • Is this how people define success? • In the end is this going to be a life that’s worth living?


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• How is she spending her time that it’s causing her to fall asleep standing? Far too many people in the world are asleep at the wheel as they drive down the road of life. When they do finally wake up it’s possible they’ll find themselves on the verge of a complete breakdown. To live that life that’s truly at your disposal you don’t have to sell everything you and leave the country in a month. You just have to make it a priority to spend your time on things that matter. I’ve got news for you: • The 10 o’clock news doesn’t really matter unless you’re on it • The latest episode of Glee, General Hospital, 90210 insert your favorite TV show don’t matter. • Going through the motions, trips to the grocery store, your daily commute and your overall daily grind doesn’t really matter even though it might be necessary. Yet, these are the things we give the majority of our time and attention to. In the words of Tony Robbins we major in in minor things We don’t make it nearly enough of a priority to spend our time doing things that matter and are of much higher significance: • If you’re a parent, that could be spending time with your kids.


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• If you’re a creative type, that could be painting your next work of art, writing your next masterpiece, or if you’re a musician playing some music • If you’re an outdoor enthusiast it could be talking a walk in nature, a swim in the ocean, or a bike ride. When you make it a point to give up the insignificant things, the quality of your entire life will improve. As I’ve said before when you have a passion that lights your eyes up it will permeate every other aspect of your life. We don’t often seen the fruits of our labor until we we water the seeds of accomplishment for an extended period of time. Where people go wrong is when they stop watering those seeds. They give up because they’re attached to outcomes and don’t see results as early as they had hoped.

Success Isn’t Linear Most of us have a plan for success but , sometimes life doesn’t go according to plan. In fact success in any endeavor is usually not a linear path. It involves some ups and downs and the willingness to veer off the beaten path and take the scenic route. The traditional view of how people become successful looks something like this: • Go to a good school • Get a good job


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• Do well • Get promoted • Go back to school • Get a better job • Get promoted until you’re at the top Sounds like a nice and simple plan doesn’t it? It rarely goes that way for anybody who has done something of significance. But somehow we’re convinced that forcing square pegs into round holes is how we succeed. Unfortunately there are going to be circumstances that are simply out of your control that will force you to alter your plans. There’s no question that to make progress in life you’re going to have to be flexible. You can’t exactly walk in a straight line when it might require one turn in a different direction in order to get to your destination. However, there are multiple paths to any destination. Flexibility isn’t about compromising your core values or giving into somebody else’s demands. It’s about the willingness to try something different when what you’re doing is not working.

How the Dots Connect In his famous Stanford commencement speech Steve Jobs said “you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your


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gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.” The events that have transpired over the last couple of years, months and weeks, even though a perpetual roller coaster ride connected one day in a way I never thought they would. • If my friends had stayed in Brazil as planned I may have never caught that first wave. • If I had received an offer from my summer internship at Intuit, I wouldn’t have been unemployed for 9 months after graduation from business school. • If I hadn’t been unemployed after graduation, I wouldn’t have started The Skool of Life or spent that time surfing for 6 hours a day for 8 months straight. • If I hadn’t started the Skool of Life, I wouldn’t have started that weekly series called Interviews with Up an Coming Bloggers • If I hadn’t started Interviews with Up and coming Bloggers I wouldn’t have met Sid Savara. • If I hadn’t met Sid, I wouldn’t have had the foresight to create BlogcastFM • If I hadn’t developed the network and connections I had from BlogcastFM, I wouldn’t have been able to staff the Flightster blog the way I did. • If it hadn’t been for my work on the Flightster blog, I wouldn’t have had my first speaking gig on the art of digital storytelling.


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• If my hours at Flightster hadn’t been cut, I wouldn’t have moved to Costa Rica, (which wouldn’t have happen without that first wave) • If I hadn’t moved to Costa Rica I wouldn’t have met our first sponsor for BlogcastFM. • If I hadn’t lost my job and have our sponsor unable to continue our agreement, I wouldn’t have started the pursuit of another sponsor. • If I hadn’t started that the pursuit of another sponsor, I would have never secured Livefyre, a venture funded startup, as the sponsor of my show. When I applied to business school a few years ago, my dream was to work in media and entertainment. I wanted to chose what went on the air.. There have been lots of wrong turns, setbacks, and things haven’t exactly gone according to plan. But today I chose, produce, and create what goes on the air and do it on my own show. All that taught me is that that path to success isn’t linear.

Chapter 4- Stop Apologizing For Your Crazy Wild Eyed Dreams We need to create a frame for your goals that inspires you, empowers you and lights you up. So listen up class.. By the standards, of conventional wisdom the things that I want most out of life make no sense. But conventional wisdom yields conventional results and I just can’t accept that. It’s not how I ever want to live even if it would satisfy other people’s expectations. Whoever said your dreams and goals had to be practical was full of shit and it’s time start marching to the beat of your own drum. Bang it so loud that people think there’s a parade going on. We start the pursuit of our crazy dreams with our eyes lit up and our hair on fire, ready to scale the biggest walls, climb the biggest mountains and ride the biggest waves. Then some well intentioned jackass tells us to be realistic, pragmatic, and practical. Before long we’re chasing mediocrity and in a race to the bottom. I’m sorry, but good enough is not an acceptable standard. We live in a culture of expectations, constant comparison and competition. The result is a growing rat race of people losing sight of the difference between settling and settling down. People run through the world feeling like they’ve got something to prove, get caught up in the ego driven pursuit of a life that looks good on paper and find themselves in therapy trying to recover from the mess. I 85

Chapter 4- Stop Apologizing For Your Crazy Wild Eyed Dreams

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won’t be turning that assignment in even for an A on my report card and a magnet on the refrigerator considering there are no grades in the school of life.

Nothing to Prove and Nothing to Lose Brilliant work is rarely the byproduct of feeling like you have something to prove. That’s what happens when you start to approach everything like you’ve got nothing to prove. It’s fucking liberating. Try it sometimes. Want to ditch class at the skool? Go for it. No detention.. although we might throw a party in your absence with some good vodka. If your life is a mess I’ve got some good news. There’s tremendous power in hitting rock bottom. I know because it’s happened to me twice in the last few years. It’s also what put me on the non-linear path to success. When you start to play the game of life as if you’ve got nothing to lose, you will be working with a blank slate.

You don’t need a Reason to do Something Worth Talking About The question of why we’re doing anything we’re going to do seems to come up over and over again. Why do you want to paint something? Why do you want to learn to take photographs? Why do you want to surf the world? • Michael Hodson traveled across 6 continents and 44 countries without ever setting foot on on airplane.


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• Benny Lewis travels the world becoming fluent in the local language in 3 months. • Nate Damn Walked Across America • Drew Brophy Rides HUGE Waves….like 60 footers. • Steve Kamb Exercised All Over the World….24 Hour Fitness blows

Ask any of these people why and it’s likely they’ll reply “why not” The lack of answers to this question of why keeps so many people from moving forward on the things they are genuinely interested in. The truth is you really don’t need a reason. I want to you to consider that people who accomplish something remarkable are never called reasonable.

How unreasonable are you willing to be? The dictionary defines being reasonable as “not being extreme or excessive.” Screw that…nothing inspiring about that. As my friend Ashley Ambirge so brilliantly pointed out moderation is for losers. The idea that you should be unreasonable might seem counterintuitive considering we’ve been taught our whole lives that being reasonable is actually a good thing. But when it comes to dreams and passions it’s simply not. When it comes to these kinds of things, be unreasonable.


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People will continually challenge your pursuit of the things that make no sense and try to crush your dreams. Often it’s a byproduct of their own fear of not pursuing their own dreams. Don’t get caught up in living your life through the lens of other people’s expectations. When it’s all said and done, you’re the one going to the grave with these memories, not them. It’s safe to say almost everybody regrets more the things they didn’t do than the things they did. So stop apologizing for your crazy wild eyed dreams.


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Forget Realistic and Start Thinking Through the Lens of Possibility “Really successful people say I want that and I don’t see any reason why I can’t have it” Danielle Laporte How does it make you feel when I tell you to “be realistic” about the goals you’re setting? It probably makes you cringe a bit and considering abandoning that goal. I’ve got some good news for you. Some well meaning people have screwed up the meaning of the word for a really long time. When most people tell you to to be realistic what they’re saying is “be doubtful and fearful about whether you’ll be able to accomplish this.” Before we get into how to set goals, let’s redefine realistic. In fact let’s just ditch the term realistic all together and use one that’s far more powerful: possible. • **It’s possible to run a 4 minute mile. Somebody has done it. ** • It’s possible to surf a 40 foot wave. Somebody has done it. (warning: I’m not suggesting you should try this) • It’s possible to earn a million dollars. Plenty of people have done it (don’t expect it to happen over night).


