Early Sunday morning, two brothers will pick me up from my hotel in Kathmandu. We will drive several hours to a place called Sole Bazaar and from there I hear it’s an eight-hour hike by foot, through areas infested with leeches, to the remote village where the project is located.

This isn’t a photo expedition or a mini-vacation. If the weather holds out, I will be taking plenty of photos but that’s not the purpose of this trip. I’m doing this for the kids like those in the photo above.

So where am I going? I’ll be visiting the project site for a small non-profit organization called Nepal FREED, whose primary goal “is to make education more accessible for the children of Nepal”. The group helps build, fund, and run schools using local materials and local labor.

As I’ve mentioned before, I wholeheartedly believe that the best way to change the future is through our children. Their education will determine their ability to continue working towards a better world.

Nepal FREED is a very small organization founded by a man who grew up in Nepal and who now lives and works in California. His entire family is involved in the project — it’s his two brothers who are picking me up. Neither of them speak English, so hopefully they bring an interpreter (maybe I should’ve taken that crash course in Nepali after all).

How I heard of project is a story of its own. A close friend of the founder read the Small Ways to Make a Big Difference ebook and he was intrigued by my vision for using technology to help make the world a better place. He has similar ideas and sent me an email asking if I would be interested in getting involved with his friends’ project.

It would’ve been easy to say yes and write a long blog post about the organization asking everyone to go support them (that’s not what this is). I could’ve helped them redo their website and set up a Twitter account. I could’ve used my own Twitter account to spread word about their cause. But I didn’t do any of those (at least not yet).

In a world where people are doing and saying anything to clamber for attention, all we have is who we are; all we have is our integrity. If who we are is tarnished — if our integrity is weakened — we stand little chance of really being trusted.

One way to weaken our integrity is to jump on any and all available opportunities without hesitation and without putting much thought or research into who or what is involved. Taking the easy and cheap way out rarely builds integrity.

I’ve always been extremely skeptical and cautious when it comes to money. I know how powerful a drug greed can be and how quickly even the best intentions can turn evil (I wrote about this earlier).

So I replied to the email and explained that before I used my voice to spread the word about this project or support them, I wanted to see for myself the work they’re doing. I wanted to see the schools with my eyes and shake hands with the people in charge.

You can really tell a lot about a person just by meeting them and if the past four months have taught me anything, its that firsthand experience in any situation has enormous power.

I also realized that I needed to put my feet where my mouth was — I needed to start turning all those feel-good words and big dreams for a better world into tangible actions on the ground. If the ebook project was my first digital step in this new direction, this was to be my first step in the real world.

There are lots of ways to start making a difference. Is this the best thing for me to be doing with my time? I’m not sure, but it’s definitely better than sitting in a cafe.

Any action is better than no action. My instinct told me to go with this, so that’s where I’m going. This decision is way outside my comfort zone, so at the very least there will be plenty of inner development.

But I really need your help on this one. This is my first time touring an NGO project or doing anything like this and I have no idea what questions I should be asking.

If you were in my place and you were considering helping support Nepal FREED, what would you want to know? What questions would you ask the people in charge? Please share this post with others so they can provide feedback as well!

My bladder was about to burst.

Just a few more minutes, two more pages and I’ll stop and run to the restroom.

OK, back to work. I’m on a roll. No time for lunch today.

And so went the three weeks that I spent putting together my first ebook. When it comes down to it I can be very stubborn, even obsessive. It’s a quality I struggle to put to good use, but when it finds good use it’s amazing what gets done.

The staff at the cafe knew me by name — some of them even have my phone number. When I arrived, they knew what I would order and where I would sit. Sometimes they would inquire as to what I was working on. Sometimes they would leave me notes telling me how impressed they were by my diligence.

When the cafe closed at ten, I would walk back to my hotel room, past the crowds of drunken tourists who were loudly making their way into one of several clubs, where even louder music was blaring, filling the streets of Kathmandu with sounds that didn’t quite fit with my idea of rugged and romantic Nepal — a country at the top of the world, home to the tallest mountains on the planet.

I would plug in my laptop, lay down on the bed, and continue working until two in the morning, wrestling with unreliable WiFi and the occasional power outage while the sound of monsoon rains trickled in through my window. Five hours later I would wake up and repeat the entire process again.

I was enjoying every moment of it. There wasn’t a single day where I wished I could stop and take a break. Every single day was filled with pure enthusiasm, pure motivation. There was absolutely nothing I would’ve rather been doing, not even catching up on sleep or exploring the back streets of Kathmandu.

But why? Why I was working so hard with no apparent short-term reward or promise for success?

It’s because for the past three weeks, the only thing that mattered in my life was the completion of that ebook. Everything else — from eating lunch, to using the restroom, to sleeping — was simply an obstacle I needed to get around to continue working towards that goal. The ebook project was the only bigger picture in my life.

And then the project was over. The ebook was released and everything I spent day and night focusing on, dedicating all my time and energy to, was gone. I was left feeling lost and wondering where I was and what I should be doing next.

That relentless feeling of enthusiasm seemed to vanish overnight.

And that’s when I realized that it had nothing to do with a lack of enthusiasm. It had everything to do with a lack of focus — I was missing the real bigger picture.

***

There are lots of things that we do for a bigger picture. We take care of our health or save a portion of our paycheck for the long-term health effects or the ability to have money when we need it. We fill our car with gas so that we can commute to work and earn money to support our family.

We simply could not function if all we did was tackle the big pictures.

What would happen if before filling our car with gas, we tried to list every single road we would drive on and every single place we would go with that tank of gas?

What if before we saved a portion of our paycheck, we tried to list every single thing that money might be used for in the future?

What if before we started exercising or eating healthy, we tried to determine every single illness and discomfort that we might avoid?

Nothing would get done! We’d spend so much time planning and “solving” the bigger pictures that the bigger pictures would forever remain unchanged and out of reach.

To affect the bigger picture, we need to focus on smaller, more manageable chunks. We need to take a tiny piece of that big picture and relentlessly focus on it until it’s ready for us to move on to the next piece.

