How things got started

THE PIECES ARE MOVING (written January 2010)

FAILING AT MAKING MONEY

I first read 'The 4-Hour Workweek' by Timothy Ferriss in the summer of 2008. It was lent to me by a friend named Dominic Dallaire; unfortunately for him I never gave it back, more on this some other time. The bottom line is that the book blew my mind. I'm still wrapping my head around it (Geoarbitrage, New Rich, Muses, Outsourcing). I had understood the words while reading them (they were getting clearer with each beer I was drinking). Something inside my brain had begun to understand something on a deeper level. Five hours after beginning the book and twice as many beers later I had finished the book with plans to re-read it as soon as possible. As of this writing I have done serious damage to the book from reading parts of it so many times.

The results over the past 18 months have been interesting. My thinking has slowly 'morphed from conventional to completely abnormal. The worst thing is that I've been hiding my discovery of the 4HWW from some of my friends and most of my family. There's no point in discussing things with people who you know will try to sabotage your ideas. The main reason for silence is because I feared what I would have to do if I put my crazy ideas out there. You might guess that it would involve proving those people wrong about me and you would be right. I'm not into doing things for the wrong reason; doing things out of spite isn't healthy when trying to be a responsible father and husband. So for the last 18 months I've been trudging along in my mundane life, my mundane tasks slowly applying my new found skills. Those who have known me the longest understand that SLOWLY is not how I like to do anything. So while my brain has been 'morphing I have experienced a lot of growing pains, depression, anxiety, confusion and uncertainty. The basis of my anxiety has been trying to guess at what I should be doing with my time OR failing at finding ways to make money.

BACK IN TIME - GOAL SETTING IS BORING

About one month ago things started to change because I decided that I needed to travel back in time to when things were great; fourth year Human Kinetics, Terry Orlick's mental training class. I re-read his book 'Embracing Your Potential' to set me in the right direction. The problem of course is that these books don't work when you don't know which direction you're interested in sailing. Orlick's book kept talking about goals, passions, embracing. Couldn't relate. Where had my passion gone? What were my goals? I used to be on top of this stuff... perfect scapegoat = my 5 month old baby. I relentlessly started re-learning how to write goals, how to evaluate goals and BLAH... boring. At this point I forced myself to write down a whole bunch of goals that I figured I should be interested in pursuing (using my pre-'morphed brain). I can't be 100% certain but I think that this was the catalyst my brain needed to finish the transformation. I started crossing things off my goal list (personal training, fitness consulting) and I was left with a bunch of things that don't make a family any money. The difference this time is that I didn't stress about it. I embraced the hope that by doing things that I wanted to do; other opportunities would present themselves.

Here I am precisely 13 days (less 90 minutes) after declaring to Dominic Dallaire, (the guy who started this awakening) that 2010 was going to be an awesome year and that I had no idea why. He supported my approach as a faithful friend would after listening to my reasoning. I was trying something different (for me) and he respected that.

BATH TIME... ABANDON SHIP

Brain transformation nearly complete (unknowingly) I settle into the bath after a failed attempt at a family bath due to screaming baby (now asleep). The first 30 minutes consist of ridiculous random thought distractions. The next 30 minutes are annoying work related thoughts and many off-shoots. The following 10 minutes consist of feeling every itch known to man... and then finally something surprising happens... complete clarity. No thoughts and complete control. My brain starts shooting off ideas, calculations, plans and validating past ideas. I see what I have been doing wrong, I see what I have been doing right. In minutes I have what I was looking for. I need to escape my life, it's ruining me and I'm escaping with my family.

I have seen the path for my brother, my parents, my muses, my passion, even myself as charitable person. Most importantly, I see myself embracing my potential and learning new things. I'm going to live in South America, I'm renting my house, I'm selling my car and I'm finding a babysitter for my cat. All I have to do is publish this text and it's a done deal as far as I'm concerned... but I'll wait to see how the discussion goes tomorrow morning over breakfast so I can change all the 'I am' s to 'We are' s.

I can't wait to share my ideas, the final stage of my metamorphosis is approaching!!

Cheers, here's to hoping that the transformation is complete tomorrow!

Bruce