This wasn’t an easy article to write for me. In fact, out of the hundreds of articles I’ve written for Byteful Travel, this was probably the most challenging to write, but this is an article whose time has come.

Trying to Avoid a Non-Problem

First, I’ll give you some context for how events have led up to the point where I finally dropped anonymity.

In Byteful Travel’s early days, going by “Byteful Traveller” seemed to be a natural step. But after a while, I realized that this wasn’t especially memorable or a good reflection of who I was. So, after much research and reflection, I choose the pen name “Andärin”, which was a Spanish word that meant “walker” or “wanderer”. I liked the feel of it; and for a time, I felt good about using it. After all, I wasn’t the only blogger using a pen name, right?

At the time, I felt this pen name worked well. I liked the idea of the anonymity, and I’d never liked the idea of fame, even teenie-tiny internet fame. I was afraid of it. Sometimes my imagination would run away with me, projecting out scenarios where people I didn’t know approached me on the street, telling me their opinion of my work and who I was, even though they didn’t know me at all. (Admittedly, I was letting my imagination have a bit too much free reign over my mind.)

I thought that a pen name and forgoing using a photo of myself on this site would be an elegant way to avoid that problem. At the time, I felt as though it would simplify my life in some ways. After all, with page views still going up, why should it matter?

Yet over the course of 2011, the feeling that the pen name was actually more rooted in fear than logic kept nagging at me more and more. When I faced these feelings head on, I realized that the writer I wanted to become would not tolerate this kind of lingering feeling. For some people, maybe a pen name is all they’ll ever need. Maybe they’ll always feel great about it. But the more I wrote, the more I realized that it just wasn’t right for me.

Tigering It

Eventually, a horrifying thought came to me: I was hiding behind my sense of anonymity. Being anonymous wasn’t making my life simpler. Instead my life felt more awkward. It became more and more clear to me that, for me, the pen name was a false barrier getting between me and the people I wanted to serve. I wasn’t being my full, true self. When mentioning the site to friends, I felt an inner resistance whenever I explained that I was using a pen name.

When I felt this gut reaction too many times, I knew it was time for a change. But I didn’t make the change. At least, not at first.

It wasn’t until last week, when I returned home from Steve Pavlina’s Conscious Success Workshop, that I had the resolve to make the change. One of the most memorable concepts from the workshop was the idea of “tigering it”, which means charging towards a goal similar to how you would use tiger style in martial arts. (In fact, this was so well-received at the workshop that one of the attendees bought small stuffed-animal tigers for everyone there.)

Basically, using tiger style means you focus all of your energy on the attack and not worry about defense. As you can probably imagine, this is pretty wild to see in person, and a running joke is that if two martial artists use tiger style on each other, one will end up going to the hospital while the other one will end up dead!

As you can probably guess, the Tiger style attitude can be extremely useful when it comes to completing projects, too. If you take a lot of action and avoid succumbing to over-analysis, you can accomplish things that may have seemed impossible before, and usually in much less time. So when I returned home, I “tigered it” and removed the pen name from the site. I didn’t even know what the next step was after that, but I knew I had to do it. And the rest of the steps flowed from there (including uploading a picture of myself). The workshop was the final nudge that had pushed me over the edge, and I’m so thankful for that. (And thanks to everyone who was there for creating such an amazing atmosphere and promoting so much growth in all who attended. You guys really are the salt of the earth.)

Embracing the Odyssey & A Challenge

Atop Lone Mountain in NV

My name is Andrew, and I don’t believe I’ve properly introduced myself before. The reason for this was rooted in fear. I was letting irrational fear inform my actions. I wasn’t acting like my best self would act… but that changes today.

And while “Andärin” may have been a cool pen name (someone once said it sounded elvish), it wasn’t me. This is also the first time I’ve shared a picture of myself on a public website, so this is well outside of my comfort zone. But I’ve decided that, as long as there are intelligent reasons to do so, I’m going to push myself to do things that scare me and put me outside of my comfort zone more often, because it’s more likely to help others (not to mention help me grow, as well).

Under the “author” tag, you may also have noticed that I’ve included “Adi” in quotes. This is a nickname given to me by a dear friend toward the end of the Big 2009 Trip, and its significance will become more clear as we finish up the Big 2009 Trip story. (And I must admit that I really like how “Adi C” sounds like “odyssey”.)

After writing periodically on here for years, I’m ready to be my full self, publicly. Not only does it help with credibility, but it also helps me connect with you guys, my readers, on a much deeper level. From where I stand now, I feel that a pen name was a barrier to that. Overall, I feel a lot better having done this. “Tigering It” certainly changed my life, and I appreciate your support as I get used to this new level of transparency. Life is too short to be controlled by fear. Life is too short not to be our full, genuine selves — boldly and courageously.

So my challenge to you is this: if you’ve been creating anything under a pen name (or anonymously), have you consciously examined your real reasons for doing it? What would it mean if you embraced your work and took full ownership of it? Unless you’re doing guerrilla journalism in an oppressive country, it’s highly doubtful that you’ll be harmed for exercising your free speech, so what are you waiting for? Is it possible that embracing a higher level of transparency will be a relief to you on some level (and perhaps push you to do better work, as well)? What would your life be like if you took full ownership of everything you created? What would your best self do?

Just think about it.

We have an incredible year coming up, and the journey has only just begun. Coming up, we touch California redwoods within Muir Woods Natl. Monument, as well as a get a stunning view of the San Francisco Bay from the top of Mount Tamalpais. And after that, we explore Las Vegas, so be sure to subscribe and stay in touch.

No posts relate.

Actually, I’m getting ahead of myself. To be completely honest, I didn’t plan on writing this story today, or at all. But when I was out running this morning, fragments of it started coming to me. By the time I got back, I knew I wanted to talk about power and freedom: understanding it, when you have it, and when you don’t. Because unfortunately, many people that I meet, including some close friends, aren’t fully embracing freedom in their lives.

Are you? What could your life look like if you were?

When I was about three years old, my family and I visited my grandparents in California. I loved spending time with them; and my grandmother, who grew up in France, was especially warm and loving. Just being around her was a comforting feeling. I’m sure you know the feeling. With her around, everything would always be OK. There was simply no doubt. And she was pretty easygoing, as well.

My grandfather was different. Having grown up in Brooklyn during the 1930s (and without a mother), his personality had adapted to survive in those unique circumstances. Thankfully, he hadn’t lost touch with his sense of empathy; but like a layer of old bark around a redwood, there was a layer of toughness around it. (Overall though, it was pretty remarkable how well he turned out given his unique childhood.) But even though his bark was worse than his bite, his bark was basically legendary in our family. He was loving, but he didn’t tolerate anyone’s BS, especially three-year-old-me’s version of it.

During the course of our visit, my grandparents watched me a couple times while my parents did other things. At that age, I obviously had a limited amount of freedom, but what I did have I used to its fullest potential. Often I would explore the area around the house for hours. (I know. Huge surprise, right?)

The Wrong Tendencies

Yet at my grandparents’ place, my freedom was even more limited. There were more rules here. There were things you dare not touch, and a fireplace ledge that I wasn’t allowed to sit on. “How dare they!” My 3-year-old self thought. “I’m not hurting anything by sitting on it.” But it didn’t matter. As I soon found out, breaking any of their rules had consequences.

The most famous incident (and the one that my grandfather continues to tell to this day, even in his advanced age), took place during the visit I mentioned above.

Young kids like throwing things. So did I. And though I have no memory of this, apparently I threw an ashtray (or something like it) across the room. For some reason, my grandfather didn’t understand how absolutely fun it was to throw things when surrounded by large glass windows and a sliding glass door. He told me if I did it again, he would have to punish me.

