A couple weeks ago I dug into my heart and past to write about the death of my father. Sharing my thoughts and emotions has turned about to be a cathartic experience. Since publishing this article I seem to have opened up some long closed well of awareness within me…dammit. That shit was supposed to stay stuffed way down like all self-respecting men are taught from a young age. Alas, now that it is out there I may as well probe around a bit and see if I can use it to improve myself.

In the original article I argued for taking time to reflect on our past to see how specific events and experiences have shaped us. It is during these times of reflection that I believe we have the greatest opportunity for choice in who we will be going forward. We can choose to focus on the bad experience and wallow in the “why me” questions. Or we can choose to embrace who we are today, be comfortable that we can’t change the past and get busy living. Given the title of the article was “Embrace Who You Are Today” I will assume you know where I happen to lean.

I realize now that I don’t need to look in the past to practice being comfortable with who I am and how I react to the environment around me. There are a multitude of small experiences in the present which present me the choice in how I respond and what emotions I will feel as a result.

Responding to the Little Annoyances

While sitting here in China in my newly (albeit slightly) enlightened state of being I’ve found that there are more experiences than I ever imagined that let me practice how I choose to respond.  Every day there is some small event which presents the opportunity to scream in frustration. A child wailing on the train. A man (I wish it was only 1 man) smoking on the bus. A group of people pushing you forward while you stand in a swarm (lines are apparently forbidden here) waiting to enter a museum.

How we respond to these situations is the choice between peace and frustration, between punching someone in the throat and laughter.

Bad shit has happened to everyone

It’s happened to Brad Pitt, Genghis Khan, Marilyn Monroe, and Julius Ceasar and everyone who’s come before and after them. None of us is immune to these small (and sometimes not so small) frustrations in life. Where we can be different is in how we respond to them.

Look back on your most recent “less than pleasant” experience. Think about how many stories this one experience provided for you. The comedy, the audacity, or the sheer pain that you were able to share with others. Remember in the middle of these tough moments that you can choose how you want to live through them.

Here are a few ideas to help you the next time your entire bus of fellow passengers appear to be engaged in a contest to see who can smoke the most cigarettes in our 12 hour trip and then hock the biggest luggie (insert your own experience if you find this one is not directly applicable):

• Start crafting the story you will tell friends when this is over. Capture each detail into your memory to ensure you accurately capture the sounds, sights, and smells (hopefully this last one is rarely needed). You want your story to be as compelling as possible so take the time focused on making the story come alive. You owe it to your friends to share this experience over a well earned drink.
• Close your eyes, put a smile on your face, and imagine yourself sitting in your perfect chair in your perfect location looking out at your ideal scenery. Perhaps it is overlooking a mountain view in Ecuador, or sitting on the deck of a ship sailing across the ocean, or whiling away the time on a beach without a care in the world. What ever you do, don’t take your annoying offender with you. Leave them behind to frustrate those poor souls still sitting there.
  
• Think of yourself as a cultural anthropologist. Explore the historical reasons why your offending party could have chosen such a behavior. Perhaps you can trace them to an ancient tribe known widely as Dickus Maximus. Perhaps they were dropped as a child, dislodging the part of the brain that recognizes there are other people in the world.

I realize that just saying, “hey I’m going to stop worrying about all these unpleasant experiences and just be happy” is not reality. But I do know that we can control our reactions to them with awareness and practice. Here are a few additional resources to help hone your skill:

• 40 Tips to help you release stress. Lessons from Buddhism and insights to help you realize “Every moment is a chance to let go and feel peaceful.”
• Do you feel you just must get it off your chest? This site lets you share your annoyance with the world and release those bad feelings. Their tag line says it all “Dear World – You Suck”. Reading this for 10 minutes will have you laughing out loud and forgetting your annoyance.
• When all else fails to help you could turn to the ancient Chinese ritual of “da siu yan”, or “beating the petty little people”. For just $6 you can put a curse on the offending party, which seems like a fair punishment for that guy who believes that farting next to me on the train is acceptable behavior

Life is challenging enough without all these outside influences seemingly intent on driving you crazy. Despite my firmly held beliefs, Betsy is probably right when she tell me “these people are not out to get you”. They are simply going about their own lives, possibly with a bit less realization there are other people occupying the planet with them. Regardless of their intentions I can only choose to control my responses each and every day.

I’m confident I’ll reach the point that my urge to punch people subsides completely, but for now I’ll settle for not letting their behavior ruin my day.

The good news is there are plenty of opportunities to practice and I am committed to doing a bit better every single day. I believe this is all any of us can ask for every day…just be a little bit better than yesterday.

Do you know someone who would benefit from learning to let go of the daily annoyances? Note: There is an email link embedded within this post, please visit this post to email it. this over to them and introduce them to the Live the Good Life Movement.

Thailand to Portugal by way of Russia with no planes allowed.

A trip over land and sea of 18,000 kilometers using trains, buses, camels, and ferries without an itinerary.

An experiment in ‘just-in-time’ decision-making to put fear in its place and concentrate on what really matters: living in the here and now.

It sounds pretty cool in a regular tone of voice, but we like to imagine it being said in Dolby Digital Surround Sound with the booming intensity of the movie-announcer guy, with a slight echo.

I have taken to calling myself Jason Bourne, though behind my back and with a voice louder than he should dare Warren mocks me with the nickname Mason Bourne (Jason’s clumsy and less famous sibling).

To say that we are excited about our Eurasian Adventure 2012 would be an understatement. It is the boldest trip we’ve undertaken so far, at least on purpose (apologies to the erupting volcano and the political coup – you were pretty incredible surprises).

The challenges to our own fears about leaving the future so unplanned in such an unknown environment are the real lesson here.

We want you to learn from our experience in how to stop worrying so much about the future.

Opportunities

I knew something would happen the minute I hit publish on our first article announcing the adventure. We boldly stated our end goal, to travel all the way to Portugal from Thailand without the use of planes. The next day, an opportunity dropped out of the sky and landed in our inbox:

“Want to come housesit at our guesthouse in Kerala, India?”

