The Secret Weapon!

By Howard Partridge

Once you have identified past referral sources, you now have a profile of potential referral sources. You have a reward system in place. Now it’s time to make a visit to their office or store. There is one secret strategy that will do more for your referral relationship program than anything else.

What is this powerful secret? Food. Yes, food. In particular, donuts, chocolates, pizza, lunch, candy, snacks, etc. Food is the international language that everyone understands! Food is the one thing that can gain the attention that you cannot get any other way. The reason is that feeding someone taps deep into the Law of Reciprocity, which says, “If you give me something, I give you something.” With food it goes deeper. It penetrates our most primitive make up. If you feed me, I owe you the time of day. If you give me a treat, I owe you at least a couple minutes of time!

Remember the Five Point Marketing Message from an earlier article? What a great time to share it—while they are partaking of the delicious brownies or candy you just brought! If you walk in with sales materials, what’s their posture? Busy! Too busy to talk. But if you walk in the door with a box of Krispy Kreme donuts, they will listen to every word you have to say! It’s amazing, and I have seen it work over and over again.

I first learned this from my wife, Denise. She’s in radio sales, and I noticed that she would take her clients milk and cookies and, in the afternoon, bring them lunch. She even had a company that made custom chocolate bars and she had the client’s logo branded on the chocolate bar.

Just about every night she’s wrapping gifts for clients and people in her network. All of the closets in our house are jammed with gifts that don’t belong to anyone yet. She buys things as she sees them, then when there’s a need, the wrapping begins! I finally “got it” one hot summer morning when she was walking out the door to go to work with a laundry basket full of things for the pool—squirt guns, goggles, and flip flops. “Where ya' goin’ with that stuff?” I asked. “Oh, a lot of my clients have kids, so I’m bringing them stuff for the pool.” Hmmm…, I thought to myself.

I decided to try it out.

There was a large potential referral source that I had called on 11 times (yes, eleven times). I had nice brochures and a nice introduction, but I didn’t have the secret weapon. Every time I went into this place, I got the same response—a stiff arm came up along with, “We’re real happy with the people we’re using right now. Thanks for coming by.” But this time I went to the grocery store and bought a little box of chocolates for $2.99.

I walked in and a lady down the hall noticed me come in. I introduced myself and she responded with the same stiff arm answer. She obviously didn’t see the chocolates, so I said, “But I brought chocolates,” with a little smile on my face. You should have seen her body language change! It went from the Nazi stiff arm to standing in front of me holding the box of chocolates almost close to her heart. I could almost hear her thinking, Who is this nice man bringing me chocolates! Within seven days we began getting referrals from that company. And they became a consistent referral source for us from that point on. One of my early members increased his business $30,000 per month by making Friday “Donut Day.” He and his wife loaded up the truck with branded boxes of donuts every week and set out to see as many referral sources and accounts as they could. I ran into him at a conference recently, and he told me it continued to work so well that he now has other people delivering donuts on a regular basis. That is the case with us as well.

A final food story that is instructive is about an auto repair shop called Freedom Automotive. My service company has a nice clean fleet of vehicles parked outside. Freedom Automotive obviously noticed the fleet, and one morning a box of donuts and a little card from Freedom Automotive showed up at our office. The next week, another box of donuts. After about the fourth or fifth week, I saw my operations director walking down the hall with a fistful of donuts and Freedom’s card. He said, “We should at least give them a try.” (I mean after all, they might stop sending us donuts if we don’t, right?)

So we called Freedom, and they came to the office and gave us a presentation. They charged more than the shop we currently used. “Yeah, but the shop we use doesn’t even say thank you. They don’t care about us,” we argued to ourselves. In Freedom’s presentation, they showed us how following their maintenance plan would actually save us money. Who do you think we use? Freedom Automotive. This took place about 20 years ago, and we still use them today. I know what you’re wondering, Do they still have donuts delivered? Yes, they still have donuts delivered.