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• It’s possible to surf or snowboard when you’re 65. Some of those guys are better than I’ll ever be. • It’s possible to meet the man or woman of your dreams. People do every single day. • It’s possible to accomplish more in a year than you have in your entire life. Still not convinced. My friend Joel Runyon is building a tribe of people who are doing supposedly impossible things. So forget about what’s realistic. If it doesn’t defy the laws of nature (i.e you’re not going to be able to jump off a the empire state building and fly), it’s possible. Start with what’s possible. Filter your goals through possibility thinking. One of the things that is worth examining before you decide on a goal is if it’s what you really want. Throughout my life I’ve had many goals that were heavily influenced by other people’s expectations. Even if you do manage to accomplish those goals, it’s unlikely you’ll be fulfilled by them because they weren’t yours to begin with.

The Self Actualization Filter Let’s get clear on one thing. Survival is not a goal. It’s a necessity. So ditch survival as a goal and set a higher standard for yourself. One way to figure out if a goal will really fulfill you is to run it through what I like to call the self actualization filter. Will the goal satisfy your needs for creation, contribution, creativity? Does it light your eyes up? If not, it might be worth reconsidering the goal.


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Ego Driven Goals The ego is a bit of an interesting character because it needs to be fed in order stay healthy. But feed it too much and it seems to enjoy puking all over every part of your life. The super hot gal or guy by your side, the dream house, the fancy cars, ivy league degrees, may not give you much more than the right to brag about them. And nobody likes an asshole. On the flip side, I think we might lose our motivation without a little bit of ego. I want my podcast to reach a million downloads a month and I’m happy to tell you that it feeds my ego. The fact that you’re reading my book does as well. (Just so you know I’m very grateful that you chose to read it). So there’s nothing long with giving your ego something to occasionally snack on. Just make sure you don’t overfeed it. That’s when things get ugly.


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The Only Way to Know How Serious You Are About a Goal If you want something bad enough and you’re committed to it, it’s only a matter of time before you turn dreams into reality. But writing down the goal is not enough. How many of your New Year’s Resolutions have you abandoned over the last several years? Depending on how old you are, you might have a stack of resolutions big enough to fill the library of congress. Well, it’s never too late and you’re not too old to start turning any of those dreams into reality. But it’s going to require some change on your part. You’ll need to take action. So let’s do something. I want you to sign a contract. Don’t fret. No lawyer is necessary. But the act of signing your name to something creates a mental obligation to follow through on things. “I insert your name commit to finishing the assignment below. The term of this assignment is one week. After this week, I’m free to never work on this again.

Pick One You’ll hear quite a bit of conflicting advice on how many goals you should pick. But nobody wants to get home from school with a pile of homework that makes them cringe, so all you need to for the purposes of this is pick one. Pick something that you think you REALLY want. If you look at and think to yourself “yeah, that’d be cool”, it’s not the right goal. My friend Danielle Smith from Extraordinary Mommy has a great way of evaluating things she wants.


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Do you look at it and say “hell yeah.” Pick that goal.

Work on it Every Single Day for a Week For the next 7 days I want you to take some sort of action towards this goal. It doesn’t matter how big or small it is. In fact baby steps result in quantum leaps of progress. Just do something. I wrote this book one page and one blog post at a time. A page or two every single day added up to almost 200.

The 6 Most Important Things You Can Do Tomorrow I’ve observed a rather fascinating phenomenon about dreams. The last thing that goes into your mind at night seeps into your dreams. Just before you go to sleep pick your six most important things that you’ll do tomorrow and maybe ask yourself, “what else can I do to make this goal a reality.” What’s funny is you’ll probably wake up in the morning with a dozen new ideas for how to move forward with the goal.

Examine Your Feelings at the End of the Week This is the real test of how bad you want something. When you get to the end of the week, take a look at the goal and the progress you’ve made. How do you feel about it? Do you feel a sense of obligation because you signed a contract in this book which will never hold up in court? Is the fire


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inside you lukewarm? Then you might not want it bad enough. On the flip side, does it pass the “hell yeah” test? If so, you’ve found a goal that matters and now you can add new ones to the list.

Reconsider, ReWrite and Start Over If your goal fails the “hell yeah” test, then you want to examine a bit closer. Why did you want that goal? Is it because somebody else said you should want it? Maybe the pursuit of it isn’t everything you thought it would be. No matter what it is you’ll want to reconsider it, set a different goal and start over. There’s a fine line between what you think you want and what you actually want.


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How to Stay Motivated to Accomplish Your Goal When you start measuring progress towards a goal, it’s easy to get caught up in how far away you are from the end result. The problem with this is it actually holds you back and slows down your progress towards your goal. Your focus is on what you haven’t accomplished. As a result you end up creating more of what you haven’t accomplished. One empowering way to make additional progress towards your goal is to focus on how far you have come rather than how far you have to go. Let’s look at the benefits of doing this.

• A sense of accomplishment: Having a sense of accomplish nt part of a goal. If you look at what you already have achieved re going to make it much easier for yourself to feel a sense of a ent. If you look at what you haven’t achieved, then you might gi e goal altogether. It’s also likely that once you feel that sens lishment you will have the motivation to keep working towards y • Evidence that You are Making Progress: One of the thing it difficult for people to stick to their goals is lack of evid hey are making progress. When you look at goals from this persp I’m talking about, it’s going to be much easier for you to make e evidence. The more evidence you have for your progress the more u will be to stay motivated.

###A Few Examples ####Blogging When most people start blogs, their goal is to grow traffic and increase the total number of subscribers. Let’s say your goal is 1000 total


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subscribers and right now you have 100. What do you think is going to make you feel better? The 900 subscribers that you still don’t have or the 100 that you already do have? ####Saving Money Saving money is actually not as difficult as many of us make it. For so much of my life I thought it was really hard. But small amounts actually add up over time. IF your goal is 1000 dollars, 100 dollars a month will get you there in 10 months. But if you look at your first 100 and think about how daunting an additional 900 dollars seems, you’ll likely give up the goal altogether.

Weight Loss Diets work the same way as the two examples above. If you look at how much weight you haven’t lost, you’ll probably find yourself back in the kitchen stuffing your face. But focus on your progress, and you’ll b me motivated to keep going. Focus on what you can do today. Don’t get too caught up in the future. If you can do that and realize that accomplishing goals is like playing with legos and building houses (i.e. it happens one brick at a time) then you will be much more likely to get to your end result.


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Sometimes You Take Two Steps Back in Order to Take Twenty Forward Our setbacks can demoralize us, make us feel defeated and even make us lose site of how to keep our composure when life deals us a bad hand. But if you take a look back over the course of your life you’ll see that the setbacks were necessary. A few years ago I quit a job in two weeks after a 6 month search. A coupIe of weeks before I interviewed a very successful entrepreneur named Rich Lazarra, who made yachts for a living. He said something to me that stuck with me and it’s something I keep in mind with all my goals. “Sometimes you’ll take two steps back to take 20 steps forward.” Leaving that job was two steps back. Here are some of the 20 I took forward: • I created BlogcastFM where I have interviewed over 250 business experts, best selling authors and people who are doing extraordinary things online. • I secured Livefyre as the sponsor of my show and grew it over 70,000 monthly downloads • I grew my blog, The Skool of Life to over 50,000 Monthly Visitors • I Spoke at both Blogworld Expos in 2011 and at Eye for Travel 2011


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• I spent 6 months living in Costa Rica, Surfing Every Single Day • I’ve had my work published on numerous blogs around the internet. One of my friends has an interesting way of looking at life. He says that we’re always making forward progress. Am I fearful of setbacks? Yeah a bit. But, Danielle Laporte Summed it up brilliantly her book The Firestarter Sessions “Here’s the white hot truth. If you go bankrupt you’ll still be okay. If you lose the gig, the lover, the house, you’ll still be okay. If you sing off key, get beat by the competition, have you heart shattered, get fired…it’s not going to kill you. Ask anybody who’s been through it.” - Danielle Laporte Opportunity emerges in an interesting way. You can stand in two different spots in the same room and what you see will often change. When we take a steps forward, opportunities that weren’t there before tend to reveal themselves. But when we take two steps back after taking one step forward, we see things from an even wider perspective. With every new step you take from that point forward infinite possibility starts to open up.