I should have realized the potential consequences, but I was in the mood to test my limits. So a few minutes later, I threw it again within range of a whole bunch of glass. And so, he hit me with a paddle (or maybe a belt), and I cried.

Lesson learned, right? Wrong!

The Wrong Replies

Being somewhat of a strategic child, I told my mother about this. And apparently, she told me he wasn’t supposed to punish me directly.

When my grandfather watched me a second time, I was armed with that information. And as we were walking up the steps to the house, I explained to him (quite proudly, I might add) that he wasn’t allowed to punish me because my mother had said that he couldn’t.

He nearly laughed and then explained how this was his house. If I was going to spend time in his house, I was to follow his rules, especially the rules about throwing hard objects near large panes of glass. Otherwise, there would be consequences.

Thankfully, I realized that throwing things in my grandparents’ house wasn’t the best use of my time, and after that conversation I never did it again. Instead, I played with what few toys they had and explored their backyard, as well.

When it came to learning about so-called “tough love”, my grandfather was one of my first teachers. And even though he could be rough around the edges, he was always very clear and congruent with his reasons behind anything that he did. From a young age, he helped me understand personal boundaries. Since then, I’ve come an extremely long way, as I’m sure any one would say they have since age three. But the fact that we’ve all grown isn’t the point.

The point is the direction in which you grow. Since then I’ve learned to wield my power more constructively and grow in a direction that increased my freedom. I’m pleased to say I haven’t thrown an ashtray since; and even though I’m still a smart-ass on some occasions, I balance it with compassion now.

Marching to the Wrong Drum?

What about you? Are you congruent with your own choices? Do you knowingly wield your Power to create Freedom? This ability is more valuable that gold-pressed latinum, but seeing in use is not nearly as common as it ought to be.

In some situations, your freedom is severely limited for very good reasons. The prime example of this is childhood. Obviously, when you’re a child you simply aren’t intelligent enough to fully realize the consequences (both positive and negative) of the actions you take, not to mention how those choices will affect others. And so, your free will is corralled and limited.

But as an adult, you have complete control to create your life as you see fit. Not all adults have consciously wielded this power to create what they want, but failure to wield your power doesn’t make you any less responsible for the quality and content of your everyday life. Or, put another way, you cannot be anything else but the captain of your ship, whether you realize it or not. As an adult, your power (and consequently your potential for freedom) has grown exponentially since you were a kid, but that only matters if you consciously wield it.

Too Long

If you’re reading this site, then travel has a place in your life, and it’s my job to encourage you to wield your power to make time to travel. It’s my job to remind you that your time on this planet is limited, and there are literally billions of experiences that await you.

What I write about here is a direct reflection of that mission. By writing about my explorations and sharing my sights, I do my best to inspire you toward what is possible when travelling. Yet in the past, navigating the wealth of articles within the Byteful Travel archives was rather clumsy.

No longer.

Although it’s been a long time coming, I’m really pleased to announce that the Byteful Travel Citypages are now fully operational. Some of the new features, such as the coding for the interactive map and its animation, took longer than anticipated (which is why I skipped a week in November), but I’m confident that focusing on these new enhancements was the best use of my time.

By completing these updates, it helps everyone navigate the wealth of information on Byteful Travel much more easily than before. You may even discover a lot of information that you didn’t even know was here. The new features include:

1. Interactive West Coast Quest Map
   • on the Archives page & the bottom of each West Coast article
   • includes a subtle animation to imply travel direction
2. Easier to use Citypages
   • wider map viewing area
   • reformatted attractions are now easier to click
   • an elegant graphical explanation of what pin colors mean
3. Quest Mini-Map in the sidebar (which leads to the Quest Map)

As I say in the site intro, your time is limited. If you’re not a kid anymore, your freedom is in your own hands. So what are you waiting for? In a way, the world is a huge playing field, waiting for you to explore the game space. Even if you feel like you’ve been on the wrong road for a while, picked up the wrong tendencies, or are marching to the wrong drum, you can change that. In fact, you’re the only one who can. The question is: Will you wield your power and begin your odyssey (in whatever form is meaningful to you), or will you wait until its too late?

You will only have Freedom when you create it for yourself.

Ready to Explore?

Read related articles

1. How to Increase your Power through Travel
2. One Byteful Year

You may have heard it before, but have you ever posed this question to yourself? When was the last time you sat down to create something you really felt strongly about?

A couple weeks ago, I awoke to a quiet and sunny morning. I sat in the silence, and I wondered. I wondered what, of that which I’ve created, will live beyond me. I wondered what my lasting impact would be on the Earth.

As I sat there contemplating this, I realized that much of what anyone does will be forgotten in time. The meals they made, the possessions they owned, the places they lived in. None of these things would be relevant in even a hundred years time. I continued contemplating, and I asked myself, “What does the world need, right now? Where does it stand, and how can I help it?”

Have you ever asked yourself such questions?

In contemplating what the world needs, I thought about the different theories regarding climate change, impending prophecies, and the rapidly changing times that we are now all living through.

I realized that my actions already showed part of my answer to that question. I believe people need to continually push themselves into new experiences and stretch their boundaries, travel being one of the best examples of this.

I soon came to the conclusion that there was no way to be sure of what my final impact might be on a larger scale. No way at all, really. And I realized that this fact is one of the mysterious aspects to being a creator: you never know precisely what you’ll be remembered for. Do you think Benjamin Franklin would have chosen to be remembered primarily for his kite-flying lightning experiment? Maybe, maybe not. Certainly he had far more influential enterprises in his life. But of those other pursuits, none had the iconic imagery that the key on the kite provides us, so that is what he is most remembered for.

How are you serving your era?

If I had to say right now, I’d guess that perhaps three bits of my work will be remembered: a piece of travel poetry, a destination-focused article, and one or two of photographs in the Byteful Gallery. And if they are, it’ll most likely be because they’ll have documented a moment in the early twenty-first century that is interesting or important to future historians. Then again, I could also be dead wrong.

But how’s that for a thought? Every time you take a photo and put it on the web, it has the potential to be part of a historical archive, perhaps well into the twenty-second century. Since, year after year, storage space continues to increase in dramatic leaps and bounds, I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire web as it exists today (in 2011) will be someday preserved on a crystal that you could hold in the palm of your hand. (And hopefully by then we’ll have decent 3D interfaces so we can more efficiently sift through these vast archives of history.) In fact, it’s pretty likely that something you do today will be accessible for generations to come.

The Currency of Expertise

The point is, you never know what bits of your work are going to be relevant in the future until the future arrives. But even if something you’ve made is preserved… will it be remembered? Will it be notable? Will you have had a true impact? In order to do that, you have to create something of value in the first place.

Are you?

In my experience, the greatest value we ever create is when we work towards something we actually care about. You can tell when someone’s heart and soul has gone into their work, can’t you? I know I can. Think about the affect that kind of work can have on people. Don’t you want to have the same affect? Sure, the first time you try to do something, it will probably suck, but it’s the trying that makes you better. The number of mistakes made is all that separates a classical pianist from someone who stopped after learning a few chords. The price you pay for expertise is experience. Or, put another way, Experience is the currency of expertise.

The Highest Expression of Who You Are

When was the last time you sat down to create something you really felt strongly about? If it’s been more than 3 months, then what are you waiting for?

Too often, when I talk to people, they tell me how busy their lives are and that they see themselves not having the time to create anything. Perhaps they’re exhausted after a long day at their job, or perhaps they already have too many other commitments. But what if they’d made a more sacred commitment than a job contract? What if they committed to become the highest expression of who they could be, in every area of their life? How do you think their life might change when they whole-heartedly followed that commitment?

Apply it to yourself. What if you made a commitment to be the highest expression of your true self, and followed it wholeheartedly? How would your life change?