Um, yeah! One of our goals is to run a guesthouse or B&B for a short time, living on the other end of the life we’ve grown to love. But is this opportunity enough to derail us from our current goal?

We cut short our trip to South America last year to take an impromptu slow cruise across the Atlantic, and it was one of the best experiences of our travels. Could this be the same kind of opportunity?

We weighed it in our minds as we hiked Tiger Leaping Gorge for a few days. In the end, we realized it would be far easier for us to find a guesthouse-sitting gig in the future than to be perfectly aligned time-, location-, and budget-wise to attempt the trip across Asia and Europe again. We said no.

But the lesson here is not that we made the right decision. We made a decision, and our life will flow from it. There is usually no right or wrong, just left or right, up or down, A or B. Either way, we would have been okay.

Don’t get so caught up in making the right decision that you fail to make any decision at all.

Setbacks

As we traveled further north into the Yunnan Province, our goal was to enter Shangri-La and take the less-traveled Sichuan-Tibet highway to go east to the central Chinese hub of Chengdu. It would be a more rural and difficult journey, but it would take us through magnificent mountains and give us a taste of Tibet that we would otherwise not see until we actually get a permit to go there someday.

We discovered as we tried to book our tickets that the road was closed to foreigners at that time. There were protests, including people setting themselves on fire, and the government would not allow any outsiders near.

So we asked around and heard about Lugu Lake, a beautiful area popular with Chinese tourists and somewhat on the way to Chengdu. It was a relaxing destination, and we had some terrific experiences with Chinese travelers while there, plus one of the most spectacular walks we’ve ever had. The setback turned into a bonus.

As we got ready to leave this remote area, we were told we could catch a bus coming from Lijiang if there were empty seats available. We checked at the bus station and found out the bus was not running that day, but we did run into a Chinese traveler looking to go to Chengdu as well, and between her, the bus station clerk, and a minibus driver, we mapped out a way to get to Chengdu with a series of local buses and transportation we would have never worked out on our own. It started a long day of travel, our first night train in China, and plenty of sign language, but we made it – and in less time than if we had taken the original bus.

Setbacks are not always as they appear. Sometimes they are just road signs telling you to take the detour to make your journey more interesting or less difficult.

Rubbing this goat is supposed to eliminate all your worries. Sadly, it didn't work. No one can do it for you!

Options

Many of you have asked about our upcoming journey across Russia and Mongolia. We are excited about this leg, too, and it all depends on two things: getting our Russian visas, which are more difficult when you are out of your home country; and deciding how to travel across Russia, with a tour group or on our own.

We have been given a pretty nice offer of a discount to go with a tour group. It will be so nice to have someone else plan our transportation and lodging and negotiate the language for a change! But if we take this tour it will mean missing out on Nadaam, the Olympic-like festival that has been in place since the time of Genghis Khan.

The other option is to just book the individual tickets and wing it without a guide to smooth the way. It is not really that much cheaper to do this, but it does give increased flexibility in our timeline and destinations, making Nadaam a reality as well as some extended time living in the gers with Mongolian families. Again, we don’t speak or read Mongolian or Russian, so this is a more difficult option.

We are deciding which option to take this week because it impacts our timeline to exit or renew our Chinese visas. Our current location in Chengdu is where our travel plans diverge depending on which option we take.

Choosing one thing over another always comes with some kind of gain and some kind of loss; that’s why it is a choice. You can’t get away from this, so stop trying to have it all and have what you want most.

Crowdsourcing

There have been dozens of other smaller decisions in our journey so far, but the best surprises have been our ability to meet with friends as we make our plans public. Since making our final decisions on the Russian leg of our trip, we have been able to schedule a meetup with an English friend in Beijing in the next few weeks as well as coordinate a meeting with a journalist who wants to write about us. Who knew we’d meet a writer on her way to China?

We have also been able to better predict our timeline in Europe now with the Russian leg better visualized, and a friend in Germany is planning a reunion with us and some friends from our travels in South America.

Add to that the information we glean from other travelers as we make our way around the country, and we are better able to plan our journey as we go instead of sticking to some prearranged itinerary without the flexibility to respond to new opportunities and information.

When you share your decisions with the world, you’ll be surprised at how it rallies to conform to your plans. Keep it to yourself, and you’ll face every decision alone.

The world is yours

How this affects you

Four lessons on just-in-time decision making from the first month of our travels in the Eurasian Adventure 2012 plus a bonus:

• The line between right and wrong is different than the line between choices. Think of it as left or right, up or down, or A or B. No matter what you choose, life will go on, so don’t get so caught up in the analysis of the choice that you fail to make it.
• Setbacks are not always as they appear. Sometimes they are just road signs telling you to take the detour to make your journey more interesting or less difficult.
• Choosing one thing over another always comes with some kind of gain and some kind of loss; that’s why it is a choice. You can’t get away from this, so stop trying to have it all and have what you want most.
• When you share your decisions with the world, you’ll be surprised at how it rallies to conform to your plans. Keep it to yourself, and you’ll face every decision alone.
• And the bonus: Give your big mission a name. We call ours the Eurasian Adventure 2012, and it reminds us just in repeating it of our end goal. Give it a name, and you give it life.

Just-in-time decision making can free you from the worries of the distant future. It is not the same as not planning for the future at all. It is more a marshalling of your best resources to solve the decision at hand and repeating this tactic as you go, always working toward your end goal but creating the steps by every decision you make, instead of forcing each step to conform to a fixed future you can never successfully predict.

Your assignment this week, should you choose to accept it:

• Make a choice
• Take the detour from a setback
• Decide what you want most instead of aiming for it all
• Share your plans
• Name your mission

Need some help clarifying your own mission? Dream Save Do will show you how to put your money where your heart is. One reader used it to quit her job and get a book deal, another is now teaching English in South America, and several have started their own businesses. Click here to buy your copy on Amazon and pursue your own dream.