People Won’t Remember You for Your Failures Throughout history the most successful people have failed miserably. But we only talk about their failures for the sake of inspiring us. It’s not what they’re remembered for. Thomas Edison is famous for inventing the light bulb, not


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for the 10,000 attempts do it. Steve Jobs is known as the genius behind Apple, not the guy who went to the Hare Krishna temple for one good meal every Sunday because he didn’t have enough money. Once you succeed the people who once called you crazy will say you’re a genius. But we’re so afraid of the labels that we let other people determine how often we’re willing to fail. We let other people determine how high our tolerance is. Nobody will remember you for your failures because your successes will outshine them. Look back over the course of your life, and you’ll see this pattern over and over. Have you ever taken two steps back only to find yourself moving twenty steps forward?


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If You Want to See The Fruits of Your Labor Don’t Dig up The Seeds When you star taking action towards any goal what you’re doing is planting lots of seeds. I’d be lying to you if I told you that there aren’t moments in my own life when I think “why the hell are the results taking so long?”. The other day I realized that if you want to see the fruits of your labor you can’t dig up the seeds. This is how long term goals are accomplished.

Keep Watering Your Seeds Once you’ve planted a seed you have to keep watering it. Let’s go to my favorite example in the world, learning how to surf. If all you did was buy your board and wetsuit, and got in the water a year later, you wouldn’t be able to surf. If you’re not in the water you’re never going to catch any waves. Those first few sessions will be brutal. You will wipe out a lot. At a certain point you’ll need to let go of the need for visible progress and just do the work. If you keep going, then one day you’ll be standing up.

Plant More Seeds Every action you take is a seed you plant. So, one of the best things you can do is plant more seeds. If you’re learning how to surf that might mean, going to Yoga class to work on your balance. Since I’m located an hour away from the water at the moment, I bought a skateboard which


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allows me to work on balance, turning, and a few other things. Don’t Confuse Activity With Accomplishment One of the byproducts of the world we live in is that there rare lots shiny things to chase, new social networks to explore and people to talk to. Don’t get me wrong. I love most of these things. They’ve made this book possible. But many of these things also give us a false sense of productivity. Make sure your actions actually contribute to the accomplishment of your goal.

Develop Infinite Patience In a book I read by Wayne Dyer he said “infinite patience brings immediate results.” Once you become patient you’ll resist the temptation to dig up the seeds. If you dig up the seeds you plant, the whole process starts all over again. With patience will come peace of mind, and the quality of the actions you take will improve If you want to see the fruits of your labor, don’t dig up the seeds. Class dismissed.

Chapter 5 Lessons from the PlayGround ”Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” -Oscar Wilde Life is a playground with slides to ride, sandcastles to build, friends to make, hearts to break, and hearts to mend. It’s the recess that lasts forever, something we hope never ends. It’s the lessons from the playground, not the classroom that determine the person you ultimately become. The bullies who beat you up, the cuts and scrapes, the slips and falls, leave the battle scars that enable us to navigate the tumultuous waters of life. The playground has taught me more than my fair share of lessons. If you’re anything like me, you’re the kid who didn’t hear the bell ring when recess was over. You stayed out in the rain, got drenched, and realized it’s pretty damn fun to step into liquid. Some of us are just meant to be fish swimming free through the ocean of life. You might encounter sharks, sharp reefs, and other barriers, but if it’s between that and swimming laps in the pool, leave me on the playground. I’ve already ditched the script. I’ll write my own. I’ll figure it out. And now here they are in no particular orderâ€¦lessons from the playground. 60 Things You Should Have Learned in School But Never Did 102

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The playground has left me with scrapes, cuts bruises, smiles and tears. With each one came a lesson: 1. A wise person once told me that where you’ve been should be a paragraph, and where you’re going should be a book. So just remember that where you’re going is far more important than where you’ve been. 2. Don’t stop dreaming. It’s in the world of dreams that the impossible becomes possible, imagination runs riot and great ideas are born. 3. Believe in the love you hear about in music lyrics and see in movie scenes. If it wasn’t real the musicians wouldn’t sing about it, the writers wouldn’t write about it, and the movie makers wouldn’t make movies about it. 4. Fall in love even though I haven’t yet. I’m told there’s nothing like it. 5. Don’t worry too much about the empty mailboxes, traffic jams, unreturned phone calls, broken hearts and piles of debt. If surfing has taught me anything it’s that the conditions always improve. 6. Learn how to do something new every year. Last year I learned how to surf. This year I learned how to snowboard. If you kept learning something every year until you were old, you’d never be bored with your life.


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7. Stop waiting for permission to be extraordinary. By waiting for permission you’re denying the the world the gift of your brilliance. The fear of losing the things they don’t even have keeps so many people from taking the chances that open up a world of possibilities. 8. When things are really bad, remember that waves come in sets. Usually it’s going to be better than it’s even been before when it’s really bad. 9. There are no answers in darkness. There have been days when I wondered if it would be better if I didn’t wake up up tomorrow. In those moments of hopeless, despair, and great fear, remember that you can’t always trust the voice in your head. 10. Try an extreme sport at least once in your life. Everybody should feel the thrill of a nerve rush. 11. Ride a wave or a 1000. There’s nothing quite like it. But explaining it to you is like trying to describe an orgasm to somebody who has never had one, even though I’ve tried with many o according to their timeline. By 25 you should do this, by 30 you should do that, etc, etcf my words. 12. On that note, find a passion that lights your eyes up, something that you can’t imagine your life without, something that defines you.


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13. Don’t settle. People will try to convince you to live life. The logic becomes a bit ridiculous when you realize that we could end it by saying “by 90 you should really in the cemetery.” 14. Put your best foot forward with everything you do because good enough is not an acceptable standard. 15. Life is not a race. The only thing waiting for you at the finish line is death, so don’t be in such a damn hurry. 16. Look for a dare to be great situation. They’re all around us. 17. All it takes is one good wave. After all the false starts, brick walls, failures, and setbacks, the only thing people are going to remember is your moment in the sun. You’re only crazy until everything you’re doing starts to work, but most people don’t have the courage to stay the course. 18. Don’t trade temporary approval for a lifetime of mediocrity. Make a short time sacrifice for a long term gain and you’ll live without regret. 19. Eliminate toxic people from your life since you become the byproduct of the ones you surround yourself with. 20. Forgive the people who have hurt you. It’s probably weighing you down more than it is them.


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21. If you have siblings admire them for their greatness. My sister is charismatic and likable in a way that I’ve never been. I’m more of an acquired taste. 22. Don’t ever forget about the people in your corner. 23. Don’t give up on things just because they’re hard. Those are usually the things most worth accomplishing. 24. Share your crazy wild eyed dreams only with the people who inspire you to chase them. Avoid talking about them with those who infuse doubt, disbelief or encourage you to chase ordinary. 25. Remember that conventional wisdom will produce conventional results. 26. When you wipe out, shake it off, and paddle back out to the lineup. If you’re not in the water, you’re not going to catch any waves. 27. Build something with your own two hands. Find your castle in the sky. It will be one of the most rewarding things you ever do. 28. Believe that you will have a moment that makes them stand back and say “wow.” 29. Take advice with a grain of salt or shot of tequila. Even mine. 30. Stand on the edge of your comfort zone early and often. It’s how progress occurs.