We need to temporarily make the smaller picture our bigger picture.

And that’s exactly what I did for this project. For three weeks, the only goal in my life was the completion of this ebook.

But then something unexpected happened. After spending so many days and nights focusing on the project, I was left outside looking back in; the bigger picture was now just one piece in a giant incomplete puzzle.

The urge to fall back and continue focusing on that one single piece of the puzzle was strong, but I knew that if I did that, nothing further would be accomplished. Falling back and focusing on the already-complete smaller picture wouldn’t do anything to affect the bigger picture.

It didn’t take me very long to remember what the real bigger picture was — an entire world in need of help — but the experience made me realize why there are so many organizations, charities, and even individuals who are not doing everything they can to help.

It reminded me how easy it was to get distracted and lose sight of what matters.

***

As if the universe heard my thoughts and agreed with me, I was provided with an example to reinforce my realization.

The next day, an email arrived in my inbox from a new reader who had read the sections about micro-financing in the ebook. They wanted to alert my attention to a recent article in the NYTimes about how microfinancing was being misused.

For those who aren’t familiar with microfinancing, it’s a type of loan provided to small business owners and entrepreneurs, oftentimes in poor countries. The loans are generally small amounts of money — as little as $10 — and like any other loan an interest rate is charged.

However, microfinancing has grown so popular that some greedy people see it as valuable avenue for making money. Some lenders charge exorbitant interest rates — sometimes as high as 90% — in attempt to make more money and reduce their own risk.

The very people who are supposed to be helping rid the world of poverty were leeching money and stealing from the poor!

They were focusing their attention on the smaller picture and they had entirely lost sight of the bigger picture.

Poverty is the bigger picture. The smaller picture is their need to make enough money to support themselves. As long as they only focus on the small picture, the big picture — poverty — will never be solved. Instead of solving poverty, they will be doing the exact opposite and ensuring that poverty remains an excuse to continue filling their pockets.

It should be noted that Kiva, a popular organization that assists in the microfinancing process and one that was recommended twice in the ebook, goes through a lot of trouble to ensure the money loaned through their website is not misused. You can read their full response to the NYTimes article here.

I am in no way discouraging the use of microfinancing. I’m simply using the NYTimes news article as an example to show how losing sight of the bigger picture can cause us to forget what we’re working for in the first place.

***

After getting even less sleep during the night of the ebook launch, I spent the following three days sleeping nine to ten hours and eating a full meals.

I spent lots of time contemplating the prior three weeks and the strange feelings that were a result of the sudden completion of the project. I spent time thinking about how those feelings were so closely linked to how one of the greatest promises for ridding the world of poverty could so easily be misused and turned backwards.

Most bad things that happen in our life occur because we let ourselves get caught up in the moment. We take our eyes off the bigger picture and we lose sight of what really matters.

It happens all the time.

It’s obsessively checking the statistics for your blog instead of providing your readers with valuable content.

It’s focusing on what you want to say in a conversation instead of hearing what the other person is saying.

It’s becoming frustrated with a family member instead of remembering that today could be your last chance to express how much you love them.

We all do it, but the beautiful thing is that it’s never too late to start seeing the bigger picture and adjusting our priorities. It’s never too late to start focusing on what really matters.

What bigger picture do you focus on throughout your day? Do you find yourself occasionally feeling lost and losing sight of what matters?

Exactly three weeks ago, I started working on a collaborative project that had no name. I sent out dozens of emails requesting participation and quickly realized that I needed some way of organizing the emails so they wouldn’t get lost. So, I created a tag in Gmail for this project and I named it with the first thing that came to mind: “Change the World”.

Every time someone replied to an email for the project, the “Change the World” tag in my Gmail account lit up and it put a smile on my face.

Every time I got an contribution, it reminded me why I was doing this project. It reminded me that there are so many people all over the globe who genuinely care about this world and who have ideas for how to make it a better place.

In just three weeks, over 40 bloggers contributed more than 100 ways to live more sustainable, to live happier and healthier, to get more out of life, to inspire and share, to reconnect with our true selves, to be a leader, to exist more intelligently.

More than 100 ways that you can begin setting an example to be the change you wish to see in the world. More than 100 ways to make a difference in the world right now.

Please visit the page for Small Ways to Make a Big Difference to download the PDF ebook and share it with the world.

It has been a privilege to have had the opportunity to organize this book. The quality and quantity of contributions surpassed everything I could have hoped for and the real authors of this book are the contributors themselves.

It’s my hope that you will find as much value in this ebook as I found while preparing it. This ebook is free and will forever remain that way. All of the content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, which means you can do with it as you like so long as you don’t make money from it or pass it off as your own work.

***

If you’ve been reading this blog for the past few weeks, you’ve heard how traveling through India, Vietnam, and Nepal has transformed my sense of purpose. This project is my first step on that new path; my first step towards helping empower people be the change they wish to see in the world.

With the release of this project I’m also launching a newsletter and I invite you to join our community of passionate changemakers and share your thoughts, your wisdom, your insights, and your perspective. But most of all, I invite you to take this ebook and start setting an example for others to follow.

Mohammed Ali said, “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” This ebook is my first payment on an account that is long overdue. I look forward to the journey ahead and to sharing every step along the way with you.

I was sitting at a small coffee table in Kathmandu, Nepal and I had looked up from my laptop to find myself, twenty years in the future, sitting right across from me.

As I stared in disbelief, he leaned back and eased into the chair. His eyes smiled and he looked over me, as if he was inspecting a rare artifact.

“I’m you”, he said with a bit of humor in his voice, “twenty years in the future. I only have a few minutes and I’d like to hear what advice you can give me.”

Advice? What advice could I possibly give? What could I say to someone who knows every single thing about me and then an entire lifetimes worth on top of that?

This was difficult. Writing advice to my younger self was a lot easier. A future version of myself would invariably have more experience, a greater perspective, and far more wisdom than my current self. But there he was, and he wanted me to speak. He seemed a bit stronger than me, so I wasn’t about to ignore him.

What advice would a future version of myself need that he couldn’t give himself? What would he need to hear from the less experienced version of himself? What might time have taken away from him that only I could provide?

