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No BS: What the super-rich worry about

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No B.S Friday: There’s work we all have to do, no matter how much money we have.

Not long ago I was on a super-yacht in the Greek isles talking to someone.

(Yes, I know a lot of my stories start that way.)

Anyway, the old fellah I was talking to seemed like he had it made.

He owned a super-yacht for starters. That’s often a bit of a give-away. He also owned most of the island where we were staying, several mansions across Europe and America, a global shipping empire and an online shopping network, and there was probably enough gold around his neck to buy a small African nation.

The man had money.

And this was the tail end of the GFC, when everything seemed a bit topsy-turvey.

And do you know what he said to me?

“I just want to make sure I’m ok.”

I didn’t pick up on it at the time, but talking to my wife over dinner that night, I reflected on how strange it was.

He wasn’t being ironic. He wasn’t having a laugh about how much wealth he had.

He genuinely wanted to be “ok”. He was genuinely worried that he wouldn’t be ok. I could hear the worry in his voice.

It was ridiculous. There was enough seafood and whiskey, just on board the yacht, to last out a nuclear winter.

His companies made him more money in a single day that most of the world would earn in their entire lifetimes.

If he liquidated all his assets, there would have been so much cash that if you set it on fire, you could see it from space… and still have enough left over for him to live out the rest of his days in comfort. (He was already mid-70s.)

What does ok even mean?

And this is the thing.

(And if you’re starting out on your journey to exceptional wealthy, as I sincerely hope you are, pay attention.)

We all need to feel like we’re ok. That’s a basic human need.

And money helps with all problems. Money is very useful like that. Often, if you’re not ok – you’re sick or your relationships are rocky – more money is probably going to help.

(Rich people have much lower divorce rates that the rest of the population.)

But at some point, once you’ve solved this problem and that problem, you’re going to reach a point where money isn’t going to help you anymore.

You’ve reached a level where it’s about your relationship to your self. It’s about whether you like who you are as a person. It’s about your personal pride. It’s about your resiliency.

And it’s about whether you feel you can lean into and find support in the social networks you have around you.

Money is useful here, but it can not solve these problems.

It requires conscious work. It requires looking within and dealing with what you find there. It involves growing as a person.

Until you do that, you will never be ok. You will never know peace.

And it just takes the smallest global financial crisis to trigger it all off again, and for you to start worrying about whether you will be “ok” or not.

So take the time to be with yourself. I’m not talking five minutes after footy practice. I’m talking booking a weekend away to stare at the coast. Time by yourself.

Find that centre, that core – that place you turn to when life presents you with challenges.

Find that core, and you will always be ok. No matter what.

This is the work that we all have to do.

And money can’t save us from it.

JG.

No BS: Why you need slack, lots of it

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No B.S Friday: If you’re maxing out, the wheels are going to come off at some point.

Have you built enough slack and redundancy into your life?

This has been a bit of a lesson for me.

It’s something that’s come reasonably intuitively for my business, but it’s been a very difficult lesson to learn in my personal life.

When you’re running an organisation, it’s easy to think about redundancy and contingency planning.

I remember I once did a tour of a print-shop where I was getting some materials made.

This wasn’t your corner store printer. This was the printer those smaller printers turned to when an order they couldn’t handle walked through the door.

These guys were the big boys.

And they had some serious equipment. Like massive printers, worth half a million dollars each.

And I remember they had one of these things, attached to a winch and elevated over the factory floor, just hanging from the roof.

This was the back-up printer. The sole purpose of this printer was to step in if the main printer went down.

If the main printer broke down, obviously they’d turn it off and back on again, but if that didn’t work, it’s probably something that would take at least several days to fix.

And a printing business without a printer is not a business at all.

And so yeah, they had a massive printer worth half a million dollars, just hanging from the roof… just in case.

And it made total sense.

You need to have a bit of slack built into your systems… just in case.

Now, that’s obvious with a business, but what about in your personal life?

Have you built slack into your schedule?

Many of us don’t – well the many of us that step outside the box and start running our own show – whether that’s running a business or being a professional investor.

Many of us run our lives at 100% capacity – if not more!

I did. For years. It took me a long time to learn that I needed to build in some contingency.

I couldn’t plan to run myself at 100%.

Because, inevitably, something would come up, and then I’d be stuffed.

Especially when I had a family. Family life is constantly dealing with the unexpected.