Picture this: It is a warm spring day and it is our anniversary. How to celebrate this romantic occasion?

We go out for a drink, enjoy a nice dinner, and engage in a little contract renegotiation before we slide between the sheets.

Wait a second…did she say contract renegotiation? Is that a euphemism for a new sexual position? 

Not quite.

The weakness in the original contract

The day you get married/partnered/cohabitate/exchange “I love yous” is a day worth remembering. It is the start of something important in your life and a public commitment to share it with another person. You are high on love that day, and depending on who’s in charge of the punch, possibly also drunk as a skunk.

You begin your life together with the highest aspirations and best hopes.

• You work hard to please your mate.
• You can’t wait to see him/her walk through the door at the end of the day.
• Your bedroom is like a private Circ du Soleil show every night.

Over time, the “new” of your relationship begins to wane and other things regain focus in your life.

• Work becomes more important as you strive to create a successful career and solid financial foundation
• Family takes priority as you have children or begin caring for aging parents
• Financial obligations soar as you buy a home and cars and vacations and college educations – all the trappings of success

This is where your original vows to each other begin to fade into the background as the urgencies of everyday life intrude on your bond. You begin taking your partner for granted, forgetting the ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ of your earlier days. Instead of working hard to please your mate, you begin to wonder why he/she isn’t pulling the fair share of weight in your household or financial obligations. You rush through dinner conversation so you can get back to your laptop and answer emails from work that could easily wait until tomorrow.

Maybe you hide your frustration with each other in sharp comments, chilly silence, or a gap in the middle of the bed where you used to curl up together.

Whether you are at the light end of this scenario and have just a few simmering resentments or so far at the extreme you wear body armor just to say good morning, there is a lot you can learn from the business world in strengthening your marriage.

Improve your relationship with a contract renegotiation

What trips so many good relationships up is waiting too long to fix the problems. And let’s face it: We all have problems in our relationships. You are not alone – not by a long shot.

When you look at your relationship as a series of one-year contracts, open to renegotiation every year, you will be far less likely to wake up one day and realize you don’t even like your partner anymore.

By giving him or her the chance to grow with you by providing ongoing feedback – and by being open to the same yourself – you give your relationship more than a fighting chance of succeeding.

We all grow and change over time, and we cannot expect our partners to read our minds and simply adjust. Nor can we expect to shrug the frustration off, saying it is our problem and not theirs. Any problem in a relationship is the problem of the relationship and needs to be dealt with by both parties.

When you stay in touch with your partner, discuss the ways you are growing and changing individually and together through life, and make promises to adjust your relationship accordingly, you are experiencing the highest form of partnership. Isn’t that why you signed up?

How to perform an annual contract renegotiation

It really isn’t as hard as it sounds. In fact, done right it can make your next anniversary the best one you’ve ever had. (And if it is too long to wait til your next anniversary, go ahead and have a mid-year renewal. It’s okay.)

First, consider the value of your relationship as a whole and as individuals.

Two business entities would realize what each brings to the table and how they are mutually benefitting the other. You each have a strong position from which to start and more to gain by working with each other. Negotiations are better when both parties realize this.

Think of all the ways your partner makes you happy, contributes to your overall well-being, and rounds out your life. Then think of all the ways you do the same for him or her.

Once you have this appreciative mindset, you are in the right frame of mind to start the process.

Begin with the good stuff.

Tell your partner what you were just thinking and how he or she rocks your world. Get into it and tell them all the things you sometimes take for granted. No need to make up a long list of little things to sound more appreciative, but do cover the big ones and mention some that you may have kept to yourself all these years.

“You make our home such a sanctuary from the stress of life, and I feel better every day just walking through the door.”

Starting with all the ways your relationship is working puts your few problems into perspective.

Next, calmly state the thing(s) your partner does or does not do that impacts your satisfaction level and ask how it can be resolved.

This is not a time to bring out a laundry list of gripes and complaints. A company renegotiating terms of a contract may discuss an overall problem with delivery, not a specific order that got messed up. When discussing problems, you should take the same overall view.

“I would like to have sex more often. What can we do to make that happen?”

This opens the door to finding out why one party is reluctant to have sex and how the outlying problem affecting that (work, kids, simmering resentments, incompatible foreplay, physical problems, timing) can usually be resolved. This is so much more productive than “You are withholding sex from me,” which sets the other person on the defensive right away.

Imagine the big fight that would start, especially if the answer to getting more sex is as simple as helping her tidy up the kitchen every night and put the kids to bed.

No interruptions, excuses, or fighting allowed.

Remember, this is a contract renegotiation, not fight. We are just talking terms that will make the overall arrangement more lucrative for both parties. It is not a time to get down in the weeds and fail to see the bigger objective. Listen calmly, with an open mind, and try to see the situation from your partner’s perspective.

Somewhere between the stating of the problem and your gut reaction to it is a solution that will work for your relationship.

Focus on solutions, not the problems.

If she hates it that you work every Saturday morning instead of spending it with the family over a leisurely pancake breakfast, could you negotiate a late night of work on Thursday to allow for more family time at the weekend? The problem is not that you work; it is that you work when the rest of the family is available and wants to spend time with you. If you hate pancakes and are not a morning person, perhaps you can change your family time to Saturday afternoon instead. Or switch to omelettes.

If he thinks you nag too much, find out where it is coming from. The nagging is a symptom of the real problem. Are you worried about something in particular, feel like he’s not listening so you have to repeat yourself, or something else? Getting to the root of the problem will soothe your worries and resolve his complaint.

Sometimes we realize that we are the instigators of actions we don’t like in the other person – and that we can do something about it.

Restate the solutions out loud to each other.

Make sure you are both seeing the solution the same way by saying it out loud to each other. Know your part in resolving the issue going forward and how this act will strengthen your relationship. Make sure your partner restates the solution in a way that will resolve the issue for you.

Clarify if needed, and accept clarification if given.

