“Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together.”

- Ray Bradbury

Why do some people seem blessed with infinite luck and passion? Why do a lucky few get to do what they love and get paid extremely well for it? Why do so many things seem like uphill battles?

Their secret is intensity. Without intensity, all their effort is wasted.

Understand: If you half step, you will fall on your face. You will create things nobody cares about, and you will waste your own time. You’ll grow frustrated, and nothing will go your way.

Care about what you do, and only do that which you can focus completely on.

The Power of Intensity

Let me start with a story about a skateboarder I knew.

He would come to the skatepark, and skate for thirty minutes. Everyone else would be skating for hours, but for him, it was always thirty minutes. Like clockwork. He’d warm up, then just take off. Everyone else had to stop and watch. He’d be operating at a level five times higher than anyone else. The energy level he brought couldn’t be sustained, but that wasn’t the point. He was literally shutting down the entire place and every one just stood with their jaws on the floor.

He did it all with intensity.

This is what so many people miss in life. They never figure out how to build intensity and focus completely.

Building Intensity, Building Focus

How can you come correct? I’ve wondered this myself, I’ve wondered how I could bring a complete, all embracing focus into my skateboarding, into my businesses, and into my writing. Yoga helps, and so does meditation, but it doesn’t break the real barriers down:

How to get around my judgmental mind, and get to that state of complete intensity, immediately?

Time spent unfocused is just time wasted. We must always be chasing the tail of our own focus, in whatever we are doing. Nothing happens outside of the moment, and yet it is so rare for us to ever give it complete attention.

Where does passion come from? From pretty pictures, from grand ideas, from big dreams late at night? We all want to experience this emotion called passion, but it seems nearly impossible to find it in the real world. Instead of great jobs saving the world, we’re giving jobs flipping burgers or turning out code like a machine.

Hacking Your Mind Into Passion

The trick is, we must trick ourselves. Our “passion” is nothing more than an emotion we give to ourselves. We don’t need visualization, we don’t need positive reinforcement, we don’t need any of that.

Understand: We dole it out from our own minds.

It’s tough to believe, but it’s true. Our minds are in complete control. We can decide how we feel about something, and instantly we will connect with it or not. It is up to us to see things from a point of relation, or not.

Passion is when you relate to what you create, and have a higher purpose for it. A moral imperative, plus a relation. It’s almost a formula.

Moral Imperative + Relation to Work + Enjoyment = Passion

What do you relate to, what can you give back, what do you enjoy doing?

We can enjoy doing any damn thing we commit ourselves fully to. Humans beings have done it all, but the only ones who get to truly enjoy themselves are those who give back. These are the people who get blessed with that thing called “passion”, and these are those people who don’t get burned out. It’s impossible to walk uphill every day, to push against your own inner inertia every day. We must give ourselves the leg up of passion, of compassion. We must ask ourselves what, if anything we have to give back.

Then we can step on the landmine of ourselves, and be proud putting ourselves back together.

1. Serve A Purpose or Be Pulled Out

Every year, we gardeners work our asses off for our plants. We prepare the soil, clear the ground, and bring in fertilizer so our plants can grow to their maximum potential. We work hard so our plants can grow strong.

Because they give us fruits, we give plants all they need.

On the other hand, plants which do not serve a purpose, plants which only seek to take fertility and light, without giving something back are called weeds. We pull them out because they give nothing back to the garden. They are selfish, and because of this, they are quickly pulled out of the productive garden.

Lesson: Contribute first, and you will be taken care of.

2. Work With Forces, Not Against Them

There are two philosophies when it comes to a garden. One believes the world is out to get your precious plants, and the other believes the right ecosystem must exist for optimal growth.

The one who believes the world is out to get his plants uses chemicals and synthetic fertilizers to keep his plants alive and productive. In doing so, he contaminates his food with chemicals, kills insects, and creates a “sterile” environment for his plants.

In the other, companion plants are planted, birds and insects encouraged, and flowers planted for others. The farmer hopes everything will balance itself out in this biodiversity. If an insect starts to take over, it is immediately eaten by its predator.

Can you guess which type of gardening is more fun?

Lesson: It takes too much effort to fight against the will of the world. Seek a place to work within natural forces.

3. A Little Every Day

If you’ve ever had a garden and left it for a few days, you know what this means. A garden left untended for even a week quickly becomes and impossible task. Weeds quickly establish themselves and entangle the rest of your garden. It becomes a monumental task to undo all the work of weeds and insects.

Working a on a garden every day, it’s almost as if there is no real work. Walk, look, pick a few weeds, and chew on a few tomatoes. There is no massive effort required.

Lesson: Work against entropy. Visit your garden frequently and check its health.

4. The Best Gardens Are Symphonies

The best Gardens are truly symphonies. There isn’t a plant in a place where it doesn’t belong. Individual plants have their own strengths and weaknesses, and a great gardener knows his plants personalities.

Every plant is planted according to its personal cycle. The quick growers are planted to give shade to the slower growers, and everything works together.