Now, I completely understand that when you’re starting out, things can be on a bumpy road for a while. But what if you’re in your 30s or 40s (or beyond) and you still haven’t made anything you’re proud of? How do you feel about that?

Let’s get to the Nutshell

Let’s get to the nut of the nut. At what point does going to a job, cranking the crank, coming home, watching TV, and hitting “repeat”, not enough?

If you need a reason to do more than the 4 things I listed above, consider this: Your fellow humans need you. Only you are able to create what only you are able to create. You have a unique light, and no one is going to shine it for you. You’ve probably heard this before, but did you really internalize it? Remember, everyone has unique gifts, abilities, and propensities that they were born with. And they exist of a reason.

Even if you’re not entirely sure what your unique gifts are yet, that doesn’t mean they’re not there. If you keep trying different things, you will discover one of your gifts. In my case, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life when I was in college, but somewhere along the way, I realized my love for travel, writing, and design, among other things. Some take longer than others to discover their passions, but all can (and do) in time.

And when you use these gifts, you shine your light. And this is very powerful.

But this can only come out of making a conscious choice. That can be a daily choice of deciding to create just one thing or to do “your thing”, whatever it may be, on a regular basis. Whether it be through photography, dance, song, poetry, prose, drawing, or anything — express yourself. Perhaps 10 minutes a day, or even one hour a week. Whatever works best for you. Just remember, you won’t feel fully alive until you do.

So, what will You be remembered for?

When was the last time you asked yourself, “What will I be remembered for?”

If you skip the opportunity to create your life, you slip into the habit of simply watching life go by. And, what’s worse, you deprive us of your voice and, quite frankly, you do the entire world a huge disservice.

Yet if you have the courage to create from the deepest places in your heart (and have the courage to share) the world will respond to it like a birdsong on the wind. And in time, it will enchant us and make the world seem that much more alive, because you gave yourself fully to it. In that moment, you will learn more about yourself and feel more connected to the planet than you ever have before.

And there are few things more beautiful than that.

Read related articles

1. How is a well-worn bike path like a planet?

As we learned in the previous article, our perceptions affect our experience of reality in a profound way. I experienced firsthand how other’s perceptions and influence can dramatically shape my experience of a place while exploring Washington DC last year. The extent at how my perceptions can be shifted depending on who I allow to influence my experience was profound. This effect can be for ill or for good, and it is compounded if the person in question is hosting you.

CS members can be Divine

First I should explain how I met my hosts, and then I’ll show you how each affected me in a very different way and consequently my perception of DC.

I’ve been using Couchsurfing.org for years to make new friends in cities I visit, as well as find good people to host me. It’s much better than simply staying at a hotel because staying with a local allows you to see the city through a local’s eyes, and often the local will have helpful information you’d never learn if you were just staying at hotel. And, more importantly, it never ceases to amaze me how fantastic the people I meet through Couchsurfing are. Without exaggerating at all, I can honestly say I’ve met some truly divine people through Couchsurfing that were more hospitable, caring, and generous than words could ever do justice to. These are the kind of people that make the world glow. In fact, Couchsurfing is completely free to use, and it’s ability to connect communities together has been shown time and time again; so it’s not surprising to me that CS has been growing like wildfire over the past few years. In 2009, they reached 1,000,000 members, and in 2010 they doubled that number. Today, they’re nearly at 2.5 million members globally.

Sometimes travel experiences go beyond words, and my experiences with Couchsurfing very often do. You probably won’t “get” CS if you don’t have a basic belief that we are all part of the same human family, but I highly recommend you check it out if you’re interested. Even if you don’t want to host or couchsurf at a host’s place while travelling, CS also hosts events like potlucks in many cities around the US and the rest of the planet. And these events tend to attract really cool, intelligent (and often inspiring) people.

I was lucky. Both of my hosts harbored a positive attitude toward DC, which was fortunate because I was still forming my own impression of DC since it was my first time there. They were both kind people; but, as I soon learned, one proved to be much more conducive to my enjoyment of the city than the other.

The Tale of Two Hosts

The first host I had in DC conducted a rather chaotic life. I don’t normally stay with rather chaotic people; but I’d had some trouble finding a place to stay, and my intuition told me this would be an acceptable first host. However, some things were uncertain that should have been more stable. My host had a lot of roommates, none of which were particularly organized, which also lent the place some instability. (And it’s worth mentioning that this isn’t a typical experience with CS. Couples, people who live alone, and even families host travellers on Couchsurfing.org.)

Thankfully, my host was friendly and cared about my experience there, but I soon realized that my perception of DC was somewhat fragmented because the place I went back “home” to (so I could recharge after a day of exploring) was somewhat fragmented itself.

As within so without.

Because of this, I was on the lookout for a new host, and that’s precisely what I found at a Couchsurfing event about a day later. It was a potluck-party-thing, and a local CS member was hosting it at their apartment. At the gathering I met a very cool couple in their 30s, both working professionals, and new to Couchsurfing. We had a great conversation, and I got a really good intuitive feeling about them; but when they mentioned they were technically in Virginia, I put them in the “maybe” category in my head.

“They were just too far…”, I thought to myself.

The following day, I was pleasantly surprised. I did some research, and it turned out that DC’s metro system made staying at their place more convenient than the place I was currently staying at! They were much closer to a subway station, and they weren’t as far from downtown DC as I thought. So after talking with my first host, I gracefully transferred to my new host’s place.

It was then that I saw DC begin to change before my eyes.

A Stable Foundation

Because I had a stable foundation, my energy went back into high gear, and I felt positive about being in DC again. This couple had a much more regular schedule, their place was incredibly clean, and they really payed attention to how I was doing as a guest in their home. This couple’s positive attitude was delightfully contagious, and soon I was seeing DC in a more holistic way. From this new stable foundation, I set out and explored DC with vigor. After moving to my new host’s place, DC didn’t even seem spooky at night… even after I kept running into this one homeless guy, but that’s a whole different story!

So why didn’t it seem scary?

Because from a stable foundation, I was able to elevate my level of consciousness. I was able to refine my attitude about what I was experiencing.

My remaining 4 days in DC were action-packed, seeing everything from the Lincoln Memorial to the Natural History Museum to the view from the top of the Washington Monument! I saw so much (most of which was free since it was federally funded), and to this day my time in DC remains one of my all time favorite travel memories. I really had a blast, and I’m very excited to share those experiences with you in future articles on this site (though not before I finish telling you of my West Coast trip, of course). We still haven’t gotten to San Francisco and Vegas yet, and I think you’re going to find my explorations of those places quite interesting.

Question Your Lens. Break Your Shell.

Just because someone harbors fears about a particular place, doesn’t mean you should subscribe to that fear too. Just because someone perceives a city or person a certain way, does not mean it will be in alignment with your experience. Always question your beliefs. Test them out. Ask yourself why you actually believe one thing instead of another. What would life be like if you changed that belief? You don’t have to just swallow what you’re told without examining it; be it untested faith or untested fear. Realize that you shape what you experience more than you could ever realize. This is the Magic of Choice.

Remember, beliefs are like a lens that you look at the world though, and some lenses have huge dark spots that the wearer never sees. Continually probe at your limits and discover the truth for yourself. Only through doing this will you continue to make breakthroughs in what is possible. Only though doing this will you finally begin to break the shell that encloses your understanding. Don’t let dark spots on your lens limit your freedom or your joy.

Be the washer of your own lens.

- Bonus -
Here’s an article that was pointed out to me that challenges some really common limiting beliefs about travel. Recommended: 10 Round the World Travel Myths Debunked from our friends at BootsnAll.

