“Fear can hold you prisoner, hope can set you free”- The Shawshank Redemption

Escaping The Matrix

“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”- Benjamin Franklin

F-R-E-E-D-O-M…ahhh…just say it out loud to yourself…just by saying it you feel an exhilarating feeling of boundlessness. This has to be the most beautiful word in any language.

Freedom is the central theme around the movie“The Shawshank Redemption”, it Is a classic film filled with wisdom and universal messages that almost everyone can relate to. I want to show what we can all learn from the movie because while most of us may not be locked up in prison, many of us are living in a prison that we are not aware of. If you are not aware that you are in a prison you will not bother in trying to escape. You may not be physically imprisoned, but psychologically we are prisoners of our minds.

Physical freedom is only one aspect of freedom, this is freedom “from”. Freedom “from” could be financial freedom, being free from a job, this is what most people associate freedom to, but this is not real freedom. It’s a start, it gives a glimpse of whats possible. This is why people who win the lottery remain unfulfilled, they are still not free of their own prison. Inner freedom cannot be given to you by anyone or any amount of money.

“To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom”- Andre Gide

Freedom “from” is still dependent on external circumstances. You need from “for”, this is psychological inner freedom. This is having a mind free of its conditioning, free from its own limitations. Freedom “for” is the ability to respond to life without having the past or future interfere in your actions. Freedom from your incessant inner chattering. Having freedom “from” and freedom “for”, now this is ultimate freedom.

The Plot:“The film portrays the story of Andy Dufresne, a banker who spends nearly two decades in Shawshank State Prison for the murder of his wife (wrongfully sentenced). During his time at the prison, he befriends a fellow inmate, Ellis “Red” Redding and finds himself protected by the guards after the warden begins using him in his money laundering operation.” – Wikipedia.org

The Essential Wisdom of The Shawshank Redemption

• Provide service to others without expecting anything in return: Andy was a very smart person, but he was not arrogant towards others who where not on his level intellectually. He took the time to teach and empower others. He received great fulfillment in seeing one his students get his GED from prison. Serving others and being a part of their growth is one of the greatest forms of fulfillment that you can experience.
• Hope + hard work + baby steps + commitment = Freedom: Andy ultimately escapes the Shashank prison because it started with a little hope. One night In his prison cell a small part of the wall chipped off, this was the little spark of hope he needed. He then proceeds to dig a hole for the next 20+ years of his life, behind the poster of a beautiful woman.
  
  Hope: Think of the times you felt truly great, truly free, this is your hope that you know other states of “being” are possible.
  
  Hard work: study yourself all the time, study great books, practice yoga, meditate,  and find a school or group of like minded people you can work with.

  Baby steps: If you work hard enough and have a definite aim, you will create experiences for you to know that your work is paying off. If your work is real and meaningful you will change the way you feel, you will change your state of “being”.

  Commitment: You need to commit, you can’t work for one month, then take a month off. If you are not ready to commit don’t even start because then you may create even more problems for yourself.  You may even lose faith in certain methods and close yourself off from them in the future.

  When I first played around with meditation in my teenage years “I did not get it” my efforts where partial and infrequent. What I thought mediation was, was me only “thinking” I was meditating, which was not meditating at all, just a superficial feeling of calmness was as far as I got.

  It would be years until I finally understood what the great teachers meant in having a “timeless mind”. It took years to get through my layers of conditioning and previous ideas I had about meditation, until I finally got my first taste of going beyond my inner chattering. This is a journey that only continues to grow into deeper states of meditation. If I would have not stayed committed I would have never known what is possible, it was inconceivable.

