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You may have heard that there is no such thing as a free lunch. This is untrue on every level, and also a terrible lie. Over and over throughout our short lives, all of us have been given something for nothing. We don't deserve free lunch, yet it continues to arrive on a regular basis. No charge, ma'am. This one's on me, sir.
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If you want to change the world, follow a dream, or otherwise find your own identity, you need to be able to do big things. In addition to being a prerequisite for growth, doing big things is also a lot of fun. But how do you do them? What steps do you take? Thankfully, much of the work required to do big things relates to the mindset of deciding to do them. With that in mind, consider these suggestions for your own pursuit of meaning and adventure ...
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I'm off the grid this week on my first vacation since ... forever. It's a little disorienting, but I'm working on it. A few items of random interest: The $100 Startup continues to race up the charts, returning to the New York Times Bestseller List again this week. Thanks so much for your support! We're planning to do more events in local cities during the first week of September.
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Have you ever withdrawn $100,000 in cash from the bank? Me neither ... until last week. This post includes a video from last weekend's World Domination Summit, and a brief explanation on why our team invested $100 in each WDS attendee.
A number of people have asked me to share more about the surprise we unveiled at the end of WDS 2012. As mentioned on Thursday, you can read the experiences of many other people who were at WDS all over the internet. (This list will be updated soon, since there are now more than 150 posts.)
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I've been having a hard time writing up my experience at the second-annual World Domination Summit last weekend. I feel exhausted, but mostly in a good way. Our team did a fantastic job, with more than 80 volunteers working together to put on an epic weekend adventure, complete with block parties, dunk tanks, keynote sessions, dozens of workshops and presentations, and ... so much more. I'll be going away for a few days to reflect more on the experience, but I don't want to keep you waiting on a recap—so I'll send you to a few of the 100+ reviews and writeups that have been published by others in the past few days.
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For the past five days, I've been immersed in a weekend adventure with 1,000 of our closest friends from more than 20 countries. They'll be able to tell the story better than I can, so at some point soon I'll do a roundup of their posts. (Attendees: link your posts to this one or tag them with #WDS.) For now, here are a few photos that might give the rest of you an idea of what our weekend was like ...
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What does independence mean to you?
I asked our community on Facebook and Twitter this week, and here are a few things I heard ...
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Much of the time, we don't actually want to make decisions. We want to defer or postpone them, allowing another person or some external event to determine our future. In that case, see how to put off making decisions about your life.
But what about those times when you really do want to make a decision, but you aren't sure of the right one?
Here are three approaches ...
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When I shared the story of a man who tightroped across Niagara Falls, someone said, “That's easy! He had a safety harness.”
Every day I hear from someone who thinks my quest to visit every country in the world is invalid because of some technical reason.
When I talk about people who leave their jobs to make their own way through self-employment, I hear about the advantages these people have and how it must be so simple for them.
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Broken hearts. Mistakes that changed the course of a life.
Things that went wrong through no fault of your own, and the things that were your fault.
Global problems. Poverty of all kinds. The war, the famine, the flood.
The activist chooses to believe in the ability to make all things better, sometimes in the face of reason itself. Life is full of things you can't fix, no matter how well-intentioned you are.
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This week I've been reading Turning Pro, a new call-to-arms by Steven Pressfield. Here's an interesting section on making a choice:
Sometimes, when we're terrified of embracing our true calling, we'll pursue a shadow calling instead. That shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career involves no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us. Are you pursuing a shadow career?Read More
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What if you could flip a switch and go back in time?
It's right up there with flying and invisibility—the ability to travel in time, to revisit the past and alter the future.
What if you could return to some point in the past and do something different?
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Back when I played music I used to say I was self-taught, because I never went to music school or took lessons. But then someone corrected me: “Really, you taught yourself everything?” he said.
“You never listened to other people's music?" he continued. "No one ever showed you something? You never asked for help? You didn't steal your early ideas from other musicians, like all musicians do?”
I got the point: I may have lacked formal education, but I benefited from those who had gone before. One way or another, I had learned from my peers. And after that experience, I stopped saying I was self-taught.
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Home for a month before setting out on a new adventure, I resolve to make some changes in my life. It starts with exercise. I'm a committed runner, a casual yogi, a beginning swimmer, and every week or so I head to the gym for an unfocused session of strength training. In other words, it's too random—so I resolve to change it up.
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Want to become wiser? It's fairly simple and closely resembles Brian Tracey's formula for being luckier: “Luck is quite predictable. To have more luck, take more chances.”
To become wiser, therefore, take more risks and stop letting fear rule your life. Change it up a little.
In honor of last week's dual birthdays, here are 34 things I wish I knew years ago ...
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