Are you disconnected from your herd?

 
One of the main worries members of our forum have is about feeling a little out of step.

How many people do YOU know who have even thought about building more freedom into how they live and earn money, let alone are seriously prepared to action it? No wonder it can leave you feeling at best a little isolated, at worst a naive chump.

Most of us have experienced the blank look, the mild scoffing, the patronising smile when you try to explain that it is possible to live on your own terms, earn a living using a mix of skills and leveraging the power of the new-fangled inter-web and travel when you please.

Look in the right places

 
The great thing about conferences are they are full to the coffee-station of people who are a lot like you. You can skip a lot of the preliminary justifications; they get it.
 

This month we went to Traverse in Brighton, which was fab for many reasons, although the ones that stand out are the UK location (these are rare); the ridiculous number of free bar events (the organisers know what pleases a crowd) and the really informative and practical workshops.
 
Here are some tips I learnt from my top two:
 
Photography (courtesy of Tom Robinson www.tomrobinsonphotography.com @Mr_Tom_Robinson)

Topping up your energy

 
It was really refreshing to attend an event full of people who are not just passionate but verging on obsessed about travel. We’ve only been home for 3 months but already that top-up of enthusiasm was long overdue. An event doesn’t have to be travel related either. For a couple of years we got huge benefits from attending marketing and on-line business events. Gravitate towards what feels right for now and find the people who will inspire you to keep moving forward.
 

Final reminder; different doesn’t have to be wrong!

 
On our drive back home we saw an exotic billboard advertising some holiday destination or another with the slogan ‘escape to the sun’. When you are feeling like no-one else wants or sees the possibilities of lifestyle changes you do, it might help to remember; most people think saving all year for a 2 week holiday where you get to escape your normal life is perfectly reasonable behaviour. You however fall into the category of those who know you can create a life you don’t feel the need to escape from.

Our recent conference recommendations:

Traverse Brighton -> www.traverse-events.com/brighton
World Domination Summit (WDS) -> www.worlddominationsummit.com

Do you have any other events you can recommend? What do you get from attending conferences?

The weather is turning fractionally warmer here in the northern hemisphere- so what better time than to re-vamp a website!

So what is useful to look at? Here are the top 16 actions we’ve been implementing on our sites lately.

What’s your top spring clean tip?

Ahhhh!

Read this and then be honest with yourself; is any of it sounding horribly familiar? (If it helps we’ve spent 6 years making and learning from these mistakes!) If you are prepared to acknowledge where you are getting it wrong then you’ve got a great chance of making this work.

But if you think you know best and this stuff doesn’t apply to you..? What can we say…be warned!

Do any of these sound familiar?

Sick in the USA

For some people a concern about long term travel is health. What if I get sick while I’m away? How will I cope? Here are a few of our experiences and pointers which may put your mind at rest. (Or just make you wonder how we can be so sickly…!)

With so many options to deal with health niggles you might encounter along the way you can quit worrying and get out there!

Note- don’t be put off- our examples are taken over many years, plenty of tropical countries and some fairly risky food!
 

Do you have any tips from when you’ve dealt with health hiccups on the road?

Oh no! What’s happening to me?

In the last few weeks I have transformed from a globe-wandering, business-obsessed, adventure seeking, wine-loving flex-pat into someone entirely different. The new me put my foot down and demanded that we return home early from our round the world extravaganza a few weeks ago. I’ve heard myself say that I never want to set foot on a plane again. I can’t stand the thought (and cannot even look at photos) of the country that begins with ‘A’ and is home to cuddly marsupials. Despite having just set up a new website at www.luxuryandboutiquehotels.com, hotels hold no appeal for me. For Chris, it’s like he suddenly finds himself married to someone else.

So what has changed?

Well, the fact that we are expecting a baby might have something to do with it. Suddenly everything has turned on its head.

The advantages of a break

To be fair, I don’t think travel is usually on the top of anyone’s agenda who has spent much of the last 3 months with their head over the toilet. But still, is this going to change things forever? Or might there be some advantages to taking a break?

Can travel get old?

For the last 6 years we have spent 6-9 months of each year travelling around the world which has been incredible. We’ve seen so much of the beauty of the world, we’ve adapted to living in different cultures, we’ve sampled different foods, witnessed natural wonders, tried exhilarating new activities, pushed ourselves to the limits and kicked back to watch the sun go down almost every day. But, at the risk of seeming unbelievably spoilt, lately it had started to get a bit, well, samey.

Can a panorama like this become “just another view”?

Research tells us that after a while, you can become habituated to pretty much any circumstance. The main ‘Positive Psychology’ guy, Martin Seligman suggests that although new things can make you temporarily happier, eventually you settle to your own personal baseline. It’s like people who use drugs and need a slightly bigger hit to get a better high. Eventually their hits will just deliver ‘normal’ and not a high at all.

Facebook friends will start the countdown to their annual holiday weeks in advance and their ‘only 5 more sleeps!’ updates make you wonder how they will get any sleep with that fever pitch of excitement. It’s been a long time since we got that excited about taking a trip. Travel for us is no biggie. But maybe it would be nice if it was a little more special.