• You can always be creative and continue learning even while in prison: No matter what your circumstances may be, there is always something new to learn. If you learn to become integrated within yourself, you can always find a creative solution to any of your problems.
• Making Genuine Connections: Be open to anyone new you meet, you really never know when you might meet a once in a life time friend and ally.
• Enduring Extreme Pain and Suffering: What doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger, that’s if you approach things with the right attitude. If you have a definite aim in your life, it will serve as motivation for you to get back on track when you encounter obstacles in your life.
• Life is not fair: Life does not discriminate, there is neither good nor bad in the eyes of the universe, it is up to you on how you decide to approach and live your life.
• Becoming attached to your environment, even if it is a prison: Anything you become attached to will create pain when it changes or is taken away from you. Realize that if you do not have a certain understanding of how you work internally, you will always live a life of attachment. You need to live a life of awareness, so that you do not make unconscious decisions that will then become an attachment and keep you in bondage.
• On Being Institutionalized:
  “This is all he knows, In here he is somebody, out there he is nobody…(prison walls) first you hate them, then you get comfortable, then you begin to love them, you depend on them” – Ellis Redding
  
  One of the oldest inmates “Brooks” gets released after spending the majority of his life in prison. Once he has his physical freedom back, he does not know what to do with it. He has forgotten what it means to be outside of the prison walls, he doesn’t know how to function, so he decides to kill himself. This is what happens to many of us, we get comfortable with the familiar, we know we are miserable but at least its something we know.

  In his apartment he engraves “Brooks was here”, just like Brooks we all have this fear that we will not be remembered. We want to know that our lives meant something, we want people to acknowledge our existence.

  We all want to leave our mark on this planet. The best way to leave your mark is just to find work that is meaningful to you, dedicate yourself to the work, and do it in a selfless way, contributing your work for the betterment of the whole.

• Persistence: While in prison Andy had the desire to make knowledge freely available to the inmates, he wanted to start a prison library, but needed to get funding from the state. He asked the warden if he could write a letter requesting the necessary funds. Andy ends up getting his wish, it just took him six years of writing letters to the state .
  “ It only took six years, now I just might write two times a week” – Andy

• Music is Proof that there is god: When one donation to the library provides Andy with the opera “The Marriage of Figaro”, he plays it over the public address system for all the inmates to hear, well-aware of the punishment of solitary confinement he will receive for the brief moment of bliss. For the briefest of moments all the men at Shawshank felt free.

  In the movie Andy says solitary confinement was worth it because you need music so that you don’t forget there’s a place inside you “they” can’t touch. To know that something exists besides the material world.This is beautiful, meditation if done with earnestness and unshakable determination will give you the experience of this place that no one can touch.This space is being in the essence of that which is really you. Freedom is an inner phenomenon. Beautiful music is a reminder that life is illogical, that we are able to feel a reality that is beyond our minds comprehension.

• Prison Time Is Slow Time:
  “A man in prison will do almost anything to keep his mind occupied” – Shawshank Redemption

  This is not true of only people who are in jail, but all people who escape with entertainment. In your slow time learn to be with your silence, this is how you will break free from your mind. You will come to understand your mind, you will see all of its negative tendencies. If you stay in your silence long enough you will come to realize that you are not your mind.

  You will be able to see that your mind does not function in a logical manner, most of your thoughts are just random, the problem is that when our thoughts bubble up within us, we are always looking for meaning. We try and connect one thought with the next. Our minds crave certainty and always want to understand everything.

  When you are able to see that your mind does not function in a linear manner, you will stop trying to control or look for meaning in your random thought process. This leads to a great increase in energy, much energy is wasted in trying to control and suppress our thought process. This will allow you to have enough mental energy to see things as they “are”.

• Having a Timeless Mind:
  “You know what Mexicans say about the Pacific? That It has no memory” -Andy

  If you are able to experience a mind that has become empty, you will understand what it means to have a timeless mind. Your thoughts create your sense of time, all your thoughts come from memory. Freedom from your mind means freedom from your memory. This is not to say that you no longer use your memory and are in a state of amnesia, but that your memory no longer conditions and influences you in the present.

“It all just comes down to a simple decision…you get busy living or get busy dieing”- The Shawshank Redemption

• All You Need is Pressure and Time:
  “Everyman has a breaking point”

  Pressure: Freedom is your choice, but you’re going to have to work hard to get it. You have to realize what your main aim in life is, if its to discover real freedom, you are going to have to give everything you got. But first you need to realize that you are living in a prison in the first place, you need to get a glimpse of whats possible. Once you experience what true freedom tastes like, there is no going back, heaven is possible in this life time.

  Time: It takes time to change, but true change is instant. Once you re examine your relationship to time, you will see that change can happen this instant. Depending on your own level of being and understanding it may take a long time and a lot of work to get to the point where change can become instantaneous, when you are acting from a “timeless” space.