Here’s what I came up with:

Never settle. I’d like to say never settle in the literal sense (family, kids, house, etc.) but I’m a young, inexperienced, digital nomad who has just discovered his love for the nomadic lifestyle and I cannot begin to understand what you’ve been through or how you currently perceive your purpose in life. So instead, let me just tell you to never settle with ideas, with knowledge, with your accomplishments. Every day, every moment, is a fresh start. Keep the rebel in your heart alive until the day you die.

People need you. Help them. There are so many people in this world who need help. Whatever you end up doing in your life, remember them. Remember those people at every corner, every crossroads, and every intersection. Let them guide you. You won’t be here for much longer and they are the one’s who need the most help, so do what you can to help them. Remember that what you take goes with you when you’re gone, but what you give is immortal.

Stay young. Age is a measurement of how much you’re learning and how curious you are. Never stop doing either of them. Remember that youth is a state of mind, not a physical condition. Look to the younger generations to see what they’re doing and what they’re learning. Put yourself in their shoes and see their future. What can you do to improve their future?

Give unconditionally and remember your roots. If by chance you’ve found your soulmate and decided to have children, remember that strong moral values, immense respect for your elders, self-reliance, a willingness to learn, open-mindedness, and sense of fierce independence got you to where you are today. Teach your children the same, but don’t smother them. Remember that you can never give too much unconditional love and freedom so long as the two are balanced. Encourage learning and open-mindedness above all else.

Remember this one thing. You will likely take all this advice with a grain of salt because you’re stubborn and you probably feel that I’m so inexperienced and so naive that I couldn’t possibly have anything valuable to teach you. If you take just one piece of advice from this, please remember that stubbornness is only useful when it keeps you on track for a noble cause. If it’s holding you back from learning something, let it go!

Never stop questioning the status-quo. If you have kids, be sure to teach them the same. Never accept something as truth simply because someone, or everyone, says it is so. Use the information available to you, and the wisdom and experience of others, and then trust your own intuition and decide for yourself.

Music is your equalizer. Remember how important music has been in your life and how effective it has been for reeling in emotions and putting them in harmony with the rest of your being. Music helped you write this post in three hours when you were in the middle putting together your first ebook. Music will be around forever. If life feels like it’s in a knot, untie it with music.

You could die tomorrow, so make today count.

It’s never too late to start. Tomorrow holds just as much opportunity for you as tomorrow does for me.

Die running. Remember that you’ve always said you want to “die running”. No matter what happens, no matter how frail you become, no matter how many injuries you’ve sustained, no matter how sick you may be or how much you’re suffering, stay active and stay positive. Use it or lose it. If you slow down or let yourself be negative, you’re inviting death into your life.

Think forward. You might be thinking about me right now, about what life was like for me and all the things you wish you could tell me and warn me about. Stop. The past has been written and the only thing you can do a damn thing about is your present moment. No matter what your circumstances are, your future is still unwritten. Go write it.

***

I’m sure I will look back at this piece of writing twenty or thirty years from now and find it very interesting to see the perspective of my younger self. I go through the archives on this blog from time to time and I’m always astonished by how foreign my past self seems to me and by how much insight I gain from him.

If you have a blog, or even if you don’t, I highly recommend you try this exercise. Figuring out what advice we’d give our younger selves is easy, but to give our older selves advice we need to step into their shoes. By doing that we’re forced to take an honest assessment of where we think we’re headed and what type of person we think we’ll become.

I was encouraged to write this by Courtney Carver over at Be More With Less and we agreed to both do this exercise and then exchange links. Be sure to check out Courtney’s post, 20 Lessons for my Future Self.

The aged photo of myself was generated with a tool called Face of the Future.

She smiled and asked in a somewhat sarcastic tone, “Do you live here or something?”

For her, dropping $250 in a single day was no big deal. For me, that’s my whole budget for food, transportation, and lodging for an entire month.

Over the course of the past week, we had both spent several hours a day at the same cafe in the backpackers district of Kathmandu and on several occasions exchanged glances without speaking a word.

The free wifi and excellent coffee made the cafe a great place to use my laptop and for the past week it has been my home while I work during the day on my upcoming ebook, Small Ways to Make a Big Difference.

I returned the smile, simultaneously surprised and happy that my out-of-control facial hair — which I refuse to cut until the end of my initial six-month journey — had not scared away yet another person.

We continued talking and I learned that she grew up in Canada, has a degree in education, and has been traveling for the past ten years holding jobs in various countries.

She talked about how nice it was to work in a foreign country where she was not only paid well but also provided with free health insurance, free lodging, and given two months vacation every year.

She uses her vacation every year to explore various parts of the world. She’s currently vacationing in Nepal where she is taking yoga and painting classes, going on trekking tours, and hanging out a cafes reading and trying not to get bored.

Her current job has her working in the United Arab Emiraties (UAE) as a first grade school teacher for children with whom she cannot even communicate due to the language barrier.

The UAE, which she describes as being “like the twilight zone”, has the world’s seventh largest oil reserves and possesses one of the most developed economies in the Middle East.

I told her about my previous four months of travel and explained how the poverty, suffering, and inequality that I witnessed had driven me to start looking for ways to help.

When I asked her to tell me more about the UAE, she told me about the extreme riches and extreme poverty that exists there. She explained how the laborers were not supposed to work when the temperature rose above 120F degrees, but higher powers more interested in progress than human life made sure the temperature was always reported as 119F degrees, regardless of the actual temperature.

She talked about how expatriate laborers would come from countries like India and Pakistan in search of work, hoping to send money back to their families. Upon arrival, many of them would have their passports illegally confiscated.

These people would then be forced to work in grueling conditions for 14 – 16 hours a day while mothers and children, like the two in the photo above, would live in makeshift houses, oftentimes in overcrowded and unsanitary housing conditions just a few kilometers away from luxurious palaces they themselves were helping build.

Ferrari’s and Lamborghini’s could be seen driving next to the repressed people who were working to build this empire. Despite this, many of the wealthy people in the United Arab Emirates would say to your face, “there is no poverty here”.