Find out what your major accounts and your referral sources like and take it to them. If they like Dove bars, take Dove bars to them. If they like Starbucks chocolate-covered Espresso beans, bring those along with you when you visit.

We have all of our existing and potential referral sources on a route. Every month we deliver cookies, pies, cakes, or whatever. We have a number of other “food strategies” too. For example, we cook breakfast for referral sources, hold referral appreciation lunches, and more.

What if your referral sources aren’t local? You can ship stuff. There are a variety of gourmet food baskets you can order online. Recently a man who owns a franchise called Candy Bouquet International became a client of ours—they make custom candy bouquets. I use a program called Send Out Cards . With Send Out Cards, you can send along cookies, brownies, and many other gourmet food items.

Try this secret weapon and see if it works for you. I know it will.

SOURCE

13:15:00 - By Vincent 0

TIE IT ALL TOGETHER, The Pyramd of Mastery

By Tony Robbins

Let’s take a look at how far you’ve come. We’ve been focusing on the most important areas of your life to have an extraordinary quality of life. To recap, these areas are: Physical Body, Emotions and Meaning, Relationships, Time, Career, Finances and Contribution and Spirituality. Each of these areas requires focus – neglecting any one of them can cause massive pain in your life. To create a life of true fulfillment, you must master all seven areas.

While some areas may be stronger than others, it is important that you continue improve each of them. In doing so, you will create more balance in your life. This balance will allow you to create more momentum and power. Continual progress is the way you get bigger and better results while feeling more fulfilled.

To live an extraordinary life, you must know where you are and where you want to be – and the Pyramid of Mastery is your map for closing the gap and creating the life you deserve.

SOURCE

13:07:00 - By Vincent 0

The Importance of Meaningful Connections: How I Prepared for My World Domination Summit Keynote & Why No One Does Anything Alone

by CHELSEA DINSMORE

Last week I stood on stage at the World Domination Summit (WDS) and delivered a 30-minute keynote speech to more than 1,000 people. (Note: we will publish the talk as soon as we get it in our hands!)

It was scary.

It was exciting.

It was overwhelming.

It was something I never dreamed I was capable of doing.

And while I stood on that stage on my own, what I delivered by no means came together solely from my own efforts.

So, today I want to share with you the process I used to face this new challenge, in the hope that you might take from it some tips, tools and mindset shifts to help you face your own new challenge. This is not “Public Speaking 101”—this process is simply a way to face anything that feels outside of your comfort zone—and why meaningful connections are absolutely key to that.

How I Prepared for My WDS Speech

I don’t really have much public speaking experience. I was senior class president in high school, so delivered a short message at graduation. I delivered remarks at Scott’s memorial service. And back in April I gave a speech on connecting to a group of students. So, I am by no means an expert.

I was asked to speak at WDS back in November. So while I had about 10 months notice, in reality my real prep came together starting in June.

My first step was to get the message I wanted to deliver together.

STEP 1: START WITH THE END IN MIND

I was given broad instructions on the topic of my talk. Basically it could be anything that fit with the theme of the event: how to live an unconventional life in a conventional world. I had been an attendee at this event two times in the past so I sort of knew the theme, the crowd and the energy I was going into.

To get some focused space, I retreated to a family beach house by myself with my journal, my computer, my lessons from my weekly planning process since September, and a ton of ideas to hone my message into something that could be delivered in 30 minutes.

I knew that I wanted to talk about why and how I have processed the loss of Scott over the last 11 months. But how could I possibly narrow that down to a few main points? There are soooo many things that I have done—but I knew I needed to relate to the audience and deliver something that left them with a take away.

So I first came up with my outcomes—an important step in determining how to pare anything down!!!