• Living With Fear:
  “I just want to be back to a place where I am not afraid all the time”- Ellis Redding

  Fear is the one thing that may be keeping you stuck in your life. You need to understand that only a mind that is free from the past is the only state of mind that is free of fear. Fear can’t exist in a mind that is grounded in the present.

“Some birds aren’t meant to be caged, their feathers are just too bright”-Ellis Redding

Life is too short, make sure you realize that freedom is not something to be achieved but something that you need to rediscover. You came into this world free, now its time to spread your wings and reclaim your freedom.

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Thank you for stopping by “The Extraordinary Self Development Blog”.

“Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.’” – Lisa St. Aubin de Teran

Without a doubt the number one reason why I love to travel and live abroad is because it forces me to learn more about myself. I gain a deeper understanding of myself and the world in general. Today I briefly want to describe how traveling can help you go through an inner transformation.

There comes a point in a long term travelers’ journey where they begin to question many things, they may begin to feel as if they are losing themselves.

I want to try and point out that if you do find your self in this position, to not be afraid. Being in this space is an opportunity for amazing growth. I will try and offer some guidance on what you can do to learn and expand from this experience.

How Does Traveling Help You Grow As a Person?

“I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” – Mary Anne Radmacher Hershey

Much of your experience depends on how different your environment is from what you’re used to. If I am American but move to London, sure I am going to have a great time, but the transition will be fairly painless.

Moving to a completely different country in which your clearly out of your comfort zone is key. In This type of situation you will encounter many things for which you have no reference for. This automatically puts you in a different level of awareness, you’re forced to be alert, and you can’t rely on your old knowledge. This heightened sense of awareness will allow you to see things you never saw before, in yourself and the world.

Since everything is new and if you can’t speak the language you are automatically forced to try and make sense of it all. Typically our attention and energy is going out into the world. Now if you stay watchful you will see your attention going inward.

Embarking on Your Inner Journey

For many of us we have never really looked inside ourselves. But now we have nowhere to hide, we need to look. This is the point where you will become really intimate with the ideas you have of yourself, of your ego, which you may have been really identified to, and derived your sense of self from.

Your ego is essentially your self image; it’s the mask you display to society. Your ego only survives by constantly seeking approval from that which it wants to identify with. This is the society you are raised in. Therefore all the unhappiness you experience comes from the constant battle of your ego seeking approval in the outside world.

What happens when your family, friends, and your typical environment is not there to reinforce the ideas you have of your self? They become shaky; they start to lose their grip on you. Living in the unknown your ego falls apart and the real you begins to emerge.

“Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.” – Alan Keightley

You will begin to challenge and question everything you have ever believed. If you don’t run away and use this as way to grow, you will see that all your beliefs belong to society, they where never really yours. This can be extremely scary, liberating, nauseating and a million other things all at the same time.

Now you may come to a point to where you feel completely lost, everything you once knew is now seen as an illusion. But simultaneously also get a tremendous feeling of freedom, freedom from all that was false. Now your journey really begins.

If you keep trucking along, losing and questioning many of your beliefs will lead you to develop trust in yourself. Trust is something society can’t give you; trust comes from your own experiences. You may even feel a new quality or type of consciousness growing in you. Keep walking my friend; this is your opportunity to live a life of awareness, a life of authenticity. You can only be authentic through your own understanding. Developing your trust will give you the courage to continually make the leap into the unknown.

The Key Skill That Traveling Can Instill is Observation

Traveling can help you to constantly be in state of observation, a watchful state. Learning to watch is the key in learning about oneself. You need to learn to be a passive observer of your mind, of your thought process. You learn that to control and suppress only leads to inner conflict. Just by constantly remaining in a state of aloofness, you will see how the number of thoughts you have naturally comes down. You will be living in a meditative state; meditation is simply the art of learning to watch.

Learning to watch you’re mind you will come to know its positive and negative tendencies, learn from them. You may even feel like you are turning on yourself. Expanding your consciousness will allow you to see your own faults; you bring them out into the light. Don’t feel bad, just by seeing them clearly they will begin to fall on there own. They where only existing because you where unconscious of them.