I starting talking to her about my ideas for how I thought we could bring awareness to the problems, brainstorm solutions, and provide small steps that could make a difference in the long-term.

But instead of the enthusiastic response that I expected, she shot down each idea with an example of why it wouldn’t work. She kept describing specific types of people who were more interested in their own problems than those of the rest of the world. As far as she was concerned, the situation was hopeless.

Now before I continue, let me say that the position of a school teacher — especially one that teaches young children — is held with very high regard in my mind. I strongly believe there is no better way to change the world and affect the lives of others than through teaching children, so this post is in no way an attack on this person. Rather it’s simply an observation that I made about her attitude towards the problems in the world.

She had already accepted defeat. She had already accepted that nothing could be done about the current state of the world.

With all the difficulties, all the obstacles, and all the challenges blindingly obvious, it was easier to just say that it can’t be done. It was easier to talk about how difficult the changes would be than it was brainstorm solutions and be willing to sacrifice comforts.

***

The attitude that we bring to any situation heavily influences the outcome of that situation.

If we go around with an attitude that nothing can be done, it’s more than likely that nothing will get done. But if we approach a problem with the attitude that something will be done, then there’s a damn good chance that something is going to happen.

As my focus in life makes a huge shift towards figuring out what I can do to help make the world a better place — as I read, research, and talk to others about the problems the world is facing and the efforts already in progress — the scope of the situation is becoming more and more clear to me.

The sheer scale of the challenges and obstacles — the incredible forces of greed and ignorance; the hugely influential power of governments; the political control the wealthy — they’re are all beginning to feel unmatchable.

As I sat there working on my first ebook — a tiny piece of digital media designed to help give people ideas for ways they can make a difference in the world — this person sitting across from me was making it sound like it was all for nothing. And I was beginning to believe her.

She continued talking and I glanced down at the ebook on my laptop. For just a moment, I began to feel hopeless. I began to feel as though maybe all this work was for an unattainable dream.

Maybe there really was no hope for all those poor people dying of starvation. Maybe those children were doomed to a future without opportunity. Maybe the inhumane abuse of power in the UAE will continue indefinitely, crushing the dreams of workers going there in search for a better life for their children.

And then it hit me.

Like a virus taking control of its host, I was allowing this negative attitude to infect my dream of possibility. I was letting go of optimism; letting go of confidence; letting go of hope. I was letting go of everything that was driving me.

I was letting go of the one thing that all those suffering people are holding on to — the one thing that nobody can take away from us so long as we choose not to give it up.

***

To complain and say that it can’t be done? That’s easy. To hold your ground and take action when faced with a seemingly insurmountable challenge? That’s difficult.

Only one of those two paths leads to progress and if progress is what we seek, then the choice is clear.

Nobody said that changing the world would be easy. Nobody said that working towards a better future would be comfortable and without sacrifice. Nobody said that we could sit back and wish away all the problems in the world.

We need to maintain an attitude that we can make the world a better place, that we will work towards a world where nobody goes hungry. We need to accept that poverty and injustice exist in the world and then believe that we can do something about it.

If we combine that attitude with purposeful action, progress towards a better world is inevitable.

Photo credit to JakeBrewer

My upcoming ebook (due out by the end of this month) wouldn’t be possible without the incredible contributions I’ve been receiving from bloggers and non-bloggers alike (thank you!).

Creating something for a good cause that brings together the collective knowledge of so many individuals is exactly the type of project I want to be apart of, so when a new friend on Twitter, Abubakar Jamil, invited me to contribute to a free ebook he’s putting together, I felt it would be the perfect opportunity to give back to the community.

Abubakar’s ebook will be a compilation of life lessons and advice from various bloggers and non-bloggers. The Life Lessons Series project already has over twenty contributors and the combined volume of knowledge and advice is incredible.

My good friend Farnoosh Brock, whose own list of life lessons is an absolute goldmine of advice, emailed me yesterday to make sure I was writing this post. I must say, there’s nothing quite like receiving motivation and support from someone you’ve never actually met.

***

So what advice would I give to that three year old boy in the picture above? To really answer that question, I needed to take a walk through time and bring with me the collective experience, knowledge, and lessons of all the mistakes I’ve made over the past twenty-eight years of my life.

The point of this exercise wasn’t to see how I could have done things differently, but rather to see how I could have been more prepared for the situations I would face in life.

I don’t wish I had done anything differently. I believe that accepting our mistakes and loving oneself is vitally important to continued inner growth and who I am today is a culmination of everything that has happened in my past.

I believe we should build on our existing foundation, not leave behind an empire of half-finished castles.

***

Sitting in a comfy orange armchair on the second floor of a cafe in Kathmandu, Nepal, surrounded by the noise of cars, the whirring of a latte machine, the delicious aroma of espresso, and the sweet sound of Indian flute music, I closed my eyes and opened a dialog with the eight year old version of Raam (talking to the three year old version seemed too unrealistic).

Here’s the advice I brought back through time to give him:

1. When something isn’t changing, it will likely continue not changing.

You gotta take action and do something about it, even if that means getting uncomfortable. Even if that means pushing your limits. Even if that means making mistakes. Even if that means risking it all.

Wasting time — the one precious thing we all have a limited amount of — is just not worth it. If you feel like you’re stuck in a rut; if you feel like life shouldn’t be this way; if you feel like there’s more out there for you; take action and do something about it.

It’s going to feel like the entire world is working against you. It’s going to feel like they’re all afraid of change and that they want to convince you that change is bad and too risky. That’s when you need to take a stand, hold your ground, and believe in yourself.

There is only one person you can count on and that person is you. Don’t let him or her down. Seriously, life is just way too short to waste it.

2. Take care of your teeth.

Once your baby teeth are gone, you’re stuck with one set of real teeth for the remainder of your life. If you neglect those adult teeth, you’re screwed.

Sure, you can have cavities filled and you can even get teeth replaced with fake ones, but there is no substitute for original healthy teeth. Unlike other aspects of your health, you cannot restore neglected teeth!

