A few years ago, after dropping out of high school, I worked as a laborer in various factories and warehouses. It lasted for two years before I decided to study by myself and pass an admission exam that would allow me to go to college. At that time, I thought having a college degree meant having a job in which I’d find myself happier, freer, and wealthier. I began studying various subjects before finally opting for taxes and accounting. I actually loved those classes, rocked at it and found what is called a good job in a matter of days after receiving my degree.

Coming from a family of laborers and social welfare abusers, I was seeing it as a huge social evolution. The feeling of accomplishment lasted a few months, accompanied by an actual feeling of self-worthiness to be a part of the system. I was happy to provide value to the company I was working for, because making it perform well meant being a part of the global economy of my country. Being good at it meant more profit, thus more employment, more taxes, more money to pay for schools and road. Everything seemed so beautifully set. Working there was good to me and to the community. At least, that’s what it felt like. The human mind is so flexible I’d conditioned myself to believe that a white collar job would make me happy and was the right thing to do.

Then monotony and lucidity set in. Those good high-on-pot feelings began dropping in intensity, as I realized there was not much difference between an office job and a factory job. I was still a slave. I’d spent years studying, only to become more of a slave than I actually was without college education. School had only contributed to make me more of a sheep than I would have been if I’d stayed education-free. Without going to college, I would have kept working as a slave, but at least I’d have stayed conscious about it.

In 99% of office jobs, you don’t get paid enough for the devotion you give your employer, even if you have a 6 figures salary. Spending at least 40 hours a week in a office, pretending you care for the company and spending actual mental energy to make it go well although deep down you couldn’t care less, when you could be spending that time and energy on a project of your own, is both a lie to yourself and to your employer. This is the way of the weak. Because what you really care for is your wife, your children, your friends and the activities you like doing outside, these things you really enjoy doing and that you do whenever you actually feel like it, (not from 9 to 5 convincing yourself it’s good for you).

Here’s a list of the things I most like doing :

1. I love writing.
2. I love traveling and feeling free, being on the road.
3. I love thinking uncommonly.
4. I love playing backgammon.
5. I love studying animal behavior.

Five stuff I love and that count for me. Five ways to earn the necessary money to live.

I’m combining number 1 and 3 in this blog. It’s not bringing any money at the time of writing, but that’s because I need to provide more and more value. When there will be enough valuable articles in here, I know it will pay back.

I’m about to live number 2 full time in a few months time, and along with that I have two projects : one involving business that goes with traveling, and the second one is writing online on a day-to-day basis about my traveling experiences.

Number 4 has yet to provide a way of bringing in some cash. I’m not good enough to play for money yet. But I’m practicing everyday in the hope to become an excellent player.

Number 5 is a longer term idea. If someday I decide to set in, somewhere wild in the world, I would love to work freelance on helping humans and animals to live together. Bringing the first ones to understand and respect the seconds more.

What are the things you love doing ?

Don’t hesitate sharing your ideas below

If you’re a regular reader, chances are you’re interested in self-development. Perhaps you’re an ex procrastinator, or an ex lazy ass. And now that you’ve committed to taking actions and making a better life for yourself, chances are you’re working a lot both on your own behaviour and emotions, and with the world around you. You have learned that it is possible developing a great life that fits your expectations, but think it’s an acomplishment only workhorses can attain.

Well, I don’t believe so.

Of course, achieving good results in any area requires time, dedication and consistency. Being very focused on an area of your life you want to improve is a good thing. People who are able to focus all their mental energy on one particular area for a time long enough will multiply their chances of meeting success. These persons are the one who learn how to master a new language in a few months time. It’s the boy who changes from shy guy to nightclub playboy, and the girl who loses 50 pounds and becomes the sexiest. It feels great being able to overcome one’s fears and finally take action. However, the danger resides in the possibility of burning out of energy. Because the more effort you put in, the higher your expectations, the harder the fall if things do not work out.

Expectation, or anticipation, is a dangerous friend. If you don’t set any, then you’re not setting goals to reach for, and you’re cancelling all your possibilities of change. You’re therefore bound to keep living your life the way it’s always been. Maybe it’s a wise thing to do once you’ve reached a certain level of peace, freedom and –dare I say it- enlightenment. Buddhism for instance has placed living with no goal-oriented thinking at the core of its philosophy. I’m still pretty far from there and I make the guess that most of you are too. It’s a good thing being aware of it, as it can only help us getting closer to it.

Meanwhile, expectations and goals are what make you go forward. I said expectation is a dangerous friend because pursuing high objectives can easily become an obsession. An obsession is when you can only think about one particular topic and do activities that gravitate around it. You will devote it all your energy, mental and physical, day and night. If it’s not paying off after some time, you will get frustrated. More and more so until the point of giving it up forever and forgetting all you learned about it. What a complete waste of time and energy this would be.