Developing a quite mind will allow you to catch glimpses of really being in the here and now. For the typical tourist they may be under the Eiffel Tower but they are still thinking of things from back home, along with all the anxiety that that brings. Then when they are back at home, their experience of the Eiffel Tower is vague, it’s vague because they where not really present.

Continuing Your Growth

I would advise anyone to incorporate meditation daily into there lives. If you are new to meditation as a general guideline try and meditate one minute for every year of your age. If you are 26, meditate 26 minutes daily.

If you know nothing about meditating educate your self and find something that works for you. The easiest method is “Vipassana”, which is just learning to watch your outgoing and incoming breath. Like I said earlier, mediation is the art of learning to be a detached witness, yet being very alert, having a sensitive mind.

Incorporating daily mediation will help you become more even minded, and cultivating your ability to observe and be a witness to your daily life.

I am currently working on a small yet in depth guide on how to practically practice meditation in our lives, if you would like to know when its finished sign up for my newsletter.

In traveling and living abroad learn to be with your silence. When you are bored don’t escape into entertainment like TV and internet. Remember that you don’t know how long you will be in your host country, make the most of it. Go on a walk and get lost in your city, there is always something you can be doing and learning.

If you are thinking of traveling abroad, I hope that I inspired you to go on a quest of personal growth. Wishing you the best….God Speed my friend.

If you enjoyed this post please help me out by passing it along to your friends. tweet it, facebook it, stumble it.

P.S. Check out the new travel blog flightster which is shaping up to be a great resource for travel enthusiasts.

Thank you for stopping by “The Extraordinary Self Development Blog” of  Ivan Campuzano

Its Time To Spread A Little Love

Let me ask you a question, how do you feel when a stranger stares at you? Are you at ease or do you feel uncomfortable?

Currently I am living in Busan, South Korea where I can run around all day and not see another foreigner. I stick out like a sore thumb. Being in an environment where everyone is constantly staring at you as if you are an exotic species, you quickly learn to not let it bother you.

I meditate a lot so I am always trying to live my day to day life from a very meditative and mindful state. This is to try and live from the deepest part of my inner being, the part that remains totally unfazed with the outside world. I can be in a totally crammed subway, yet feel completely at ease, even If I have someone breathing down my neck, inside I am 100 feet away.

“Our task must be to free ourselves…by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.” - Albert Einstein

Its like being in the world, but not of it, just a witness to the miracle that is our planet. Living from this space one feels an overwhelming sense of love, of oneness, and consequently you feel it overflow and exit through your eyes.

It’s All In The Eyes

Next time you find your self on the subway or any other public place, try and find that place inside you that is utterly still, and from that place look out into the world. Feel the love inside, don’t think just feel, feel the boundaries between you and the world melt.

Look at someone simply, which is to not let your thoughts come between that which you are observing, otherwise you are only seeing an image your mind constructed and not the thing you are seeing. You are seeing something conceptually not actually. You are not making contact with it, when you are seeing something simply you are making a direct connection with it.

This is seeing in a loving way, you can observe this within yourself. Anytime you see a beautiful flower, a bird dancing on a branch, or a beautiful sunset you are doing it in a loving way. The energy and quality of your look is different.

Today when I was sitting on the subway I caught an older gentleman starring at me, I starred back because I welcomed it. I looked at him simply and just smiled, he smiled back…we kept looking and right when he felt my look was penetrating him, he blushed then looked away and broke contact.

The Doorways To Our Souls

Our eyes are really doorways to our souls, this is why its rude to stare at people, they feel like you are invading their space, their privacy, that you are trying to take a peek at their deepest darkest secrets. But since I am trying to be open to the world, I welcome it. When you make a connection with someone through the eyes it’s as if you merge into each other, but it happens so quick that many of us just brush it off.

This also doesn’t have to turn into an awkward experience, just look out into the world in a loving way. You can make a tiny connection with a random stranger on the street in a split second. Just spreading a little love. You will immediately know the people who where open and receptive to it. You can tell right away when someone is getting uncomfortable, so just look away. If they welcome it, send your silent love and intention through your eyes, all this can happen in less than a second. If you don’t do this already, just try it, I would love to hear about your experience in the comments.