And so slowly, I learnt that if I ran myself at 100% – if I filled every hour of my schedule with tasks – then at some point something would come up, and the wheels would fall off.

I learnt that I had to run myself at a comfortable 80-85%.

And the discipline there was in saying no. It was saying no to taking things on, even though in the moment I had the capacity. I had the hours. I could step up.

But I had to discipline myself into saying no – into running my self with a bit of slack in the schedule.

And the real magic here is what happened with that surplus time.

What happened with that 15% that was just sitting idle?

Well, it just became me-time. It became sweet nothing time. It became time just to have a coffee in the sun and mull on some of life’s big questions.

(Which ironically, ends up being incredibly productive time!)

It became some of the sweetest hours in my schedule.

And once I clocked into that sweetness, it actually became easier to defend it from the thousand and one things that wanted to encroach on the schedule.

So that’s my advice to people these days.

Don’t run yourself at 100%. Keep some slack in the system. Let it be easy.

And just enjoy the sweetness that it opens up.

JG

No BS: why you can’t handle the truth

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Social media is heating up. Conspiracy theories are everywhere. I tell you what you can believe with total confidence.

The journalist Gary Webb once believed in a conspiracy theory.

He believed that the CIA was importing huge amounts of cocaine, selling it on the streets of America, and using the money to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Turns out the theory wasn’t just a theory though. It was fact. And it was the biggest scandal of the day.

Webb got no thanks for his efforts though, and he later committed suicide.

By shooting himself in the head.

Twice.

Welcome to the strange, murky world of conspiracy theories.

Now, what’s really going on with the Corona virus?

Like, really REALLY going on?

I can see things are starting to get pretty heated on the socials. In the early days of the virus, the narrative was more or less, ‘uncontested’. Now there are more and more voices questioning what’s going on.

That’s a good thing. If you never question anything, you’ll spending your whole life in a nice safe job, until one day you watch your entire life savings go up in smoke in a bot-driven market crash.

But, there’s a lot of stories out there – from the official to the fringe. They can’t all be true, so how do we make sense of everything that’s coming at us?

Over the next few blogs, that’s what I want to try and do. Give you a framework for making sense of the conspiracy theories that are out there, and sifting the reasonable from the nonsense.

Now, when I put it in the context of a binary between ‘reasonable’ and ‘nonsense’ it sounds like it’s an easy thing to do. Like the truth will somehow appear obvious and untainted when we look in the right place.

But humans are not geared up for ‘truth’.

Let’s look at that for a bit, because we need to understand what we’re dealing with.

Okay, so let me ask you, how do we experience ‘facts’?

Well, facts are our things that we have perceived with our senses. Either directly, or second hand – through images to our eyes or meaningful sounds to our ears.

But even this leaves room for a universe of the unknowable. Our senses have evolved. Early organisms didn’t have eyes or ears, but we do.

However, ears and eyes have been selected to help us survive in our environments. That is, they are specifically designed to help us eat, root and avoid angry things.

By design, they give us just enough information to do that. No more and no less.

And they could do more. Insects can see whole spectrums of colour that we can’t see, because it helps them navigate their niche. We can’t see that spectrum because it’s kind of irrelevant to us.

So there’s spectrum of light and sound. But there are world of possible media – Vibration? Quantum phasing? Spirit?

If the earth was inhabited by gentle ultraviolet spirit beings who ate beauty and had no impact at all on our ability to eat, root or avoid angry things, then we wouldn’t be able to see them, simply because there would have been no evolutionary advantage in being able to see them.

So this is the first point. Evolution determines what you are capable of perceiving.

You are never seeing the ‘whole’ truth. Your sense organs are just not designed to do that. That’s not what they were built for.

They were built for survival, not truth.

The same story goes with the information you perceive and the way you process it.

Your brain’s job, as detailed in the job description evolution gave it, is to give you a workable framework for getting about in the world.

The ‘accuracy’ of that framework, again, is kind of irrelevant. The only thing that matters is whether it successfully helps you eat, root and avoid angry things.

So perhaps you believe that when trees wobble, it creates wind, and when trees really start wobbling, a storm is coming and you should take shelter.

It doesn’t matter that you’re ‘wrong’. The framework helps you survive, and that’s enough.

The ‘truth’ is only ever a second-order consideration.

This is something that is useful to acknowledge.

