With beginning of yet another endless summer, the clouds finally clear, sun beating down upon us, and   girls in bikinis dotting the southern California beaches (well, when I wrote this it was sunny), I look back at where I was this time last year and I’m truly grateful for how much starting this site has changed my life.  For the most part my life to most people reads quite a bit like the endless summer.  Anyways, I want to share some not so obvious ways in which starting this blog has changed my life.

Self Exploration: If there’s anything that blogging has done for me, it’s given me a great opportunity for self exploration. Yesterday I was interviewed by my friend Caroline, the founder of Reflectmylife who asked me what people who should do if they don’t know what they love or what their passion is. That turned out to be a challenging question for me because I don’t think there is a right answer. I think the key to that however is doing a good amount of self exploration or soul searching. I think writing, regardless of whether you do it on a blog or not is a great tool for soul searching. As Tony Robbins said “A Life Worth Living is a Life Worth Recording.”

Physical Health: I would say I’m probably in the best physical health of my entire life today. For a good amount of my 20’s I was a heavy drinker and I would even smoke cigarettes when I drank. I still enjoy going out with my friends and having drinks, but it’s definitely done in quite a bit more moderation. While the blog itself is not responsible for my physical health, since I tend to use my time in the water as means of creative thinking and coming up with content ideas, the blog has indirectly impacted my physical health in numerous ways.

Financial Awareness: I made many mistakes in my early 20’s . Managing my finances was definitely not my strong suit. Starting this blog has given me the discipline to not only embrace the one financial habit that will make a dramatic difference in your life, but to actually track my own financial growth. Since I’m sharing my ideas with the world about how to improve all these areas of your life, I think there’s a level of accountability that comes with being a blogger.

A Dream Job: About a month ago I wrote about how my blog has helped me with my day job. Up up until this last year, I’ve hated every job I’ve had. I never looked forward to going to work and was always looking for my escape from the 9 to 5. Today, things are really different. I actually have what many people would consider a dream job. I’m the editor in Chief of the Flightster Travel blog and I get to run all the social media marketing for an online travel site. I don’t really think of it as a job as much as I do yet another opportunity for creative expression that happens to come with a paycheck. As a byproduct of that I think I’m better at it than any job I’ve ever had.

A Global Network of Friends/Contacts: Bloggers are a truly a tribe and a community. If you look at a tribe, it’s members, and their subculture you will start to see that it is a beautiful thing.  The people I’ve connected with online over the last year have been some of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met in my life. The great thing is that they are a like-minded group of people all trying to live their life to the fullest. Not only that, they are eager to see you live your life to the fullest. As you know you’re the byproduct of who you surround yourself with.  Surround yourself with people who are living the lives of their dreams or are on their way there, and you will eventually become one.

Creative Expression: What motivates is often quite surprising. Many people don’t realize that money is actually not the most powerful motivator in getting us to reach our full potential. Don’t believe me? Read Dan Pink’s book Drive or Dan Arieli’s The Upside of Irrationality. It turns out we have a strong need for intrinsic benefits in things we do. When I encourage people to start blogging, I think they often get caught up in the idea that writing is the only form of blogging. But it doesn’t have to be.

• If you are an artists, put up your work on a blog
• If you are a musician, share your music, or teach us how to play
• If you are a cartoonist, put up your illustrations through a blog
• If you’re a video wiz, then make use your blog as a video platform

The truth is that it’s a platform for anything you want it to be.

Yaro Starak/Blog Mastermind: I know I’ve mentioned this to you before and you can even check out my recent interview with Yaro. I can honestly say that signing up for Blog Mastermind was one of the best investments I’ve made in my entire life. Everything you see today was a byproduct of that and I encourage you to take a look at Yaro’s Program, by click on the banner below. Even if you don’t sign up for the program, get on his newsletter and get his free ebook.

Note: This is a guest post by M.Farouk Radwan, founder of www.2knowmyself.com,The ultimate source for self understanding.

This is what I know about you

What if you discovered that your friend’s IQ was very low and that this would never help him succeed in life, will you be able to tell him this fact or will you just avoid hurting him by hiding the truth?

That’s a tough situation especially if you loved that friend so much but what if that friend was you and what if the one who made the discovery was your subconscious mind???