Read related articles

1. How to Spot Inaccurate Beliefs While Travelling: Perceptions aren’t always Truth
2. How your Couchsurfing Host’s environment can Wreck You (or Heal You)
3. How to Balance Blogging and Travelling
4. How I Solved my Travel Dilemma in 60 Seconds using the Law of Attraction
5. How I used Intention-Manifestation to stop an Identity Theft (& had fun doing it)

And although it may seem obvious which one is more desirable, making a conscious decision about which one you want to experience isn’t always an easy feat. Or rather, it isn’t always easy realizing that you do indeed have the power to choose, in every situation. But rest assured that you do.

Experience has taught me this time and again, and today I’m going to begin to share with you a new way to look at fear and risk while travelling, how to spot when an inaccurate belief rears its ugly head, and how using this new perspective played out in my own experience. Because I want to cover a lot with this topic, I’ve broken it up into two separate articles. In this first article, I advise you to buckle your seat belts, because we’re going to look fear straight in the face, face the shadows of your mind, challenge how you perceive danger and safety, and nearly kill a cat.

Beliefs are always a choice

As you travel more and more, you will encounter more and more people who amaze you, annoy you, excite you, weird you out, and inspire you. And this is all by design, and extremely instrumental for your growth as a person. Occasionally however, you will come across a thought pattern that conflicts with your personal experience in a certain area. For instance, you may encounter a person who insists that a certain drink you don’t enjoy (for instance, cow’s milk) is important for your health. Now whether or not you’ve been very healthy for years without this hypothetical food item is usually not the person’s concern. They have their belief, and they may even feel that it’s their personal duty to “save” you.

Similarly, you may meet someone who believes that riding a particular bus or train service is fraught with terrible danger; and they may proclaim that you won’t make it out alive, despite the fact that you may have ridden this bus or train dozens of times and found that other kind people were aboard, as well.

While the first is merely the example of someone who is misinformed, the second is far more insidious. It is the projection of a belief system based around fear. And often this fear isn’t perceived as a choice by one who harbors the fear. Instead, it is merely thought of as a “fact of life” or worse, clung to like a security blanket. But these beliefs are always, and ever, a choice. And the real truth comes out when they are tested and verified. The process of realizing that a fact needs to be tested and carefully picked apart and weighed before it can be believed is the process of Discernment, and it is a life saver.

Shell of Your Understanding

Often when travelling, I come across individuals who harbor vast range of limiting beliefs like this. They may be terrified to use a certain service of which I know to be safe, or spooked at even the mention of visiting a certain place that I’ve found to be quite enjoyable. And to be completely frank, when this happens it makes me sad. It makes me sad because I see a powerful being, a human being, who can create whatever they want in their life, who can set their course for any rising star… and they choose to succumb to fear. They choose to give their power away to something outside themselves, and in doing so, keep themselves in a box of their own making.

Yet if they fail to explore even the nearest boundaries of their beliefs, how will they ever break the shell that encloses their understanding?

Perceptions aren’t always Truth

As the above examples illustrate: Other People’s Perceptions are not Truth. This is very important. A person can perceive the truth, yes, but the truth always goes deeper than any one person can understand. A perception alone is not truth any more than an eye is a beam of light. Or put another way, the chances of any one person’s fears coming true are always probabilistic, meaning they aren’t set in stone. If you go to XYZ place at XYZ time, there is no guarantee of anything, because that’s the nature our shared reality. Many minds are creating their lives here, and there are uncounted numbers of variables to consider. The process of making smart choices is about understanding risk as well as understanding the bias of the person warning. However, as we shall see, you can bend these probabilities to your whims, to your side.

Anyone may perceive danger. Anyone may perceive safety. Different people may see opposites. Even in the same place. Even at the same time. You may have noticed this in your own life, and when this occurs it means that the two people have profoundly different beliefs about what they’re perceiving. You see, perception is filtered through their belief system just like light filters through shaded sunglasses. But as my most recent longterm trip reinforced, it’s much more than that. Much, much more.

Observation is Creation

You may be familiar with the famous Schrödinger’s cat experiment in which teeny-tiny reactions happening at the quantum scale affect something on our not-so-tiny everyday scale. What Schrödinger had no idea of when he invented the thought experiment was that it was also the perfect way to explain why our perceptions effect our reality in such a profound way, even to the extent of actually creating reality around what we expect to see.

I’ll explain.

In the thought experiment, famous physicist Erwin Schrödinger envisions a sealed box containing:

1. A living cat
2. A container of poison
3. A Geiger counter
4. A radioactive triggering mechanism

If the Geiger counter detects radiation from the radioactive trigger, it shatters the container of poison thereby killing the cat. However, the radioactive trigger is decaying so slowly that there is only a 50/50 chance that it will trigger the Geiger counter an hour after the experiment is begun.

Because the trigger is a radioactive process, quantum physics comes into play. Therefore, after this one hour has elapsed, both realities have been superimposed upon the box.

Say what?

When you apply quantum mechanics to an everyday scale, strange things happen. This thought experiment implies both possible outcomes of the experiment exist simultaneously… until the box is open. But before we open the box, the cat would simultaneously be dead from the poison and alive and well because the poison never would have been released. Basically, before you open the box, the outcome of the experiment is like a “wave” and not a particle. It’s not a realized reality yet. However, when you look into the box you “collapse the wave”, and you see the cat either alive or dead. By observing the experiment, an outcome is decided. By measuring what has happened, you create the outcome.

Obviously a cat can’t be both alive and dead at the same time, right?

At least, it can’t in our shared reality. But this is precisely what happens on the atomic level with quantum physics… all the time. (Just ask your local quantum physicist.) Clearly the Universe is a lot more weird than we could have ever imagined.

The Focus-Reflection Model of Reality

Schrödinger, who was a personal friend of Albert Einstein, designed this thought experiment to show how the behavior of particles behaving as waves in the quantum scale just didn’t make sense in the our everyday world. In fact, he described that if this model of reality were true on the everyday scale, if the cat were actually in both states at once, it would be a “blurred model” for representing reality. And while Schrödinger clearly has trouble accepting this as how reality works in his original article, he does admit that, “In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory…” since “There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.”

What if Schrödinger didn’t take his idea far enough? Or, taking another angle, what if he did take it farther but no one would publish any ideas “crazier” than that?

Schrödinger’s “blurred model” of reality could better be described as the “Focus-Reflection Model” of reality. Meaning, what a person focuses on is what coalesces, manifests, and reflects back to them in their reality. I’ve seen firsthand how my own (and others) beliefs dramatically shape the reality around them. In the past, I’ve written about how this can happen in outright weird ways. In fact, if you’re not familiar with the intention-manifestation model of reality (also known as the “Law of Attraction”), I highly recommend you read “How I Solved my Travel Dilemma in 60 Seconds using the Law of Attraction” as it will give you greater clarity on what I’m describing here.

But if I had to sum it up, I’d say that, based on what we’re learning about the true nature of reality, you shape your life more than you could ever realize. Events that you think are out of your control… are reflections of you. Your specific set of beliefs, attitudes, and expectations affect what the wave collapses into.

You are the one who decides if the cat lives.

Continue on to Part 2 —>

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However, with the time I do have, I wrote this short poem I call “Truly Safe”.