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31. When you feel like the situation is hopeless, take one more step forward, give it one more day and remember that your circumstances today don’t determine what’s possible tomorrow. 32. Don’t make a big deal out of small things and don’t make a small deal out of big things. Your body will thank you for you it. 33. Remember that you’re a hero in the eyes of somebody. 34. Even if you die the richest man in the cemetery, remember that nobody leaves this world with a thing in their pockets. 35. Measure your wealth by the number of friends you have instead of your bank balance. 36. When you get derailed on your journey, don’t be afraid to take the scenic route through life. 37. Life only Gets Better. Like a fine wine, age only makes you better once you start to believe that. From our angst ridden teens to our insecure uncertain twenties, to finding ourselves in our thirties, it just keeps getting better. I’ve been a late bloomer in every area of my life. So, if you are feeling doubt, uncertainty, insecurity, just know, it will get better. 38. Family is Important. I don’t see eye to eye with my parents on pretty much everything. . We have


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different philosophies on life, but in the end they’ve done their best to make me happy. Through all the ups and downs they’ve always helped. 39. Be Extra nice to bartenders, waitresses, and door people. When you’re out enjoying your life these people are making a living. Imagine if they showed up to your house drunk and demanding. They make your every day life possible. Remember their names and remember the seemingly pointless details about their lives and you’ll be amazed at what happens. 40. Go out on a Limb and Jump off it. If there’s one flaw in our aging process that we should reverse it’s this. We start out as kids, fearless, daring, risktakers. I see the 5 year old kids learning how to surf, shredding waves, and putting me to shame, and I realize they have one thing most of us have lost, courage. 41. See the Gift in Everyone: Lots of people will make your life difficult. Bosses, significant others, siblings, and parents. But the reality is they’re all their to teach you something. Be open to learning what that is. 42. Van Wilder said “Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.” Damn straight. 43. Learn from your Mistakes. You are going to make mistakes. If you knew what would happen every


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single day you’d be bored out of your mind 44. Embrace your Imperfections: We’re all flawed. It makes us human. You might never be taller, but you might find a significant other who has an attraction for shorter men, women, etc. Sometimes our imperfections are our most magnetic qualities in disguise. 45. Stay Present: Don’t think too much about the future or too much about the past. Neither one really matters as much as you think it does. The only moment that any of us really have is NOW. 46. Avoid High Speed Car chases. If you are ever in Tijuana with a friend from college and a car pulls up behind you with badges sticking out the window, don’t just drive. It makes for a great story, but that’s about it. Yes, I’m speaking from experience. 47. Take Lots of Pictures: Tony Robbins said “If you’re life is worth living, it’s worth recording. There’s certain moments that really just need to be captured on camera. There’s something special about being able take a photographic walk down memory lane. 48. Stop Keeping Score. Life is not a competition. It’s an adventure, something to be enjoyed and lived to the fullest. Keeping score ensures that you’ll be in ego driven pursuit of a meaningless marker of success. 49. reak the Rules. Have you ever heard of any remarkable people actually following the rules? I’m saying


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break rules, not laws. There’s a big difference. 50. Don’t listen to the naysayers: Naysayers will always emerge when you start blazing your own trail. The really amazing part is the same people who called you crazy, insane, stupid, etc will call you a genius when your moment in the sun arrives. 51. Be Patient: Ocean waves come in sets and between sets you just have wait. But when they do come the ride is such bliss that the wait is something you don’t even think about. So relax, chill out, and enjoy yourself a bit. 52. Choose Wisely: In my mind there are two areas of life where your choices will dramatically impact the quality of your life. Choose wisely when it comes to your mate and choose wisely when it comes to your career. Mistakes in those areas could be detrimental to the quality of your life. 53. Travel as Much as You Can. I’ve been really blessed to have grown up all over the world. While it sucked because I didn’t have friends that I’ve known for 20 years, it was awesome because I’ve seen so many different cultures. The world is small and vast at the same time. Different cultures give us different perspectives. So, experience them, embrace them, and you will grow so much as a person that words can’t do it justice.


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54. Don’t Grow Old Mentally: There’s a difference between being wise and being old. If you’re a kid at heart and mind, you’ll never stop innovating, creating, imagining. That’s what we need to keep moving forward as a society and as individuals. 55. Chose Success over Perfection: Perfection is something we’ve made up over time. Nobody is perfect according to everybody. But, certain things are perfecting according to just a few people. Focus on those few that matter and you’ll always be perfect. 56. Waves Come in Sets: Sometimes they’re good. Sometimes they suck, but conditions always seem to improve. That’s the natural flow of life. 57. Choose Your Own Path: Throughout your life you’re going to get guidance on what the right path is. You are the only one who can ultimately determine what the right path is. 58. Quality Trumps Quantity. When it comes to material possessions, friends, and anything in life, quality is always going to trump quantity. 59. Talk to Strangers: As a child talking to strangers is dangerous. In adult life every conversation you have with a stranger opens up a world of new possibilities. 60. As long as you’re on the playground (living life), you’re going to keep learning lessons from it. Every experience in life is designed to teach us something.


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Once we realize that we can start to put those experiences in their place and really thrive. Bonus: If you find an Indian person surfing, call the humane society and let them know you have found an endangered species. If she’s attractive and female give her my phone number…510-697-6334


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Lessons from the Scenic Route The California Pacific Coast Highway is one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world. It also takes a hell of a lot longer to drive from LA to San Francisco on this highway, so most people don’t make the time to drive up PCH. They usually drive up the 5 freeway which is just endless fields of cattle and produce. It’s not practical to drive up PCH so most people don’t do it. The scenic route takes longer. It’s more challenging. But it also exposes you to unparalleled beauty. I’ve hit some serious bumps in the road. Some might even consider them insurmountable obstacles. I’ve been fired, laid off and even written off. It’s forced me to take a few turns in some unexpected directions. But rather than think of it that way, I like think that what I’ve done is taken the scenic route and the view has been pretty damn interesting.

Things I’ve Learned Along the Scenic Route Along the route I’ve failed quite a bit, most of those failures led me to where I’m at today. As Steve Jobs once said in a commencement speech, the dots connect when you look back at them. Most of my early goals and aspirations were nothing more than the ego driven pursuit of a life that looks good on paper. The way I see it you have two big choices in life that will really determine the quality of your life experience: You can either make a short term sacrifice for a long term


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gain or you can make a long term sacrifice for a short term game. I recommend the first. When you do decide to take the scenic route you have to be willing to stop living in a world that’s based on rules and start making your own. It’s not easy and you’ll be ridiculed quite a bit (often by the people closest to you), but in the end it’s completely worth it. When you face the fear of uncertainty, just realize it has a flip side. Usually that flip side is bliss and occasionally it’s pain. Risk is just a natural part of taking the scenic route and if you’re afraid of taking risks then you’re going to find yourself turning back to start the journey over and over Inevitably, whether you take the scenic route or not, there will be problems in your life. So if you’re going to deal with problems anyways, why not create a spectacular backdrop for your life? The scenic route tends to come with quite a few completely unexpected detours. But, if it was completely predictable then it really wouldn’t be that much fun. At the end of an unpaved road, what you’ll often find is beauty at its end.

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Settling vs. Settling Down The way I see it, you have two options. You can settle or you can settle down. Far too often in life, I think people fail to make the distinction between settling and settling down. I’m going to go out on a limb and say more people actually settle than settle down. There are of course those who are smart enough to understand that difference and in my mind those are the people that have happy and successful lives.

Settling Vs SEttling Down in Your Career I’ve seen a lot of people settle for less than what they want in the last few years. I was almost one of them. There’s no doubt that the economy has forced people into less than ideal job situations and I can respect that not everybody can easily just quit their jobs tomorrow and pursue work they love. But, what’s the long term cost of this? If they stay in a situation that makes them miserable with no plans to get out, then it’s unlikely they’ll put an end to their misery.

Signs of Settling: • • • • •

I hate this job, but it pays the It’s not the ideal job, but I’ll I don’t like what I’m doing, but This is the lesser of all evils I can take this job and look for

bills take it the money justifies it

something else in the m


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Signs of Settling Down: • • • • • is work

I love this job I love what I do here and the money is just an added bo This job gives me an opportunity to express myself crea The idea of doing this for the next 5 years really excit I’m not really thinking too far ahead and I’m really pr

###Settling vs Settling Down in Relationships Over the last two years many of my friends have gotten married and had kids. So, the natural question on everybody’s mind is whether or not I’m next. There’s a lot of pressure to settle in our society. I woke up the morning after a cousin’s wedding in Vegas and while drinking coffee my mom said “you really need to be married within the next year or two.” There was no mention about love, happiness or anything else. Just to get married. Settle. When I look back at the two relationships I had, in one I settled for my first girlfriend so I could experience a relationship. I settled for my second girlfriend by putting up with things that I would never want in a relationship. Settling in relationships is a dangerous place to be. When you settle in a relationship you screw up two people’s lives, yours and the person you settled for. It’s not fair to you or them. So, I’ve vowed to myself that this is one area of my life where I WILL NEVER SETTLE. ###Signs of Settling • •

This is the best that I can do This is better than the last relatiosnhip, so I shouldn'


• •

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I haven't connected with anybody in a long time Well I'm x age so I have to make this work

Signs of Settling Down • • • • •

I feel amazing about this I feel truly blessed to have this person I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with this per I wake up everyday grateful to have this person next to This is what I truly want

###Waking up from the Matrix and Realizing What’s Possible Every time you settle you become a little less true to yourself. Do it enough times and you’ll eventually be living a lie. It’s an exhausting way to live. If you’re not willing to settle, be prepared to be judged, ridiculed, and criticized. When you are tempted to silence the critics by giving in, just remember they are not the ones that will live with the consequences of your choices. Sometimes peoples lives are so boring that they have nothing better to do than tell you how to live yours. Once you have broken free from the chains of the matrix, you realize what’s possible. Once you realize what’s possible there’s no going back. So it’s enlightening and terrifying all at the same time. You see that it’s possible to shape your life the way you see fit and anything less is unacceptable. It’s in this moment that settling is no longer an option. I encourage you to give some thought to where you have settled in your life. It might be a bit disturbing at first and


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you may have made some uncorrectable mistakes. Don’t worry about that. Instead, work on a future where you will not settle. What have been your experiences with this.