Self deception and luck

Sometimes it hurts the ego much less to believe that life is unfair or to claim that you are unlucky than to admit that you didn’t try hard enough

To some people, especially the ones who don’t understand that success is only a matter of the number of tries, they feel really bad when they fail and so in order to protect their egos they attribute their failures to things such as luck and unfairness of life.

While in fact succeeding in doing anything is all about failing enough times until you manage to do that thing without failing.

Remember when you were a little kid and trying to walk for the first time?

How many times did you fall?

Why didn’t you blame your luck for it?

And why did you keep trying?

Simply because at that time your weren’t taught yet how to blame the circumstances for your faults.

Now remember when your parents started hitting the ground (as if they were punishing it) when you first fell down and hurt your head?

At this point your parents were teaching you indirectly how to blame the ground when you fall!!

But life is sometimes really unfair and there are lucky people

Yes some people were born with tons of resources but they wasted them!!

Some people were born without resources and managed to collected all the resources they wanted

How many poor men became billionaires and how many millionaires lost their money?

I agree that your starting point might depend on fate, fairness of life, luck or whatever you call it but the end point is 100% under your control

You might have been born without any skills but learning new skills is your choice

You might have been born without any luck but changing your life and creating your own luck is up to you.

When I first started my website I believed I had amazing content but my site was unknown for one year. at this point I could have said that life is unfair and I would have stopped working on it but because I believed I deserve to succeed I managed to continue until I reach a point where my website gets above half a million hit per month

I wasn’t lucky at all but I forced my way and created my own luck

You too can do the same because I not a super man but I am just a person who has correct beliefs about life, success and luck

Don’t blame your world but force your way and create your own luck

Earlier last week Corbett Barr wrote a post at Think Traffic about how much you need to reveal about yourself online to be authentic and transparent. It definitely set off a great discussion and inspired me to give all of you a no bullshi#$3 look at who I am as a person.  Corbett even wrote his own post about this where he revealed 33 thicngs you might not have known about him.  So let’s get started:

18 Completely Random Things About Me

Fu#$#d up Situations: I think for anybody who is a close friend of mine it’s a known fact that I’ll probably put your life in danger at least once. You guys know who you are. It’s never intentional and usually it makes for a great story. My Tijuana high speed car-chase is absolutely a true story and over the years my friends have shared it even with their friends. Of course, my friend in the story continually adds new details that didn’t actually happen every time we tell this story to anybody.

No Filters: I have a tendency to speak my mind and don’t usually filter conversations. In certain moments this can get me in real trouble (like using four letter expletives around 3 year old kids). Fortunately since my closest friends have had kids, I’ve been a bit better about this since I don’t want their kids to be screwed up.  But, if I’m around adults, you can pretty much assume I’ll say whatever I’m thinking.

Selfishness: To be honest I’m pretty damn selfish. One of my friends called me out on it so I figured I’d just write about it. Apparently, this is a trait of people who are Aries. I don’t know anything about that. All I know is I will blow off almost anything if the surf is good. While I will accommodate people to some degree, if you choose somewhere to eat that I absolutely hate, I will let you know. Once I went to dinner at a family friend’s house in India and they served an Indian dish called idli and sambar, which I’ve hated since I was a kid, so I didn’t even eat.   When my sister was born, many people came and brought her gifts. One of my parent’s friends’ was nice enough to bring some cookies and I said “I don’t want these stupid biscuits, I want a real gift.”

My friends Mean The World to Me: On the flip side of all this selfishness is that my friends mean the world to me. They’re like family to me. I even have a list of friends who a girl I’d marry would have to meet and all of them would have to give a thumbs up. If even one person on the list said, no I’d see it as a red flag because I trust these people so much.

Dating/Relationships: The same friend who told me I could be selfish also said that I never write about my dating life. Well, that’s because there isn’t a whole hell of alot to write about. You want the honest truth? For some reason this has been a struggle for me for a good amount of my life. It’s not like I don’t know how to talk to people. I guess it’s just that chemistry hasn’t been there with alot of people. All of my interest in self improvement has primarily been driven by desire to get some consistency around this part of my life.