Just learn to constantly be In a state of observation. You will see that if you know how to look, a persons eyes can tell you a lot about them and the way they are feeling.

Just want to thank you for taking the time to read my post. I hope you found it insightful and that it inspires you to spread a little love.

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“Life is uncharted territory. It reveals its story one moment at a time.” - Leo F. Buscaglia

Awakening Your Intelligence

If you really want to see your natural intelligence in action, its time for you to take an adventure. Adventure entails going into the land of the unknown. A land full of excitement, danger, embracing the total uncertainty of life – this is the essence of living.

To really go on an adventure requires great courage, trust, and intelligence.

“Life is either a great adventure or nothing.”- Helen Keller

Examine why it is that you have this sense and need for adventure in your life. For many of us we have become slaves to routine, to society, to worldly obligations. Routines kill your natural intelligence because it does not require it, it simply needs an unconscious mechanical reaction. You just run through the motions, it’s a silent death.

True intelligence is your ability to respond to life in the moment, with an answer that is new, fresh. This is how you grow trust in your self, because it is understanding from your own experiences. By not actively engaging in your intelligence, when life throws a new situation at you, you are not quite sure how to proceed.

When I replay in my mind what it is to live an adventurous life, memories of being inspired, spontaneous, and actively engaged in the moment dominate my mental screen.

Spiritual Adventure and Living Through The Heart

We have come to become too head oriented, which means to live a life of pure logic. We have just become more intellectual, but this is not to be confused with intelligence. The problem is that life is illogical and paradoxical, this requires one to live through the heart. Living through the heart a different dimension of intelligence is at play, you can’t really explain it, it’s your own inner sense. We need to go from less thinking to more feeling, we have forgotten how to feel, hence why life seems so empty and meaningless to many of us.

To live a life of adventure is to live from the heart, knowing how to listen to your inner sense, that which is alive and connected to reality. Putting your thinking mind aside and becoming immersed in your inner space.

Listening and moving with your heart you will fall many times because you just want to experience the unknown, doesn’t matter if it’s pleasant or not. But each time you fall, you get up and become stronger; these are the experiences in which you really grow. Learn to respect your own inner voice and follow it.

When you follow it, be prepared that it will also take you into what you perceive as wrong. This is life the only way you know what right is, is by experiencing the wrong. Too many people live their lives only by what other people or religion tell them is the right way to live. Living like this you are not able to move, because something wrong might happen.

The most important thing is just to be open, life will reveal many things to you, even if it doesn’t make sense at the time. You may come to question everything you have ever known, be prepared to drop all that is false that is within you. Much of your understanding you may not even be able to express in words but will manifest its self as a deep inner knowing. Hopefully through your adventure you will come to a better understanding of your true self and the world. Then everyday will be an adventure.

Thank you for reading my article, I hope that it inspires you to live a life of adventure. This world truly is an amazing place the moment you live through your heart. Everything you see in this world is ultimately your own interpretation, by living from the heart you will begin to see everything as divine. You will begin to lose your feeling of being separate and begin to see and feel oneness with everything. In short you will feel alive, and how beautiful is that

“Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature; it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something.”  ~Carl G. Jung

“I met a lot of people in Europe.  I even encountered myself.”  ~James Baldwin

As I am writing this I am in a TomNToms coffee shop listening to some chill Spanish music, feeling like I am once again in Europe. One quick glance reminds me that I am surrounded by only Koreans, not some cute Spanish chica named Penelope, but don’t get me wrong Korean girls are extremely cute as well

Beam Me Up Scotty

As I take a sip of my coffee, it hits me, as if a strange energy slowly descended upon me, this energy is the penetrating realization that I am “here”. I have been in South Korea for 5 months, but this feeling is one as if I just got teleported here this instant.

What is this strange feeling that many travelers happen to encounter, yet may not exactly know whats going on, or where its coming from?

This feeling is the one of becoming self aware, becoming aware of your own awareness. Typically we live in our own self imposed bubbles, where we our lost in the conceptual images of our mind. We think we are conscious and awake but the reality is that we are asleep, and don’t realize we are asleep.

This the first step to becoming more conscious is realizing your asleep in the first place. This is very difficult because you need to experience what it is like to be truly aware and awake in the world, you need contrast to be able to compare different states of being.