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Nature Rewards Our Patience As a society we’re in a really damn hurry. It takes too long, the line’s too long, the traffic sucks, the internet is too slowâ€¦the list goes on and on. We’ve become impatient. In the midst of a rush we make tragic mistakes, cause car accidents, and do irreparable damage. For years I was impatient. I moved a million miles an hour and it drove me nuts when other people didn’t. It took about 15 years, but it all caught up with me and manifested in the form of irritable bowel syndromeâ€¦ I was impatient about the cure and went to the doctor and said “give me something for this” and he replied “you have a digestive disorder for which there is no cure.” I scoured the internet for diets, pills, and anything else that might provide some relief. I met a hypnotherapist and got frustrated because the sessions were too long and the cure was taking too long. Finally, I gave up and accepted my fate. But as luck would have it I caught a wave and I was overcome by this sudden calm for the briefest of moments. I wanted that feeling againâ€¦and as a result I became a surfer. When you surf you learn to deal with somebody else’s schedule all the time: mother nature. She decides when she wants to dance, when she wants to play, and when she wants to sleep. She’s the kind of woman who tells you she wants to dance, calls you over and falls asleep when you show up (we call this a lull). You can whine, you can complain and nag her to death, but she won’t wake up until she wants to. The lesson is simple. Nature rewards our


patience.

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Choose a Life Made up of Experiences Instead of one Made up of Possessions Anytime I’m driving home from a surf session, I’m in a delightful zen like state. I start going through all the waves I caught that day in my head. One of my drives I started to wonder how something so simple could make me so happy and I realized that experiences are far more valuable than possessions. Most Possessions lose their value almost immediately after your acquire them. A Life of Possessions: • • • • er one. • •

Your Your Your Your

new new new new

shoes will eventually be old. flatscreen TV will eventually be obsolete tech purse will eventually be out of fashion. toy will eventually be boring to play with and

Your new car will depreciate once you drive it off the Your new house will eventually be old.

Every material thing that’s newly acquired will eventually be old. To add to that, when you die you can’t take a single one of these things with you.

A Life of Experiences: • The thousands of waves ridden over a lifetime will leave permanent imprints on my memory and I’ll take them to the grave. I can describe fractions of a


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second from waves I’ve ridden in vivid detail because they were that memorable. • The friends you spent your birthdays with will always trump the gifts you got. I can’t remember what I got for most of my birthdays but I remember spending each one with the most important people in my life. I can take every birthday with me when I go. • Traveling across the world, you’ll experience different cultures, meet interesting people, have wild experiences, sometimes near-death, live to tell the stories, which get passed on from generation to generation and you can take them all with you when you go. • First Kisses, wedding Days, kids being born are all experiences. Some of them are even said to be lifechanging. I’m not too educated on most of these minus the first kisses, but I would imagine these are the kinds of experiences that you will always have in your heart and mind. You can take them all with you when you go. • The mountains we climb, the sunsets at the beach , the downtown skylines, the views from the peaks of every city are all experiences that we can always go back to just through the power of imagination. You’re free to take it all with you when you go.


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A life of experiences is far richer than one of possessions when you’re faced with the end. Those who have a life of experiences die rich. Those who have a life of possessions may die rich, but will find themselves empty handed once they cross over to the other side. There’s a physical limit on possessions and a life of experiences is a life without limits.


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Life’s Biggest Problems are the Biggest Blessings in Disguise In our lives it’s almost inevitable that we we will face problems, challenges, and uncertainty. If it was perfect and predictable, the we wouldn’t be much different than robots. Wayne Dyer said, paraphrasing the Tao te Ching, “When you change the Way You look at Things, the way things look change.” Often the greatest setbacks in our life end up being the greatest blessings in disguise. Sometimes your biggest failure sets you up for your greatest success.

Unemployment I’ve spent some extended periods of time unemployed over the last couple of years. But it’s because of those times you’re reading this book, I created a show that gets over 70,000 downloads a month, and a world of other opportunities opened up in my life. Being unemployed sucks. I’m not going to sugar coat it. Money is tight, and it can definitely take a toll on your self esteem. But, what if you started to focus on the opportunity it could provide to take your life to the next level? Here’s a few things that will eventually make unemployment a blessing in disguise: • • • • •

A much better job Making more money Creating Your Own Business that you have a tremendous p Finding a hobby that completely transform your life Improving your health dramatically because you have tim


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itness

Getting Fired As I mentioned earlier, I got fired from my very first job out of college after a year of 12-14 hour work days, and a daily commute of over 3 hours. In fact I got fired 5 days before Christmas. Talk about a blow to your ego. In the moment that it happened, it seemed like the worst possible thing that could have ever happened. During the course of that year I developed IBS, my stress levels were at an all time high and my mental and physical health at an all time low. To this day, I think that getting fired from that job may very well have saved my life. It was the worst job I’ve ever had and it made me appreciate every situation I was in so much more after that. It was truly a blessing in disguise.

Illness Illness is one of the most traumatic things we encounter in our lives. It takes the lives of people we love and care for and often we feel helpless. But, on the flip side of this is those who survive the illness only to tell you it was the best thing that ever happened. Getting diagnosed with IBS caused me to slow down a bit. I started drinking less and taking my health more seriously. If it hadn’t been for IBS, I wouldn’t have become such an avid surfer. So in some twisted way IBS was the path to a passion that lights my eyes up. Here’s some of blessings in disguise that might come from even the worst of our illnesses:


• • •

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A newfound happiness and appreciation for life A healthier lifestyle Making peace with people who you’ve damaged relationshi

Getting Dumped I can’t honestly tell you that I have a legitimate perspective on this. I don’t think I’ve ever really been in love, and I was the one who ended my two most serious relationships. The hardest thing about doing that was the pain I knew I would end up causing to those people. But ultimately, I would imagine that the worst of these situations are really a blessing in disguise. Let’s say the person you are with ends up marrying you, despite his or her doubt. Then you end up getting divorced. Ultimately getting dumped would have been a blessing in disguise. I would rather be happy and end up with somebody who wants to be with me in the long term, even if it meant heartbreak in the short term. To me, who you marry is one of the most importance decisions you make in determining the quality of your life. ###Failure in General Failure is a part of life. I considered the fact that I didn’t get a job at some Fortune 500, not getting into a top business school and many of my other ego-driven pursuits of looking good on paper failures. However, each one of them brought something new into my life.

Not Getting into NYU for B-School Considering how much I hate cold weather, this was probably a blessing in disguise. Thanks to Pepperdine, I got to


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study abroad in Brazil, which eventually lead to some big changes in my life. ###Not Getting a Fortune 500 Job The 8 month struggle of one rejection after another led to the growth of this blog, and lifestyle that I wouldn’t trade for the world. I LOVE the way my life has turned out. When I was a summer intern at Intuit, I had an opportunity to chat with the CMO. I asked him what the key was to getting ahead in you career. He told me that early in his career he worked on a marketing team at Proctor and Gamble. He was passed over for 2 promotions. But those additional years in the same role allowed him to witness two business cycles. As a result he learned of those additional cycles he learned so much that it made him far more effective later in his career. You might think that looking at everything in life as a blessing in disguise is naive or idealistic. But who knows, maybe if you looked at every problem or challenge that way you’d be on a level far beyond what you initially thought was possible.