Your brain has only a loose commitment to the truth. It is interested in relevant and workable truths, not complete truths.

In fact, it’s geared to not spend too long over-thinking the truth. Once the brain has a workable framework, it actually starts resisting the impulse to do any more digging.

Once you have a workable framework, you actually, sub-consciously, start filtering out anything that might disturb your confidence in that framework.

It’s why science tends to move in lurches – frameworks need to become completely untenable before we’ll invest the precious resources needed to create a new one.

And that’s all before we touch on social media thought bubbles, confirmation bias and the tendency to believe anything that ‘feels’ right.

So that’s the second point. Not only are you imperfectly equipped to perceive truth, you are imperfectly equipped to understand truth.

It’s an uphill battle all the way.

I’m saying all this because I think we all need to relax a little bit.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed right now because you don’t know what the truth is or who to believe, that’s ok. You not designed for ‘truth’. It’s still available to you, but you’re fighting your biology.

So take it easy. Find what’s workable for you. That’s what your ancestors would have done.

The second point is that if you’re shouting at strangers on the internet because they’re too stupid to see the truths that you see, maybe dial it back a bit.

First, while it’s possible that you have a grasp on the whole truth, it’s probably unlikely. Second, if you’re getting frustrated that people can’t embrace your truths overnight, it’s most likely because there’s a billion years of evolution getting in the way.

Go easy on them. They’re sophisticated monkeys trying to do the best they can… just like you are.

So take it easy Australia. Either way, we’re all in this together.

Now, I haven’t told you what I think yet…

More on that next week.

JG.

No BS Friday: I Give Up (Seriously)

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Give up trying to ‘make it’.

You are never going to make it.

But this is the secret that no one tells you.

There is no “make it”.

There is no point where you’re done, where you’re putting your feet up with a whiskey in your hand and thinking, yep, I’m a success.

Because if you’re defining success on your achievements – on your business successes, on your fancy cars, on you funds under management – you’re chaining yourself to the wheel.

There is nothing you can do that will ever be good enough. Think about Alexander the Great.

He’d conquered half of Asia Minor and it still wasn’t good enough.

Even the most mighty king is never free.

But freedom can be yours.

Don’t look to what you do in the world, but look to what you do in yourself.

Do you give everything every thing that you’ve got?

Do you rise to meet your fears and hit things with relentless courage?

Do you strive to see yourself clearly and honestly in the mirror, striving to be the best version of yourself that you can be?

This is the only definition of success that matters.

And so this is the secret I will share with you. When you set your soul on this course, then you can “make it.” You can be a success.

You can sit back, take a long look at yourself in the mirror and think,

“Yes, I am the person I want to be.”

Then you will have made it.

And peace and freedom will be yours.

Take the pressure off now… give up!

Surrender to the person that you truely want to be…

The real YOU!

NO B.S.FRIDAY: Who Was MY “Rich Dad?”

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I owe a lot to just one man.

At one of our conferences the other day, someone asked me who my favourite investor was.

I guess they were expecting me to go with Warren Buffet or Richard Branson or something like that.

And as much as I love those guys, the truth is I model my investment philosophy on someone else – a man named Alan.

I don’t expect you to have ever heard of Alan. He was a friend of my fathers, and was around when I was a teenager – when my father would have ‘the boys’ over for a drinking session on the back patio.

He also never amassed the kind of fortune that makes you famous (or notorious). But that never bothered him. He was never in it for the fame. For him, it was the creative challenge of it all. To him, investing was more like a sport.

And I know we’re all unique, but Alan was truly unique. Like he had been installed with a different operating system or something. He would be entirely, full-power present with you one moment, and then in the blink of the eye, he would be lost to some creative horizon, almost like he was talking to you from a different room (or different dimension).

But as unique as he was, he was a great role-model to young investors like me. Here are three things I took form the gospel of Alan.

1. Walk your own path

I’m struggling to think of a rule that Alan followed to the letter. Maybe, ‘wear pants in public’. (I never saw him without pants, but then again, it wouldn’t surprise me if he had a ‘pantless phase’ at some point.)

But Alan wasn’t a rebel for the sake of it.  He wasn’t anti-authoritarian by nature. He just didn’t see any rules as fixed. Everything was up for negotiation. Everything could be looked at with fresh eyes. You could write your own rules.

