Top 10 life-lessons from Down Under

When I set off for the Land Down Under 6 months ago, I set 3 goals for myself. 

The first one was to have fun and make the most of it. 

The second was to fully live and embrace the Aussie Culture. 

The 3^rd, and perhaps most important one, was to use this experience to help me develop as a man and strive towards achieving my full human potential.

As William James once said, “Most people live, whether physically, intellectually, or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.”

I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. James on this topic. Therefore, I decided to use my 18 months in Australia to consciously work on my mental, physical, spiritual, and relational capabilities. At the age of 24, I believe I am at the perfect stage of my life to do this. I am old enough to understand the world around me, yet still young to shape my ways and beliefs in a way that will help me get the most out of my time on this planet.

I have been on this self-discovery and personal development journey for 6 months now, and decided to take a moment to look back and appreciate the progress I’ve made.  I feel extremely blessed about how things have gone so far, and I decided to give back by sharing the top 10 lessons I’ve learned in 2010. I’m hopeful that each one of you will benefit from at least a few of them.  

#1 Our mind is our best ally

“Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.” –Emerson

“The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.” –Darwin

In life, there’s only one person we’re going to spend every minute of our life with. It’s not our husband/wife, parents or siblings. It’s ourself. Based on that, doesn’t it make sense to devote some time to getting to know our mind better, to gaining better control over it? I believe so, for it is our mind that determines our perception of the world. By improving our mind, we improve our world.  The quality of our life literally depends on the quality of our thoughts.

Have you ever met someone who just always seems jovial and in a good mood? Someone who is always positive, always thankful for what they got instead of sulking about what they don’t have? We all have the power to be such a person.  Of course, just like anything worth achieving in life, it’ll require take a lot of effort and time. In fact it’s probably a life-long quest. But each minute invested in harnessing the power of our mind will bring rewards infinitely greater.

Our ability to monitor and selectively control our thoughts  allows us to always stay in the optimal mindset in any situation. Once we gain control over our mind, we can replace negative thoughts by positive thoughts (we can never have negative and positive thoughts at once- it’s one or the other). We can also  focus on “controlling the controllable” by letting go of all things we have no control over and directing our cognitive energy towards the things we have control over .This enables us to be more effective while greatly decreasing our stress level.

As such, I believe mind control is the only way to reach our full potential, to be as successful and happy as we can be.

The activities that have contributed to gaining better control over my mind are the following:

-Daily meditation. Whaaat? Yes, I do meditate every morning and it actually works. And to be honest, once you get the hang of it, it’s actually quite pleasant.
-Reading spiritual books and blogs (zenhabits.org, tinybuddha.com), mostly from the Buddhist philosophy.
-Reading personal development books and blogs (ridiculouslyextraordinary.com, http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/).
-Yoga, which strengthens the mind-body connection.
-Mindfulness, which is the practice of being fully present in the moment, aware of our thoughts and what’s going on around us.

#2 Everything is interconnected

When we make one positive change in our life, it creates a domino effect that positively impacts all the other areas of our lives. 

For example, when one starts to live an active lifestyle he/she will start having more energy and feeling better, which leads to having more positive thoughts, which will leads to having less stress, which leads to better sleep, which leads to even more energy, which leads to having better relationships with others, which leads to more confidence, which leads to more achievements... and so on...

One positive change creates a virtuous circle and leads to a more happy and fulfilled life.

#3 We can be whatever we want to be

 “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavour.” –Thoreau

“The growth of the human mind is still high adventure, in many ways the highest adventure on earth.”  -Norman Cousins

Many people believe that we are born a certain way and that our personality is set. Their thinking lies along the lines of “This is just the way I am, take it or leave it.” This mindset is incredibly limiting and unfortunate.

 The truth is we all have the power to shape ourselves in the way that we want to. Whatever personality trait we desire can be developed, and any negative trait can be slowly eradicated.

I believe that to achieve greater success in life we need to work harder, but not in the way we generally think of. Granted, we can work harder on our relationships, on our jobs, on our projects, and that will yield results. But more importantly, we must work on ourselves. Every minor improvement we make on ourselves will radiate on every single sphere of our life. We can be as great as we can dream. 