And then I spent many hours, a lot of procrastination, a few glasses of wine (and at one point an entire chocolate bar in a single sitting) coming up with my main lessons from the year. I had 25+, which I grouped into about five main lessons and then ended up choosing three to fit into the time limit. I tried to choose ones that would relate to any difficult situation and that also provided take away’s the crowd could actually implement.

STEP 2: STEP AWAY TO LET THE IDEAS BREW

I then went on a trip where I let the general ideas brew. I casually talked about it to almost anyone who would listen to help me integrate the ideas and flow (and also to get feedback).

I sought further inspiration as I was traveling since I had the general ideas on my mind already. I thought about it in my moments alone. And I did some initial writing of the talk as I traveled (because as I mentioned, my best writing seems to happens when I fly).

This was a casual approach to helping me fully embrace the overall idea of the talk.

STEP 3: SEEK OUT A VILLAGE OF HELP (AND PRACTICE A SH*T TON!)

We talk a lot at LYL about cultivating meaningful connections and this is exactly why.

The message I delivered on that stage last week was not a result of my doing. It was a result of the input of a village of people.

Just a few to be exact….

And this is why meaningful connections matter.

Because I was asked to do something that had the opportunity to make an impact. And while I could have stood up there and said something, what I said was 10 times better because of the advice, feedback, strategy, input, love, and effort of those around me.

If I hadn’t spent years cultivating actual meaningful connections (where I added value in some way shape or form to them), they likely wouldn’t have been willing to add value in return when I needed it.

Meaningful connections make giving and receiving help easy—it is a two-way street.

I scheduled dinners at friends houses and offered to cook for them (add value) in exchange for them listening to my talk and giving feedback. One, because it is really hard to practice on your own (although the family cat Nui, did hear the speech more than any other). Scheduling those dinners not only kept me accountable, but also practicing in front of your best friends and family members is far more difficult than practicing in front of a large group where there are bright lights and you can’t really see into anyone’s eyes when your story makes them cry…

As hard as it was to change what I had been trying to practice, hearing people’s feedback helped me understand how they took my message. I asked every single person what they liked best and where they got lost, or what they didn’t fully understand. It would have been easy to sit and think I knew exactly how people were going to take what I said, but I got a lot of insight as I heard what people actually heard.

To Add Value, Be Grateful

With my business connections, I had people hop on the phone with me despite their very busy weeks, meet slide deadlines with only days and give me loads of support before and the day of.

But only because I wasn’t only asking for help. In some way in the past, I had given some sort of advice, help or something else in return.

And I made sure to leave those connections with a thank you from me. Some people received gifts in the mail, others email thank yous with how their advice specifically helped me deliver what I did that day.

Honestly, adding value to someone isn’t all that hard—as everyone loves to hear how they helped you out. So paying attention to their specific advice, implementing it and letting them know the outcome is one of many ways to begin to cultivate meaningful connections with others…

No One Does Anything Alone

At the end of my speech, I received a very generous standing ovation.

But that standing ovation was not for me….

It was for all those who helped me prepare what I delivered on that day.

It was the effort of many, not just one. It was the result of connections cultivated over years. And it led to some very cool outcomes—including a girl who got a tattoo immediately after with something I said on stage!!!

And that is why, as we have mentioned before, we are super excited to release Connect With Anyone in just a few weeks. Because not only was it Scott’s proudest work, but he did not build Live Your Legend alone and I have not kept it alive alone. 

So today I encourage you to think about who you have in your corner? And what connections you currently have where you give and receive value?

Because if there is anything I know, it’s that those connections are what have gotten me through this very difficult year. It’s those connections that help keep LYL what it is today. It’s those connections that gave me the strength to stand on that stage last week.

And, it’s those connections that will lead to whatever lies ahead…

To the people who make me a better version of me, 

–Chelsea Dinsmore

SOURCE

12:47:00 - By Vincent 0

Managing My Depression Is a Constant Struggle. Here's What's Helped

BY JOHN ROMANIELLO

We throw the word "depression" around a lot. That's the unfortunate truth. We use it to describe a weeklong period of sadness after a breakup or a few days of feeling bad when things aren’t going our way. I don’t mean to trivialize those experiences or emotional hardships. But being sad is not the same as being depressed—that’s only the smallest part of it.