Many of us just accept the limits that are placed on us without ever really testing them – without even asking ‘why?’ Many of these limits are inherited – from society or from our parents, or from something an elf said on Lord of the Rings once. They’re not really ours.

Limits are ok, but we need to do the work to make sure that we’re ok with the limits we accept – that they are actually in alignment with our values.

2. Push yourself…. Hard.

Another thing that inspired me about Alan was that he seemed to be addicted to pushing his own boundaries. He was constantly challenging himself. Constantly taking himself off in new directions.

It was like one week he was doing property development. The next it was a tourism business in Queensland. The next it was family-run vineyard in New Zealand.

You know how some weight-lifters get addicted to doing weights. Arnold Swartznegger once said it was better than sex. (Might depend on how you’re doing it, Arnie.) But even though lifting heavy weights is a difficult and challenging and exhausting thing, they get addicted to it. They can’t get enough of it.

Alan was like that when it came to challenges that pushed his boundaries – that expanded his comfort zone.

Ultimately I wonder if Alan might have been a more successful investor if he had stuck with just one thing. It’s like me. I know what I like. I like property in general, and right now, town-house developments in particular.

The more experience you have, the easier something becomes.

But while I’ve probably now made more money than Alan ever did, I can say for certain that Alan had more fun doing it.

Every new venture was an adventure and an opportunity to learn a little bit more about himself.

This is an inspiring way to live.

3. Back yourself… to the hilt.

The other thing that inspired me about Alan was that he had absolute faith in his own resources. He was relentless with self-education and self-improvement (which is another thing I took from him), so he did have a deep-well to draw on.

But many people have a lot of skills. Not everyone has an unshakeable belief in their capacities.

It’s kind of why Alan was able to drop into so many worlds, and take on such different projects.

It was like he knew that whatever happened, he’d make it work. If that delicatessen in Fitzroy turned out to be a dud, he’d turn it into something. He’d make it fly.

And if he couldn’t? Well, it was like he just had faith that everything works out for the best in the end.

He had faith in himself and faith in the world.

Put those two together, and the world just becomes your playground.

An ordinary / not-so ordinary hero

The last I heard of Alan he was off to WA to manage a cattle station or something, and I think he’s probably passed away now.

But of all the characters I’ve met in my life, Alan stands out as one of the most inspiring – perhaps not as an investor, but definitely as a being determined to live life to the fullest. And after all, isn’t that what we’re really talking about?

Power Challenge 6/8: Receiving

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Your opportunity to win an I-pad – and make a full-power start to the year. Challenge Six – Receiving

Ok, so this is the Knowledge Source Power Challenge – your opportunity to set a cracking start to the year and win some great prizes.

We’re getting down to the business end, but it’s not too late to get on board. This is where we are at so far:

Challenge One: Energy

Challenge Two: Know your pain

Challenge Three: Take the reins

Challenge Four: Radical Honesty

Challenge Five: Connection

Challenge Six: Receiving

Challenge Seven: LOCKED

Challenge Eight: LOCKED

So today, I wanted to look at the often-overlooked art of receiving.

The Australia Day holiday is coming up. It’s a good time to reflect on our capacity to receive – rest, nourishment, anything.

It is actually an art. It’s a skill that we need to practice. I think we start out pretty good, as children. But as we grow up, we lose the knack.

In many ways, growing up itself is learning how to give more than we receive.

And why are children so good at receiving? I think it is because they are ok with being vulnerable. They are little. They don’t have fire-arms. Vulnerability is their natural state.

When we receive, we are put in a vulnerable state. Power lies with the giver. They are the one with the gift. They are the one orchestrating the transaction.

And so as we become adults and no longer have the luxury of wallowing in helplessness, we turn away from vulnerability. It’s something we run from.

As a result, we become givers. We feel powerful when we are giving, and we find it difficult to withstand the vulnerability required to receive.

We cannot ‘tolerate’ it. It’s why so many of us just suck at receiving.

But receiving is a very important skill. I mean, think about your vision for where your life is going. Doesn’t it involve receiving a passive income stream from your investments, receiving love and affection from your family, receiving a Long Island Ice Tea from the pool boy?

Doesn’t the ultimate realisation of your vision involve a lot of receiving? So when are you going to practice that? You’re not just going to magically get better at it once you’ve made your money.

And what does the universe make of someone who is always pushing away opportunities to receive? What message is that sending?

