Greetings from my favourite Canadian city, Montreal. This is our second time in the cultural capital of Canada but our first experience couchsurfing. CouchSurfing has been fantastic so far, not only as a free place to stay and an introduction to an unknown city, but as the quintessential social media site. It’s very essence is about connecting people in real life.
What is CouchSurfing?
For those of you who don’t know, CouchSurfing.org is a network where travellers can connect and find a place to stay with a local person in cities around the world. There is no cost for the website or for the couch (bed, room or floor) but it is expected that you are going for the social exchange and not just a free place to sleep.
This is how my wife explained it to her mother, “We are going to stay at a stranger’s house. We found the person on the Internet.” (Very rough English translation. )
Prior to our visit, I must admit we had some apprehensions…
I have been back in my home country of Canada for about four months, now I have two more weeks to go before I leave again. It has been great to be back home, but I think I enjoyed it more because I know it is not permanent. My wife and I have not made any roots and have not anchored ourselves to a lifestyle we don’t want. The greatest insight I have discovered is that life is fantastic.
Sometimes it is easy to forget just how good we have it. Several friends and relatives have recently undergone major medical surgeries. I have heard many complaints about how far they had to drive to get to the hospital, how long the waiting lists were to get a hospital bed, how many times their surgeries had been postponed, how late the doctor was, etc.
I understand people under-going life threatening operations are under huge amounts of stress and want to get out the hospital as soon as possible, however I think they may be over-looking how lucky they are to be in a rich developed country with amazing technological advances and medical…
On a recent post on Untemplater.com, I wrote about how I think talent is created, not born. I called the post, You are a Monkey so Stop Thinking You are so Special. I learned a couple of things from the comments, apparently people don’t like being called monkeys and some people place a lot of emphasis on the genetic side of the debate.
Of course genes are important in many circumstances. It is difficult to be a professional basketball player if you are short. It helps to have big hands and feet if you want to be a world class swimmer. Good eyesight is necessary to be a pilot. So yes, genes do shape our future to a degree, but how often does genetic makeup really limit what we can accomplish?
The purpose of the monkey post was to show that since humans have 99.9% of the same genes as chimpanzees, maybe we shouldn’t put too much emphasis on our genetic makeup. The worst part of an over-reliance on nature over nurture is that it…
Making the decision to move to another country is difficult and scary. It is even harder if you have a family to support and educate. Brandon Pearce, his wife and two daughters made that choice and moved to Costa Rica at the start of the year and are loving their new life outside of the US. Brandon is also proving that the idea of the low hour work week (he works 5 hours per week) is definitely possible if you put in the effort. Brandon offers some great details into his business and his lifestyle in Costa Rica in this interview.
Please tell us a little about your background.
I just turned 30 years old, and was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. As a child, I fell in love with both music and computers. I learned to play the piano and sing – a passion probably inherited from my parents who are both musicians – and when I was 12, I began teaching myself to program in QBasic. I always dreamed that one day I would either be a music teacher like my dad, or have my own…
I love watching people succeed through hard work and talent. I often say that we live in amazing times, because anyone with focus and dedication and rise to the top. Corbett Barr is one of those people that I have admired since his blogging beginnings just over a year ago. He has managed to build two popular blogs, start several other business ventures and live location independent in Mexico for a good portion of the year. Corbett has the talent and dedication to accomplish big things. If you want to track the progress of a rising Internet celebrity, than I recommend watching and learning from everything he does.
Please tell us a little about your background
I’m a 30-something former careerist who traded salary and perks for doing what I love and living anywhere.
After growing up in typical American suburbia, I jumped on the career hamster wheel and ended up as a management consultant working for Fortune 500 clients. I traveled across the country and worked on projects that helped giant corporations make more money or become more efficient. It paid well and everyone I worked with was whip-smart,…
In a recent email, a reader of this blog asked me how I became so successful. He read in one of my posts about how I moved to Japan on one week’s notice with no job, no work visa and only $1000 to my name and later became a jet-setting global rock star celebrity. (Okay, I added the ‘jet-setting global rock star celebrity part ‘ for added effect. )
Here is the Secret to my Success
The short answer is … I am not successful. Most people, myself included, tend to glamorize or even exaggerate successes and hide set backs or negative aspects of their lives. Don’t believe everything you read or hear because you are only getting the positive side of the story.
I am not rich. I am not famous. I am not particularly smart or talented either. I am just an ordinary person that is not afraid of hard work. When I arrived in Japan more than 13 years I worked a lot to save money and…
Corbett Barr at FreePursuits.com recently posted a fantastic video that is closely aligned with my personal life view. The TED video is of Srikumar Rao who outlines how to be happy in life. I briefly summarized the video below, but I didn’t include the great examples that will help convey the message. Watch the video, it is worth it.
Brief Summary
Srikumar Rao
Everything we do in life in someway is a quest for happiness.
There is nothing that you have to get, do or be in order to be happy.
Happiness is your innate nature. It is wired in your DNA.
We have a mental model that says we have to get something in order to be happy.
IF this happens, THEN we will be happy.
The IF-THEN model itself is flawed. But instead of realizing that, we spend an enormous amount of time changing the ‘IFs.”
Recall a scene of spectacular beauty that took you outside of yourself into a place of great serenity like a rainbow or mountain range. The reason that happened is that you accepted the universe exactly as it was. You didn’t say that is a
It has been just over one month since my wife and I left Japan. We spent three weeks of that time in a small town in central Canada with my grandmother and have now returned to my home city of Calgary.
The first week or so was spent just relaxing after all the stress and work we had finishing up our old lifestyle. We gave up everything; our house, car, business, furniture, personal belongings, daily routine, everything. It was a lot of work but it is also incredibly liberating. There is a freedom that I have rarely experienced. It really feels fantastic to not want to buy things. We can’t take much with us on our travels so there is no need to even think about furniture, electronics or any other accouterments of modern life. We are finished with consumerism (for a little while anyway).
It has only been a month but we are already starting to make some important realizations.
I don’t want to be a traveller.
We will always live abroad and we hope to continually move to different locations but we have to do it slowly.…
My wife and I made it out of Japan. It has been almost one year since my wife and I made a one year plan to leave Japan and begin a new career. We did it!
Lifestyle Design is Hard Work!
It was a lot of work and will still require a massive effort to keep moving forward but we committed and made it happen. We sold our business and car. Got rid of most of our possessions. Cleared out our house and started to get it ready to rent out. In particular, the last few weeks prior to departure were extremely busy and stressful.
Getting all the necessary paperwork, finishing up everything in Japan and liquidating all of our possessions was a phenomenal amount of effort. It was much more work then we imagined. The last week was the most stressful. So many things had to be done that we were sleeping for only a few hours per day. After a couple weeks of sleep deprivation and a 9 hour stop-over in Tokyo, it took about a week to get back to a regular sleep pattern. I will be…
My wife and I are frantically trying to wrap up our life in Japan. Needless to say, there are still a million things left to do and the clock is ticking. It is a lot of work to leave a country.
Less is More
It really is amazing how much stuff you can accumulate over the years. I thought I was pretty good at limiting my consumption but I have purchased so many things that I barely use or have never used. My wife and I are really looking forward to a simpler existence in the near future. Less stuff, more life will be our motto.
Travel Update
We decided not to bring our car to Europe. We will sell it here instead. Unfortunately, the resale value of vehicles is really low in Japan due to the high taxes. It generally makes more sense to buy a new car than to drive an older one. That is why you never see old, run-down cars in Japan. It probably also contributes to the strength of the automobile industry here.
Anywhere Lifestyle, Here We Come, but I hate to give away my
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