Depression is about feeling trapped by overwhelming unhappiness, completely surrounded by an impenetrable fog of misery, and a general acceptance of the idea that it will never go away.

Winston Churchill called depression “the black dog.” His reasoning was simple: Like a hunting dog, it would always be nipping at his heels, following him. For some people, the black dog is omnipresent. For others, like myself, depression comes and goes—but even when you’re not suffering, you’re always aware of the black dog off in the distance, waiting to close in. This is an uncomfortable thought to which one must adapt: Even when you’re not depressed, you’re afraid of depression.

In My Case

 PIN IT

When I say I’ve suffered from “debilitating” depression, I mean exactly that: I’ve had long periods of time (three months or more) when getting out of bed was the only thing I could accomplish each day. And sometimes that was a stretch.

There have been times when I would break down and cry for seemingly no reason or randomly snap and put my fist through a window before I could rein in my temper. There were months when I hid from friends and family, pretending everything was fine and that I was too “busy” to see them while sitting alone in the dark. More often than I care to admit, there were times when I needed to be working on some massive project, but instead would spend a weekend watching an entire season of some TV show I’d already seen.

That’s what depression is like for me: a general inability to perform. And with it, a feeling of shame and guilt for not being able to do so, compounded by the ever-growing anxiety of deadlines.

In many ways, being truly depressed is sort of like being immunocompromised: It weakens you emotionally and psychologically, wears you down to your bones—and suddenly, things that would not normally affect you or which you could fight off with ease overwhelm you. When I’m depressed, I’m infinitely more susceptible to things like guilt, fear, shame, and regret. I’ll dwell on mistakes I made years ago and think about all of the ways I could have done things differently. I’ll feel ashamed of myself and my actions or inaction—and actively fantasize about the ways the lives of everyone around me would be better if I were simply not there.

Small setbacks seem like incomprehensible obstacles. Tiny transgressions seem like reasons for justifiable homicide.

Small setbacks seem like incomprehensible obstacles. Tiny transgressions seem like reasons for justifiable homicide. Mustering up the energy to shower sometimes takes days. Sleep comes unbidden or not at all. Training is half-hearted at best. Food turns to ash, and everything that isn’t made of chocolate seems to be made of cardboard. Life is pretty sh*tty.

Coming Out the Other Side

 PIN IT

Since I’m clinically depressed and not bi-polar, I don’t have cycles of depression alternated with extreme mania. I just have periods of being depressed and periods of being a relatively normal human being. Most of the time I’m fine and happy and productive. I’m typically brash, boisterous, happy-go-lucky. I’m friendly and goofy and annoyingly passionate about love and life and sex and food and literature and music.

But depression doesn’t really follow any schedule or come at predictable intervals. Things just start feeling awful, and then they feel worse. And then you sort of get used to feeling awful. And then maybe things change a bit.

There is no massive change, no celebratory event, no clear signal that the storm has passed. Things just slowly get better. Day by day you’re able to function just a little bit more.

There’s an old saying about the month of March: It comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Depression, then, is the March of your emotional calendar. And like March, it strikes suddenly and takes over absolutely everything. When it fades, it’s gradual. There is no massive change, no celebratory event, no clear signal that the storm has passed. Things just slowly get better. Day by day you’re able to function just a little bit more. And then one day you look up and realize you’re doing pretty well. Things seem less gray, and the world seems to offer reasons to keep living.

And there are reasons—thousands upon thousands of reasons. And they’re all around you. You just need to wait things out long enough for the veil to lift so you can see them. Now let’s talk about how to do that.