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Nobody Leaves This World With a Thing in Their Pockets A few months ago I met my ninth grade biology teacher for lunch. When you see somebody you haven’t seen for almost 17 years, it makes you really reflect on the fact that life hasn’t gone according to plan. When I think about what I thought my life would look like by now it’s certainly not the picture I had painted as a ninth grader. There’s been many twists, turns, and curveballs which I haven’t exactly knocked out of the park. My ninth grade biology teacher was one of the most influential teachers in my life and his class was my favorite in high school. Not only did I enjoy science, I got really good grades. He went on to become a high school principal and eventually retired. He had been acting in theaters as a hobby, and after his retirement his wife suggested they move to LA and he attempt to get paid acting gigs. Eventually it worked, and he started appearing in movies and now is getting paid to act. You simply can’t predict the future. Needless to say, I was really thrilled to meet him after 17 years. If you’ve been a long term reader of The Skool of Life, then you know my life has been a bit of a roller coaster ride. There have been times when I really have felt hopeless. It seems as though you meet people in your life exactly when you need to. After exchanging stories of how we ended up where we had with our lives, my teacher shared a story with me that really opened my eyes.


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When he was in high school, he worked at a mortuary. His job was to close caskets after the very last time people were allowed to view the body. Apparently family members, friends, etc, would often try to put money, legal documents, etc in the pockets of the deceased so that nobody else would get them. His job before closing the casket for the final time was to empty the pockets of the deceased. He told me “You know what I learned at a very early age? Nobody leaves this world with a thing in their pockets. Since then my life has never been moneycentered.” For a long time now, I’ve believed in choosing a life made up of experiences instead of one made up of possessions, but I’d never heard it put that way. It caused me to really think about what’s important in life, and it brought this sense of calm and peace to my mind that I rarely experience when I’m not in the ocean. Money is something plays a major role in our lives. We stress about the fact that we don’t have enough. If we do have enough, we’re constantly thinking about how to accumulate more. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the pursuit of wealth. There’s no doubt that it’s better to have money than to be broke or struggling. But, when you’re able to see it through this lens that you’re going to leave the world without a thing in your pockets, you can approach the pursuit of wealth in a very different state of mind, one that is much more likely to lead to true wealth. Class dismissed.

Stop Waiting for Permission to Be Extraordinary In school we’re required to raise our hands for permission to speak. If we answer correctly or the teacher approves, we’re praised. If we answer incorrectly or the teacher disapproves we’re criticized, and given labels that in the future can destroy our potential¹. To make the situation worse we treat this all as a prescription for how we should live our lives. We get so concerned about being wrong that our tolerance for risk diminishes and before long we’re just waiting for permission. It’s rather sad, but our fear of being wrong kills the curiosity within us as we go through life. Yet it’s this curiosity that has caused some of the most creative accomplishments of humanity. It’s this curiosity that forced us to ask questions like • How can we put a man on the moon? • How can we make computers faster? • How can we conserve energy? • What can we do to make the world a better place? The list goes on and on. But what you don’t see on that list is the question “what if I’m wrong”? If we all walked ¹http://theskooloflife.com/wordpress/how-labels-destroy-your-potential/

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Stop Waiting for Permission to Be Extraordinary

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through life asking ourselves that question, the progress of humanity would eventually come to a screeching halt and we would be stuck.


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There are no wrong answers We need to get over this idea that there are any wrong answers if we intend to stop chasing ordinary. Unlike school, in life, the more mistakes you make, the more you’re going to learn. I should know since I’ve had a series of failures that have brought me to where I’m at today². Without those failures I wouldn’t have had the lessons. In school, when I failed, the only thing I learned was how to get a better grade. To make matters worse I don’t even remember what I learned. Too many people let their failures define them. This whole idea that past performance is an indicator of future results is such bullshit. Yet, it’s how we put people into boxes and get them to buy into all those myths that help corporate America to fuel its own existence³. But look at the visionaries, the mavericks, the renegades and everybody else who was crazy enough to think they could change the world and you’ll see an entirely different way of living life. They realized the one and only thing that matters when it comes to success, that it has no expiration date. My past is somewhat of a sordid affair consisting of broken hearts, financial problems, IBS, ADHD and uphill career battles⁴. But the best thing about it is that it’s all done and over with. There’s no point dwelling on it and experiencing it all over again. As I’ve said before, you ²http://theskooloflife.com/wordpress/overcoming-failure/ ³http://theskooloflife.com/wordpress/corporate-america-myths/ ⁴http://theskooloflife.com/wordpress/ibs-adhd-and-uphill-career-battles/


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can’t paint a masterpiece on a cluttered canvas⁵. Some of us just happened to be late bloomers. The way I see it it’s better that you shine at some point in your life than never at all. If you’re not where you want to be with your life, you might want to consider a 5 year perspective⁶. Anytime I’m talking to a friend about where I’m stuck in my life I usually tell them “a year from now we’ll be have having a very different conversation.” Every time I see that person after a year, we usually are. I just make it a point to focus on what I can do today and move forward. If you keep dwelling on your past, it’s all you’ll see when you look into your future. It’s never too late to be extraordinary. So stop waiting for permission. ⁵http://theskooloflife.com/wordpress/you-cant-paint-a-masterpiece-on-acluttered-canvas/ ⁶http://theskooloflife.com/wordpress/the-5-year-perspective/


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Why Conventional Wisdom Yields Convestional Results “While it can be psychologically and financially difficult to depart from the race toward conventional rewards after a lifetime working with one mind-set, doing so is imperative to succeeding in the long term. Otherwise, you will struggle to sustain your long-term projects amidst the desire to be validated in the near term.” -Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen We’re in an age where people have finally stopped paying attention to conventional wisdom and suddenly individuals are producing extraordinary results far beyond what they thought they were capable of. For years we’ve been shouting the mantras of: • Go to school • Get good grades • Get a good job If you accomplish all that you’ve done enough. If you’re lucky maybe there will be a climb up the ladder involved and you’ll make it all the way to becoming a middle manager and make a six figure salary. There’s nothing wrong with any of these things, but they’re conventional results that are the byproduct of conventional wisdom. If you’ve made it this far in the book, than you know I’m not interested in survival as a goal. I’m interested in seeing people thrive. You don’t have to spend much


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time reading through my blog or talking to me to realize that I see the world through a very different lens. I have issues with authority and I’ve been known to do some very impulsive things from time to time. Throughout life people try to break you of these kinds of habits because they see them as problems and weaknesses. The funny thing is some of these are fundamental parts of who we are and trying to get rid of them or compensate for them, just puts us into prisons of our own creation. I’m convinced at this point that some our greatest so called weaknesses are actually things that can enable us to produce unconventional results. One of my favorite things that George Carlin said was that when you get older you can be as crazy as you want and just blame it on your age. For some reason as you get older you stop giving a damn what other people think because you realize it really doesn’t matter since nobody is going to write any of your weaknesses or even your Klout Score on your tombstone. How you interpret the world, life, relationships, and events will determine your experience of all those things.

Turning Your Weaknesses into Strengths Big Lips I had to mention this because it was the most ridiculous one that I could think of. And sometimes it’s just fun to be ridiculous. When I was in junior high I had friends who used to make fun of me because my lips were so damn big. In fact I got the nickname “lips”. That’s why I eventually


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went on to be a tuba player (I know it’s not cool or sexy). Today people spend fortunes on collagen injections to have what I was blessed with naturally. Every girl I’ve kissed in the last few years seems to have no complaints either. (spread the word far and wide).

ADHD When I was diagnosed a few years back I thought “what a disaster. I’m going to have to pop pills the rest of my life if I’m going to survive a corporate job.” My attention span doesn’t last long. But when it’s on, I get more done in a few hours than the average person does in weeks. In fact many successful entrepreneurs will say that the the very thing that held them back in school has enabled them to be successful in business.

Obsessive Personality People tell you that you should experience everything in moderation. That message was lost on me. If you ask anybody who knows me, obsession is par for the course when I take an interest in something. I don’t believe in moderation when it comes to my interests. In the wrong context this could be self destructive and it was in my younger days. However, this actually has turned out to be quite useful in the process of doing everything I do online. I was determined to turn dreams into a reality even if it meant standing on the edge of success with adversity as a catalyst and going to the point of no return.