— — —

When you feel the storm swiftly coming
When you hear wolves howling nearby
Do not fear
Do not cry
For there are greater sounds beyond your ears
And greater sights beyond your eyes

When you see giant waves approach your shore
When the earth fragments beneath your feet
Do not fret
Do not weep
For there is greater stability beyond the Earth
And in truth you were asleep

When you journey far beyond to distant lands
You need not worry about your plans
Someday you’ll awake to realize
That all along
As you marvelled at how the Universe expands
You were always safe
Truly Safe
Cupped in the palm
Of your Creator’s hands

~~~~~~~

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New places, new food, and often, new friendships. But there’s a dark side to travel. As wonderful as it is, there are palpable challenges associated with making friendships as you travel from place to place. In this article, I’ll explain the core of the problem, and the way you can intelligently solve the problem without much effort, because the problem is solved through understanding and self-knowledge.

A Major Challenge when Travelling

Many travelling challenges are not obvious from the outset. For instance, sometimes when travelling, at least if you’re lucky, new friendships will form quickly. Sometimes you feel that you resonate with the other person very much and may even see yourself becoming lifelong friends with them. This, in itself, is a beautiful thing and one of the great rewards of exposing yourself to new places and people. However, there is a serious challenge posed by making friends while travelling.

Invariably, you have to say goodbye.

The nature of travel is Movement. This is paradoxically its greatest challenge and its greatest strength.

Obviously, when you leave, you won’t see your new friend face to face for a while, perhaps not for years. And often, if a strong bond is made, each person will try to maintain the new friendship through methods other than face to face. It’s only natural, right? And today more than ever, people are maintaining these friendships through internet services like instant messaging, email, or even Skype.

There’s a problem with this though. In the long run, it just doesn’t work. The reason why is directly related to the fundamental nature of people.

But why doesn’t it work? Let’s pilot our metaphorical USS Friendship… ship, around the Ocean of Knowledge and see what we can find.

The Reason why It Doesn’t Work

Let’s return to our analogy. Imagine you meet someone who really wants to stay in touch, whether it be through email, Skype, or (my personal least favorite) telephone. However, since you only knew this person for a relatively short amount of time, maintaining a friendship will be exceedingly difficult via remote communication of any kind.

Yet some people buy into expectations of growing their friendship this way.

Why?

Because they fail to understand basic human nature. A budding friendship needs a good amount of time to build trust and connection, and sometimes people try to progress through this stage through using remote communications (including internet-based ones), and fail to realize the following fundamental elements of human nature:

• Strong friendships require high levels of trust.
• High levels of trust are built by spending quality time with someone.
• Spending quality time with someone requires you be within sight of each other, at the very least.

And this is especially important in the early stages of a friendship when both individuals are still beginning to understand one another.

Low Bandwidth vs High Bandwidth Communication

A good way to illustrate this is to compare and contrast the different ways you interact with people in your life. Today, you have lots of options, and each option has a different level of information that can be communicated by using it. You can call this level of information the “amount of bandwidth” that a kind of communication is capable of transmitting.

Some methods of communication are very low bandwidth in terms of actual information received, such as email, instant messaging, and SMS texting. A slightly higher form of bandwidth is Skype voicecalls or telephone, because you can now hear emotional inflections in a person’s voice. An even higher level of bandwidth is a video call (which is available in Skype and iChat now), and this is higher obviously because you can see the person and read their expressions (more or less).

However, none of them can even come close to the amount of bandwidth face to face communication is capable of. (To put this in perspective, people used to call this “talking to someone”, but as you can see, we need to be a little more specific these days.)

Actually, talking face to face with someone is the highest bandwidth communication available today, and it’s how humans build trust. Their brains are weird that way. You may have heard that when you speak to someone in person, most of your communication to the other person is not in the actual words you’re saying. Most of the communication is non-verbal, i.e., being communicated through body language, expressions, and more. This explains why so much information is lost when you communicate solely through email or even phone. In fact, massive amounts of information are lost.

A budding friendship in which the vast majority of time “spent together” is achieved through low-bandwidth means is frankly not capable of developing into a strong friendship. It’s only the pale shadow of what a real life friendship might become.

This is somewhat similar to if you try to revive a friendship that has faded by using primarily low-bandwidth communication tools. Do you think this method will result in a renewed and strong friendship? It can’t. Using low-bandwidth tools (like Skype) for high-bandwidth tasks just doesn’t do the trick. Sure, a friendly email (or if you’re really awesome, a handwritten letter) is a great way to rekindle a friendship, but it’s only a start, not a way to maintain. It’s only kindling, it’s not going to grow any fires. This is why it’s so important to remember to be realistic when it comes to maintaining a friendship using anything other than face to face interaction.

The Solution is Courageous Honesty

You’ll find the solution to this problem by looking back at your own experience and by realizing the strengths and weaknesses of each type of communication method. If you’re really honest, you won’t try to metaphorically fill a square hole with a round peg. You’re smarter than that!

If you remember only one message from this article remember this:

Focus the majority of your social energy on people that you’ll actually see more than once a month (preferably more than once a week). The more you maintain your friendships in person, the stronger they will become. Otherwise, you’ll be experiencing a pale shadow of what your friendships could be.

Yes, it’s great to keep in touch with friends that you rarely see, but just remember to stay balanced. Remember to put more time and energy into friendships with people you can actually spend time with on a face to face basis more than once in a blue moon. You deserve to have good friends in person, too. You deserve to have friends you can actually hug!

It’s really important that you remember how valuable time is, yours as well as other’s. Value the time you spend with people you care about. (I’m speaking of time spent with them in-person, of course.) I know it sounds brain-dead obvious, but too often we forget to value that time spent together.

Your time is precious (and limited), so make your friendships as good as they can be and have the courage to let go of friendships that don’t serve anyone anymore. If you feel a certain friendship no longer fits who are, give yourself permission to let it fade with grace. Remember, if one person in a friendship isn’t happy with the friendship, no one in the friendship can be truly happy.

Instead, focus on strengthening the connections you actually want.
You, and those around you, deserve nothing less.

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I’ve found this to be especially true last year when I traversed over 6,000 miles exploring around the western United States. Along the way, I realized people’s limiting beliefs tend to highly limit to what they think they can do. I realized that people usually perceive travel as being a luxury, something prohibitively expensive and best experienced in short one or two-week bursts.

Dingo’s Kidneys!

The reality is that there are lots of ways to travel to the destination of your dreams without spending nearly as much money as you think. So today I’m going to explain my method for dramatically reducing the cost of travelling from Point A to Point B, as well as how you might even make some money from doing it, like I did. Today, let’s talk about Craigslist rideshare.

6,000 Miles of Success

Last year, I utilized Craigslist with great success. In fact, about 90% of those 6,000 miles mentioned above were traversed through Craigslist rides. If you’re not familiar with Craigslist, it’s a website that allows you to post classified advertisements to easily get a lot of eyeballs on what you have to say, usually a request or an offer of some sort. With the exception of a few select categories like real estate for the most populous cities, Craigslist ads are completely free to post.

You may already be familiar with areas on Craigslist that help you find housing or sell your car, but increasingly people are using it to find carpool and rideshare partners. By using the Craigslist rideshare page, I was able to travel thousands of miles around the western half of the USA without having to worry about bringing a car along (and all the maintenance, parking, and security concerns that arise from that). And I plan on doing this again in the future.

Does the thought of using Craigslist to share rides seem strange to you?

Why should it? Many many people around the world do this exact thing every day and benefit greatly from it. I’ve used it for about two years and have never had a negative experience using it. I originally found out about this section of Craigslist via word of mouth, and judging from how it’s grown over the past year, people are recommending this service to their friends more and more. Perhaps that’s because the people I’ve met through Craigslist are very kind and more open than the average person you’d meet. They have families and friends just like you, and they’re just trying to save some gas money as they go from Point A to Point B. That’s why the system works. So now that you know why, let’s talk about how.