I’ve never been in love. I told my past two girlfriends that I loved them, but I knew with the first few months of dating both of them that I never had any intention of marrying either one of them. So, I guess you could say I’m kind of fu#$#d up. Last week I wrote about the the difference between settling and settling down and in these two cases I didn’t really do a good job of making that distinction.

When I was a kid I used to be absolutely terrified of swimming lessons. Every time my mom would take me to the pool for lessons, I would cry. Talk about irony. I still can’t swim worth shi#$3 which probably sounds insane to most of you. I learned that when my leash came undone and I had to swim 200 yards to shore to get my board.

If I don’t marry and Indian girl then I’ll only have to invite 500 people I don’t know to my wedding. If I do, then we’re looking at 1000 people: her parent’s friends and my parent’s friends.  Indian weddings are also notoriously long. Imagine losing focus at your own wedding because of ADHD. (this is kind of a joke).

Redheads in Red Dresses: I don’t know why but I think when a girl with red hair is hot, she’s ridiculously hot. Add a red dress to that and I fee like that’s a woman who should be the center of attention in any room. If you know any, let me know.

I don’t do anything half-assed: If I’m into something, I’m usually obsessed with it. If you have been reading my blog for a while, that should be obvious to you. This tends to be useful in some areas and harmful in others. Fortunately at this point my life it’s taking a much more useful form.

I have a highly addictive personality: This kind of goes along with obsession. I have an extremely addictive personality and if I find that something makes me feel really good (i.e. riding waves) it will be something that becomes an endless pursuit in my life.  When I was younger this manifested in more self-destructive ways.

I’m impulsive as hell: My parents don’t know this, at least they didn’t until now. But I once went to Amsterdam for a 3 day weekend on a whim. I just saw a ticket on sale and bought it and left 3 days later. When my mom asked why I had a replacement passport I made some story.

I’m an adrenaline junkie: I thrive off of high adrenaline activities, hence the reason I probably got so hooked on surfing. I’ve been skydiving and I’ll probably do it again. It’s likely I’ll bungee jump, go hang gliding and try out a few other things. I might draw the line at base jumping.

I went to 9 different schools before 10th grade. Since I grew up all over the world I ended up in  different schools multiple times when I was growing up.  Oddly enough, 7 of those schools were all in the 7 years we lived in Texas. The year I entered eight grade they finally combined 6th, 7th, and 8th grade into one school.

I’ve always had roommates. I actually have always had roommates out of choice. I don’t like living alone. Even if I had a ton of money I would probably still want a roommate. I think that being completely alone would drive me absolutely nuts.

I have uncanny memory for useless information. Strangely this has never come in handy in my academic life. I have a tendency to remember names, details and other completely random things people tell me about themselves. In fact I can remember things people told me a year ago if I’ve only met them once. I guess the only really useful this has taught me is how to get free drinks and get treated like a VIP.

I suck at Math for an Indian Person: Everybody thinks Indians are good at math. Not me. I actually got a higher verbal score on my GMAT than I did on my math.  In fact I was happy to never take another math class again after my sophomore year in college.

I’m scared to death of holding newborn babies. My friend’s recently had a baby boy and I went to see him. He was 4 weeks old and adorable. When my friend asked me if I wanted to hold him, I said no. I think they’re so small that you could break them so that freaks me out.  It’s likely this stems from an incident when I was younger where i pulled my 6 week old sister out of her crib and brought her into the kitchen to my mom, while holding her like a loaf of bread. My mom freaked out, but luckily didn’t yell because she didn’t want to freak me out and cause me to drop my sister.

In the spirit of authenticity and transparency I thought I should let you guys get to know me a bit better.

I want to ask you to do something over the next 2-3 weeks. I want you to write your own version of a  post where you tell us a bunch of things about yourself that we might not have known.  Then share it on twitter with the hashtag #gettoknowme. Let’s see if we can’t start a small movement. If you actually do this after we get lots of posts written I’ll do a roundup of them all. Also, let’s share each other’s posts on twitter and see if we can’t drive a bunch of new visits to each other’s blogs.

This is the continuation of a project that I started a few weeks back with Christina Lohman from The Savvy Grad. For the purposes of these posts, I’m going to try to keep the summaries of what I’ve been going through fairly short. I’ve gone through 9 days of the Tony Robbins Personal Power II program and it’s been kind of amazing to go back and discover many things I have forgotten.