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Talking Too Much I’m not the best listener and it’s something I’ve had to work on. I think the ADHD kind of causes it and my mind moves quickly. When I do work for clients they’ll often tell me things like “you just gave me 6 months of work to do in 5 minutes.” I think “yeah and I only charged you for one hour. What a bargain.” All joking aside hosting an online talk show gave me a way to redirect this weakness. Even though it’s given me an opportunity to talk and share my thoughts, it’s also taught me how to be a better listener thanks to audience members sending me emails telling me to shut the hell up. I’ve also learned that guests tend to share way more when I don’t talk. Weaknesses are really nothing more than labels created from words. We’ve given them the meaning they have and we can make a choice to change that meaning. Don’t get all caught up in conventional wisdom. When you abandon it, you’ll learn, you’ll grow and you’ll make leaps of such magnitude that your feet will never hit the ground.


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How Big of a Game Are You Playing? When I originally sat down to write this book, it was predicated upon the idea that I’d be able to walk into Barnes and Noble, see my book on the shelf, and brag to the world that I was now a published author. Several months ago, I was having dinner with my friend Farnoosh from Prolific Living and she asked me why getting a book deal was something important to me. When she asked me the answer I gave her was ALL about my ego. I told her it was about being able to have the “I told you so” conversation, not just with my parents but with the world at large. But caught up in that mindset I missed the most important thing about this book: how it would impact the lives of the people who were reading it. Getting a book deal, shelf space in Barnes and Noble, and bragging rights were nothing more than selfish desires. Having a positive or inspiring somebody with my words, that’s a much bigger game to be playing.

Are You Reaching Far Beyond Limits? What we already know is one of our greatest weaknesses because it limits what we think is possible in our lives. That’s why kids have such a leg up on us. If you’ve gone skiing, snowboarding, surfing or done any sport that requires a leap of faith you’ve seen those little rugrats ripping on surfboards and flying down the mountains, and thought to yourself “If only I had learned how to do this


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at that age.” The advantage that kids have is not age, but rather what they don’t know. They live in a world that’s based on imagination, while adults live in a world based on knowledge. In the world of imagination anything is possible, while in the world of knowledge we can only create with that we already know. In fact as adult’s we’re not only constrained by knowledge, but we live in a world that’s based on rules. Why Not? Got a kid who says he wants to be a rockstar? Have a kid who wants to be a movie star? What about a Pulitzer Prize winning author? How about you? Any of those things on your list? As adults, our childhood dreams may not have been realized so we pass this bullshit (which we consider wisdom) on to people, so they can go out and live right into a future that is limited not by their knowledge but by ours. What’s worse is that we’re completely unaware of this. A few months back I was having coffee with my oldest friend from college who has two daughters and we were talking about what her kids could end up being when they grow up. Her husband had an interesting take on childhood dreams which I thought was awesome. If the kids wanted to be ballerinas, movie stars or anything that might seem far fetched in the context of our knowledge, he said “why not?” I’m not claiming to know anything about raising kids because I don’t have any, but I’ve been one. Maybe Adora Sitvak is on to something with her notion that adults could learn from children. If you haven’t caught her TED talk, I’d highly recommend it


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It’s Time for a Bigger Game Most of us sit around fantasizing about someday with lists like • leaving our day job, • having enough money to enjoy a few comforts, • and if we touch a few people on along the way, so be it. I think it’s time for a bigger game. My goal with this book is to reach several thousand people and have it completely alter their course in life for the better. I’d love to leave them better than when I found them. The more people that end up living extraordinary lives because of you, the more extraordinary your own life will become in the process. It’s no secret that you become the byproduct of the people you surround yourself with. So, why not take on another mission? Why not set out with the goal to make the lives


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The Point of No Return In every journey, there is a point of no return, a place where you’ve gone too far to quit, a place where it would take longer to start from scratch than it would to keep going and even fail. It’s the point where you’re standing on the edge of a new frontier and potentially on the verge of something big. If you make it to the point of no return the odds of turning your dreams into reality increase significantly. This is no time think about quitting. Even if the goal is making you miserable, what’s another hour, another day, week or another month when you’ve already spent so much time on it.

Get Too Invested to Quit In my early days of surfing I was awful at it. I couldn’t catch a wave to save my life. I was uncoordinated and showed absolutely no signs of becoming the kind of person who would eventually travel the world in search of waves. But, a guy sitting next to me at a bar gave me a profound life lesson that I think applies to accomplishing anything. He said “go surfing 50 times. Then you’ll be too invested to quit.” If you’ve invested so much time, money or effort into anything that it’s more painful to quit than it is to continue, thank your lucky stars. You’ve reached the point of no return.


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Sometimes Accomplishment Occurs in the Final Hours of Your Goal A few years ago I was in Manhattan beach surfing. The waves were hit or miss and I was a bit off my game. Nearly two and a half hours had gone by and hadn’t caught a single wave. But after that much time in the water, I figured sticking it out for an additional half hour was no big deal. In that additional half hour the conditions improved dramatically and I caught one wave after another. I walked out of the water with a big shit eating grin on my face.

Breakdowns are Breakthroughs in Disguise As a writer, entrepreneur, and digital storyteller, there are days when I feel like throwing my laptop against a wall. I can’t muster up a word to write, nothing is going to according to plan, and I’m inundated with unpleasant surprises. It’s what you might classify is being on the verge of a breakdown. But when you find it in yourself to move past the peak of your frustration, a breakdown turns into a break through. When you’re on the verge of a breakdown you’re probably right around the corner from a breakthrough.

Two Days In Hell When I lived in Costa Rica in 2011 there was a 2 day period in which I watched my entire life fall apart. I received the dreaded email from my boss at the online travel company


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that I was working of asking me to call him. An hour later I was unemployed. I also learned that first sponsor for my podcast would never be able to pay us. In a matter of days I lost every single income stream I had, and I was stuck in another country. But from that breakdown came a mayor breakthrough. Losing everything and some encouraging words from a very good friend lit a fire under my ass. In a matter of days I reached out to half a dozen potential sponsors for our podcast. Three months later we had a new sponsor that was a significantly better fit than the first one. The worst case scenario resulted in the accomplishment of a goal I set the day I started my show. Even when you reach the point of no return it’s entirely possible things will fall apart. But the good news is even when they do, you won’t be starting from scratch. You’ll be leaps and bounds ahead of where you started.


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Remember your True North The final hours of accomplishing anything of great significance can be a real pain in the ass. Even when you’ve come this far you’ll be temped to to quit, settle, or abandon your crazy wild eyed dreams. Experience has taught me there’s nothing you’ll regret more than settling for even slightly less than what you truly want, especially when you were almost there. When you’re standing on the edge of success the voices of doubt and disbelief will be screaming at the top of their lungs. Those voices will come in many forms. It could be the voice in your head which you can’t always trust. It could be the pressure from parents peers and society. But when you’re at the no point of return you have to learn to ignore them and just keep your eye on the prize.

Getting Past the Whitewater When you first learn to surf , one of the most difficult things can be getting past the whitewater, the obstacle that stands between you and one good wave. But when it comes to certain goals you just know in every fiber of your being that it will be worth it do whatever it takes. Throughout our lives with every goal and every dream, all we have to do is get past the whitewater. While you might be tempted to return the shore, once you get past the whitewater it will only be a matter of time before you’re ready to take off on your wave.


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Your True North On path to doing anything of great significance obstacles and setbacks are inevitable. But what separates the people who reach their true north from the ones who don’t is ability to look past the obstacles and keep moving in the direction of their dreams. Live in the moment but keep you’re eyes on the horizon. Don’t lose sight of the original goal or purpose just because you hit a roadblock. If you remember your true north, chances are you’ll find a way around the road block.

How You Get There Doesn’t Matter While your on the journey to your true north, it’s possible you’ll be judged, doubled, criticized and even ridiculed. But people will sing a different tune when you arrive. Nobody will remember your failures. • Steve Jobs won’t go down in history as the guy who got fired from Apple • Nobody talks about the fact that venture capitalists almost pulled the plug on Google in its earliest days • We don’t remember the great surfers of the world for their wipeouts The road to success is often an uncomfortable one. It’s filled with days that test your patience and build your character. But when it’s all said and done you’ll be singing from the mountain tops of your True North.