Last, you seal the deal by signing on the dotted line.

You are recommitting to another year of life together with a slight adjustment in terms to accommodate your changing lives, and it deserves some special attention. Though since there is no real paper in this exchange you’ll have to find another way to document your agreement.

I don’t think you need my help with that one.

Need a little extra help speaking up during your renegotiations? We’ve got the answer right here, in Kindle or paperback.

So let me tell you about my recent Smackdown with fear. It all started last year, when I began writing a blog about the challenges of keeping my marriage afloat while raising young children. While I was laughing/crying over all the usual stuff, my son was diagnosed with a life-threatening peanut allergy, my mother broke her hip and my father-in-law passed away. About the only things that didn’t befall us were plague and pestilence.

As you might guess, my husband Ken and I lost our minds plenty of times along the way. The good news is that we also found them, along with a renewed sense of what was really important to us both.

Lesson #1: If you’re not clear about your dream, toss in some good ‘ole life challenges and see what rises to the surface.

Once Ken and I were finally over the hump, I decided I was going to start writing a book about all the stuff I didn’t have the guts to put into my blog. Easy enough, right?

Ha.

To write a traditional book these days, you usually start with a book proposal, an exciting/excruciating business plan for a book. To finish the damn thing, you have to write plenty of actual sections from the book, then jump through all sorts of exciting hoops like figuring out who your competition is and what your marketing plan is going to be. Like any good dream worth its salt, the process is filled with all sorts of wonderful/awful moments, with plenty of setbacks mixed in for flavor.

Lesson #2: Nobody said it was going to be easy. But the good news is that this Awful/Wonderful period often helps distinguish a real dream from a false one.

The closer I got to my goal, the more I began to freak myself out. I decided I needed a sharper-looking blog, a kick-ass Facebook presence and all sorts of Twitter followers. Suddenly, it seemed incredibly important that I funnel all of my time and energy into shoring up the business side of my writing project.

Recognize what I was doing, anyone?

It’s called Moving the Goalpost, and for Lesson #3, I’d highly recommend you stay away from it.

Did I need to be doing all this marketing and business development?

Sure.

Did I need to do it all right now, while I was trying to finish my damn proposal?

Of course not.

But at the time, I was slightly deranged by the idea that I did, and it wasn’t long before I’d signed up for a free seminar on building your business, taught by a local business woman I’ll call Athena for, you know, legal reasons.

Athena’s free business seminar rocked. I learned all sorts of tips and even got the added bonus of hearing her compliment my project. Now, even though I’ve always believed in the lunacy of my project, I’ve also spent way too much time wondering what others thought of it, and hearing this awesome business woman tell me she believed in my project puffed me up nicely.

Lesson #4: Believe in yourself. Don’t look to someone else—a stranger, no less—for validation.

Then, at the end of the seminar, Athena dangled an exciting carrot before us: to really jumpstart our businesses, she told us, we needed a mastermind group—a group devoted to helping each other succeed through brainstorming, creating goals and holding each other accountable.

Lesson #5: Creating your own mastermind group is the business version of Finding Your Tribe. Done correctly, it rocks.

Now, I know all about mastermind groups—I started two last year. But in that moment, in light of everything Athena had accomplished and everything I wanted to accomplish, my groups started to feel kinda small and piddly. (Sorry, mastermind friends! I was under a spell!)

Of course I wanted what this woman was selling! Who didn’t? She’d started three multi-million dollar businesses and I wasn’t making jack shit these days. Plus, she was charismatic as hell.

There was only one problem. Her mastermind group cost a shitload of money.

But wait! She was offering us a discount, nearly half off, as long as we signed up by the end of the day.

Um.

Right?

Talk about putting on the pressure. Normally, I would have turned and ran as soon as I got hit by a sell this hard, but I’d really liked everything Athena had said up until this point. And I just so liked the idea that I could hand this woman a boatload of money and have my own little guru/business leader to help me get my act together.

Lesson #6: Don’t expect anyone else to do the work for you and/or solve your problems.

If I believed what she said, I’d turn my business around within a year. I’d be a smashing success in my field and I would have her and her pricey mastermind group to thank.

There was only one problem with all of this: my fear. The entire damn program (not to mention a giant entry fee) was based on the fear that I couldn’t do it on my own. That I couldn’t make any decent money on my own. That I couldn’t come up with a kick-ass book on my own, not to mention a marketing plan, etc., etc., etc.

Now, if this isn’t already clear, here’s where I fess up and remind you I’m a writer, not a business person. And while I’ve spent a lot of time this past year teaching myself about the business side of what I do, I wasn’t feeling particularly confident in my business acumen at that moment.

So why not turn them over to someone who really knew what she was doing?

(Cough.)

Isn’t this how a lot of us feel as we’re angling toward our dream? A little unsure about where we’re going, a little insecure about whether or not we can actually pull it off and, hell, maybe even a little bit afraid.

There’s a reason these things are called stretch goals, and part of what makes our dreams so special is that we’re forced to work for them. This, I believe, helps ensure that we really are on the right path and really do want whatever it is we’re gunning for.

But of course I didn’t realize any of this that night. I was too confused/scared/obsessed to think clearly, so my thoughts went like this: I need this mastermind group. I have to do this. But it’s too expensive. Pause. How can I justify spending this much money? And: If I don’t do this, I might not make it. Pause. Then again, I might.

This was the mental loop that consumed the rest of my day. Finally, at about 10:30 p.m. (1.5 hours before the half-off offer expired), I decided to just go for the damn thing. So I walked downstairs to fax in my credit card info, and found there was no fax number on the sheet.

Talk about divine intervention. After a moment of near-shock, my whole body relaxed, and a wave of relief washed over me. I no longer had a hard pit in my stomach and for the first time that day, I felt like I was finally back in my body.

Lesson #7: When you’re having a hard time making a decision, tune in to your body. It will know.

