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Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Live Your Best Life





At a cooking class deep in Thailand in the fields of Chiang Mai.  What an amazing experience.

What does it mean to live your best life?  Oprah talks about it all of the time...in fact she probably has a trademark on it.

I found myself sitting in my office (not my home office), considering the routine I had fallen into.  Trying to get bigger tasks done each day - remember the prior article on high level v. low level -  only to be stymied, without fail, by small fires that would inevitably arise every single day.  From my list of 10 things to do each day, I would normally end up getting about only one of them done.  And you know what?  I was getting frustrated, more and more.  All of these fires were caused by other people's incompetence and every day I would end up, and still end up, performing these low level tasks.  

Stuck in routine.  We as creatures of habit can find comfort in that routine, even when it is comfortable.  For me, within a short period of time I find myself to be a caged animal.  So what to do?  GET OUT.  The people that have regrets in life are the people that did not try new things.  It is always better to try something you are not sure about, than regret not having done it later (unless we are talking about risking your health or safety).  What I have found refreshes me is to not let myself fall into the mold and you should consider it as well.

What mold are we referring to?  The mold which prescribes that we go to an offices or specific job from 9 to 5 every day.  The mold that says once you commit to a career, you have to stay in it and build your life around that.  BORING.  What if you special skills in unrelated areas?  Should they go to waste because apparently you are only allowed to stay and build yourself in one career?  I think not.

Turn your passions into hobbies and into businesses.  If you aren't happy in what you're doing, then do something else.  It will take risk.  And yes, it is easy to say if you don't have big bills and a family to support.  This is your one chance to live your best life - if you're not as happy as you can be now, it is not going to get any easier and life is far to short to be miserable.

Live your best life.  Every time you have a feeling of uneasiness, act on it and do something with it.  Tired of looking at a computer screen?  Stand up and go take a walk.  Don't look at the clock wondering when you can leave to take a break, take it now.  Follow your impulses!  I myself need to do more of that.  Bored with the city you're in?  Go take a trip!  If you can't afford one, jump on a bus and change your environment!!!

Change starts today, right now.  Not tomorrow.  You don't need to wait for new year's to change.  Live can go by quickly.  Live your best life now, today.  Don't be afraid., just take that first step.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Are You High Level?

It hit me the other day.  After a long trip abroad, I've been contemplating life again and I have that feeling that something is missing.  More than anything, feeling like I have become a bit bored and stressed with my day job of being an attorney and business owner.  Mind you, seeing as I don't believe in saving up vacation time and only getting to "do me" 2 weeks a year, working a 9 - 5 job is out of the question.


But it hit  me the other day.  I wasn't really lacking anything at all.  Everything I have to be happy is within me.  So what was the issue?  Simple:  I had devolved into being "low level".  I truly believe that I am here to do something on a big scale that impacts as many people as possible in a good way.  Unfortunately, over time, I had gradually gone from doing high level things to doing low level things.  The epiphany occurred to me as I was sitting in my clients' living room.  The two clients are lovely people although they struggle understanding concepts as well as with speaking, reading, and writing simple english.  As such, I find myself having to repeat myself over and over and over again, with nothing getting through.  Additionally, to provide excellent customer service I will often spend valuable time meeting with them at their home to retrieve or give documents, instead of just using email or faxing.

As I sat in their living room listening to them ramble on about things that had nothing to do with my visit, I had a mini out of body experience.  I watched myself sitting there in their dingy little living room and felt myself not wanting to be there.  My ears no longer captured the vocals coming from the wife's mouth, although my eyes stared blankly at her, while registering her mouth moving.  I smiled to her in the process as though I were agreeing with and understanding her gripe, but in reality I was contemplating how fast time goes in life and how precious every second of every day counts.  Every second I was spending there was time I could never recapture.  My precious time was being sucked into a black hole with these people and doing tasks which had no meaning to the bigger picture.

I considered how unnecessary it was for me to be there in the first place as I had only gone there to drop something off, not to sit down and try to decipher whatever it was they were saying.  It occurred to me - I was doing low-level stuff and this was causing me to depart from my true calling.  The big picture.  It was time for a shift so I could reach more people, expand my own horizons and hopefully have a positive impact on expanding the horizons of others.  

The punchline?  If you are feeling a lack in your life, have you considered if you are pursuing your true calling?  Are you stuck in the same mundane routine?  Get out of your box and stop doing so much low level stuff.  Think of your big picture and go high level to start painting it!  Ask yourself if you are truly undertaking tasks that are high level.  Just consider people that are considered successful:  Barack Obama, Warren Buffet, Oprah Winfrey...do you think they waste their precious time arguing with a loved one about a Facebook post, or are they promoting a book that could change the lives of hundreds of thousands?  Are they driving around picking up documents from someone's house and listening to indiscernible english, or are they putting together business deals that will employ 1000 people?  

So what are you doing that's bigger?  Ask yourself!





Photos from China - DAY 1 - Photo Journal

Some of you my loyal readers have been wondering where the hell I've been?  Well, traveling, enjoying life, stressing about life, and going through a major transformative year!  As I gradually reduce my workload so that I can focus more time to this blog, I would like to share with you some photos from my trip to China.  I just got back from an amazing adventure through Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia and want to start writing about that while the memories are fresh.  However, given how indelible the images, sites, smells, and sounds were from that experience, I don't anticipate forgetting anything anytime soon!  

I know, I know…I haven't even finished writing about China…stay tuned :)  In the meantime, enjoy some of the visuals.





From the beautiful hotel grounds to the busy streets leading up to the markets, everything about the trip was magical.  Cleansing, even.  Things have really changed in the country - the days of millions of people riding bicycles have been replaced with luxury cars and mopeds (I don't think I saw a single car that was older than 3 or 4 years).



We had an amazing time at the food / night  market.  Amazing dishes, ambience, and tones of tourists!  They were selling scorpions and starfish to eat (believe it or not the poor things were still alive while impaled on the skewers), but I think they were more for tourists as I didn't see a single Chinese person eating them.

Stay tuned for more!