Try this small experiment, sit in your couch and just simply try and remember your self for 5-10 minutes, this means just keeping your attention to the feeling of being alive. Just feeling and acknowledging the living presence inside your body.

How long can you keep your attention here and now without your mind going off on some mental tangent? This will show you the level of your being, if you where truly self aware this would not be difficult, you could keep your attention on whatever you chose without it going in other directions, true will power.

Are You Taking Your Life For Granted?

Living unconsciously we take for granted the most important thing in this world, which is our life, the simple acknowledgment of our existence, the feeling of “I am”, just pure simple being.

Like I mention in my blog, my main concern in life is to become fully awake, to live life with an unconditioned mind, to die psychologically to the past every single day. To have a mind that is young, fresh, new. A mind that does not carry the burden of the past. If you are able to have a mind that is totally free, being self aware is your normal state.

This path is extremely arduous, but I enjoy it so much because I am constantly learning, becoming more aware, more alert, less divided.

This is the reason why I have not been able to stop living abroad, I have used it as a way to experiment with everything I learn on a daily basis.

Knowledge Is Not Enough: Participate In Life

In trying to transform yourself, knowledge is not enough. One can possess an enormous amount of knowledge and yet not be able to do anything with it. You can actually create more problems, by knowing too much. You need to live your life and create the situations in which you will truly grow.

You can read a manual on fixing engines and know it forwards and backwards, but until you actually attempt to fix the car your knowledge wont even begin to show its value.

How Traveling Helps You Grow

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” Alan Alda

When you become exposed to an environment that is completely different, that is out of your comfort zone, what happens….even if its for a split second is that you stump your mind. What does this mean? This means you stop the movement of your mind, or rather it stops movement on its own.

If you ever observe your mind, you will see that all it is, is a constant never ending thought process, which is to say the mind is just movement. This never ending movement consumes so much energy, so much that it can lead to stress and depression.

What happens when your mind stops moving? You become extremely quite, utterly still, in this stillness you are free to observe without any dissipation of energy, in fact you accumulate energy. This energy is what causes you to feel extremely alert, yet calm and relaxed, like you just had 10 Red Bull Energy Drinks without any of the side effects. This energy is what helps you transform and go beyond your previous unconscious tendencies. You start encountering your true self. Living in moment is delightful and beyond any description I can give.

It takes a huge amount of self understanding to know that this is whats taking place. People who just catch these glimpses simply know that they like it and want more of it. This is another trick of the mind, the mind always wants to know, wants a logical answer, so it may say to you that the reason you feel like this is only because of traveling.

So now you might become a travel junkie because you want to keep experiencing these feelings. Anything the mind derives pleasure from, it seeks to continue it. This is a game you will never win.

You need to be able to see that it’s not the traveling that gave you this feeling of bliss, but that your mind became still, your new environment simply gave you a friendly push.

It’s not a question of constantly seeking new experiences with travel, but how can you make your mind quiet. Then every day is “full of life” no matter where you are or what you may be doing.

I Need Your Help

I am currently starting to work on a small guide to meditation, where I hope to demystify what meditation is and how we can practically incorporate it into our lives. Please let me know if meditation is new to you and what questions or challenges you have had in trying to meditate. Leave your comments below, I will try to address them in the near future.

Thank you so much for reading my blog, If you find it useful please help me out by spreading the word.

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” - Howard Thurman

The only constant is change, it is life’s very nature. The problem is that we hate insecurity, we always try to make things known and comfortable. After awhile we become miserable, because everything is known, we try to make our lives conform to a certain pattern. But how can you make life conform to your ideas?

You just need to realize that life is dynamic, you need to embrace life’s uncertainty. It’s is important to learn to be open to life, being fluid with your ideas. Everyone typically fights and struggles with their environment. When you deeply understand that life is uncertain, you learn to go with the flow, you learn to work and cooperate with it.

Ways To Change Your Life

• Mix up your routine: Routines become a prison because we begin to feel stagnate. We feel like machines, simply reacting to our environment in an unconscious manner. Anything you do with awareness, being totally present will be new, but to jump start your awareness purposely change up your routine.