So we need to practice the art of receiving. And to do that, we must practice the art of standing in our vulnerability.

So this is your challenge for today.

Place yourself in a situation of receiving. Ask your wife for a foot rub, ask your friend for a compliment, as the trolley boy to carry your shopping, ask your children to make dinner. It doesn’t matter, just find one thing that puts you squarely in the receivers seat.

Tell us what it is…

And do it.

And when you do it, treat it as an act of endurance. It’s like running a marathon, or jumping in an ice bath, or sitting in a super-hot sauna. But just notice how it draws on your inner resources just to be able to tolerate it.

Notice how we all have to learn to tolerate love, tolerate affection, tolerate care… as ridiculous as that sounds.

And maybe commit to building up your tolerance levels this year.

So that’s it. That’s the challenge for the week. Hit up the blog and let us know:

What are you going to do this week to practice the art of receiving? Just one thing. (And if you can’t think of one act of pure receiving, what does that say about your life?) How long were you able to ‘endure’ it?

And here’s hoping you’re open to receiving everything you deserve this year.

Jon

Ps – Hit us up in the comments of down below for this challenge, while –This link will take you to the previous challenges. It’s not too late to have the best year ever.

Power Challenge 3/8: Take the Reins

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Your opportunity to win an I-pad – and make a full-power start to the year. Challenge Three – Take the reins.

Alright, the Power Challenge is in full-swing. There are 360 (so far!) heroic individuals who have committed to making this an awesome year. I’m giving you eight quick but deep challenges to see if you are fully in alignment.

(Think of it as a tune up for your success engine.)

There’s still time to get on board. Find the challenges here. As long as you do all eight challenges some time this month you’ll be eligible for the prize draw. I’m relaxed like that.

Ok, so challenge number three. This is about self-discipline.

The road to self-mastery begins with mastering the body.

The Buddha said that the conscious mind’s controls the body the way a rider controls an elephant. The elephant is strong, and has agendas of it’s own. It won’t just do what you say unless you have established control.

So today, I want you to hit up the blog and write down one thing that you’re going to do this week that goes against the instincts of your body.

Maybe it will be taking a cold shower. Maybe it will be going a day without food. Maybe it’s walking up the stairs to your office, which was Stephen B’s answer to our first challenge. (Stephen, you’ve got to come up with something else.)

Think of just one thing you can do this week. Declare it to everyone on this blog.

Then do it.

And when you do it, whatever it is, I want you to pause just before you do it and watch for two things.

1. The Whingeing

First, listen to your body’s excuses. Standing on the edge of a cold lake, you might here yourself complain, “It’s too cold, I’m might catch a flu, I’ve just eaten, I look ridiculous in these budgie smugglers.” Sometimes your body is crafty. Sometimes just whingey. But it always pushes back.

But notice how your body sort of has a capacity to over-ride your inner monologue. Notice how your body’s thoughts can be mistaken for your own thoughts, if you’re not watching carefully. Notice how your boldest agendas can be derailed by the worst and whiniest instincts of our body.

This happens to us ALL. THE. TIME.

There is an art to knowing when your mind is raising reasonable objections, and when your body is just being a little wuss bag. It takes time to know the difference.

2. The Loving Command

Second, I want you to force yourself to do whatever it was you were planning to do. Jump into the lake. Get up at 5 a.m. Fast.

(Actually, fasting is great because you are constantly being presented with temptations.)

Whatever it is, assert your authority, assert your control, and just do it.

But as you’re doing it, I want you to hold an attitude of “loving command.”

Don’t go hating on your body. Don’t go screaming at your body, “Shut up you flabby ball of failure. We’re doing this. I’m throwing us in this lake. F-youuuuu!”

No. Hold an attitude of loving command. Say, “I can see you don’t want to jump in this lake. I know that it’s cold. But I want this for us. And I have the reins. I am in control.”

And then do it.

I think an attitude to loving command is the key to having sustainable, heart-centred self-discipline, which in turn is one of the key pillars of success.

So that’s it. That’s the third challenge. Share the act of discipline you’re going to commit to this week right here in the comments section. And then watch for those two things – The Whingeing and The Loving Command.

I really believe it will help you grow a more powerful self-discipline and self-mastery this year.

Power on!

Jon

Ps – Why not rope somebody else into this challenge. Who do you know who could travel the road of mastery with you? Forward them this email and get them on board.