All it takes is constant work and dedication to making ourselves a slightly better human being every single day. 

#4 Feed your mind and it will feed you

Since I got here, I haven’t watched TV. I just took it out of my life habits. It gave me a whole lot more spare time, which I’ve decided to re-invest in “character building” activities. Reading self-help, spiritual, inspirational, challenging, enlightening material.

What I’ve found is that not only are those reading educational, they it also help me tune in to a “higher frequency”.  For the next few hours, it’s as though my conscious or subconscious is pondering on the material. The result is that I have so much more good creative ideas than ever before. The funny thing is that sometimes those ideas seemingly pop out of nowhere, but I think they come from my subconscious mind.

Hence, reading enlightening material (self-help, professional development, spiritual, and “challenging” literature, not novels or the newspaper) is literally food for though. You feed your mind great stuff and next thing you know it will reward you with great thinking. It’s simply brilliant.

#5 Don’t be afraid to think differently

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" –Albert Einstein

“People will always try to stop you from doing the right thing if it’s unconventional.” –Warren Buffett

Because something has always been done a certain way doesn’t mean it's the best way to do it. 

Recently, I’ve found that when we start digging, we often find that a lot of commonly accepted knowledge is set on shaky or even false grounds. While it is easier to accept the status quo, the only way that we will ever solve today’s society’s problems is by thinking in a different way that those who created the problems in the first place.  Challenging the status quo again and again is the only way we can ever move forward as a society.

Therefore, it is imperative to allow ourselves to challenge assumptions, pre-conceived ideas, and accepted truths, no matter how strong the resistance of the majority. Any idea that goes on to revolutionize the world is generally considered crazy in the early stages.

Just remember... once upon time, people would have you crazy if you claimed that the Earth was round, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

#6 Write everything down

One thing I’ve learned the hard way is that when you start feeding your mind and getting numerous ideas everyday, it’s crucial to write them down as they come. The human memory is far from foolproof, and I’ve unfortunately lost a few of the ideas that popped into my head. To prevent that, I’ve started writing them down in the “Notes” application of my iPhone as soon as they come. An added benefit is once you’ve written down an idea, it gains substance. It’s not just something in your head, it is tangible. It’s the first step towards making that idea a reality.

#7 Action is all that really matters

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit at home and think of it. Go out and get busy.” –Dale Carnegie

“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get us and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.” –George Bernard

Reading, thinking, dreaming, meditating... it’s all nice and well, but action is the only thing that actually counts. I’ve written a full post on this (which can be found here http://phil-theaustraliandream.blogspot.com/2010/11/actions-separate-people.html), but this is so important that I felt compelled to re-iterate it.  Sometimes when people start internalizing, they can become more passive and it compromises their relationship with the outside world. Too many great ideas are thought of and not acted upon (we are all, to some degree, guilty of this).

In order to achieve anything, the most important step is the first one. Once we get a project in motion, even if we don’t fully know what we’re doing, we’re already halfway there. Somehow, once we commit to a project, things start falling into place, as if the universe conspired to help us, and all that is left to do is be persistent and good things will come.  

Action is what separates people who achieve, from those who wish they had achieved and spend the rest of their life thinking “what if”...  

#8  No money, no problem

I moved to Australia with 2000$ to my name, and a few people thought that was foolish of me. Perhaps it was, but it also turned out to be greatly beneficial. Not having much money thought me 2 things:

1-     

A frugal lifestyle:

Basically, I’ve learned that stuff really isn’t what makes us happy. People, experiences, accomplishments are what really make us happy. And we don’t necessarily need much money for any of them. Studies consistently show that after a certain point, about 40,000$/year in developed countries, there is no correlation between income and happiness. Take a minute to consider this. Generally speaking, whether you make 50,000$/year or 1,000,000$/year has no real bearing on how happy you’ll  be. I’m the poorest I’ve ever been this year, and quite possibly the happiest I’ve ever been, so I tend to agree. I don’t own a TV or a car, I don’t ever eat at the restaurant, I don’t buy clothes, I rarely buy more than one beer when I go to the bar... And I’m still super happy. Go figure!