How I’ve Coped

Therapy and medication are viable options for treatment, as are other less clinical approaches: meditation, exercise, certain dietary changes. All of them work in their own way. While I dislike medication, I admit that antidepressants, taken in moderate doses for short periods of time (8 to 12 weeks), have seemed to get me through the hardest times.

Whether you find yourself besieged by depression and/or thoughts of suicide, or you know someone who may be in distress, I’d like to provide some other resources that have helped me.

1. Pick up the phone.

If you’re actually considering suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline immediately: 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255).

2. Educate yourself.

If you’re exploring depression from an academic perspective and trying to figure out how the pieces fit together in your particular emotional landscape, I encourage you to spend some time reading the following articles:

Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide, by Tim Ferris
This amazing series on The Art of Manliness, collectively titled Leashing the Black Dog:

• Part 1: My Struggle With Depression
• Part 2: The History of Depression
• Part 3: What Causes Depression?
• Part 4: The Symptoms of Depression
• Part 5: A Realistic, Encouraging, Compassionate, No-Nonsense, Research-Backed, Action-Oriented Guidebook to Managing Your Depression

3. Do nothing; be silent; be still. Breathe.

Take a moment and try to take the long view.

Perspective is important because chances are whatever fresh hell you’re experiencing is a temporary thing. Eventually you’re going to feel better—or at least, less awful. Your experience of depression, however powerful, is an exercise in exposure to the impermanence of humanity—and there is simply no real upside to facilitating death with suicide. Because once you’re dead, that’s it. Game over.

While I admit that the idea of committing suicide might occasionally reach out to the tortured artist in me, the pragmatic side of my personality rails against the thought. Because suicide is permanent—and ultimately robs the world of whatever contributions you may make in the future. What if Hemingway killed himself before The Sun Also Rises? Or The Old Man and the Sea?

While I cannot claim any Pulitzer Prize-winning manuscripts, in my own small way, I change lives. I have a file on my computer of emails filled with several hundred notes from people who have said my work has changed their lives; those are lives I would not have had the chance to change had I checked out years ago. To me, that is a reason to keep living.

4. Take control.

I’ve come to believe that suicide is an attempt to feel in control, and both depression and anxiety result (in part) from feeling out of control. So take control—of something, anything.

Take control of your body. Cut your hair. Get a tattoo. Sign up for a transformation challenge. You’d be surprised how this can help. (I am endlessly surprised by how many of my clients tell me they were suffering from depression before starting their fitness journey.)

Take control of your environment. Change something. Devote five minutes a day to imposing your will on something external. There have been some surveys that suggest that something as simple as making your bed every morning can mitigate the symptoms of depression.

Take control of your mind. Meditate. Read. Write. Examine. Discuss. Whatever seems interesting to you, dive into it and allow it to eat up some of the energy the black dog is trying to siphon from you. I have a friend who was experiencing intense feelings of anxiety and who decided to address it by taking control of his inbox. He made it a game to see how many things he could unsubscribe from or delete in a single day then tried to beat it the following day; within two weeks, he was at inbox zero—and he said that helped.

5. Do less.

A big part of feeling out of control is simply feeling overwhelmed. If you have too much sh*t to do and your ability to produce is already hampered by your emotional state, then you’re not going to get it all done. Trust me, this will push you further in depression.

If you can eliminate something, do it. Do less. Say no to as much as you can. Push off any obligations or projects that aren’t immediately urgent. Delegate things to other people, and actually allow them to help you.

6. Ask for help.

This is the hardest thing of all but also the single most important—and the most beneficial. If you’re anything like me, you feel deep shame about asking for help and more so about needing help.

I find it almost impossible to look back now and get into the mind of the person I was in those moments—but I do know that I did not allow myself to ask for help.

I’ve had three actual suicide attempts: two of which I can say in retrospect were more a cry for help (ironic, as I never told anyone about them), and one that qualifies as what mental health professionals label a sincere attempt. I find it almost impossible to look back now and get into the mind of the person I was in those moments—but I do know that I did not allow myself to ask for help.