NO B.S.FRIDAY: Such is Life…

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Why do we love bushrangers so much? Are we all just bushrangers too busy with our day jobs?

November 11th was Remembrance Day, but I also noticed it’s the 138th anniversary of Ned Kelly’s death. They hanged our most famous bushranger on November 11, 1880.

I feel like we must be due for another round of bushranger romanticism. Seems to come around every 30 years or so. I mean, it’s been 15 years since the last Ned Kelly movie.

(Update: they’re in the process of making one right now. There you go.)

But why do we love bushrangers so much?

Kelly has more brand recognition than any Australian has ever had, including Don Bradman, well over a century after his death.

And Kelly’s life was hard. He was born into a poor family, took a lot of knocks along the way, before finally going to the gallows at the tender age of 25. Not a lot to envy there.

But we collectively get starry-eyed, and imagine ourselves in an iron suit, both guns blazing.

(Or is that just me?)

Bushrangers were a product of that time, and our romanticism has as much to do with that period in Australian history as it does with them.

I mean, if Ned Kelly were alive today, he’d probably end up on Today Tonight, with a camera man chasing him through the streets of Melbourne. Clank, clank, clank. “Mr Kelly. We just want to ask you a few questions.”

No one is getting misty eyed about car thieves in tracky-daks and sneakers these days.

But still there is something in the archetype of the bushranger that calls to our spirit.

To me, I think the key selling point of brand bush-ranger is ‘rebelliousness’. That’s what elevates them from the muck of humanity’s dregs, into the rarefied air of cultural hero.

But what does that say about us?

Why do we love and celebrate the rebellious? The rule breakers? The trouble makers?

Do we secretly long to cast ourselves in that light – break the rules, trash the law, kick down the doors and leave our name in bullets in the wall?

Are we all just bushrangers, too busy with our day jobs to cause anybody any trouble?

Yes. Yes we are.

The world is repressive. It crushes our freedom, our unique spirits, our playful, child-like natures. It’s just how it is. As we get older, we find the adult world with all its rules and regulations has us all bound up in a straight-jacket.

The question becomes how do we respond?

Do we suffer in silence, taking a photo-copy of our bottoms when the boss isn’t looking in an impotent act of defiance?

(Brian, I know it’s you. Just stop it, ok. It’s unhygienic.)

Or do we go totally off the hook, become a renegade, dying in a rain of bullets and glory?

That’s sexier, but still pretty sad in the end.

Or do we find another way? A third way? Do we find a way to push back the prison walls of the world, and find a way to live on our own terms, with our own money, with our own drive and our own autonomy?

Do we find a way to keep expanding the sphere of our own freedom?

This has been one of the central missions in my life in recent years. Finding that freedom.

Sure, that’s partly about money. Money can buy you many freedoms in life – the freedom to travel, the freedom to follow your own interest, freedom from the stresses of a hand-to-mouth existence.

But it’s also about making it part of my life goals – finding a career that let’s me set my own hours and schedule. Living somewhere that gives me easy access to the things I love doing. Putting energy into my relationships so they are supporting me, rather than holding me back.

But ultimately, it starts with recognising that we are all living in Ned Kelly realities – realities where the system is not set up to maximise our freedom and fulfilment.

This is the first step.

The fight then and must come second.

Such is life.

JG

NO B.S. FRIDAY: Die with this regret… and you’ve won!

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I take a look at some of the guff written on regret. The results will surprise you.

Today, I’m going to give you a glimpse into your future life.

I’m going to show you what lies at the end of your road, and the one thing you will regret, when your number finally comes up.

… I mean, if you’re lucky. Most people die with a thousand regrets. But if you live your life well from this point on, follow my advice, you will take just one, beautiful regret to your grave.

And I know that because it is the same regret that I carry now.

So pay attention. I think this might be about to be the most important blog I’ve written.

(And oh, haven’t I written some doozies!)

Anyway, a lot has been written about regret. There was a story doing the rounds a few years ago about a nurse who worked at a retirement home, who did a study on the things that people regret on their death bed.

I don’t know why we focus so much on that death-bed moment. It’s just like any other really.

I mean, maybe I regret not playing professional ping pong in my twenties. That’s something I might regret on my deathbed. It’s definitely too late do anything about it then.

But it’s also too late to do anything about it now. The window has definitely closed on my professional ping pong career. That horse has well and truly bolted.