2-      Creative money-making:

The other thing that living on a tight budget is teaching me about falls in line with the old adage that “necessity breeds creativity”. There are countless ways to make money out there if you keep your eyes open, spot opportunities, and find creative ways to exploit them. I am still in the learning phase of this but I intend to do a lot more of it in 2011. For now, I am currently in the process of getting a job that will pay me 60$/hour for doing fun and easy work. Nothing is confirmed yet so I won’t get into the details, but once it goes through I’ll let you know. And I can assure you you’ll get a good laugh out of it!

#9 Hedonistic vs Eudaimonic happiness

There are two competing theories out there as to what makes humans happy. Hedonistic happiness is derived from eating, drinking, lounging around... Living “the good life”. Meanwhile, eudaimonic happiness is derived from achievements, from developing ourselves, from pushing our limits, etc. Once upon a time, hedonic activities used to make me happy but something inside me has changed over time.

For instance, given the opportunity of spending a day laying on the beach drinking cold beer, or spending a day climbing a mountain and pushing myself to get to the top, 9 times out 10 I will choose the mountain. Laying on the beach is fun, climbing a mountain is fulfilling. To me, fulfillment reaches a much deeper level of my being than merely having fun.

Clearly, we need a bit of both, but generally speaking I believe eudaimonic activities contribute much more to my happiness than hedonistic activities. That’s why one of my most important resolutions for 2011 is less partying Friday/Saturday night, and more Saturdays/Sundays spent doing cool activities such as surfing, spearfishing, cliffjumping, sailing, biking, running, hiking, camping, exploring, writing, reading, etc.  

#10 Superhealth 

Last but certainly not least, over the last 4 months I have come to realize that there is such a thing as “superhealth”. If you look up “health” in the Oxford English dictionary, it is defined as “the absence of illness or disease”. I find that utterly ridiculous. Not being sick is the bare minimum threshold.

Someone who drives to work, sits at their office all day, eats processed food, drinks 4 cups of coffee to get through the day, carries around 20lbs of extra weight, has no energy left at night to do anything but sit around and watch TV might not be sick but there is absolutely no way that person is healthy. Sadly, that description represents the average person in the Western world nowadays. I strongly believe that it is critical that we, as a society, change our definition of health over the next decade. As baby-boomers get older, we will be faced with the consequences of that lifestyle and trust me, they will be disastrous.

To me, health means so much more. It means waking up and feeling awesome, having high levels of energy all day, it’s looking the way you want to look, it’s being able to perform well in all the activities you do and not get tired doing it. I guess we should call that “superhealth”.

I’ve been doing extensive research on the subject since I got here. I figure that since I only have 1 life to live, I might as well feel and look as good as possible while I’m here. The way I see it, superhealth is the only way to truly live life to the fullest.

I feel so strongly about this concept that I have decided to devote a whole new blog project to it. It is called “100 Happy & Healthy years”.  On this blog, I will write weekly articles on what I believe are the 4 pillars of superhealth: super-nutrition, an active lifestyle, spirituality, and self-development. You can visit my new blog here: 100happyandhealthyyears.blogspot.com. 

Check it back regularly and I promise you will learn things that will, if you apply them, lead you towards a more enjoyable, fulfilled, and prosperous life.

Thanks, and have a super day!

Phil

Fast Times in Byron Bay

Have you ever experienced the feeling of walking into a town you’ve never been before, and instantly feeling at home there? As if you had just found that place on earth you’ve been dreaming of all your life?

It had happened to me a few times before, but never quite as strongly as it did when I arrived in Byron Bay. It was truly love at first sight. 

Imagine a small surf town that has amazing surf breaks, gorgeous beaches and scenery, a chill atmosphere, friendly people,  a really healthy vibe (the town has like 5 health food stores and 0 fast food chains restaurants) , a vibrant nightlife (fun bars and great live music acts every night), some unbelievable trails for running , and to top it all off.... fun gorgeous girls everywhere. Can you say Heaven on earth? 