Lesson: Work from the personalities of individuals, and give them the communities they need.

5. Work According to the Season

Gardeners only have one year at a time. And each day within that year happens within a season.

So we focus on what needs to be done, today. Even though we constantly look to the future, we spend time within our garden today, working on its immediate needs. Within the winter months we plan and scheme, but during the Spring, Summer, and Fall we work.

Lesson: Put in the hours when necessary. Plot and scheme when the time is right: when there is no growth.

6. Screw Subsidies

For most corn and soybean farmers, growing food is a losing proposition. It isn’t until after they get their couple hundred dollars in subsidies that they “make” a profit.

Gardeners, on the other hand, get no subsidies. Everything planted must create more than was put in. The properly designed garden outputs more than put in. An improperly designed garden requires support and subsidies.

Lesson: Make sure you get more than you put in.

7. We Are All Farmers

No matter where you live, you must eat. Your food purchases decide how food gets grown.

So like it or not, you are a farmer. We are all farmers. We all decide how plants get grown, either directly or indirectly.

Lesson: We are all leaders, we are all in business for ourselves.

What do we do when things aren’t working? How do we respond to dismal situations, when we’re trying our best, but the world decides to hand us lemons?

Consider the following Haiku, written by Basho:

Fleas, lice,
The horse pissing
Near my pillow.

Although he was on a spiritual journey, and thought himself something important, Basho spent the night on the floor with urine and lice. All night the roof leaked, and he was cold. The night was so miserable, he wrote a poem about it.

So what do we do when things aren’t working?

How do we change our personal realities when we’re sleeping on a floor covered with urine?

We forget all about ideas for “how things should be”.

Stop Scheming

Our minds want to endlessly scheme and plot. Figure out ways so we never have to spend the night in dirty sheds. But inevitably, we eventually find ourselves in dirty sheds.

The real danger then, is not in dirty sheds, or in failure. The danger lies in pretending our will, our intelligence really adds up to anything. Though we may be extremely clever, and think ourselves resourceful, things will come that knock us over. It is our ability to accept things as they are that gives us true strength.

Be mindful when you spend too much time scheming, planning. Information paralysis is real, we can get endlessly caught up in ideas of “perfect information”, and forget to ever participate in life.

Because we’re always facing problems within our lives. And in response to these problems, our minds are ceaselessly looking for solutions. They’ll seek out information until finding a logical solution.

Reality Doesn’t Know About Logic

Unfortunately, reality doesn’t respond to logic. It responds to actions, and to incredibly chaotic patterns already existing within the world. Our best laid plans can be immediately destroyed by chance.

Understand, we can lock ourselves up in rooms forever, seeking out all the world’s knowledge for a perfect answer. To a life that’s perfectly solving every one of life’s problems. But we’ll never finish. It’s always an incomplete.

Accept Things as They Are

So instead, we must turn the prison of logic on its head. Accept reality as it is, and forget our scheming. Zen Buddhism says instead, we should focus completely on the present moment. What we are doing right now.

In this way, we can escape the endless cycle of logic, planning, and disappointment or success. We can just accept things from one moment to the next, and forget about achievement or loss.

We can spend the night in the piss, and wake up the next day ready to climb the next mountain.

“Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine”

- Shunryu Suzuki

Having a hyperactive brain sucks.

In the process of continually planning and worrying, the hyperactive brain forgets to pay attention to the task at hand. People will go entire days without ever paying attention to what they’re doing. They’ll literally flush their life down the tubes, listening to the dull chatter of their mind while the rest of life passes them by.

Silencing this idle chatter is key to living a happy life.

A focused mind is the most powerful asset a person can have. If you’re constantly distracted by new ideas, you’re never going to focus.

The level of attention you are capable of giving at any moment determines the quality of your life.

This is why people meditate. Meditation quiets the mind for the performance of life.

The Secret to Meditation

Contrary to what you may have seen in the movies, there is no great “secret” to meditation. Usually, it’s just a matter of closing your eyes and focusing on breathing. There is nothing to buy, and nothing to buy into. You merely sit and breathe.

Sitting Zazen

In Zen Buddhism, there is a type of meditation called “sitting zazen”. A person simply sits cross legged, with a straight back, and begins to breathe. In for a long deep breath, paying attention to the air as it flows through the nose, and then out, again noting the sensation as the breath leaves.

At first, it’s very difficult to just sit in one place and breathe. Your mind races, and thinks of a million “better” things to do instead of something so “unproductive” as meditation. But keep with it. After the first real temptation comes the first breakthrough.

Growing Inward

You’ll experience a very real feeling of your inner self growing larger. Your vision will suddenly see a much greater “space” surrounding your self. This space will seem to grow and get smaller at the same time. This is the first great breakthrough.

You’ll notice a strength from this feeling. This is the strength of “knowing your true face”. It’s getting a glimpse of that greater self that lies just beneath the dull worry.