Some people are born with softer teeth than others and they need to spend more time taking care of them. Whatever your case, spend a few extra minutes every day taking care of your teeth. Your long-term health, peace of mind, bank account, and your future self will all thank you.

3. You cannot control the outcome of a relationship.

All you can control is your half of the relationship. If it’s not working, don’t be stubborn and think that with enough time, effort, and patience things will magically change.

Like the previous lesson, when something isn’t changing, it will likely continue not changing. If you’ve made your best effort (which means communication when it comes to relationships) be prepared to move on.

While we’re on the topic of relationships, remember that communication is life blood of a relationship. If communication is lacking, the life of the relationship is dwindling.

Communication ensures that both sides clearly understand the motivations, beliefs, and expectations of the other side. If both parties are constantly unclear, the relationship will stagnate and not move forward — you will be wasting time.

4. You cannot own anything. You’re just the caretaker.

Think about this for a moment: Your life is on rental. You won’t have this body forever. If you don’t even own this body, so how could you possibly own anything in the physical world?

You rent everything. Your car, your house, your TV, your phone, your life. Let go of that part of you that wants to own things; that part of you that wants to possess things.

There is nothing wrong with having a house, a car, a phone, or even this life. But when we think we own them, we forget how temporary everything is and we become attached.

Attachment leads to a never ending desire for more and an inability to be satisfied. Instead of being happy and recognizing the value in what we have, we look for something else to attach ourselves to; something else to “own”. You own nothing.

The illusion that we own things leads us to spend so much valuable time in the pursuit of possessions that have no intrinsic value to our lives.

5. Time is a currency that appreciates in value and simultaneously decreases in quantity over the course of your life.

There are only a few things really worth spending time and money on in life. Family, education, and more time are some of them. Yes, just as you can spend time you can also buy time. You can pay for time through getting rid of things in your life that require your attention.

Your family, your friends, your children, your education, your health — they all require your attention and therefore you pay for them with your time. You also pay for your time with your car expenses, your home mortgage, apartment rent, cable subscription, phone bill, and even your daydreaming.

To buy more of the things you love, you need to stop spending time on things that are of less value to you. If you consider your family or your health to be more valuable than your expensive car or deluxe cable TV subscription, then reducing those expenses so that you don’t have to work so much should be a no brainer.

6. Fulfill your crazy childhood dreams as early as possible.

It’s often the acceptance that we’ll never achieve our childhood dreams causes us to accept mediocrity in life; it causes us to settle and accept the status-quo. We don’t feel driven to really achieve anything substantial in life because we’ve accepted that the thing we want most, we can’t have.

Imagine you’ve already done everything you really wanted to do in life. You would feel so content and so at peace that it would be difficult for anything else to upset you.

You’d feel motivated to use the remainder of your days being happy, truly enjoying life, and helping others do the same. You would feel so content that time wouldn’t scare you. Death wouldn’t scare you. Death would simply be — as it is — a part of life, not something to fear.

Following your heart is worth every risk!

Fulfill your dreams as early as possible. Once they’ve been fulfilled, you may discover new purpose and new meaning in life. Or you may continue living those dreams. Either way, if you’re not following your heart and living life on your own terms, you’re wasting your life.

7. Use your free time wisely.

If you’re working a boring job that involves you sitting around for hours, instead of staring off into space daydreaming, why not spend that extra time studying, learning, or otherwise doing something that improves your chances of doing something you love?

Remember what I said about things not changing unless you change them? You don’t have to quit your job and struggle to survive doing something you love. Keep your job and use your free time wisely. If you cannot read at work, turn off the TV or skip the bar after work and spend a few hours every day learning what you need to learn to live the life of your dreams.

Every minute that passes is another minute you don’t have. Most of us have less than 20,000 days left to live. Think about that for a moment: your body will be a rotting corpse in less than 20,000 days. That’s about 480,000 hours or 1,728,000,000 seconds.

By the time you’re finished reading this, you may only have 1,727,999,880 seconds remaining to live. Are you spending your time doing something worth living for?

***

This was an incredible exercise for me and I encourage you to take a few moments, close your eyes, and travel back in time to visit that younger version of yourself.

What advice would you give him or her that would better prepare them for the life ahead?

This is a guest post by my buddy and good friend, Ali Dark. Ali lives in Brisbane, Australia and I’m currently in Kathmandu, Nepal.

We spent about an hour and a half on Skype bouncing ideas off each other and discussing ways that we could help make the world a better place. This is a great example of why I think technology gives us the perfect opportunity to start bringing the world together — two people who never met each other, separated by thousands of miles, brainstorming ideas to help improve humanity.

Ali and myself are both going through life changes that involve a strong dissatisfaction with “normal” and an even stronger desire to do something that ensures we leave behind a world better than we found it. This blog post was born from our discussion and I think it includes some important ideas for bloggers and non-bloggers alike.

Making a difference starts with taking a stand. It starts with planting our feet on the ground, openly showing that we care, and being willing to discuss and brainstorm solutions to real problems… problems that are determining right now the future we leave behind for our children.

–

Let’s start a little fire that whistles “I am not scared of my conscience” all over the web. Let’s integrate our passion and conviction with the rest of our lives.

So you have a blog. It’s easier to care on Facebook or Twitter than it is on a blog. Facebook is not “on topic”. Facebook is you talking to the people who already like you. Twitter is similar, with a bit of hopeful marketing thrown into the mix.

But to care on your blog — which is not about caring but is about whatever your target market needs from you — that’s something else. That’s something called a day job.

That might be all we think of it as right now, but we can change that with a little tactful integrity.

My confession

I care a lot, but not on my blog. I care everywhere but my blog. I’d even rather care at my family dinners than on my blog. I even started another blog just so that I could care over there and not care on my main blog, where I want to sell stuff sometimes.

You know the word you just read… “integrity”? What does that really mean? More importantly, what does it mean today? The definition of integrity is getting looser and looser as the rift between life and logic widens.

Remove the disconnect. Together.

If we’re going to make a difference in the world, we need to stop preaching to the converted. We need to stand up for our beliefs. We need to become voices for our convictions. If we think there are essential problems that need solving yesterday, we need to get active. We need to integrate the information dissemination process into our lives.