And then the anger started to kick in. At myself. It had been a beautiful day outside, and I’d missed it. I’d been so busy obsessing over my decision that I’d hardly been present with my kids, not to mention my spouse. About the only thing worse than realizing I’d wasted an entire day to my fear was the knowledge that I could have wasted plenty more.

I went to sleep determined not to waste any more. It was time to start living from my power, I decided, not from my fear.

Now, you’re probably wondering if Athena’s mastermind group would have been helpful. Probably. She seemed like a good teacher and I’m sure I would have learned some helpful techniques.

But you know what? For me, that mastermind group would always have been marred by the knowledge that my fear had driven me to it, not my strength.

I didn’t want to live that way any more.

Do you?

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We entered China almost 1 month ago and have been overwhelmed with everything about the country. From the public works projects, to the size of the cities, to the friendliness of the people, everything has been a surprise. In that time I’ve had my camera going almost non-stop to capture the endless scenes around us in a futile attempt to convey the experience to others. However, in looking at the pictures the ones that I find the most compelling and insightful have been of the faces we’ve encountered.

While walking down the street in Lijiang we found this boy working with his father’s tools and looking absolutely adorable.  I love children because they are curious, quick to smile, and wear their emotions on their face. I love knowing that this boy represents a future China that will be so different from what his grandparents experienced and that he will have opportunities that were unheard of even 20 year ago.

While on a long bike ride along Lake Erhai in Dali we rode through a small village and stopped in their “town square”. We quickly became the big attraction for the locals who came up to check out the foreigners. This woman was quick to share a smile and laugh and we shared a brief conversation through pointing and our limited Mandarin. During the discussion she was clearly enthralled by the hair on my face, arms, and legs. In the end she petted by arms in exchange for this picture. Can you imagine what this woman has seen in her lifetime?

Before coming to China we did not know what to expect in terms of how dogs would be treated. Well, after a month here I can honestly say that I am delighted to see so many well-treated and cute dogs. Here in Lijiang we passed this dog every day when we walked by his owner’s store. This particular morning he made sure we could not miss him by planting himself in the middle of the street. We rewarded his patience with a leftover dumpling.

This is one of my favorite pictures from China because I believe this man represents so much of what we talk about with Living the Good Life. All about him are people doing various forms of exercise and martial arts. He was sitting at the corner of the park with a huge smile on his face and this large contraption on his lap. A few hundred meters above him is his kite, which we assume he comes out to fly each morning. With all the distractions and people around, I love knowing he is here finding pleasure in the simple act of flying a kite.

Friendship looks the same the world over. This image feels like a stolen moment of conversation between two friends. The subject is not important, but the idea of two people being able to sit together and just talk is a reminder of how much we gain from company with another human. No cell phones, no distractions, just share an afternoon together.

In China we’ve found that people have the same ideas of life, yet different history and experience. I am inspired by their faces and the stories each contains.

Do you struggle meeting new people? Wish you had the confidence to stroll up to a complete stranger and say hello? Click here to get Strip Off Your Fear, your guide to becoming the confident “you” you want to be.

Do you know how to talk yourself out of doing something? You focus on the details, the outcome, and the potential roadblocks ahead before you even dip a toe into the water of your new project.

• Before going back to college you fixate on the one class – statistics, chemistry, whatever – you know will be really hard, even though it is more than one year into the program.
• You want to clean out your basement and make it a useful part of your home, but you keep waffling on how you’ll eventually use the space – game room, mother-in-law suite, or home office – instead of actually hauling crap out of there.
• You want to meet someone new, but you know it will make your life more complicated. You worry about sharing holidays between families and how you’ll handle finances with a person you haven’t even met yet.

Worrying about the later is the death blow to the now.

The most important decision is the one right in front of your face, not the one days, weeks, or years down the road. In fact, I’m going to let you in on a little secret.

That thing you are so worried about right now will likely be a non-issue by the time it actually comes around. It is only a stumbling block for you right now because you do not have the clarity of action and experience to guide you.

Let’s put it into perspective:

• If you go back to college and spend at least one year studying, performing well, and exercising your brain in a subject you love, don’t you think the hard class you dread will become more manageable with that kind of foundation? If you told me I had to take a statistics class right now I wouldn’t be too excited about it, but if I was able to pair my learning with the field I was already studying, it would be much easier. Without that background, though, it still seems overwhelming.
• If you start cleaning out your basement, even in just 15 minutes a day, as the space clears you will be able to determine how it best fits into your life. But as long as that crap still sits there, you can’t see it.
• If you go out and meet someone new and start a relationship, the topic of sharing holidays and money will come up in the natural progression of things. You will deal with them in real time and in ways you may not even be able to fathom right now. So look for someone compatible and interesting and let everything flow from there.

Have sex before you start naming your babies, for heaven’s sake.

Take the Next Step (all the way to Portugal)

We talk a lot about taking the next step, and there’s a reason for it: It is really freaking important.

Over the next several months we are putting this “take the next step” advice to the test for you to follow along. We left Chiang Mai, Thailand on April 1, 2012, and we’ll be traveling overland through China, Mongolia, Russia, and Europe all the way down to Portugal, for a total of 18,000 or so kilometers (or 11,200 miles).

We don’t have any set itinerary, and we will only be scheduling our lodging one destination out. It is an experiment in living in the moment and adjusting based on the experience we’ve had so far and the opportunities that come our way.

We’ve already had a few potential roadblocks:

• Russian visas are more difficult to obtain when outside your home country. We are still unsure if we’ll be able to make this work, which would mean altering our course to Europe to enter from the south instead of the north. We’ll find out more when we get to the Russian Consulate in Beijing. It’s on our radar, but we’re not losing sleep over it.
• A long-term house sit offer on another continent was extended out of the blue, but it would mean cutting our adventure short. While it was tempting, we chose to stick with our original plan. The big lesson here is that even if we had chosen to take it, it wouldn’t have been a bad move. We still don’t regret leaving South America early to take advantage of the offer of a cruise across the Atlantic to England, and we keep that experience in mind when it comes to new opportunities.
• Our Chinese visa is 90 days, double entry, which means we can stay in the country for 180 days with a border crossing and re-entry halfway through. We plan to use the first 90 to get up to Mongolia for the annual Naadam games, but do we keep going to Russia after that or do we return to explore China for 90 more days? It puts us at risk for bad weather when/if we go to Russia and later to Europe.