The only unfortunate thing about all this is that we only had 48 hours in Byron Bay. Clearly, there was only one possible course of action. Make those 48 hours as unforgettable as possible. 

Here is the story of our short but oh-so-sweet stay in beautiful Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia.

On the 6^th of January, Matt and I set off from Surfers Paradise, a great place in its own right, but overdeveloped and too commercial for my liking for the short 1 hour drive to Byron Bay. We arrived there sometime in the late arvo, drove around for a bit looking for a hostel to sleep in that night. 

1 hour and 4 different hostels later, we had to face the fact that the whole town was booked out. We were going to have to be a little creative about this sleeping situation. 

I could see Matt was worried about this predicament of sorts, but personally I was getting quite excited about all this. I love adventures, and I could clearly see an epic one looming ahead. I had no idea where we were going to sleep 8 hours later, but I knew one thing. Those 8 hours were going to be unpredictable, really fun, and perhaps even a little wild. 

We started weighing our options, and the one to emerge from our discussion was to park the Jeep in the middle of the town, and “set up camp”. Meaning, we were going to put all our stuff on the front seats, put the back seats down, lay down our foam mattress in the back, and hope for it to be relatively comfortable.

Operation “Transform Jeep into a bedroom” was going smoothly until it started raining. Not a little light rain, a friggin’ tropical downpour . There wasn’t much we could do at that point, so we took cover. While we were waiting for the rain to subside, we cranked up some tunes, poured ourselves a few rhum & cokes, all the while thinking that things could be a whole lot worse!

Once the rain stopped, we finished organizing the jeep, and upon testing this new set we agreed that after a night a partying we would have no problem sleeping there. Delighted about this realization, we started walked the 50m that separated us from what Matt assured me was the wildest bar in Byron Bay, Cheeky Monkey. With every step towards the bar I was getting a little more excited, and then, my excitement reached its paroxysm as I saw a sign indicating that it was Wet T-Shirt Contest night at Cheeky Monkey. Haha! This was going to be one hell of a night :D 

We got in, ordered a couple pints and started chatting up some of the fellow patrons. It was all good fun but somewhat tame until the MC got on stage and exclaimed that as a warm-up for the Wet T-Shirt Contest, they needed 6 contestants to come up on stage for a Trivia Contest. I instantly started jumping up and down to show my interest and next thing I knew I was up on stage with 2 other dudes and 3 girls. The MC then explained the rules: each contestant was going to be asked a question and a right answer would get them through to the next round, and a wrong answer would yield two options. The first one was to get off stage and be out of the game, while the second one was to take off one item of clothing and make it through to the next round. Woah, definitely a good way to spice things up!

The game got underway and slowly but surely everyone started getting wrong answers and taking off some clothing. Eventually, other contestants started getting off stage and it got down to me and this cute British girl.  Oh yeah, at that point I was only wearing my boxers and she was only wearing panties and was trying to cover up her boobs as best as she could with her arm haha!

Hahah just thinking back about it makes me laugh! The whole time I was up there I just had the biggest grin on my face. Here I was, half drunk and half naked, in my dream town, on a stage in a bar in front of about 200 people, playing trivia against a topless girl. Priceless! 

The girl and I went back and forth, knowing that we had no room for mistake because, well, we only had 1 item of clothing left each! Then, the MC  asked me the following question:  “At the 1996 Olympic Games, which country came second in the medal count”? I started thinking... “All right, 1996 that was in Atlanta, so the USA would have won it for sure... but who came second?” Everybody in the audience was screaming out answers... Germany, China, Brazil, Russia...  This was a sports question, my forte, so I decided to follow my instincts. “Russia” I uttered confidently into the microphone. 

The MC flipped the card and said “The 1996 Olympics were in Atlanta and the USA won... and that year, 2 countries boycotted the Games. China was one of them... and the other one was... Russia! Hence, in 1996, it was Germany who finished second in the medal count at the Olympics”. Noooooooo. Hahah, oh well!!