What I’ve come to believe is that suicide is something that is contemplated for extended periods of time— yet the decision to execute is made in a single moment. Had I just reached out to someone, anyone, I would have gotten through that particular moment and been able to lean on them for support.

Ask for help. From a friend. A loved one. A stranger. The hotline. A support group.

SOURCE

13:01:00 - By Vincent 0

YOU’RE OKAY

BY Mark Manson

“Relax. You’re okay.”

I find myself wanting to write this at least five times a day in reply to reader emails.

I rarely do — or if I do, I’m sure to add some explanation or a few useful ideas.

But the point remains: what a lot of people now identify as “major life problems” are really the natural ebbs and flows of life. Sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down, and for some reason, we seem to have forgotten that that’s OK.

THE CONUNDRUM

Let’s say you have low self-esteem and a general self-loathing about yourself. You believe everything you do sucks and that you’re more or less screwed in life. Wanting to stop believing such things only serves as more evidence of how screwed up you are. After all, if you weren’t such a fuck up, you wouldn’t have to spend all day wishing you didn’t feel like a fuck up, would you?

It’s a Catch 22. In external aspects of one’s identity, desire is useful. Want to run faster? Set a goal, then go out and achieve it. Want to start a business? There are measurable benchmarks you can reach, you just have to want it enough.

But want to stop being anxious and stop procrastinating on those goals? Well, then wanting to stop being anxious about them is likely to just make you more anxious.

THE CHALLENGE OF SELF-ACCEPTANCE

Self-acceptance is the way out of the conundrum, but it’s counter-intuitive. Paradoxically, accepting that you’re just not a confident person and you’re always going to feel a little off around other people will begin to make you feel more comfortable and less anxious around others. You won’t judge yourself and you’ll then feel less judged by them as well.

Accepting that you have a tendency to get depressed and that some people are just happier than you and that’s fine will, ironically, make you a happier and more accepting person. After all, some of the most important people in history were depressives.

Many of us are inundated with so much information at all hours of the day that it’s easy to get a skewed vision of society. Everyone else is fit. Everyone else is happy. Everyoneelse is successful. Everyone else is getting dates and having sex. But for some reason,you’re not.

What sells TV time and what gets passed around the internet are the exceptional situations, the easy solutions, the magic pills for perfection. It’s human nature to always look for perfection or for something greater and better than ourselves. But when you’re presented with something greater and better than yourself over and over and over again, all hours of the day, all days of the week, it’s easy to internalize that there’s something wrong with you. Ironically, the self-help industry is a culprit here as well: you can eliminate all sadness and fear; you can be popular and loved by everyone; anyone can get rich and be successful and retire to a beach at age 35!

It’s just not true.

We’re all flawed creatures. And that’s OK.

I’ve come to accept that meeting new people is always going to take conscious effort for me. I’ve improved drastically in conquering my social anxiety over the years, but I’m just never going to be that naturally gregarious type who can talk to everyone in a room without thinking about it. That’s just not me.

I’ve accepted that even though my relationship with my family has improved a lot in the past 10 years, it’s never going to be great. And that’s fine.

I’ve learned that commitment — romantic or otherwise — will always make me a little bit uncomfortable. I’ve worked hard and overcome a lot of my irrational fears surrounding it, but I’m just never going to feel completely at ease with it. And that’s OK too.

I’m OK.

I get a lot of emails from readers. And a lot of them, particularly the younger people, lament problems that are so completely normal and healthy that I sometimes don’t even know what to say to them.

Most people get depressed at some point in their lives. Most people get dumped at some point and struggle getting over their ex. Most people feel insecure about their sexuality at some point. Everyone has family problems. Many people grow up in abusive situations. Tons of people have low self-esteem and dependency issues. Almost everybody wishes they were more successful and more motivated.