Space for Meditation

If you want to try meditating, I suggest finding a room where you can be alone, and just beginning. Set a timer for 15 minutes, and see if you can last that long. And just do it when you’re stressed out or worried. Eventually, you’ll love the silence and sense of perspective that meditation brings. You’ll incorporate it into you life, whether things seem good or bad.

Good meditation means you learn to accept reality as it is, whether good or bad. It means you have a sense of perspective on your existence, and do not come to the world like a whiny puppy. You understand a power within, and the responsibility to act upon it nobly.

“For every sin but the killing of Time there is forgiveness.”

- Unknown

Have you ever secretly dreamed of traveling the world?
Do you have a secret place of the globe you’ve always wanted to visit?

Planning for the trip of a lifetime is easy enough. It’s getting out of the rat race that’s the hard part.

Begin With a Dream

When I was seventeen, I knew I wanted to live in the rainforest. I grew up hearing so many stories about the rainforest, watching The Jungle Book, and wishing I could be in such a rich place. But I was born in the suburbs, and knew nothing of wilderness. The longest I’d ever been camping was exactly one night.

Still, I got it in my head that I would live at least six months in the tropical jungle. I got online, and researched how I could do exactly that. I found a few farms, and decided that was my best bet. I didn’t bother to call or make contact with any one of them.

I decided I would just show up, and figure things out once I got there. Most importantly, I decided there was nothing I could really plan from home. I resolved instead to figure things out once I got there.

Follow Through With Economy

If you want to do anything great in life, you’re going to need money. So if you’ve got issues with money, it’s time to get over it.

Figure out how much your trip is going to cost.
I created a budget for myself, and decided I needed at least $2000 to get myself down to Central America, and to begin working at a farm comfortably. The expenses I projected broke down like this:

• $380 – Plane Ticket
• $400 – Emergency fund
• $1200 – Four months at a budget of $300 / month

Saving up $2000 became my goal. I knew I could pick up my backpack and things for cheap. I just needed to begin saving, to get to $2000. I set a deadline, 6 months to get to $2000.

I counted everything. I set a budget, and I socked away $340 / month, no matter what. In the process, I learned how to be frugal with my money, and I learned the number one lesson anyone ever has to learn about money:

Spend less than you earn.

I know this is difficult for people to understand, but if you aren’t saving, you are financially dying. You will sink into debt at interest, and get to have compound interest working against you. So instead of just being poor, you will become poorer and poorer.

Break Free of The Rat Race

The first step to breaking free of the Rat Race is to find out how much you are actually spending. Stop and take a look at your bank account statement for last month.

How much money did you spend on eating out? On entertainment? On gas?

Start cutting, and cut ruthlessly. The bigger the trip, the more money you need to save, the more you need to pare down your lifestyle. This is a blessing in disguise, because it prepares you for the traveler’s life.

You learn to live lean. And this is the first virtue of being a true traveler.

Learn To Be Happy With Less

When the great religions and philosophers extol the virtues of poverty, what they are really referring to is the virtue of living beneath your means. It is an undeniable law of the world and economics, you must contribute more than you take.

There is no secret greater than this. Contribute more to the world than you take from it, and your riches will continue to grow exponentially.

Just Leave

With money mastered, and a bit saved up, it’s easy to say: “I just want to save a bit more and be safe.” Don’t.

Leave Now.

With any great trip, there will be a huge amount of fear. When I left to hike the Appalachian Trail, I was dropped off in the middle of nowhere with not nearly enough food for four days in the woods.

But I went, and pushed through the fear. I ended up solving all the imaginary problems I had within my head right away. Most of them never even happened. Which is why now, when I leave on a trip, I just go.

The longer you take to think and plan everything to completion, the less likely it is you will leave. So when you have a chance, take it.

What About Work?

If you’re lucky, you’re just out of school, and don’t have a job to come back to. If you’re unlucky, you’ve got a well paying job that won’t understand your wanting to backpack Nepal for four months.

To which I say:

“Screw them.”

Life is too short to be spent being someone else’s puppet. Let them take your fat paycheck and learn to live on less. Then give back more and watch your finances come back better than ever.

Learn From Your Travels

Living in foreign cultures is the quickest way to learn compassion. Being sucked into a completely different culture, barely able to speak to people certainly chops the ego down a few pegs. Which is good.

A traveler can’t help but turn inward to deal with the shock of being in such strange lands. This journey inward is the beginning of a great opportunity for personal discovery. Do not waste this chance by hanging out in hostels with your fellow countrymen.

I also recommend leaving for at least one trip completely alone. If you don’t feel comfortable alone in the cities, do so in the countryside. No matter what, make sure you experience being alone in a foreign country. You will never approach a foreigner in your own country the same way again.

Share

In this age of everything on the internet, why leave? Why leave the comfort of a computer and unlimited entertainment for poverty and travel? Why do anything?

Share your experiences, and share what has changed about you. Get people you know out of their comfort zones and into adventure. Life is too damn short for everyone to be hunched over computers checking their Facebook status. Get out and make the world a place worth living in.

“I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty.”

- Kabir