• Power Questions: First, I want to basically go over this concept of power questions. The idea is basically that we can link up certain states of mind to waking up if we ask ourselves the right questions for 30 days. Essentially what is called a neuroassociation is formed. So, I’ve been starting every morning with the question “what am I grateful for?” At this point, I’m almost starting to wake up in a state of gratitude. The beauty of this concept is that you can ask your brain anything, even if the question has no basis in reality. To me that’s like somebody gave you a brand new car filled with a gas tank, and didn’t give you the keys. Once you have the keys you can haul some serious AS#$#. So I’ve been religious about reviewing a series of  5 questions every morning when I wake up.
• Values/Beliefs: I was surprised to discover some limiting beliefs that I didn’t know I still had, but were actually holding me back quite a bit in some area so my life. Fortunately, the program includes a great belief change exercise known as the Dickens pattern, where you imagine 5, 10, 25 years with limiting beliefs. Once you realize where you’re headed with these limiting beliefs it gives you leverage on making change. At the end of the day you can believe whatever you want to, yet so many of us have beliefs that are based on the conditions of our lives.  Basically the pattern looks somewhat like this  stimulus==>response==>belief. Rinse, wash and repeat a few thousand times and you have alot of issues in your life. So, the idea behind this part of the program is to get you mentally prepared for the next portion, which is about accomplishment.
• Goals: While I haven’t set my list of goals, I will actually publish it on a page here on my blog and cross things off that list as they occur. The tape I heard today was about identifying what parts of your life you’re not satisfied with. On the one hand, you want to learn to enjoy what you’ve got, but you also need to have some drive to make changes.  So, over the next few days I’ll be writing down some of my goals and sharing them here on the blog. Stay tuned.

The other day when I was out in the water with a friend of mine who is learning how to surf, he asked me what I’d been thinking about for the last 4 hours. I told him that I couldn’t remember a single thought, other than “wow, the girl surfing next to us is really hot.” Lately I’ve been noticing something when I surf and I probably even made reference to it in the post I wrote about the health and mental benefits of surfing. I’ve noticed that right after I take off on a wave, my mind goes completely blank. Thought ceases to exist. Since many of you might not be able to surf, I want to talk about something that can give you some of the benefits I gain from surfing. It’s the importance of a quiet mind.

Some of you may or may not know that there was a period in my life where I was fairly depressed, even taking anti-anxiety medication and just worried about everything possible that could go wrong. Somewhere along the way that changed and I realize it’s because I had found a way to quiet my mind.

The world we live in today is one of heavy information overload. It’s likely from an evolutionary standpoint we were never meant to spend this much time indoors or staring at computer screens. To add to that, we have our life to deal with. As a result you have a steady stream of mental chatter:

• Worrying about what you have to do for the day
• Worrying about tomorrow
• Worrying about what happened yesterday
• Opinions on the article you just read
• Opinions on somebody’s tweet
• Opinions on your friends facebook status update
• Thinking about recent conversations you had
• etc, etc

This list really does go on and on. It’s pretty much endless.  Imagine if you had a car that you drove continually, and you never did any maintenance on it and every night somebody else took it and drove it all night. Eventually it would break down much faster. I think that our brains are kind of the same way. They weren’t possibly meant for incessant thought. Even when you sleep you are still thinking. My friend Karol Gajda wrote a really great article on active relaxation which I think you should read. I tried what he suggested and it was amazing.

Meditation

Meditation doesn’t have to be the challenge so many people have made it out to be. As you all know I have ADHD so the idea of spending an extended period of time doing damn near anything, especially nothing, drives me crazy.  But, it doesn’t have to because you can just shut yourself off for about 5 mins.

Basically all you need to do is close your eyes, focus on your breathing, and take long deep breaths. If you keep the focus of your thought on breathing, you’ve more or less shut down the stream of information which is the whole point. Believe it or not this is more effective than an hour nap because you’ll come out even more refreshed.

A thoughtless mind can be incredibly powerful in so many areas of your life. Have you ever noticed when you stop thinking about a problem, a few hours later you have the solution? In my own experience I’ve found that a thoughtless mind enables some of the most creative things you’ll ever do.  85-90% of my ideas for this blog and everything I do in social media are usually developed while I’m in the water. Ironic huh? I’m not even thinking about anything, yet dozens of new ideas are coming to fruition. Embrace the power of a thoughtless mind for the next 10 days, and see what happens.