I put my clothes back on, got off stage and headed to the bar to get a beer (all this thinking had made me thirsty!!!) and got congratulated by everybody on the way there. You could just feel that the vibe in the bar had shifted and that it was about to get real rowdy. Oh, and the wet t-shirt contest was still up ahead!!! PLL (Percentage of Loving Life) was sky-high!!!

The rest of the night was just great, I got to witness my first ever wet t-shirt contest and it was as entertaining as I had imagined it. Eventually the 2 finalists took off their tops and it became sort of a topless dancing contest. The crowd was going off and everyone was having a blast.

Once that was over, the staff cleared up the stage, the lights went down, and the dancefloor got out of control. I was totally enjoying the new found semi-fame I had earned from my trivia performance, and I was just all over the place dancing it up with everybody. Rowdy Phil was truly in fine form. Matty was out there ripping it up as well and we were loving life... Until we went up to the bar for a refreshment, and the bouncer tapped my shoulder and said “Your buddy’s had too much to drink, he’s outta here.” I tried to argue but then I looked into Matty’s empty eyes and realized that yeah, he was gone. I gave him the keys to the Jeep and told him I’d see him at some point in the next 12 hours. 

I grabbed my beer, went back on the dancefloor and to my utmost surprise, 10 minutes later Matty had reappeared with a new t-shirt and a cheeky smile on. All I heard him say over the music was “I’m back baby!!!”. Hahahah! 

From there, I’ll have to admit that things got a little blurry. I ended up befriending a lovely local girl and once the bar closed, we decided to go on a nice stroll on the beach. It was great fun, we really had some great conversation. I really feel like we got to know each other better while at the beach!

Eventually it was time to head back to the Jeep and I got lost in the middle of the town but somehow made it back to the Jeep around 5am and got “into bed” with Matty who was passed out cold. 3 hours later I woke up with a sore neck and sweating because it was like 35 degrees in the jeep. Only remedy was to pop the trunk open meaning that until we got up, people would be walking by us on their way to the grocery store. They probably had a good laugh looking at those 2 dudes sleeping in their underwear in the back on a Jeep. I know I would have ;)

The next day I was admittedly feeling a little rough. However, I am a strong believer in  getting up and being active to get over a hangover.  Hence, I headed off to the beach with my surfboard to catch a few waves. They were huge that day and paddling out to the break turned out to be a bit of a mission, but once I was out there, everything felt right once again. I ended up staying out for a good 4 hours, surrounded by some unreal surfers, just taking it all in and trying to ride the best I can in those 6-7ft curlers. 

 

I came out for some food, and next up I set off one of the best runs my life. Right next to the beach in Byron Bay is a small mountain with a lighthouse at the top. I started climbing the mountain and was getting a bit tired when I had one of the coolest sights of my life. On my left, a cliff overlooking the ocean and the beach. On my right, luscious vegetation and palm trees. In front, this gorgeous fit girl running down in front of me. If that wasn’t enough, exactly at that moment, a black Lamborghini rolled past us. Palm trees, ocean, beach, beautiful girl, beautiful car, all in my field of vision at once. All this amplified by the endorphins flowing through my body. Wow. 

That night we went out for a few drinks a place called Woody’s Surf Shack. While it was a slightly less eventful night, I was quite content sipping my drink and watching the surf videos being shown on the flat screen TV’s all over the bar. Having spent 4 hours earlier trying to simply catch the waves, I was mesmerized by what some of the guys out there can do on those waves.

The next day, unfortunately, it was already time to kiss Byron Bay goodbye. On our way out, we stopped in a place called Nimbin. I’m sure some of you will have heard about it... While I won’t get into the specifics , let’s just say it is a small hippie town in the middle of nowhere that could be described as “the Australian Amsterdam” haha! Strange place, but it was good to see!

 

All in all, the Byron Bay adventure was a massively positive one. So much so that I’ve promised myself I’d be back sometime, somehow. There is a company called Power Super Foods for which I would love to work and that has its offices nearby, so I’m thinking I might go there for a few months after my MBA. I’ll be graduating in November 2011, and I really don’t see myself going back to Canada at the start of Canadian winter/Australian summer, so... who knows, Byron Bay might be my next destination!