  If you drive to work the same way everyday, decide that today you will take a new route. Pay attention and notice everything, see how much more alert you feel because its something new.

  If you go to the same restaurants all the time, mix it up and go to somewhere you never even thought about going. Maybe this is your time to try Indian food for the first time.

• Check out: How To Create a New Day and A New You

• Change your environment: The easiest way to get you of your comfort zone is to change up your environment. Going from the busy streets of New York, to being a beach bum in Costa Rica will definitely give you new perspective into many things in your life.
  Check out:
  Leave America Become a Vagabond
  The Essential Qualities of a Traveling Companion

• Break out of isolation: If you have not made any new friends this year, get out there and meet some new people. Go to places you normally would not go to, meet people who are completely different then your current set of friends. The goal is to meet people who will introduce you to new things you would have never discovered on your own.
  Check out:
  How To Improve Your Likability To Make Quick Connections
  The Essentials to Making Friends Anywhere In The World

• Break out of yourself: To breakout of yourself means that you need to really understand your self. What are you? Who are you? Realize that your self image is not who you truly are, your thoughts are only a certain aspect of your identity. Become acquainted with your inner space, learn to constantly observe yourself, become fluid.
  Check out:
  Discovering Your Life’s Purpose and Exploring Your Divine Nature
  How To Be Quiet and Stop Thinking

• Surprise your self: Attempt to do something you have never tried, you may just surprise yourself with the results. Have you always thought about asking out the cute girl who works at the your local coffee shop, but chickened out at the last minute? Don’t think about it, just do it, at least you will get some type of answer.
• Create something: We are born as natural creators, as we get older we get conditioned by society to become imitators. Reclaim your child like creativity and do things that will bring immense joy and fulfillment into your life.
  Check out:
  How To Reclaim Your Childlike Creativity
  I Don’t Wanna Grow Up: How To Play Like a Big Kid

Thank you for reading my short post, I hope it inspires you to embrace change and make the leap into the the unknown. Keep learning and enjoying the process, this life is an amazing game once you decide to play.

“You’re only as good as your last haircut.”-Fran Lebowitz

Hey YOU! Get a Hair Cut!

If you’re a long term travel junkie like me, inevitably there will come a point when you need to look decent, quit scaring the locals, and get a hair cut.

Unless you cut your own hair, this can be an interesting experience depending on your language abilities.

Every country has their own ideas on what it deems stylish and appealing, so unless you like getting a fro hawk in the Czech Republic, you better know how to ask for the style you want.

If your language skills don’t suffice, the easiest is to take a few good pictures with different angles of your most stylish cut, and load them on your I-Phone or any other hand-held device you may have. Make some funny faces even, get the other person to laugh when they see them. Just come in, say hello and point to your phone. If they make a weird face, chances are they may not be able to pull off your cut. If they smile and give you the thumbs up, plop into the chair and hope for the best.

Three Quick Tips

Not knowing the native language can make for some awkward silence, to make it a more pleasant experience keep these few tips in mind.

1. Smile: Smiling is infectious, if you can’t speak to the hair stylist, get them in a good mood by flashing them a big smile in the mirror.

2. Be prepared to not get what you want: Don’t show your disappointment if your hair does not come out the way you expected. It’s another situation of being lost in translation. Just remember that sporting a goofy hair cut will now be a part of your adventure.

3. Try and communicate as much as possible: This is one more chance for you to use any words or phrases you may know. Don’t worry about sounding silly,the stylist will appreciate your efforts. Use and exaggerate your body language to get your point across.

If you experience a truly horrific hair cut, remember it’s not permanent, brush it off, maybe even literally . This will just be one more common thing that becomes a tad more difficult living abroad. Learn to embrace these little challenges, they will end up adding color to your day.

If you would like to know how to really learn to speak another language, check out my friend Benny’s unconventional “language hacking” course, on how you can become conversationally fluent in as little as 3 months. Benny speaks 8 languages fluently, so he knows a thing or two about learning to speak quickly. Currently I am learning Korean and his methods have already helped out greatly.

Hope you enjoyed my little post, if you did please pass it along to your friends.

(editors note: there are some affiliate links, if you decide to purchase you are directly supporting my dream of being a full time writer, thanks a bunch in advance)