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Education is a Never Ending Journey A real education is a life long journey. It doesn’t culminate with a diploma, graduation or three letters at the end of your name. It won’t end withe the last chapter of this book. So I’d like to encourage yo commit yourself to becoming an eternal student of the Skool of Life. Every single day, no matter what, we have the opportunity to learn. The Difference Between Getting an Education and Learning Something For a long time now we’ve had a somewhat narrow definition of what it means to be educated. • Go to college • Graduate • Get a diploma • Go to Graduate School • Get a second diploma. But strip out the word “education” and let’s look at the cold hard facts. You have two pieces of paper that hang on a wall in a frame. You have some additional letters on the end of your name. If you’re really unlucky you even get a bill that shows up every month. In some cases you can accomplish this without ever attending a class. I know plenty of people who have


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True learning isn’t about the pieces of paper on your wall or the number of letters on the end of your last name. It’s about the genuine desire for knowledge and the satisfaction of whatever it is you’re curious about.

How to Learn Something New Every Single Day Whether you realize it or not your own life experience provides you with valuable lessons every single day. But most people are running through life with blinders on, just going through the motions. I’m going to recommend the simplest way to start this ongoing education of yours: Keep a journal and answer one question every single day: What did I learn today? By the end of the month you’ll be stunned by how much wisdom you possess. By the end of a year you’ll find yourself rewriting your life story.

Give Yourself an Education That Kicks The Crap Out of the One You Got in School One of the biggest reasons that people are denied the privilege of education is because they can’t afford it. However, today we live in a world where knowledge and information are at our finger tips like never before. Technology has leveled the playing field so that anybody with an interest and an internet connection can receive a world class education. Bloggers, podcasters, search engines and digital content creators of all types of have made it possible for us to learn virtually anything we want to even if we don’t


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have the money. If you want to learn anything chances are there is somebody creating content about the subject and sharing it with the world at no cost.

Self Motivation is Not Optional Taking this kind of approach to educating yourself requires an extremely high degree of self motivation. You’re not going to have any teachers or professors holding you accountable. You won’t be measured by grades. Therefore in order to receive this world class education you’ll have to be extremely disciplined in terms of how you go about it. You’ll have to do everything from figuring out what you want to study, to determining what the course materials are going to be. In order to make sure your efforts to self educate don’t get scattered, I recommend limiting your “course load” and focusing on 2-3 areas for at least 6 months.

Resources to Get You Started 1. Free College Curriculums There are a handful of traditional education institutions that have started to embrace this trend. Fortunately one of the very first to do so was MIT, a world class institution where tuition would run you a hefty chunk of change. However, through open courseware an MIT education is suddenly available to anybody who wants one. Courses are available in engineering, management, science, architecture and a number of other areas. If other institutions


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start to follow suit, people who have been denied the privilege of education for financial reasons will finally have an opportunity if they want it.

2. The Blogosphere In a recent feature, the CBS Sunday morning show said that there were approximately 50 million active blogs online. There are blogs on nearly every subject you can possibly imagine. • Want to learn how to get in shape? Steve Kamb’s Nerd Fitness will help you get there. • Want to Learn a Foreign Language: Benny Lewis will get you Fluent in 3 Months • Want to get an MBA without spending 100 Grand? Josh Kauffman’s Personal MBA will give you everything you need. • Want a Harvard Business School Quality Education? The Harvard Business Review has a blog that’s updated daily with advice from absolutely stellar business professionals. • Want to learn how to take amazing photos? Enroll yourself in Darren Rowse’s Digital Photography School? What’s interesting about the blogosphere is that it has created a trend of unconventional education and the opportunity to study any subject you have an interest in. You’re


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no longer limited to the confines of assigned reading, class lectures, and your major. You have an opportunity to be a much more well rounded individual than ever before.

3. Books In the movie Good Will Hunting Matt Damon’s famous quote was “You just spent 150 grand on an education you could have gotten for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.” While it was a bit facetious, anybody who has received a college education probably had a bit of a chuckle because there was a kernel of truth to what was said. One of the biggest expenses for any college student is textbooks. But, the beauty of a public library is that it makes books accessible to everybody and it’s completely free. When I spent 9 months unemployed, the local library in my town became one of my stomping grounds. Unlike a book store, if I wanted to take something home and read it, I didn’t have to fork out $15.00. It might be tempting to dismiss the library as an obsolete resource, but today libraries have their whole book selection available online and even have audio books that can be downloaded directly from some of their web sites. To add to that many published authors today have their own blogs where you can read their content as well.

4. Podcasts Do a quick search through the iTunes directory and you’ll find podcasts on a wide variety of subjects ranging from learning a language to online marketing. The other thing


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that makes a podcast a fantastic option for increasing your knowledge is the fact that you can listen it while you’re working out, stuck in traffic or cleaning your house. Podcasts can turn our most mundane day to day experiences into time well spent.

5. Online Video • TED: One of the most inspirational educational resources at everybody’s disposal is the TED web site. World class authors, entrepreneurs and scientists share their very best ideas with the world. I’d recommend watching at least one TED talk every single day. Most TED talks are an average of about 15 minutes and will inspire, entertain, and inform you. • Youtube can also be a great educational resource. These days just do a search for the words “How to”, fill in the blank and you’ll have numerous options at your finger tips. • Instructables: If there’s ones site that really provides an opportunity to type in the words “how to” followed by whatever you want to learn how to do, it’s Instructables. This user generated community has over x videos specifically designed to teach you how to do something. Education as we know it is changing rapidly. The classroom is no longer the only option to receive a world


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class education. With nothing more than internet connection and a computer you have the potential to develop knowledge and skills that will far outweigh the things you would learn just by attending school. The great thing about the school of life is that there are no grades, no tests, or requirements. It’s purely about the joy of learning.


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The Commencent Speech I want to congratulate you on finishing your degree and on beginning your education at an institution where the quality of your learning far exceeds that from any ivy league school or nobel prize winning professors,where there are no valedictorians, GPA’s or measures of success other than the ones you set for yourself. This institution is “The School of Life.” With that I want to impart some of my own advice and advice given to me by friends, strangers, and other people I’ve run across which will hopefullyensure that you enjoy the many rides that lie ahead of you. 1. Remember that the power of your imagination is limitless. Everything you see in the world today, and everything you can’t possibly imagine life without was once nothing more than an idea in somebody’s head. 2. Don’t believe everything you see, but instead, chose empowering beliefs, and see everything you believe. It will get you much further. 3. Talk to strangers. Everybody you call a friend, even your best friend, was once a stranger. See what they’ve done for the quality of your life, and imagine just what would happened if you talked to more strangers. 4. Color outside the lines. Break all the rules, and make up your own.


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5. Set your own standards for success because trying to live up everybody else’s is like joining a rat race that is a constant uphill battle. 6. When you make mistakes, don’t be afraid to make them big, but learn from them and move on. 7. When you dream, dream big. Dream far beyond where you are and what you think you are capable of today. Enjoy the journey on your way to every destination. The journey is what makes the experience. 8. Choices are a part of and life you’ll have many. When you have 31 flavors, be wary of those who never chose chocolate, unless they’re allergic. Some choices will be more important than others. 9. Choose your friends wisely, because you’ll be a byproduct of the ones you are around the most. 10. Chose careers based on passion and do what you love. 11. Don’t worry about where the money will come from. It’s far more depressing to be spiritually and emotionally broke, than it is to be financially broke Recovering from the latter is easy, recovering from the former another uphill battle. 12. When you come across unfortunate incidents, look back over the course of your life and you’ll see that almost every bad thing that happened to you was actually a blessing in disguise.


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13. See as much of the world as you can and your own backyard will suddenly start to feel much larger. 14. Pay it forward whenever you have the opportunity. 15. Don’t concern yourself with what you’re doing, but concern yourself with who you’re being. Let yourself be completely vulnerable at least a few times in your life because that’s when you tend to have some of your greatest emotional strides. 16. Don’t compare yourself to other people because no matter how good you are what you do, there’s always somebody better, and there’s always somebody worse. 17. Remember, it’s not a race. Besides, what are you going to do race to the death? Be independent of the good opinion of other people and you will likely be favored by them. 18. “Forget regret or life is yours to miss.” Don’t waste your time regretting something you can’t change. It’s already happened, and by dwelling on it and thinking about it, it’s like it’s happening over and over. 19. When you fall get back up and keep walking. You did that as a baby and you eventually learned to walk and do it so well you don’t even have to think about it. Something tells me most things in life work that way.


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20. See the magic in the world and listen to the music. Each and every one of us brings a magic into the world. Just believe that and you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for and exactly wh0 you’re supposed to. Good luck and Godspeed

TheSkoolofLife

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