Care on your blog

Here’s the call to action.

But hang on, you might be saying, my blog targets an audience who are potential customers. Why would I shoot myself in the foot by shoving my unrelated ideas into their heads? Just because I should? My wife/husband/bank account is not going to appreciate this. In fact I could do more about my cause with more money, not less.

Okay, let me be more specific. Show that you care somewhere on your blog, in interesting and creative ways that accompany and compliment your on-topic content. Like a spark, visible for a second from everywhere but not dominating the landscape.

Excerpts. Links. Call outs. Asides. Footnotes. Sublime messaging. Nothing cheap. Nothing Corny. Do it your way.

For example

My blog is about helping people shine confidently online, to rise above the branding/marketing theories and thrive as themselves. Something like that — I’m still working it out.

For bloggers, this is what I’m thinking: introduce a widget under the post or the footer of your blog, or down the sidebar somewhere. This widget could link to your Google Reader starred items. Or maybe a Twitter hashtag feed. Or maybe a specific Digg feed. You get the picture.

In this little box, in the context of “Ali’s Reading…” for example, you would see what I care about.

Your eyes will go there. You will know that it’s not about blogging, necessarily. You will know it’s not being shouted at you. You will be reading and clicking by choice. You will be learning what I care about because you care. Totally non-invasive, but strangely attractive.

If you’re not a blogger

If you’re not a blogger, why not talk about real world problems the next time you’re chatting with friends or family? Why not pose a question that will cause everybody to talk — or at least start thinking — about long-term sustainable solutions to problems the world is facing right now?

Takeaways

Let’s tell the world it’s okay to care by openly showing that we care and integrating that into every aspect of our lives. Let’s make it clear that it’s okay to express hope, concern, and conviction for the future of our children.

I know it sounds crazy, but think of it this way. Everyone cares about something. If everyone cared openly, it wouldn’t be like “oh my god this guy cares about something, smash the computer reset button, no time to backspace”. It will be like, “oh, so that’s what this guy cares about. I wonder why?”

Ali does WordPress websites for microbusinesses, freelancers, and anyone who wants one really. He also cares a lot and thinks the whole planet should be vegan. But even if you’re not, he still believes in your shininess.

I felt fear build up inside me as I recalled how nervous and unsure of myself I used to feel. I remembered the fear of being laughed at or of saying the wrong thing.

Now I was going to talk on the phone for thirty minutes while being recorded?

Since those days as a teenager, I’ve held several jobs that required talking on the phone. I learned to manage those fears and not let them get in my way of getting things done.

But this was my first Skype interview — the first time I had recorded something that was intended to be shared with the public. That gave my inner critic new ammunition to generate fear and self-doubt.

The entire time I was doing the interview, my inner critic was sitting there telling me that I sounded stupid. Every time I said umm or fumbled with my words, my inner critic laughed at me.

But I knew that if I let him have his way, I wouldn’t be doing the interview at all. I wanted to do this interview, so I ignored him. I didn’t listen to anything he had to say.

I realized afterward that my perception of how the interview went was clouded by the opinions of my inner critic.

I thought when I finally got to hear the intervew that I would sound horrible. I thought that I probably talked too fast, interrupted too often, or otherwise made it obvious that I was nervous on the phone.

And then when I got to hear the interview I discovered that all those fears were unfounded.

The interview turned out fine.

In fact, listening to it for the first time, I felt like I wasn’t even listening to myself. It felt as if the person talking in the interview was doing a much better job than the person I believed myself to be.

My inner critic wanted me to believe that I wasn’t even capable of doing a decent job on the phone. And I had believed him.

–

Our inner critic wants us to crawl into a corner and die quietly. It wants us to play it safe, follow orders, and do what everybody else is doing. It doesn’t want us to do anything important with our life and only wants us to ask questions when it’s too late to take action.

When we want to do something we’re unskilled at, our inner critic wants us to believe we can’t do it. When we have a great idea, it’s our inner critic that tells us the idea is worthless or impossible or that we’re stupid for even thinking of it.

In his book Linchpin (aff), Seth Godin refers to the inner critic as our “lizard brain” — the part of us that doesn’t want us to accomplish anything because accomplishing nothing guarantees a safer route.

It’s the part of our brain that wants us to sit on our hands and use our imagination to live out our life.

Would you rather do something with your life or watch it pass you by like a dream?

Would you rather die quietly or die valiantly?

The less action you take, the more breathing room you’re giving your inner critic.

Action guarantees a win-win situation because you’re either accomplishing something or you’re making a mistake that you can learn from. Inaction, on the other hand, guarantees you lose. Prove your inner critic wrong through action.

Every time you take action, you punch your lizard brain in the face.

Every time you take action, you win.

–

We all have greatness inside of us. We’re all capable of changing the world. We all have the potential to make a difference in the lives of those who need it the most. The only missing piece is action.

It doesn’t require volunteering at a homeless shelter, donating large sums of money, or becoming a minimalist and renouncing the modern world (although there’s definitely nothing wrong with any of those).

Each one of us is changing the world just by existing.

But to what extent are we changing the world? Is our existence having a positive effect or a negative effect?

As I spend weeks and months living in a third world country, these are questions I find myself asking more and more each day.

What small changes can we make in our daily lives that will have a net-positive effect on the world as a whole?

To help answer that question, I’ve punched my lizard brain in the face once again. I’ve started a project for a free ebook that will contain ways you can start having a positive effect on the world today. I plan to release this book before the end of the month.

I reached out to the blogging community last night and asked for help putting this book together. My inner critic was dead silent. I was turning an idea into action so quickly that I had left him speechless.

It was my turn to laugh.

–

If my inner critic had his way, the idea for this ebook would have remained just that: another idea. I wouldn’t have done that Skype interview with Hulbert and I certainly wouldn’t be writing this post on punching my inner critic in the face.

Instead of thinking you’re capable of greatness, know you’re capable of greatness. Instead of thinking that you will change the world, know that you will change the world. Instead of thinking about action, take action.