How Craigslist Rideshare Works:

1. Go to www.Craigslist.org
2. Watch the site automatically redirect you to the Craigslist page for the city nearest you. Or you can choose a specific city from the: Craigslist Sites List
3. Click “rideshare” under “community”, which is on the top left. (Alternatively you can just add “/rid/” to the end of the URL.)
4. Browse the listings and find a ride going where you want. (You may also want to use your browser’s “Find” function to search for all instances that your city’s name appears on the page.)
5. Click the email link above the entry and email the driver that you’re interested in sharing a ride with.
6. Repeat Steps 5 & 6 a few times to increase your chances for a quick response.
7. Wait.

Sometimes people who post rideshare ads won’t get back to you for a few days, so if they provide any other contact info besides the anonymous email address that Craigslist provides, try contacting them via that method first. I’ve found that people are more responsive to telephone than email.

Alternatively, you can also post an ad of your own, free of charge, on Craigslist to request or offer a ride. Just be sure to post in the Craigslist site for the city you’re departing from. And if you’re really in a hurry, I recommend you do both: post an ad requesting a ride as well as email anyone offering a ride to your destination. Doing both will dramatically raise your chances of leaving sooner.

Once you’ve contacted someone via email or exchanged phone numbers, plan a time to meet up before your carpool. This isn’t always possible, but it’s recommended for journeys longer than a couple hours. Usually fuel expense is split evenly between all people who will be riding, but occasionally a generous driver will offer a ride free of charge. (Some people just want conversation during a long ride.)

So how could you actually make money from this?

The way I made money using this amazing service was initially accidental. I had been checking Craigslist for a few days, trying to find a ride out of Denver to the Chicago area. Sometimes, around holidays especially, finding a ride to a distant city can take a week and occasionally longer. That’s why it’s important to have a backup plan (or be more flexible), however I’ve found that timing tends to work out for the best in the end.

This case was no exception. I found a posting on Craigslist by a woman who was moving from Denver to Chicago, but she didn’t enjoy driving on the freeways. “What a great circumstance,” I thought. “I’m completely happy to drive on freeways, and I’m headed exactly that way.” After exchanging a few emails, I called her up and planned a time to meet up with her.

I had been using Craigslist for years before this, and this was the first time I had the opportunity to be the driver. This situation is quite rare, and about 99% of all ride offers do not require you to drive, or even have a drivers license.

Run Craigslist riders past your Intuition

Just as with any new person in your life, it’s important to run prospective passengers and drivers past your intuition (what some people think of as their “gut feeling”). Although some people tend to judge on appearance, I’ve found that even more important than appearance is the feeling a new person gives you. How do you feel after you’re done talking with them? Tired? Neutral? Confused? Energized?

A phone call is a great way to start, so when I called her up, I paid close attention to how her presence made me feel. What does my intuition say about this person? Do I feel he/she is trustworthy? Is this the kind of person I’d feel comfortable sharing a car ride with for the duration of my trip?

After running it past my intuition, I got a green light. I felt good and scheduled a time to meet up. By meeting up in person, my intuition would have a lot more data to go on, and I’d be able to examine the car I’d be driving. When I met her in person, my intuition gave me another green light, her little car started up right away, and I had a good feeling all around. After asking her some questions about the vehicle’s condition, I concluded that it was ready for the 1,000 mile journey ahead of us. (It’s worth noting that, if you’re the driver, it’s a good idea to make sure your vehicle is up to the task BEFORE you embark.)

How I Got Paid to Travel from using Craigslist Rideshare

Here was the deal: In exchange for driving us all the way to Chicago, she would pay for all of the fuel and also offered to pay me some money for my time. I was surprised. I’d never been a paid chauffeur before, and because I didn’t see the work as being that challenging, I didn’t see it as something that provided that much value. This mental association with non-challenging work not providing much value was false, of course. I realized that since she didn’t feel at all comfortable or capable of driving on high-speed highways, I was providing a good deal of value, but I told her she could pay me whatever she felt was fair. To be honest, at that point I was still so pleasantly surprised at how things were working out — still rather amazed at that the universe brought me an opportunity to go 1,000 miles for free — that anything beyond that was metaphorical icing on my metaphorical travel-cake.

And So I Drove All 1,000 Miles… in One Day

We were both lucky to have found each other, and without Craigslist this never would have happened. If she hadn’t found me, she said she would have had to pay for another driver’s plane ticket back to Denver. Lucky for her, I was heading back home; and lucky for me, she was heading my way.

We set out as early as possible, and I drove the entire 1,000 miles in about 17 hours. It would have been faster, but she had a dog… and dogs have needs. (Note to self: Intend that no future rides involve pets that have to stop for “bathroom” breaks every few hours…)

But all things considered, it worked out incredibly well.

Expand your Comfort Zone

Doing something like using Craiglist rideshare to find a carpool partner may be beyond your comfort zone right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. You have a lot more freedom that you realize; and in my experience, the worldview you’re used to seeing on TV is not an accurate representation of what America (or the rest of the world for that matter) is actually like.

Just turn off your TV and see the world is nicer than you thought.
~ Elijah Wald

As I said at the beginning of this article, many many people do this around the world every day, and every Craigslist experience I’ve ever had was positive. These are people with families and friends, just like you. These are people who are trying to get from Point A to Point B, just like you. That being said, if you’re going on an especially long trip like I did, it would be wise to meet up with the person beforehand to make sure you’d be comfortable being in the car with them for most of the day. But remember, that they would use Craigslist to find a ride says something about them as a person. It says something about their beliefs about the common goodwill between people and the confidence they have in themselves. The amount of people using this service who are really fearful is about nil, and that’s something I like about it.

And although I can’t comment (yet) on how effective Craigslist is outside of the USA, I’ve heard that it’s useful in Europe, as well. As I said before, the people I’ve met through Craigslist are usually very kind and more open than the average person you’d meet. In fact, every Craigslist ride I’ve ever had has felt safer than being on a city bus, and do you realize how many people ride the bus every day without even thinking about it? I guess that explains why people who have used Craigslist rideshare once tend to use it again and again because they have positive experiences with it!

Who knows, perhaps someday we’ll live in a world where no one has to utter the word “Greyhound” ever again. What a world that would be…

Step Into the Freedom that was Always There

Why not open yourself up to travelling via Craigslist instead of driving next time you have to go from Los Angeles to San Francisco or from Chicago to Minneapolis? Or even for a shorter trip like Seattle to Portland? You’ll be saving a lot of fuel (which is environmentally responsible) and you’ll be stretching yourself a bit. Who knows, a new friendship might even arise from it!

Have you ever noticed that crossing beyond your comfort zone gives you a rush, sometimes lasting a few days afterward? You get this feeling because a part of you knows expanding your comfort zone is for your higher good (and one of the best uses of your time).

You have a lot more freedom than you exercise. Start stepping into that untapped freedom today, while you still have the chance.

The whole world calls out to you.

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This means I haven’t outlined and pre-planned this article as I have in the vast majority of other articles on this site. Tonight I’d like to talk about people. I suspect that even if I were far-removed from this age of never-ending electric light and perpetual connectivity, I would be writing something similar to this with a quill pen beneath a lit candle. But I think I’ll use this backlit keyboard while I have it.

People Come in Waves

It has been said that the quality of your life can only be as good as the quality of your relationships. There’s the relationship between you and others; and, perhaps most importantly, your relationship with yourself.

Having healthy, mutually-beneficial relationships is certainly conducive in creating a happy life. (That’s not to say it’s a requirement for everyone though. There are many people, such as hermits still living today, that claim to be quite happy in solitude, so as the ancient saying goes: to each his own.) However, in my experience most people require positive interpersonal relationship to be content, and this is actually a wonderful design because it encourages exposure to new ideas and provides a completely new lens for a person to see themselves through. In fact, relationships are the biggest catalyst for growth in most people’s lives.