These things suck but they’re not new. And they’re definitely not unique.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not an excuse to do nothing about your problems. It just means that you should stop trying to be perfect. You never will be. Emotional issues never completely go away.

There’s an old Buddhist adage: “You are already perfect as you are, yet you can always be better.”

Perfection is not some endpoint you achieve, but rather the process of improvement itself. No matter how much you improve yourself and your life, there will always be room for more growth and less suffering. There’s no final goal. The perfect self we all envision does not actually exist. As Gertrude Stein said, “There’s no there there.” It never ends. What changes is your acceptance of your place in the process.

“I suck at this, but that’s OK. As long as I’m working on it, it’s OK.”

Perfection is the process of improvement itself. Perfection is the innate drive for endless expansion, growth and completion. We’re already there and we’ve always been there. We’re okay. We can be better. But we’re okay.

12:30:00 - By Vincent 0

THE SIMPLE JOYS ARE THE MOST MEANINGFUL

By Mark Manson

The cute Brazilian girl in the cell phone store looks up at me and sputters a series of syllables in my general direction. She’s been fiddling with my phone for 15 minutes now, the phone I just bought for twice as much as I would have paid in any other country. Now she can’t get it to work. Explanation is pending, at least until I decipher the Portuguese syllable soup she continues to vomit at me.

I’m frustrated, if you didn’t notice.

“Não entendo,” I reply, for probably the twelfth time. It means “I don’t understand.” One of the only Portuguese phrases I know.

The coy smile she had given me the first few times I said it are now replaced with an aching impatience. She frowns at me, then at the phone, and then sighs. She pulls out a Post-It note, scrawls some Portuguese on it, hands it to me along with my dysfunctional new phone and slowly instructs me to go to another store in the mall and have them deal with it. She has to repeat these instructions three times before I understand them. This is the fourth cell phone store I am being sent to. Apparently there are a lot of bureaucratic procedures involved with buying a cell phone in Brazil, the details of which are obviously sailing clear over my head. And since none of the store clerks speak English, they’ve all eventually reached a breaking point, lost patience and sent me down to the next store to be somebody else’s headache.

The entire process has taken close to three hours… and it’s still not over. The mall cell phone nightmare continues.

(Although to be honest, it should have only been about an hour-and-a-half, I fell asleep in the Claro store waiting for a customer service rep to call my number. I awoke 45 minutes later to find they had proceeded to half a dozen customers beyond me. I strained to convince the rep to take me next since I had been there an hour. But my Portuguese persuasion skills weren’t very effective… OK, since we’re being honest right now, they were non-existent. I couldn’t say a thing, and therefore I hardly raised a fuss. Thus I took a new number and sat my ass back down, this time forcing myself to remain awake for the ensuing 30 minutes I would wait… again.)

I never resolved my cell phone issue that day. I finally found an old man in the mall who spoke English and was kind enough to come translate for me — yes, I walked around a Brazilian mall randomly approaching people to find someone to translate for me. It turns out that Brazil requires an identification number to activate any cell phone bought within the country, the equivalent of having a Social Security Number in the US to buy a cell phone. There’s a formal process that’s required and if you’re a foreigner and don’t work for a Brazilian company, then you’re screwed (unless you can get a friend to come in and register your phone under their name). As is probably obvious, I did not have any Brazilian friends with me. So almost four hours after arriving, I left the mall, having paid too much for a phone I still couldn’t use.

…And then got lost going home.

This was my first day in Sao Paulo. And I would be lying if I said days like this were rare. They don’t happen that often, but with enough regularity that the seething frustration, the awkward self-consciousness, the mental exhaustion, and the unavoidable sense of isolation, they’ve all become familiar to me now.

Today, internet entrepreneurship is the latest rage. Attachment-free mobile living is the new dream. And you don’t have to look much further than the 4 Hour Work Week to see the romanticization of such a post-modern lifestyle.