Change begins with you. Action starts now. Go ahead, give your inner critic a black eye.

Frugal Travel Reports
March 2010 (includes Pre-Travel expenses)
April 2010
May 2010
June 2010

This month has seen me travel more than 6,000 miles in three countries: India, Vietnam, and Nepal. As a result, the expenses this month are the highest since I paid for my round-trip ticket to India when I started my journey back in March.

However, I’ve been extremely fortunate to have had free lodging, food, and transportation for my last two weeks in India, free transportation, food, and some free lodging during the two weeks in Vietnam, and now free lodging and some free transportation in Nepal.

Lodging

At the beginning of the month, I spent two weeks in Delhi staying with my adopted relatives. They provided free lodging at their home along with free home cooked meals and free transportation. I took the opportunity to relax after spending the previous two and a half months living and traveling on a budget.

In Vietnam, I stayed at a hotel in the backpackers district (District 1) of Ho Chi Minh City. It was $16/night for a private room, or $8/night for a dorm-style room. I like my privacy and the security of being able to leave my backpack in the room, so even though it was more expensive I opted for the private room.

The second week in Vietnam, I went with my friend David and his wife Mai to visit relatives and family in Hue, a city in central Vietnam. David and Mai paid for the hotel room where David and myself slept (Mai stayed with her family).

In Nepal, my former boss and good friend offered to let me stay at his parents house in the northern part of Kathmandu. His parents are visiting the States at the moment, so I literally have the entire house to myself.

Food

As I mentioned previously, I had no food expenses during my last two weeks in India. When I arrived in Vietnam, I tagged along with David, Mai, and David’s brother and family to various touristy places during the day and they paid for the meals and water (thank you again!). The hotel room in Vietnam included free breakfast, so I took advantage of that.

I spent two days working from a cafe in Ho Chi Minh City (Highland Coffee) where I easily racked up an $18 bill over the course of twelve hours (the coffee drinks were so good!). A few times I ate dinner at other random restaurants around the hotel.

When David, Mai, and myself went to Hue for a week to visit family, we ate home cooked meals every single day.

I’ve only been in Nepal a few days now and Sanjay has provided breakfast and dinner cooked at home. When I was dropped off to explore the touristy Thamel region of Kathmandu for a few hours, I had lunch at a cafe that ended up being more expensive than I expected ($10!).

I definitely could have spent less money on food this month, but since I paid for so few meals I didn’t try very hard to keep the food costs down.

Transportation

Clearly the largest expense this month has been transportation. Traveling by plane is definitely the most expensive way to travel, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I would’ve loved to do everything over land, but that would’ve required lots of money for Visa’s and lots of time, neither of which I had.

I had no travel expenses in India this month besides the plane ticket to Vietnam. In Vietnam, I paid for a taxi to the hotel which cost me $7.50. After that, David and Mai paid for all the travel expenses, including several tour buses, taxis, and even the round-trip plane ticket from Ho Chi Minh City to Hue and then back! (Thanks again David and Mai!) I think I might have paid for one or two of the taxi rides with them, but otherwise they took care of everything.

The only other taxi I paid for was the one from the hotel to the airport to catch my plane to Nepal.

It was 3,040 miles from Delhi, India to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam with a connecting flight through Kula Lumpur, Malaysia. While in Vietnam, we took a plane to Hue and then back to Ho Chi Minh City, which was about 900 miles round trip. Then from Vietnam, I took a plane to Nepal with a 7-hour layover in Guangzhou, China, about 2,700 miles.

Total Distance Traveled: 6,640 miles

Other

This is the longest list of other expenses since I began doing these reports, not to mention the most expensive — almost my entire $250 monthly budget!

In India, I visited several museums and other attractions, including Red Fort, Qutub Complex, and the Akshardham temple. I also paid for some of the places we visited in Vietnam (the Cu Chi Tunnels is all I can remember paying for).

I bought two 4GB SD cards for my camera in India. I ran out of room while taking pictures at one of the weddings (luckily it was towards the very end of the wedding), so I wanted to make sure I had backup storage for my trip to Nepal.

In Vietnam, I bought some dandruff shampoo (Head and Shoulders). I think my scalp isn’t used to having hair on it! (I’ve kept it cut for the past 10 years, but decided not to cut my hair or shave during my entire six month trip.)

The Visa expenses should be self-explanatory.

I bought a Nepal SIM card so that I’d have a phone in case of emergencies. To get the SIM card, I discovered that I needed a copy of my passport and a passport photo. I already had both, but they were in my backpack which I had left at home. So I paid $4, made a copy of my passport, and waited about an hour to have the photos made (I’ve now got an extra seven passport photos, but they’re always good to have).

Summary

The expenses this month are a lot higher than I would’ve liked, but they were mostly unavoidable expenses. If I had paid for lodging, food, and transportation for the entire month, I would’ve easily spent several hundred dollars more.

For all the places I visited and all the things I got to see and do, this month was a bargain!

The Visa expenses for Vietnam and Nepal totaled almost $150, so you can see how quickly a tight budget can be eaten up by those!

Unfortunately, I’ve now gone over the six-month $3,000 budget that I set for myself. This month has been extremely tight for money. Last month when I anticipated going over budget, I began spending more time seeking freelance work to continue funding my travels, so things are a bit better now.

I have free lodging in Nepal for the next two months, but there are several multi-day treks that I’m interested in doing. Those will incur lodging, food, and some transportation expenses. Also, when I return to India for two weeks in September, I have a multi-train itinerary planned.

Other than what’s planned, I will continue living and traveling as frugally as possible. I have a very comfortable place with free WiFi here in Kathmandu and I plan to spend lots of time writing, relaxing, exercising, meditating, and otherwise keeping my expenses low.

Funds came dangerously low this month and without the kindness and generosity of people like Karmal & Mudita in India, David & Mai in Vietnam, and Sanjay in Nepal, I wouldn’t even have been able to make this month happen. Good karma and good fortune have a funny way of appearing when you need them most!