I believe that one thing which differentiates the people who get great results from the rest is the way they use their ability to think. More specifically, they way they’re able to plan their journeys with efficiency, in order to reach impressive destinations. And when they do, this does not surprise them. Because it was well planed ahead and thought through.

Most people go through their lives and their careers mostly based on impulses. They never really thing things through, they act thinking just one step ahead. Their actions usually fall into patterns like these:

• Quit job in order to stop doing something you hate;
• Accept new job in order to make a living;
• Spend money on a trip to Paris in order to enjoy yourself;
• Quit job again when you start hating it.

The actions of those who get great results fall into more complex patterns, which unfold over longer periods of time:

• Get a job you have natural abilities for-focus on learning and further developing those skills-focus on performance and getting paid in accordance-save money-start your own business with the saved money-run the business in parallel with the job until it reaches break-even quit the job and focus on the business make the business very profitable reduce working hours and go to Paris every week.

The first kind of person with usually struggle working an endless line of meaningless jobs, while only finding momentary enjoyments and never really achieving personal and financial freedom. The second one will eventually reach a point where she will have enjoyment, performance, money and free time to much higher degrees. She will have a lifestyle which is completely at another level.

How did she succeed? By thinking two step ahead. This is just the general metaphor which in practice may actually mean thinking 3 or 4 steps ahead, but the idea behind is the same: she is looking beyond the immediate results and she is acting in accordance with a long-term plan.

In theory, I know this can sound like a breeze. In practice it is much harder; otherwise everybody would already by living rich, meaningful, amazing lives. I think that it’s harder in practice for a couple of key reasons:

• A lot of people don’t really put in the time and effort to figure out what they want and how to get there. And since a good plan does require both of them, they end up with only vague preferences on which they can only rely to take the next step.

• It’s very easy to become a victim to the impulse of the moment. You have a big fight with your boss, you get angry, and you immediately quit your job. Then you get so excited when you receive a job offer that you immediately accept it, without thinking if it’s really the right job for you long-term.

• We are afraid to make big, long-term plan and to commit ourselves to them. Because with big plans come big risks and big responsibilities, so we are temped to choose a life adrift, which in our minds seems a lot safer, even if it’s a lousy choice in the long run.

The way out, the way to great results is going to the roots, and addressing these key reasons head on. It is by putting in the time and effort to think ahead, not becoming a victim of momentary emotions and learning to take risks that we end up making great things with our lives. There is power of thinking two steps ahead, of having a solid plan, and it is yours to use.

Eduard Ezeanu is a communication coach with an attitude-based approach. He helps others to improve people skills they find relevant and get top notch results. He also writes on his blog, People Skills Decoded.

As some of you know, I have a day job as the editor in chief/director of social media for a travel blog called Flightster. Today we’re launching a campaign to choose a new blogger to become a regular contributor to our writing team. I wanted to let all of you read my blog here know about it so that you can participate. We pay $75.00-100.00 per post, that should give you some incentive to participate. Check out exactly how to get paid to write for the Flightster Blog

In the last several weeks I’ve been connecting with many people who are truly living the life of their dreams or taking steps in that direction. Whether you are a blogger or not, I want you to check out the blog of my new friend’s Betsy and Warren Talbot, Married with Luggage. They have sold everything they own to spend 3 years traveling the world.  They have a great story and I think you’ll find their blog very inspiring.

The Lifestyle First: When I interviewed Dave Navarro, the author of the Rock Your Day Blog (another awesome self help blog), he told me that you need to setup your lifestyle first and then build your business around it. This is one place I think far too many people go wrong. They focus on setting up a business because they believe that the money will be the thing that ultimately sets them free. The irony of this is that that way they setup their business ends up being the thing that chains them down.

To a large part I live the life of my dreams. In many I was blessed with 8 months of unemployment to figure out what exactly it was that I wanted. I think far too often people end up where they are by default and before they know it 20 years have passed by. Think about how you would spend your days if money wasn’t getting in the way. It’s likely that is what you are really passionate about. Then start building your business around that.