But as with any lifestyle, there are strengths and weaknesses to it. It’s not all a bed of roses. You sacrifice some things to gain others. And don’t worry, I’m not here to complain about every trying moment I’ve come across in two-and-a-half years of traveling. There have been far, far, far more good days than bad. And I would not take back a single life decision I’ve made.

But I do want to paint a realistic picture of what this lifestyle entails, the highs with the lows. And posit that perhaps the biggest difference between this lifestyle and a conventional one, is simply that the highs are higher and the lows lower, thus reorienting what one values spending their time on.

Because this is what you don’t hear, and that Tim Ferriss would never tell you: that day after the Brazilian cell phone debacle, after finally finding my way back to my hotel at dusk, I went and sat in my room by myself. Without TV. Without Wifi. No movies. No friends (not like I’d be able to call them anyway). Nothing to do. I went home and laid in bed for most of the evening. Physically and mentally drained and miserable.

And alone.

There’s nothing new about a bad day. We all have them. And we all have our own strategies to unravel our negative emotions. Sometimes we call up a friend and unload on them, perhaps over beers. Or we call up mom or dad and look for a little reassurance. Maybe we put on a movie with our significant other and just forget about everything for a few hours. Or maybe we hit the gym or take it out on a basketball court.

But life on the road, it’s quite often that you don’t have any friends to have beers with, you can’t call a parent and lean on them for some support, you don’t have a movie to watch or someone to curl up with, no gym membership, no basketball court. Often you have to take the brunt of your emotions alone, with nothing to distract you from them.

And it’s hard. But it makes you stronger, more mentally resilient, more centered. When you do eventually bounce back, life feels much lighter. And those joyous experiences you feel in contrast to the dark and lonely ones become that much better. In fact, I’ve found that the stark contrast between highs and lows has actually begun to redefine what those joyous moments are.

Some of my happiest memories from last year were going out and just having beers with some friends. Nothing more, nothing less. Something which I did weekly for years and years prior to this new lifestyle and that was always available to me.

It’s a bizarrely paradoxical effect on one’s emotional life: the extreme highs and novelty of experience render certain “exciting” activities to feel meaningless, and the extreme lows of isolation and frustration make many “normal” activities feel exciting and fulfilling. A Fourth of July parade looks a lot different after you’ve been to Carnaval in Brazil (twice) and stayed up three days straight partying in Ibiza. And I’ll give you a hint: it becomes really boring.

A road trip to the beach back home seems silly in comparison to living on the beach in Thailand, or taking surfing lessons in the swells of Bali. In many ways, you become jaded to your former life.

But on the other hand, the dark times of loneliness, depression, frustration, and isolation make other routine daily events of life — events which you and everyone else take for granted — that much better and more significant.

Last year, I got terribly sick in a rural town in India — possibly the last place on earth you would want to be sick. I had a scorching fever, cold chills and a headache that jackhammered the inside of my skull. I ran out of potable water at about 10PM, and the only stores in town had closed down for the night. I laid in bed through the entire night, unable to sleep due to fever and sweats. No medicine. Dehydrated and incredibly thirsty. And just to make things more interesting, a few hundred bugs swarmed into the room and were now crawling and buzzing around the walls, and occasionally on me.

Mom’s Christmas dinner tastes a lot better after an experience like that.

Which I guess is what the paradox resolves into: a devaluing of superficial pleasures and a greater appreciation for simple, authentic ones. I don’t really enjoy the presents at Christmas anymore, the fireworks at fourth of July, or even the parties on New Year’s Eve. I’ve seen bigger parties, been to more beautiful places, and already own everything I’ll ever want in this life. But unlike before, I appreciate every day spent with those who mean a lot to me. A quiet beer on a patio. Watching a basketball game together. Going to a birthday party or a barbecue. These are the events I look forward to now and get excited about, days and weeks ahead of time… And that’s probably the way it should be.

12:28:00 - By Vincent 0