As we make our way to our overall goal of traveling overland from Thailand to Portugal, we are leaving everything in between open, focusing the majority of our efforts only on the very next step. We’ll be updating you along the way as to how we fare on this trip and what unexpected opportunities arise along the way (because one thing I know for sure is that they will – action insures this).

How this applies to you

Are you stuck in the here and now while contemplating future problems or decisions? The good news is that step one at getting unstuck is actually the same as step two and step 27 and step 58 and step 193:

Take the very next step toward your overall goal.

That’s it. Nothing bigger, more mysterious, or complicated than that.

• Sign up for school.
• Take one thing out of your basement and recycle/sell/donate/trash it.
• Tell your friends and acquaintances you are ready to date again.

Pick a color, say yes to something good, say no to something bad, set a date, join a club, ask him out, pay the fee, sign your name on the dotted line. Whatever that next step is: Do It.

Take out the drama and just get busy.

We’ll be posting regularly on this topic as we travel to Portugal to show you how we handle real-time decision making while working toward an overall goal. Travel makes a great backdrop to a life lesson like this because of the obvious start and finish points and possibilities for diversions along the way.

Will we make it? (Hint: of course we will! And you will, too, if you simply get started and keep moving.)

Interested in a big project that takes some cash to get started? Check out our book, Dream Save Do, to find out the step-by-step process we used to fund our grand adventure.

When Betsy and Warren asked if I would write a piece for the site I was very apprehensive.  I didn’t feel qualified to speak to anyone about following your dreams and living the good life.  In fact I felt like a complete and total failure.  How could someone like me who failed at things more often than not write anything inspiring?  Despite reservations I wrote with the hope that in some small way my struggles will show that failure is not the end of the world.  In fact it is just the beginning.

I’ve dealt with the seemingly polar opposites of dreams and fear.  But rather than opposing forces I think they are complimentary opposites.  I’ve always seen fear as a negative force that paralyzed me into complacency.  But fear can also be the opposite, a highly motivating force that sparks one into action.

When faced with a choice between life and death most of us will choose life even if that means making difficult decisions.  Aron Ralston the mountain climber who while hiking in an isolated canyon in Utah became trapped by an 800 pound boulder grappled with the choice between certain death and cutting off his own arm in order to survive.  He chose life.

Now our decisions may not seem as dramatic but aren’t they?  We are all going to die.  The older I get the more this thought haunts me.  We get one shot at this life.  Am I doing the things I dream about or is the fear of uncertainty pulling the strings?

A year ago my wife and I dreamed of taking a yearlong sabbatical to Indonesia.  I blogged and talked a lot on a variety of hip buzz word topics.  But all I was doing was talking.  I had no real plan and I wasn’t taking actionable steps toward realizing that dream.  Maybe I was more in love with the dream than in actually doing it. Talk is cheap but action is the currency of life.

We failed miserably.  I felt like I had not only let myself down but everyone who supported our dream.  I hated myself and my life.  I stopped blogging, sank into depression, argued and fought with my family and mentally surrendered to the thought that this was how my life was supposed to be.  I felt trapped, unable to escape a situation that didn’t appeal to me.  I had no clear picture of what it was I really wanted.

Fear is an insidious force that manifests itself in ways we often don’t even realize.  It pretends like it’s a good friend just trying to protect us.  It’s that smooth talking rational voice inside our heads offering up any excuse at all for remaining complacent.  It wants us to ignore our gut feelings and extinguish our desires.  This is my struggle.

When fear fuels failure what do you do?  How do you deal with embarrassment?  How do you react?  I’ve learned a lot about myself over the past year and life taught me a few lessons.  Here is what I am doing now to deal with failure and strive to live the good life.

I don’t feel embarrassed

.  We failed.  People may have even written us off, even said negative things.  I’m over the embarrassment.  Embarrassment only leads us down the path of self-pity and that walk steers us away from our dreams and goals.  Who cares if we failed?  We now know what not to do next time.  I try to remember that this is MY life.

Evaluate our failure

.  Why did we fail?  What do we need to do or change to make sure we don’t do the same thing again?  Mistakes and failure are how we learn.  We are taking a long hard look at where we went wrong.

Re-evaluate our dreams and goals

.  After the disappointment we took a step back and re-evaluated our goals.  Were they realistic based on the parameters we set?  I firmly believe that anything is possible but one must also be realistic about the timeframe.  We had set a financial goal for our sabbatical that turned out to be unrealistic based on constraints we placed on ourselves.  We also didn’t have a realistic plan to reach those goals.  It’s easy now to look back and see the problems.  Failure is simply life showing you a different path to reach your goals.

Set new time frames with very specific actionable steps

.  We messed up.  We failed.  We took a step back (or forward) and re-evaluated our situation.  Now we are working to set a new time frame and make very specific actionable steps to reach our goals.  Our biggest problem was that we were so caught up with envisioning ourselves living the dream that we failed to take the required action to actually get there.  Anything worth doing requires work and sacrifice.  We are now working on a well-defined list of steps we need to take and assigning a realistic time-frame to each.  I’ll say it again; action is the currency of life.

Never ever, ever, ever give up

.  Regroup!  We will never give up on what we want.  We might fall on our face again.  We might make a fool of ourselves.  We might have many uncomfortable moments and conversations.  But our dreams continue to haunt us and make us miserable until we do something about them.  Never give up!  We fail?  Regroup!  We fail again?  Regroup!  But we never give up.  Our life depends on it.

I hope our experience offers you encouragement that failure is not the end of the world. In fact it is just another step in the right direction.