Figure out a way to schedule your life around what you love instead of the other way around. I knew during that 8 months that I wanted a life where I’d get to surf every day. Today, I more or less live that life. The only thing I would change is the ability to travel a bit more than I do.  When I tell people about my lifestyle, I usually get a “I’m jealous” response. I tell them “I’d be jealous of me too ” Often I speak with people in their mid to early 20’s who are eager to break free from the chains of the corporate world. I think that they have fallen victim to the ego driven pursuit of a life that looks good on paper, without even knowing it. They end up making a long term sacrifice for a short term gain.

The Business Second: One thing that people to sometimes fail to realize about all these people that are building their mini empires and living the lives of their dreams is the amount of work that went into getting there. Many of the really popular blogs you read where people are making 5 figures a month have been around upwards of 2 years in some cases.  But the business has to be a part of moving towards the life of your dreams. If I had done nothing but surf during that 8 months last year, then  I wouldn’t be here today.  During that time I put in several hours a day to working on this site and connecting with people all over the web. This is is partially why it drives me crazy when I see unemployed people waking up in the morning with nothing to do other than submit resumes. If you are unemployed, I encourage you to check out my interview with Peter Bregman, from the HBS press.

4 The Things That Get In Your Way

• Fear: Fear is a natural part of life. But, what’s amazing is that it’s a learned behavior. You weren’t born fearful. In fact, you’re more or less born with a clean emotional slate. But then life happens to you and you get scared shitl#$# to take chances. Just remember, that risk, reward, and bliss go hand in hand .
• Doubt: Self doubt is one of the most insidious things in our society. This is also another learned behavior that is a byproduct of all the things that happen to you over the course of your life. Think about how much and how often this has gotten in the way of you living the life of your dreams and you’ll eventually be motivated to get rid of self doubt in your life.
• Uncertainty: If you haven’t noticed by now, I stole these three things from The Matrix. As Morpheus said to Neo “you have to let it all go, fear, doubt, uncertainty.”  The truth is certainty is something that will never be guaranteed in your life. If life was completely predictable it wouldn’t be interesting at all. If every wave was the same, surfing wouldn’t have nearly the appeal it does. Everytime you paddle for a wave, there’s an element of uncertainty, but that’s what makes it thrilling.
• All or Nothing Thinking: I recently wrote an article at the Change Blog titled Is this kind of thinking getting in your Way?. All or nothing thinking is such a huge barrier to accomplishing goals. This kind of thinking often causes people not even start pursuing their goals. I encourage you not to concern yourself with how you’re going to reach the end goal. Where you’ll start is not where you’ll end in many cases. So just take the first step and focus on today.

The life of your dreams is not as far out of reach as you might think it is.You have to be willing to make a few short term sacrifices for many long term gains. So, what are you doing to move towards the life of your dreams?

1. Your first post: The Limitless Power of imagination. It’s kind of weird to take a look back at my first post and think how much the blog has changed along with my writing style.
2. A post you enjoyed writing the most: You Shouldn’t Trust People Who Don’t Like Chocolate. It’s kind of a funny rule, but it seems to have served me well in my life. For all you weirdos out there who don’t like chocolate, I don’t know where to begin.
3. A post which had a great discussion:8 failures That Brought to Where I’m at Today. This seems to be without a doubt my post discussed post with lots of talk on twitter, links to other blogs, and even a feature on Brazen.
4. A post  on someone else’s blog that you wish you’d written: If there’s one person who writes stuff I wish I had written it’s Ashley Ambirge at the Middle Finger Project.  She’s one of the most unique voices around, so picking one post was hard.  The Lost Art of Quitting was one of my Personal Favorites
5. A post with a title that you are proud of: How Often Do You Decide not to Brush Your Teeth? This post was one of my earlier posts that I wrote about the importance of consistency  and I always thought this title was kind of cool.
6. A post that you wish more people had read: 10 Surfers Describe The feeling of Riding A Wave. As an avid surfer this feeling is one I think most people don’t really understand. The descriptions from all these people should give some idea of why I’m so addicted to riding waves.
7. Your most visited post ever: The Jack Bauer Guide to Getting Shi#$# Done. Not sure why this one was so popular. Maybe because Jack Bauer is such a bad ass mofo that we all want to apply his productivity methods.