Human Predilection to Relationships

Because of this predilection to forming relationships, whether they be friendships, intimate relationships, or casual in nature, people also tend to become attached and acclimated to these types of conditions. But will any of these relationships truly survive on the physical plane?

Of course not! Everything your eyes can see is temporary… including your eyes, actually, but try not to think about that too much. That’s out of your hands.

Instead, consider that the nature of your existence is temporary, and none of your relationships will survive death, at least not in their current form. And if you are a frequent traveller, you have probably experienced an accelerated version of this, making fast friends, perhaps even having some intense experiences, and knowing that you will not be there for long.

For such travellers, it’s easy for them to see that relationships come in waves. They are forever in flux, forever in change, and they recognize that holding onto something tightly is like trying to stop the tide from coming in and destroying your lovely little sandcastle. But the sandcastle was not made to remain in that form, just as any relationship was not made to remain static. Much like any natural phenomena, a human relationship either builds, crumbles, or gradually wears away from neglect. There are no other options.

A Sandcastle Before the Tide

Of course, the foundations of these ideas are not new, in fact they are quite old. So only take this as a reminder that becoming attached to a single person, or a set of people, is a completely natural reaction; but always remember that you are in the midst of a sandcastle before the tide. Enjoy the time while it lasts, but never place your happiness and validation into the hands of others. I’ve learned this personally time and again. To side-step much suffering, it is helpful to let seasons pass in their own time, and to relish in the changes when they come, knowing that the next stage will shape you into an even stronger and more compassionate person than you are now.

Though it’s not a lesson that comes easily or quickly, when you learn to do that, joy will follow you through all your journeys.

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What I didn’t mention was that he was, and still is, of incalculable inspiration to me.

For those of you who have never heard of Steve Pavlina before, he created what has become the most-read personal growth site on the planet: StevePavlina.com, and deservedly so. Podcasts like Podcast #014 – Embracing Your Passion and articles like 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job contained ideas that were as encouraging to me as they were inspirational. Steve’s message painted a new picture. And it was on Steve Pavlina’s forum where I learned about Blog Carnivals, an extremely useful tool for networking with other bloggers that has proven to be indispensable.

But this post isn’t about blog carnivals or inspirational posters. This post is about “Personal Development for Smart People”, Steve’s new book, a book that has given me an entirely new perspective on the field of personal growth.

Thank You, Steve!

But before I delve into that, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Steve publicly for all that he’s done, including the powerful example of human growth that he’s set for millions, and eventually billions, of readers throughout time. From reading the thoughts he’s shared on web these past years, I’d say he’s one of the few souls on this planet that has maintained focus and committed themselves to a life of service.

Personal Development for Smart People

Recently, Steve’s first book, Personal Development for Smart People, went on sale around the world. And I consider this book as one of the most holistic and purest distillations of fundamental growth principles of our time. The book’s underlying principles relate to every aspect of the human experience, including travel and especially art. For instance, Steve mentions that money isn’t a barrier as nearly as often as we make it out to be. Quite correctly, he points out that:

People who are dead broke have travelled the world.
~ Personal Development for Smart People p.188

But I may be getting ahead of myself. Before I discuss any more specific applications, it’s important to understand some of the underlying theory.

Unified Development Theory

So much could be said about this book, and I have a sneaking suspicion that Steve has tapped into a system of thought that has its roots stretching far back to the very foundation of the human race. Once you read the book, this becomes more evident. The book’s underlying purity of form and focus reflects how much work Steve put into distilling the core principles of personal growth. Overall, the book could be considered the first book to propose an all-encompassing Unified Development Theory. For decades, scientists have been searching for a Unified Field Theory to explain all four of the basic universal forces under a single theory. These four basic forces are gravity (or the gravitational force), the electromagnetic force, and two forces you may not be familiar with: the strong and weak nuclear forces.

Although physicists have thus far been (apparently) unsuccessful at discovering a workable Unified Field Theory, Steve Pavlina has succeeded in doing this with human development theory by distilling personal growth down to three universal principles: Truth, Love, and Power. Steve recognized this parallel to mathematics, and on page 122 he notes that discovering truth, love, and power operating in your life is “almost like discovering a new law of mathematics or physics.” The elegance of how these three principles work together is where his book’s timeless quality arises from.

When isolating the core principles of human development, it was important to Steve that the principles be universal, applicable to anyone, anywhere, in any culture, at any time, to all areas of life, and be essentially timeless. Tall order perhaps? When searching for a fundamental principle of consciousness, we should ask nothing less; and the principles Steve isolated meet these qualifications.

How the 3 Principles Work Together

The first part of the book focuses on the fundamental principles of Truth, Love, and Power; and how these 3 core principles work together to form Oneness, Authority, Courage, and ultimately Intelligence. Summarized, the core principles are defined as:

Truth: The ability to perceive ourselves and reality as accurately as possible.
Love: The essence of the decision to connect with someone.
Power: The ability to consciously and deliberately create your world around you.

The book then focuses on how these three principles work together to form Oneness, being Truth and Love working in harmony; Authority, being Truth and Power working in Harmony; and Courage, being Love and Power working in Harmony. And when Truth, Love, and Power are harmoniously aligned, Intelligence is the result. Looked at another way, your intelligence is proportional to your ability to be aligned with Truth, Love, and Power. The first 7 chapters of the book outlines these 7 core principles.

How to Practically Apply the Core Principles

The second part of the book focuses on the practical application of each of these principles and dedicates a chapter each to habits, career, money, health, relationships, and spirituality. Most of the pragmatic advice is contained in the second half of the book. Steve devotes a section to each of the 7 principles within each chapter, so no angle is left unexplored. That’s roughly 42 sections. Interesting how many places “42″ pops up…

One of my favorite aspects of the second half of the book was a list of 66 habits that can help boost your personal effectiveness. My favorites were:

27. Insanely Bad. Defeat perfectionism by completing your task in an intentionally terrible fashion, knowing you need never share the results with anyone. With a truly horrendous first draft, there’s nowhere to go but up.
30. Intuition. Go with your gut instinct. It’s probably right.
40. Mastermind. Explain your most challenging problems to several other people, and invite all the advice, feedback, and constructive criticism you can handle.
46. Paying it forward. When an undesirable task is delegated to you, re-delegate it to someone else.
61. Troll Hunt. Banish the negative “trolls” from your life; and associate with positive, happy people instead. Mindsets are contagious. Be loyal to truth, love, and power; not your pity posse. (I recently did this on my Twitter account.)

The book’s probing nature provides a fresh perspective to the deep questions of life while still being extremely accessible to a casual reader. Throughout the second half, he offers an excellent variety of questions, challenges, and real world exercises in relation to these 6 areas of life. When these questions, challenges, and exercises are honestly answered, attempted, and explored, they have the potential to reshape your entire perspective on reality.

A Personal Adventure for Smart People

One part in particular caught my eye. When Steve discusses how a message is separate from a medium, he makes an interesting statement that teased my imagination:

My message is about consciously growing as a human being, but I can express that same message through different media. I can write about it, speak about it, or even make a movie about it if I wanted to.
~ Personal Development for Smart People p.162

I realize that Steve is discussing his work as an example of how a message can show up in different media, but one does wonder. Since Steve has already written and spoke about personal development at great length, could it be that he’s entertaining the idea of writing a movie someday? Consider that with over 2 million monthly readers to his website, Steve has already more than proven his ability to write compelling content, and I would be quite interested to see his talents applied to scriptwriting. Perhaps this is only wishful thinking, but what if it’s not?

The Shoulders of Giants