The length of time it’s going to take before burning out is inversely proportional to the excessive amount of energy you’ll have put in your project. If you give it more energy than the universe can handle at that present moment, it’s only going to be wasted. So it’s crucial that you learn to dispense your energy to your project in an intelligent manner, so as not to waste it and risk running out of it. I’ve understood that time is our greatest ally, as it’s the one that does all the work once we’ve decided to push the forward button. As long as one keeps doing one’s best without overdoing it, everything will comme into place by itself.

One of the key elements I’ve been building in my own life through the years, with regards to self-development, is to learn to forgive myself when being less strong that I’d like too. Self-forgiving has tremendously helped me in several important areas of my life : work, love, freedom. It has now come to a point where I don’t even think about it in these terms anymore. Sometimes I just know that what I got to do for the next couple hours is: nothing. Nothing that ressembles work anyway.

For instance, at times I would be too tired to be productive, but I didn’t want to give up (for only a few hours) the project I was working on. But it’s important to realize that it’s normal to be tired and to just let go, because non one can do anything good when tired. So it’s ok, I accept myself to feel this way, I listen to my needs and I go to bed.

I used to just repeat this mantra : “I completely accept myself to feel this way. There’s no point in fighting against my own needs. Doing more work is only the ego talking. I listen to my feelings instead of my intellect.”

Sometimes feelings are of much more help than the intellect. I’ll have to write a text about that

By the way, “slacking around” has its virtues. It allows for the mind to structure the most complex thoughts one has. It’s also a time when your conscious mind can reconnect to your body : feel your digestive process, feel your heart beating, your muscles relaxing. Practice some relaxation or lucid dreaming. Those moments reconnecting to yourself are both energy and inner peace givers.

You don’t have to be at a 110% energy level at all times. Sometimes the best thing to do is sit back and enjoy a Mojito. Nobody has an unlimited supply of energy.

Our new idea is to go to Indonesia and stay there for at least a year. We’re actually planning to open a small business over there. Why Indonesia? Well, first because we need to go where the sun shines at least once or twice a year for a change, and where the landscapes are beautiful. We also want to forget most things that remind us of the occidental way of life. It’s as simple as that. Second, Nathalie knows Indonesia really well. She speaks Indonesian fluently and knows what it is to live there. She also happens to have a degree in “foreign business with South-East Asia”. She’s already been teaching me a bit of bahasa Indonesia this week and I’ve found many great lessons and games to help you learn on various websites.

The idea occurred as we were talking about staying in Indonesia, just touring and slacking around for about 6 months, before going to Canada like we’d planned before. But then we had this illumination and saw a great business opportunity in a niche business that very few people seem to have gone into yet.

The project in question requires mostly time, dedication and communication, but very little if no money at all. Once it is all set up, we’ll have a nice income for working a few hours a week. If it doesn’t turn out well, it’s still ok because thanks to the hard work we’ve been putting here, we have enough money to live a couple of years with no income at all over there.

The only difficulty resides in the fact that it’s extremely difficult to obtain a visa that allows us to stay and work in Indonesia. The administrative rules resemble a maze designed by some kind of mad and vicious man. So we need to figure that part out before saying goodbye to our people here.

Anyway I’m very happy about having one more concrete project that doesn’t require me to work for an employer ever again. On January 1st, I actually made myself the promise of leaving my last employer ever this year. I’m working as hard as I can to generate income from my websites. So, even if it doesn’t work out well in Indonesia, at least I’ll be able to spend a lot of time over there, having no obligation at all, to develop my web activities.

I already told everyone at my day job about leaving Belgium, and I’ve been amazed to see how scared people seem to be when it comes to doing anything that’s out of the ordinary. They will find all sorts of reasons not to change anything in their lives. They would invent all sort of barriers, like language difference, terrorism, or other virtual threats of the sort.

Well, it’s really dangerous going outside your home, especially in Brussels. You can get hit by a car every time you cross a street. Is it a sufficient reason to stay home? No it’s not. Life’s too short to discard the outside world’s experiences, even if crossing your front door means having 50% chance of getting ran over by trucks. What’s the point staying home waiting for your body and your brain to decay?

Always remember that everything is possible.
You want to do something, anything?
Plan it.
Do it.