Matt Koenig is a husband, a father to two wonderful boys and a photographer.  He is on a journey to live in positive and inspirational ways, complain less and experience all this world has to offer.   You can connect with him at http://www.mattkoenigphotography.com.

Looking for insights and information to identify your dream and make it a reality? Check out our book, Dream Save Do. We wrote this guide to help anyone who is struggling to identify their dream and how to amass the cash to make it a reality.

“If you read 10,000 books it is good. If you walk 10,000 kilometers it is better. If you meet 10,000 people and sing about them it is best.” ~ Ancient Chinese saying

I used to think I knew a lot because I read a lot. Many bookish people are this way, trotting out obscure facts at dinner parties and kicking ass at Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. We find comfort in knowledge, and with the Internet and books we can have it almost instantly and with very little effort.

We are so good at learning in a theoretical sense that we sometimes forget to actually take it for a spin, get our hands dirty, and put it into practice.

The ego-centric me of 2010 thought I would add to my vast stores of knowledge from reading on our travels around the world, but something else entirely has happened:

I discovered early on I really didn’t know shit.

At least when it came to putting it into practice, that is.

• What good is it to learn something but not discuss it, test it, and make it better?
• How helpful is it to read history without tying it to current events to see how the flow of time impacts our world?
• Why work to make myself a better person without bothering to get to know people who think differently than me?

As much as this idea would have frightened me 10 years ago, it invigorates and excites me now. Every single person can reveal something new, and every single destination adds to my knowledge of the world and myself. Every bit of knowledge can be tested, discussed, and broadened by releasing it into the world through action and conversation.

Knowledge is dynamic, not static; progressive, not stationary.

In the week since we left our temporary home in Thailand to travel to China this lesson has been at the forefront of my mind, and there are three distinct reasons why.

Red-Headed Stranger

As we were eating a spicy papaya salad and enjoying a cold beer on a warm night in Luang Namtha, Laos, an older woman with flaming red hair and silver bangles on both arms stopped by our table and asked to join us. Her name was Julie and she was from London.

As the conversation progressed, we learned a lot about Julie and her long life of travel and adventure. Our jaws dropped when she finally revealed she was 79 years old, especially after hearing the story of her month-long bicycle journey around Laos with a friend 4 years before. She was traveling alone now after the death of her husband, and still with a long list of places to see.

I was reminded of my grandmother who died in her early 70s, lonely and in very poor health, who used her sharp tongue and isolated lifestyle to keep people at a distance all her life. And here was this vibrant, interesting woman with friends all over the world who still read voraciously. Not only that, she had to say goodnight at 10 pm because she wanted to get up early to do some yoga before catching her 10-hour bus to Luang Prabang the next morning.

I can read books every day about the importance of living well every single day and agree with the sentiment, but taking it to heart, actively using it in my life, and seeing the difference in people who do and do not heed this advice make the lesson come to life.

I sing the story of Julie because it is the story I hope for us and for all of you:

• A life of never-ending curiosity
• Supportive family and friends
• Strength to move forward after significant loss

The Handwriting on the Wall

We met Wall as we were checking out of the guesthouse in northern Laos. Wall was near the end of several months of backpacking around Southeast Asia during his one-year sabbatical from his work in the finance industry in Shanghai. We hopped in the back of the truck with him for our ride to the bus that would take us to China.

Wall told us about China during our day-long trip to get there, and he easily bonded with the other travelers of various ages from different countries on the bus. One man, a 60-year-old Thai, related his time in Beijing 20 years before and the songs he learned. It took almost no prompting for Wall to join and sing along with him.

As we got to know Wall, we were impressed by his ability to interact with just about everyone, his deep respect for others, and his continuing quest for knowledge and self-improvement. He is a student of people and willing to talk to anyone to find out their story and add to his knowledge of the world.

He is quite accomplished for a 24-year-old man. Actually he’s accomplished for someone of any age, having traveled all over China and the outside world, climbing to base camp on Mt. Everest, and even walking 700 km between provinces in a quest on both self-reliance and reaching out to strangers. This is in addition to his “conventional” accomplishments of getting a degree and landing a great job.

He was born into an ambitious, financially stable family in a bustling city instead of a rural farm, and he appreciates this fact. He also knows he can do even better, and he doesn’t rest on his laurels as he could so easily do.

I thought of the early-20s people I know from around the world and imagined all of them pursuing a life of knowledge and self-improvement like Wall and what our world would be like if they did. And then I realized it is never too late to start.

I sing the song of Wall because it is what I wish for every young person in the world:

• An appreciation for the benefits given through the circumstances of your birth
• A desire to move beyond the constraints of your station in life
• A preference for learning and experience over wealth and material things

Fat Mother

We got off the bus in Jinghong, China, a bustling small city of about half a million people (small by China standards, that is) in the Yunnan Province. There are not a lot of Western travelers here, and everywhere we went there were stares.

After a morning of sightseeing we decided to stop for dumplings and found a shop near our hostel. Our friend Wall ordered for us and began chatting with the owner. He discovered she had just opened a few days before and was very excited to have Westerners in her shop. She took it as an omen of good fortune for her first business, and when we told her how much we loved dumplings she invited us back for a special dinner that night with her son.

We arrived to find a special table set outside the restaurant for us. She brought out specialties from her home province in the Northeast of China, thousands of kilometers away. Not only were we eating local, we had gone off menu!

We brought a bottle of rice wine as a gift, and we were gently told it was rubbish. They brought out the “good stuff” made by a local farmer (Chinese moonshine), and it was remarkably better than what we brought. We learned how to toast the Northeast Chinese way (one by one and looking at each other, similar to the French), and we drank to the shop owner’s good fortune in business and the happy chance of getting to know each other.

Her son is learning to be a chef at school, and we talked about food and cultural similarities and differences between our two countries and even between their home province and Yunnan. After a couple of hours of eating and drinking, Wall shared with us the name of the restaurant: Northeast Fat Mother Dumpling Shop. We nicknamed her our Little Dumpling, which made her laugh hysterically. Imagine, calling a grown woman a dumpling!