This past week marks three months since I left the place I called home for the first twenty-eight years of my life. I spent the past three months in India, a world away from my familiar home in the Northeast United States and I’m currently staying in Vietnam for two weeks before going to Nepal for two months.

Part of the reason for leaving home, changing my lifestyle, becoming a nomad was to rediscover myself; to strip my life of everything that might distract me from the process of inner discovery.

I was beginning to feel as though my life had gone down the wrong road; as if I had accidentally walked down the wrong path and I was watching the correct path disappear through a thick forest. I had to cut across. Whatever it took, I had to get to the other side. I felt an uncontrollable urge to follow my inner compass.

So I quit my job, sold all my stuff, and planned to live abroad for six months on a tiny budget of $3,000. What happened after that wasn’t important to me. With the entire world knocking at my door and absolutely no experience traveling abroad, my new lifestyle started in India. I had no idea what to expect of the following six months — I only knew that my life would never be the same again.

The first 90 days of my new life

I spent the first week in Bangalore, staying with a close friend of the family. He’s a social entrepreneur who runs a solar energy business that helps provide remote villages in India with power. Their work enables kids to study at night by providing safe lighting and even powers water pumps so that water doesn’t need to be carried long distances by foot.

Mingling with the employees at Selco and talking to the interns, I began to feel how their work had a sense of purpose; their work was changing lives. What do I do? How does my time help people? I felt selfish.

Just one week after arriving in India, I found myself living in a remote farmhouse in a tiny town where few people spoke English and even fewer people had probably seen or met a white person. I walked more than six miles a day, rode precariously packed jeeps with the locals, and learned many other interesting things that an isolated life in the States would never experience.

The days of solitude and many hours of walking by myself to and from the farmhouse gave me plenty of time to contemplate and analyze my life up until that point. I found myself in very reflective state of mind, easily learning lessons from the nature around me.

After a month in Ujire, I went the small beach town of Gokarna where I stayed for two weeks and discovered the link between frugality and gratefulness. All the poverty I had seen up until that point was beginning to have an affect on me — I was beginning to feel frustrated.

It bugged me that I wasn’t doing more to help. How could I spend time relaxing on the beach when mothers were begging for money to feed their undernourished children?

For a long time I have had a vision for a better world trapped in my head — a vision for what I believe the world should look like. The frustration drove me to write down this vision and begin brainstorming for ways that I could make a difference; ways that I could leave behind a world better than I found it.

Leaving Gokarna, I took the train north along the western coast of India to Bombay where I stayed for a few days. More beggars, more poverty, more frustration. I felt guilty for sitting inside an air-conditioned cafe drinking iced coffee and working on my laptop. People were suffering. People were fighting to survive just a few feet from where I was comfortably lounging. What makes me so special?

On my way to Udaipur, I stopped in Surat where I had the toughest experience of the past three months. Toughest experience? In retrospect, just saying that seems absurdly ignorant and selfish. The poverty level around the bus and train station seemed even worse than in Bombay. Who am I to complain about being a little uncomfortable? Big deal. At least I’m wearing clothes.

Udaipur was incredible. Upon arriving, I immediately felt a strange energy to the place — an energy that others confirmed they also felt. Perhaps those good vibes are what allowed me to be a little more spontaneous than usual. I roamed around the old city walking for hours through tiny unmarked ally’s trying to avoid the patches of tourists; trying to get myself lost in search of a life-changing experience.

A random shopkeeper started a conversation with me and before I knew it I was inside having lunch and watching TV with him and his friends. When I was younger, I had trouble talking to strangers on the phone. Now here I was in a foreign country, in foreign city, eating lunch and laughing with strangers. Isn’t this how friendly and welcoming every city should be? Isn’t this how friendly and welcoming every person should be?

I arrived in Delhi a few days later to meet my adopted grandfather who I hadn’t seen in several years. He had invited me to Delhi to attend the wedding of his granddaughter. My adopted aunt and uncle let me stay in their home until I left for Vietnam.

Their family follows the same traditions and values as my family and living with them for two weeks brought back so many memories. The love, kindness, warmth, and generosity they expressed not only towards me, but towards each other, really had a huge impact on me.

Saying good morning, good night, and taking a moment to be thankful for each meal were the norm. They seemed to treat each day as though it was their last, making each greeting as loving and warm as the previous. Taking a few extra moments out of the day to really express genuine gratitude and compassion to each person you meet has an enormous impact on the atmosphere around you.

Discovering a new meaning for existence

The past three months have not only been an incredible inner journey, but also an incredible outer journey through India. I’ve seen the progress happening in Bangalore, the slow life in Ujire, the increasing trash problems in Gokarna, the poverty in Bombay and Suart, the energy and friendliness of Udaipur, and the love, kindness, and warmth of family in Delhi.

The biggest thing I learned over the past three months, however, was that we really need to work towards a world of sustainable abundance; a world were people genuinely care about each other and the world around them.

Three months in a third world country has had a huge impact on my thoughts about life, work, and family. My inner foundation and core — my inner sense of purpose and direction in life — have been shaken. But the tremors haven’t subsided and I sense the inner changes have only just begun.

If more people spent time traveling to third world countries to witness firsthand the changes that are needed in the world, I think we would have more people talking about ways to help the homeless mothers and their starving children instead of arguing over who might be the next American Idol or spending hours of their day talking about the World Cup.

Three months ago I left home to fulfill a lifelong dream of nomadic world travel with a goal of rediscovering myself and finding my purpose. Instead, I discovered the family of four that lives on a sidewalk underneath a piece of plastic; I discovered the children walking up and down the train cars begging for food; I discovered a world in dire need of people who give a damn.

Ten percent of the richest people in the world own eighty-five percent of all the wealth; half of the world’s population owns less than one percent of all the wealth. Does that sound sustainable? Does that even sound ethical? I may not have discovered myself, but I definitely discovered a new meaning for my life — a new purpose for existing.

I now feel more concerned with how I can use my life to help others instead of looking for what interesting things the world has to give me. I now see my lifestyle of travel as a visual guide to help me assess where my energy is needed. Life is short. Others will follow. What better way to live than to work towards ensuring a better future for those who will be here after we’re gone?