It’s been said that inventors always stand on the shoulders of giants, and I’ve found this equally true of writers. One of the foundations of Human civilization is the new generation’s ability to make improvements on the previous generation’s work. In Personal Development for Smart People, Steve made some of the best possible decisions on what to quote from the generations before him.

For instance, one of my favorite additions to the book was the inclusion of Dale Wimbrow’s poem “The Guy in the Glass” at the end of the first chapter. The poem struck a chord in me because it elegantly pointed out how important it is that, at the end of the day, you must live in a way that is true to yourself or you’ll live in a pit of regret. You can fool everyone else, but you can never fool your heart into thinking it’s fulfilled if it truly is not.

In a way, that poem sets the tone of the book, but as one turns the page a new quote sets the tone for the chapter about Love. In fact, every chapter begins with a profound quotation that sets the tone for the rest of the chapter. Probably my favorite chapter starting quote is at the beginning of the 2nd chapter:

Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.
~ George Washington Carver

Another beautiful quote is at the start of the Career chapter:

Work is love made visible.
~ Kahlil Gibran

A Plethora of Profound Passages

Overall, I found the book to be incredibly encouraging and consciousness-raising, Below is a collection of my favorite excerpts from the book:

1. You are meant to be free. (p87)
2. You can’t be a true authority unless you commit to being a lifelong student. (p89)
3. Does it make any difference what percentage of white belts eventually become black belts? Maybe the answer matters to a statistician, but it shouldn’t make any difference to you. All the matters is whether you’re committed to becoming a black belt. You decide whether you make it or not. (p172)
4. Don’t let a few failures get you down. Just keep making the best decisions you can. (p172)
5. Don’t let moochers dissuade you from your path. Let your inspiration come from the desire to provide even more social value. (p186)
6. In order for your financial goals to be sound, they must reflect your truest, deepest desires. (p187)
7. Instead of focusing on specific financial goals, I decided to aim directly for what I thought money would give me. I thought it would provide me with the freedom to travel, so I set travel goals instead. (p188)
8. The truth is that you don’t need any specific sum of money in the bank or a specific level of income to achieve your goals. There are countless ways to do so, and my of them require little or no money. People who are dead broke have traveled around the world. Why not you? When you decide in advance that a lack of funds is an obstacle to achieving your goals, you disempower yourself. If you want something badly enough, target it directly. Don’t automatically assume that money is necessary to achieve a particular goal; this narrows your options and stunts your creativity. (p188)
9. Don’t force yourself to choose between your integrity and your income and your income — demand that both be satisfied. (p189)
10. Often the simplest way to create value for others is by sharing what you love to do. (p190)
11. True wealth comes from within. (p194)
12. If you give more value than you receive while ensuring you’re being treated fairly and not falling into a pattern of self-sacrifice, the excess value you provide will overflow into public goodwill. Superior service gets noticed because it’s so rare. (p195)
13. Do your best to create and share your value with others, and you’ll help create a richer and more abundant world for all of us. (p197)
14. If you find yourself in a situation that weakens you and you don’t choose to leave, then you’re choosing to stay, which means you’re choosing to abuse yourself. (p223)
15. It’s been said that you can predict the future by looking at the people with whom you spend the most time. That isn’t far from the truth. Your relationships will have a tremendous influence on your self-development. (p224)
16. If your primary relationship prevents you from connecting deeply with others, you have a cage, not a conscious partnership. (p228)
17. In all its various forms, human relationships are a beauty to behold, well worth the price of admission. (p233)
18. It can be disconcerting to stop identifying with any fixed ideology and to realize that all beliefs are lenses and cannot define us. (p243)

The emphasis is added by me. Numbers 7, 8, 10, 11, and 12 resonate the most with me currently. What about you?

You are a Single Cell

Throughout the book, Steve often makes the analogy that a human being is like a single cell in the complete body of Humanity. How one cell acts effects the rest of the body. He highlights that:

The health of the body cannot be maintained when the cells choose to fight amongst themselves.
~ Personal Development for Smart People p.247

Using this analogy, I’d say that Steve, and others working to contribute positively to humanity, are the brave white blood cells of our time. It isn’t easy being on this path. It requires determination and commitment, but it’s incredibly worth it. Reading this book was transformational for me, and I highly recommend that you check it out for yourself. Steve has even provided the entire first chapter for free on his website so you can get a taste before you buy. If you do purchase the book, please use a link from this post. Byteful Travel gets a very small percentage of all sales which goes to support the operating costs for this site.

To conclude his book, Steve summarized the core message the book at the end of the last chapter, and I’d like to close this article by sharing the last part of that summary now:

Enjoy your incredible human journey. Accept the highs and the lows as equally valuable. Recognize that your deepest sorrows reveal your greatest joys. Share your stories with others, and know that you’re not alone. Be grateful for your time on Earth.

Live consciously.
~ Personal Development for Smart People p.254

Thanks again, Steve.

Checkout Personal Development for Smart People on Amazon.com —>

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3. Exploring Pier 39, Chinatown, & My Own Personal Parade in San Francisco, CA

— — —

under a full moon
a plan is considered
though unresolved

opportunity
discovering the journey
action without fear

independence
is it just an illusion
of men filled with pride

so nonlinear
the thoughts of him become a
revealing gesture

above a bright sky
imagination sparks
the path that we fly

Post-publishing note: Thanks to Haiku-koo Carnival for including this article in their carnival. Their site is pretty new, but it has the potential to be best blog carnival for haiku poems.

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Day 13:

The Complete Return to Food

All things that have a beginning have an end. Today this series officially comes to a close. In my eyes though, this experience has been a new beginning: a beginning of greater awareness of my own health, of food, and of food’s effect on my body. Today I had some more of the soup at lunchtime, and for dinner I made some delectable Sicilian Lentil Pasta Sauce which I used with some whole grain spaghetti noodles. While the sauce may seem slightly unusual (to non-Sicilians, at least) because of its use of lentils, I thoroughly enjoyed coming off the Master Cleanse with this meal.

The Cleanse wasn’t always easy, and there is nothing particularly fun about it. Any fulfillment one gets while partaking of the cleanse is due to having more time on hand and the knowledge that they’re making a positive change in their health. (And regarding time, if one isn’t skilled in focusing their time doing the tasks they need to do, obviously this cleanse will not help your life be any more enjoyable.)

Having a Wealth of Time

In this way, the cleanse is rather like being wealthy. The difference being that your wealth is time instead of purchasing power. When one is wealthy with time, they express more of themselves and can effectively be “more of themselves.” This is similar to how money can allow a person to express oneself in greater capacity. Now that I have come off the Master Cleanse, I’ve realized that, although being able to handle having “more of yourself” is a quality that takes some time to get used to, it’s completely worth it.

If I could send a message to myself to the past to August 10th, I would definitely encourage myself to do this cleanse because of what I have learned about myself, my body, and good food. I recommend the Master Cleanse if you want to detoxify your body in a time-tested way that just works. Just realize that it takes discipline and will power to do the Master Cleanse correctly, so if you decide to do it, be serious about it. As long as you don’t cheat, you’ll get results. If you don’t think you’re capable of following the rules, then perhaps it’s best if you build your own will power first, and then try the Master Cleanse.

The Next Step

Now that you’ve read my entire 13 article series of my Master Cleanse journey, you may be wondering how where you can get the best deal and which brands will work best for the cleanse. Well, look no further than the “Master Cleanse Supplies” section of the Byteful Shop. There, I’ve added everything (except for fresh lemons) that you’ll need for your own cleanse; so it’s absurdly easy to buy everything you’ll need for your Master Cleanse (including the original book) because I’ve put it all in one place, just Byteful Travel readers like you. And by using the shop, you support Byteful Travel which allows me to continue to provide everything on this website to you completely free of charge. Thanks.

See the Master Cleanse Supplies at the Byteful Shop —>

I hope you enjoyed this 13 article series on my experience with the Master Cleanse. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading.

— — —

Did you enjoy this series? Why not spread the word?

— — —

Below is a guide to all articles within this series:

Read related articles

1. Coming off of The Master Cleanse (Part 1)
2. Coming off of The Master Cleanse (Part 2)
3. My Journey into The Master Cleanse (Day 6 of 10)
4. My Journey into The Master Cleanse (Day 8 of 10)
5. My Journey into The Master Cleanse (Day 7 of 10)