That gave me the opportunity to be confronted with my own limits at an early age. Where would I place them? It seems I’d end up instinctively push them as far as possible, while still maintaining safety for me and the people around me. Confronted to reality, it indeed appears I never crossed the line that’d put me in a dangerous situation or one that I’d later regret. I therefore understood I was able to do anything I wanted, and nothing bad would happen. That led me to grow a very strong self-confidence, and quite an underdevelopped sense of fear. More so, I tend to see fear as an information. I acknowledge its presence, but it doesn’t stop me. Fear might even become an engine. Right now, I’m scared of not being able to pursue my career for long, because it’s killing me from the inside. I turn this fear around and use it as a motivation to do whatever it takes to stop that career and embrace a more fulfilling activity.

It turns out that fear and self-trust are closely related.

But many people are crushed by fear. They would rather stay in a bad relationship or working a crappy job because they don’t envision the possibility that there’s a better way to live. “I can’t live single.” “I need money to eat.” Perhaps it’s true. But it probably shouldn’t be one’s main concern. If those are the only thoughts that come to your mind when you think about change, it’s because they’re the consequence of a lack of trust in your ability to move up and be more succesful. It’s the result of being blinded by fear and obsessivly concerned by the possibility of failure. But let me tell you this : if the only thing you see in your viewfinder is failure, then for sure you will reach it!

As a result of my free-will based childhood, almost everything I did begin in adulthood resulted in great success. There was no fear in the way, so I could just devote all my energy, freely, to what I was doing a that particular time of my life. When I was a 17 years old high-school drop-out, I learned english (it’s my third language) and traveled alone to New-Zealand. When I came back I worked as a web developper, I graduated high school from home, I learned driving trucks, I learned being a driving instructor, I worked as a salesman, I studied IT networks, psychology, accounting, I gave computer lessons to elderly persons. Etc. I’ve been very good, sometimes the best, in all these different areas. I don’t intend to brag about it. I’m merely showing that because I trust myself and think that no element is worthy of fear, I’ve been able to do everything that came to my mind. I trust myself because I’ve been given the opportunity to test the world, to check where are its limits. And what I’ve learned is : there’s virtually no limit to what one can accomplish.

As long as you fear nothing, you can always go farther.

All you have to do is define your next goal.

Then, you can come up with a global and ideal (thus virtual) plan to attain it.

Since having no fear doesn’t mean being blinded by your expectations and your high sense of self-worth, you have to acknowledge and comprehend the material obstacles that will come in your way. Because they will. Actually, you’ll be lucky if the path you happen to follow ressembles in any way the one you previously laid out in your mind. Thus, you will have to constantly come up with more short-term plans to go around the obstacles. One step at a time, until reaching success. That will require you to stay focused.

Just keep in mind than an obstacle is never an impossibility : it’s merely a level that you can and will go through (or around).

A bit later, I started feeling really bothered. I didn’t know what it was about, but it felt actually very depressing. I was having a weight on my chest and was terribly anxious. At first I blamed my direct surrounding (I’d had a 70 hours workweek and my parents-in-law were staying at our place for the week-end, which was a bit stressing) but quickly realized it was not quite it. I proceeded to go lay in bed and try to meditate a little. For the first ten minutes I found myself stuck and was not able to clear my mind. But after a while a thought suddenly occurred in my mind (it must have felt very lonely in there) : “Provide value”. I snapped my fingers. Eureka! In a matter of seconds, I was feeling great back again.

What happened? Of course I had written a nice little piece of blog, but what was the point? Most people could not have taken any value out of it. Some of them would have had a laugh or two. But few of them would have taken the time to translate my own selfishly explained experience into something they could use. That post could have been a piece of a novel for instance. Very distracting, but most probably of small value compared to advices clearly laid out for everyone. Actually, that piece of text was mostly serving the purpose of feeding my ego. I realized I’d written it in expectation for my supposedly existing writing skills to be shown to the world and confirmed.

But in actuality, I didn’t care about feeding my ego. And I’m not planning to be a novel writer either at the moment. The reason I wrote about my experience was because I want to help people succeed in various areas of life, those about which I can provide a bit of wisdom anyway.

I was feeling bad because as proud as I was about the form of that post, it was completely hollow.

Therefore, and as the title of the site suggests, I immediately took action by getting up, switching the computer back on, and writing the previous entry. Two hours and a half later, it was online.

My point is this : sometimes you may have an excellent idea, sustained by the best intention in the world (writing a good post in my case), but you’ll forget to think carefully enough about how you’re going to do it as to fit your minimum quality requirement for real satisfaction.

The way you accomplish every action may serve various spiritual or physical purposes. Generating income, boosting your ego, helping yourself finding answers, etc.

It’s of primal importance for your well being to do things for the right reasons. It will keep feelings such as guilt, anger or sense of unacomplishment away.

Thus, before doing something important, think carefully about what purpose your project is really serving. And use this information to allow youself doing what you really want to do, the way you want to do it.