A new appreciation

WOW! I actually went to French Polynesia

As much as I am in awe of the incredible life we have lived since we have been married, I want to continue to appreciate every sunset, every forest, every weird creature and wacky insect, every sensory assault, every new horizon, every quirky character, every fragrant dish, every moment of wonder. The freedom we have to go, work, live anywhere can make travel seem part of the normal fabric of our lives. As daft as it sounds, you have to work on reminding yourself that it isn’t the norm, and that every day you should count your lucky stars all this is within your reach.

The independence to be located anywhere- even home

Location independence is the freedom to live and work from anywhere. Not unlike many other similar oriented bloggers, we are simply choosing to stay in one place for a while (it’s just not Portland!) When we return to travel it will look a little different from our previous trips; but even in my recent darkest moments (where I contemplate buying a microwave and ponder a 3 year finance deal on a new car) I know that when we are ready, adventure will still be out there waiting for us; but this time, if all goes well, we’ll be a family.

Does travel still blow your socks off?

Is your lifestyle the measure of success?

There are plenty of business success stories to be inspired/ intimidated by and I for one spend a lot of time thinking about all the things we should be doing. Chris and I are under no illusions, when we compare ourselves with other high falutin’ entrepreneurs, we don’t quite measure up. But does it matter? Can you have a business which would be ripped to shreds on Dragon’s Den, but against all odds still seem to come out smelling of roses?

MBA free zone

Neither Chris nor I have a business background. I’m a psychologist, Chris ‘does IT’; it’s an eclectic mix. We outsource our financial management (I can picture the cries of dismay by those of you more fiscally astute) and have a catalogue of incomplete projects on a semi permanent state of ‘hold’ as our attention diverts to other things. We don’t really like sales and are abysmal at monitoring and follow up. There isn’t one area of our business where we feel we have honed it to perfection. Most of the time I feel we are doing a half assed job. How’s that for being honest!

Last week we learnt that for the first time in 6 years we failed to make any profit. Oh dear. We know why (there was a huge change in one of our industries and we lost 3 of our biggest clients the year before). Much of that year was spent laying the ground work for a long term new plan which is just starting to pay dividends now. But despite knowing all this, it felt like a huge backwards step bearing in mind the 6
figure profit we’ve managed to rack up in previous years. So what’s the lesson to be learned here?

Work life balance to the extreme

For one reason or another I haven’t been able to work for the last 2-3 months and Chris’ productivity has been a tad compromised as he’s been looking after me. I have been putting in a maximum of two hours on a good week. I’ve made the 4 Hour Work Week look like a workaholics manual.

Not the best time to take a picture!

But yet, our income has remained steady. The relationships we have been building for the last three years for one of our projects are still generating enquiries. Commitments have been met as wonderful colleagues have rallied round and handled delivery I would normally do, earning me money while I stay in bed. Today we’ve been asked to be interviewed on a radio show and last week we had two enquiries about providing a service which will generate £18k of business. Our passive income has continued to slowly grow and pay our mortgage even while I have done nothing to propel it forward. Our scattergun approach may pull us in too many directions a lot of the time but when the bottom falls out of one stream of income, we have others to fall back on while we pick ourselves back up. Lack of security can be a key dissuader for a lot of people contemplating self employment. I think I’d be feeling way more insecure right now if I was working for someone else.

Playing the long game

Of course this situation can’t go on forever and as much as we are benefitting from past endeavours right now, things will need to go back to normal eventually in order to keep our financial future steady. Plus I miss work. But when Chris and I were talking about how many things we get wrong it made us smile to realise that despite this, we are in a situation where we can travel when we like (having spent 8 months of the last 12 overseas), have savings in the bank, don’t have to worry about money and can even work ridiculously reduced hours and manage just fine. Just think what we could do if we were on full power, eh?

It’s great to look back and remember what you saw and achieved

Whatever your reservations and insecurities, some days you’ll screw up, some days you’ll make progress. Sometimes the results will be so far down the road you will have forgotten what on earth you did to get there in the first place. None of it matters as long as you are doing SOMETHING. You’ll learn as you go, through your own mistakes and from observing others, and you will always wish you were doing better. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t doing ok right now after all.

Are you striving for perfection or just trying to get some things right some of the time?

Our home is the UK, but is it the best place to be?

We’ve been back in the UK a couple of weeks now and there’s something we have noticed which we just didn’t come across once while on our Home Exchange adventure. And it’s come up so often already that it’s really made us pause and consider.

Everyone has to do things they don’t like, right?

Since being home it’s been really apparent how many people are unhappy with the jobs they have got, or are desperately looking for a job which they are quick to explain they are likely to dislike even if they are ‘lucky’ enough to get it. For those in work, too many are dissatisfied with the hours, demands or money. But they daren’t rock the boat because just behind them is a queue of people ready to jump into their slot with indecent haste given half a chance. The culture that has been created leaves a nasty taste and reminds us a) why we avoid the news media so deliberately b) why we chose to leave our families, home and familiar environment so damn often.

But even with all the negative influences, why are so many people not only willing to accept but prepared to talk themselves into desperately wanting something they already know won’t make them happy? Why are they clinging to situations which are making them miserable?