She wanted to know more about us, how to attract travelers to her shop, and even how to talk to any Westerners she might see in the street. Her curiosity and enthusiasm kept us at her table well into the night, through a thunderstorm, and to the bottom of the bottle of rice wine.

She told us of her hopes for her son to enjoy his new career, to find a wife, and to experience more of life. She told us of her desire for a bustling business and to meet more international travelers.

She said that night was one of her happiest in recent memory, and we would have to agree.

I sing the song of Fat Mother because it is what I hope for my mother and all mothers in the world:

• Children who love and respect you
• A talent to share with the world separate from your role as a mother
• Courage to start new ventures in middle age and beyond

Singing the Stories You Know

Maybe you are stuck in the same way of learning as I used to be, counting on books and internal processing to gain knowledge. Perhaps you have taken the next step of voicing and testing your knowledge out in the world, taking it for a spin and refining it based on your personal observations.

But if you haven’t yet learned to actively extract stories, lessons, and clarifications on your own life from the people you meet – possibly even the ones you don’t like! – you are missing a key component of life learning. Everyone has something to teach you, whether it is specific knowledge, the pros and cons of an attitude or lifestyle, or even how to communicate in different or better ways. When you share what these people have taught you, you advance our whole society.

Wall told us he thinks about what he has learned every single day before he goes to bed, and the lessons from other people figure highly in his list. We have now adopted this strategy as a way to cement our learning and remind us to share those stories with other people.

Street smarts come from living out loud every day, walking and talking to the people along the way.

Read as many books as you like, but don’t forget where those stories originate: out in the real world.

We’re not making any personal attacks on you. It is true for everyone. And only a masochist would worry about building up willpower anyway. I mean, who in the hell wants to deprive themselves of something they really want just to say they did it?

Not us, and probably not you.

The key to getting around one of your weaknesses – over-shopping, eating junk food, or even drunk-dialing your ex – is to not even expose yourself to the possibility in the first place. Take the easy way out.

• Stay out of malls so you won’t be tempted to shop
• Avoid the junk food aisle at the store entirely so chips and cookies won’t make it into your home
• Download an app on your phone that requires you to complete complex games to determine your sobriety before allowing you to call or text your “forbidden” list

We’re written about the fallacy of willpower before, especially in Dream Save Do, but it bears repeating. Because we are human, it is inevitable we will put ourselves in harm’s way again, even when it makes no logical sense.

Your willpower is weak, and even if you make it stronger it will never be foolproof. Your better option is simple avoidance, which also makes for a less stressful life.

But sometimes we forget our own lessons and need to be reminded. This past week we were feeling sentimental about our last few days in Chiang Mai, Thailand after living there for six months.

Just one last trip to the Sunday Walking Market, ok?

Warren’s goal was to shoot some more pictures of this famous vibrant market that stretches from one gate of the old city to another. My goal was to try out my new point-and-shoot camera, but I quickly got waylaid by my desire to own pretty things made in what has quickly become the closest thing to home we’ve had in almost 2 years.

• Bracelets
• Shirts
• Handbags

I’ve been living a minimalist life long enough to know I couldn’t take a wall-sized wooden elephant carving with me, but jewelry and clothes? Surely they would fit in my backpack.

We’ve been to dozens of markets in our travels, and I rarely get this “I’ve gotta have it” feeling. I’m usually happy to appreciate and move on. But when these pretty things are combined with the sentimental feeling of a place I’ve loved and happy memories of new friends and big projects completed, I want to capture it and take it with me.

But we all know you cannot take it with you. A strong memory or feeling stands on its own without need of a physical reminder. Would your true love slip your mind if you didn’t have the trinkets from your relationship? Would you forget the day your children were born if they weren’t standing right in front of you? Of course not.

It brings to mind last night’s chat with a pushy local hill tribe woman in Laos trying to sell us bracelets as we ate dinner. She quickly noticed Warren wearing a wedding band but not me, and in some pretty direct sign language asked why we were together if I wasn’t his wife.

I laughed when I finally understood because I don’t need a wedding ring to remind me of the man I’m with 24 hours a day. It was then that it dawned on me that I didn’t need a reminder of my time in Thailand, either. It will live on in my heart and mind forever.

Though the gorgeous necklace I bought will remind me of the lesson if I need it.

Need help saying no to the wrong things? Click these links to find out more about working around willpower with your money in Dream Save Do and with your possessions in Getting Rid of It.

On to the good stuff

Like so many of you, we grew up with Dr. Seuss rhymes and stories. His books captured our imagination while teaching us about language and life. It is great to see another side of the genius of Dr Seuss.

It is fascinating to realize how much learning a new language can have on your life. This wonderful article explains how being bi-lingual makes you smarter. And here we thought it was just helping us order cheese and wine in different countries. It makes me appreciate the millions of bi-lingual speakers around the world just a bit more.

From novels to historical fiction to the ancient myths of Greece, our stories have dominated the written word. This article, Your Brain on Fiction, from the NY Times is a fascinating look at how reading stories can “change how we act in life.” Now we have an excuse for reading novels as we just love a good brain stimulation.

We’ve been consuming vast amounts of information about China and are overwhelmed with excitement for what we will experience. One of the interesting articles we found aims to debunk the misconceptions most of us have about China. It is a great read to learn more about this mysterious and exciting country.

I love the idea expressed of living life without “should”. The goal for us all is to live our lives by not saying “I should do that” but instead just doing it. I think this is actually similar to the wise words “Do or do not. There is no try.” Thank you Yoda for your guidance.

Inside scoop

After almost 6 months, we said goodbye to Thailand this morning and are off on our next adventure. We will be spending a few days on buses as we head up through Laos and crossing the border into China. We’re excited for what the next few months will bring us. We’ll be sharing the stories and images through our newsletter and Facebook, so sign up if you are not already there.