The really interesting questions should be what do people regret not doing last year or last month. Regrets fresh enough to actually do something about.

Anyway, contrived scenario aside, this nurse reckons that people always regret the stuff they didn’t do, rather than the stuff they did.

That sounds profound until you think about it.

The stuff we do – that just tends to dissolve into the history of our lives. It just becomes part of who we are.

So maybe you regret selling your Bitcoin in 2010. But then you meet your future wife at a ‘no-coiner’ support group, and so you think it was all for the best.

Life has a way of working out like that. Which is really to say, we have a natural tendency to make the most of things, get on with it, and celebrate what we have.

(There’s even cases of people who have lost limbs in motor accidents who say that they are glad it happened to them.)

The other part of it is that it is very easy to romanticise the road not travelled.

So you think back to that girl you knew when you were 17. You should have kissed her. Why didn’t you kiss her? You fool.

And then you imagine the life that might have been. You imagine yourself falling in love, madly and foreverly. You see yourselves in Paris, eating croissants by the river’s edge. You see yourselves as an old couple, in a motor-home, driving across the Nullarbor into the setting sun.

You see her crouched over your grave, her tears falling on to a single red rose, the sky darkening overhead.

Sigh. What could have been…

But of course this is the romantic version. You don’t imagine her, at 3a.m, feeding the baby, hair electrified, giving you death stares because “YOU ALWAYS WALK TOO LOUD!!” You don’t imagine her at 60, cocking her leg at the breakfast table and letting go with one of her signature farts. You don’t imagine her at 75, pawning all your stuff and moving in with Shane from the bowls club.

You don’t imagine any of this stuff, even though it’s just as likely.

We romanticise the lives we never lead.

And so of course we regret the things we never did. Those things were gateways to these romantic and fantastical lives – lives that are always going to be more magical, more colourful, more wonderful than the ones we are living now.

So of course we regret the stuff we never did.

To a point.

And this is where we start talking about the one regret that I have.

Because I’m someone who opened the door and had a look at what lay beyond all the gateways of regret.

I have lived a life of relative freedom. And I’ve done it all.

When I was a young man, I threw myself into soccer. I gave it everything. I had my tilt at professional sport, and the glory it promised. I did my best. I took my chance. I have no regrets.

As a young man, I also threw myself into the feminie like a box of Whitlam samplers. By the time I found my wife, I was certain there was no one else I wanted to be with. I had found the perfect one for me. And I haven’t regretted a single day of our marriage.

(I can’t vouch for her though – I think she’s already thinking about pawning my stuff).

And I also had my crack at business. I chose not to follow the road of the nine to five and strike out on my own. It was a gamble and it paid off. Some people die not knowing.

I know.

And with that success, I now have freedom that most people only dream about. I can travel the world. I can track down the relatives in Greece. I can take part in bizarre medicine ceremonies in the Congo. I can throw myself out of an airplane over the French Pyrenees.

I can do whatever I want.

And my bucket list is completely cleared out.

So, all good then, hey? No room for regrets right? I’ll die a happy and regret-less man, quietly smiling into my last glass of whiskey..?

Not quite.

Because this is the thing I’ve learnt about having opened every door, having tasted every fruit, having ticked every box I could find:

None of it matters.

Having done everything on my bucket list, I can say that the amount of happiness I drew from each item on that list, is actually kind of minimal.

I mean sky-diving was awesome. It totally was. But knowing what I know now, would I go back to a younger version of myself and say, “You totally have to do this before you die.”

Nah.

And the same goes for everything on there. It was all awesome. It was all good fun. But was any of it “must do before you die” worthy?

Not really.

I mean, I do enjoy knowing that I have done everything I ever wanted to. That’s a nice feeling of completion – a feeling of satisfaction. That’s nice.

But that feeling of completion could have come with any bucket list really. It could have been a shopping list. The individual experiences just didn’t matter.

More and more, my adventuring has brought home that simple truth – happiness is an inside job.

Doing everything on the most epic bucket list in the world won’t make you happy – not if you’re not already primed for happiness from the inside out.

And this is what I regret.

I regret the hunger I brought to everything when I was younger.

I regret those days where I always wanted more. Where I had a great job, but I wanted a better job. Where I had a great girlfriend but I wanted a better girlfriend. Where I had great friends but I wanted better friends.