Taking risks to find greater contentment

One of the subtle differences about people you meet on the road and those that you return to is that the first group have taken some risks.

Is taking a risk worth seeing sunsets like this?

They’re not living a life of freedom and adventure because a genie granted them three magic wishes. They are there because they made difficult decisions, took choices that most people thought they were mad to even consider and took some major anxiety producing risks. The result? Of course, some of them have less money than they’d had in their old life. But instead they’re waking up with the sun on their faces, with a clean slate of a day ahead with which they can swim in a mountain side lake, find serenity in an incense filled temple or drink 50 cent fruit shakes while replying to emails from a leafy cafe. It seems to mean more than a fancy car which they have big monthly payments for, the ‘security’ of a stressful job and the sense that they are working all hours of the week so they have somewhere to collapse at the weekend in peace before the whole thing starts over again on Monday.

The contrast with people back home is that it seems like people are making choices because they have been worn down into believing that that’s just the way it has to be. I’m starting to really understand the term wage slave. It’s easy to think you have freedom, but unless you are really exercising that privilege, it seems a lot like you don’t.

Decisions based on fear often aren’t your best

So why do some people take those risks and others make their decision based on fear? Surely, there must be similarities in what they have to lose? Most people don’t have a big financial safety net. Most people have responsibilities. So why do some people risk all that for something better, while others retreat further into their shell of discontent? There’s a theory of motivation which describes how some people are more compelled towards pleasure whilst others main motivating force is the avoidance of pain. Are we letting an innate impulse for pain avoidance lock us into a more insidious discomfort after all?

It’s perfectly natural to attach a sense of security to things we actually have limited control over, a regular wage, scraping by, and a job when others don’t have one. As much as we might not like what we have now, it seems better than the unknown. But that thinking is flawed- sometimes the devil you know isn’t better at all.

Amazing times to live in

People are still waiting for others to give them jobs, for great opportunities to appear in the job ads or through promotion at work. But there are a wealth of opportunities to take a lot more control over your destiny, if your desire to change your circumstances is strong enough. We live in a time that offers us an unprecedented and remarkable opportunity to carve out a different life.

You CAN genuinely run an internet business from a beach

The internet has opened doors to which weren’t even conceivable to generations before us. At what other time could we decide we want to be travel writers- and do it? To run our own consultancy- and do it? To take off and travel for a year- and still earn a living? To decide ourselves what we can offer- and find the people we can help- without anyone else dictating how or where or what we should do? And we aren’t special; we are just playing at business, screwing up on a regular basis but learning as we go. We took risks, and whether we succeed or fail spectacularly, it’s down to us. It’s a good feeling.

See what’s really there

Within the unknown lies a wealth potential. It may not be easy, it may represent a long and difficult path, but surely taking steps towards something which might be wonderful is better than staying stuck in something you already know is not? If we insist on ignoring what’s at our finger tips and limiting our options, despite all the evidence to the contrary, we may as well still be living in a period where we truly didn’t have any choices. Irrespective of what everyone may tell you, now is NOT that time.

Are you changing the way you live?

Fish and chips on the water in 30C!

As part of our Round the World in Home Exchanges we spent a few days visiting the wonderful city of Melbourne. If you haven’t been there then the key thing you need to know is that it has one of those ‘four seasons in one day’ reputations. Except those days where it’s simply as hot as the surface of the sun.
 

So what do you do when your flip flops are melting into the sidewalk and you are breathing hairdryer hot air?

 
Mostly you’ll probably want to stay behind closed doors with the AC on. But if you are determined to get out and about, here are a few ideas:

What has been your experience of Melbourne?

Getting internet access can be so painful!

We recently asked you a few questions on what you thought of LovePlayWork.com.

We’re still trawling through all your lovely responses (thank you!) to work out how we can best use the info. But something that did come up quite frequently was a slightly dark preoccupation (hehe) with the unexpected, unpredictable and downright rubbish aspects of location independence.

Now we all know that location independence brings wondrous moments, uplifting experiences, rainbows and fairy dust (lol)….but what about the bits that, when you embark on your journey, are likely to piss you off too?

Lucky for you, I’m in that kind of mood today, so here goes, warts and all (plus some of our worst pictures!). Don’t forget, you asked for it (you sick puppies).
 

But what do you think?
Are these downsides unexpected?
Would you anticipate something different?

Falling out in Bangkok!

We haven’t written a standard blog this week. Chris and I have been having some (ahem!) ‘discussions’ and have some differences with regard to future direction for loveplaywork. One thing we do agree on though is that getting your input is the only way to move forward.

Could you help us out with a few questions? Naturally your answers will help prove either a) me or b) Chris right which is always healthy for any relationship, hehe.

And in return for taking a few minutes out for us (even if it was only from cat videos or facebook!) we’ll randomly select someone to receive a £25 (around $40) iTunes voucher.
 

So here’s what we were wondering:

 

 

Thanks for helping us out!

 
*We will announce the winner of the iTunes vouchers on our Facebook page next week, so make sure you like us to stay up to date!*