I brought a hunger to every thing I did, and that hunger always kept my eyes on the horizon, on the hunt for bigger, and better, and more exciting.

And in doing so, I missed out on a lot of life. The life that happens in the moment. The happiness that comes when you are just present to what is, when you are just grateful for what is.

In hindsight, I can see that I lived through countless blessings, through a charmed life full of wonders and beauty, and I was a misery guts for most of it.

My hunger kept me blinded to what I actually had.

And so this is what I regret.

I regret that I spent so many years as a slave to this hunger. I regret that I let so many moments for potential ecstasy and bliss pass me by, simply because I thought bliss was always over the next hill.

And I regret that it took me so long to figure it out. That the energy and the passion and the hormone-driven stamina of youth was wasted on someone who just couldn’t see how good he had it.

This is what I regret. And I’ll carry this regret with me to the day I die.

Funny old thing, life.

And I hope that this regret is the only regret that plagues you on your death bed too. I hope that from this day on, you heed this wisdom, and become present to and grateful for the wonderful gifts you have already.

But I don’t really expect you to.

I mean, I wouldn’t have. I couldn’t have been told. I wouldn’t have listened.

I had to see for myself. I had to taste every fruit in the garden before I could know that fruit was not the key to happiness. No amount of grey-beard wisdom would have helped.

And so if you won’t take my advice, then I wish that this journey will find you too. That you will have the freedom and the resources to chase down every desire, live every dream –tick everything off your own epic bucket list. Leave no stone unturned until you are convinced that happiness is nowhere to be ‘found’.

Perhaps it is the only way.

But however you find it, I hope this one beautiful regret becomes yours too:

I only wish that I had found my freedom sooner.

(… he whispers to the nurse, as she pours him a final whiskey.)

JG

No BS Friday: Why dirty people aren’t rich

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Would it be better to start treating money as a chore?

A few weeks ago I asked a provocative question: why haven’t you got your money situation sorted?

If it doesn’t feel like it’s sorted, then you should really ask yourself why. Your answer will be illuminating. Take a look at your excuses. How many of them are real? How many have relatively simple solutions?

(You might be surprised).

Anyway, I wanted to look at one excuse I get a bit. It goes something like, “I haven’t focused on money because I’ve been living the life I love and doing what I want.”

“What I want” might mean extreme BMX. It might also mean something more righteous, like feeding the homeless or saving the planet. Whatever.

But it’s the idea that I put energy into non-monetary but meaning-rich pursuits, and as a result, I don’t have much money.

There’s nothing really wrong with this, as long as you are genuinely happy with the results, especially the part about being poor.

But I find most people aren’t really all that happy about being poor, actually, once you ask the question.

I also don’t really get the level of analysis – like why we’re even setting money and meaning up as competing pursuits.

The way I see it, taking care of your finances is like taking care of your house – it’s like doing housework.

Very few people derive their life’s meaning from housework. But you very rarely hear people say, “I’ve chosen to spend my time on more meaningful pursuits, and so as a result, I live in squalor.”

No one would really buy that. They would say, “Don’t try and pull that crap on me again Jon. There are some things in life that you just have to do, that are just a basic part of living – they are basic responsibilities that create the foundation from which you can launch more meaningful pursuits. So give your mother a break and pick up your clothes.”

We all need structures that support us in life. Money is one of those structures. It’s not the only structure, but if you’re not going with money, you still need to go with something.

So taking care of your finances is as basic as taking out the garbage.

The other thing with it is that money is just one of many essential things we need to get by in the modern world. But it’s the only one that has the meaning razor applied to it.

For example, money is an energy that helps me do what I need to do.

So is food.

But I don’t spend time worrying about whether my eating habits are increasing the amount of meaning and happiness in my life.

And so a statement like, “I’ve decided to focus on the things that make me happy, so I’m spending less time making money” sounds like it makes sense. You might even get a pat on the back for being so righteous and wise.

But if it’s true then a statement like, “I’ve decided to focus on the things that make me happy, so I’m spending less time eating” should be equally true. But it’s not. You sound ridiculous.

And so giving less time to your money, to me, makes about as much sense as giving less time to eating, household chores, personal hygiene, and time spent in traffic.

Some things you just have to do.

Of course there is a sweet spot to be found. If you spent all of your day in the shower grooming yourself, you’re life would be pretty shallow. Likewise, if you spent all your time working and chasing money, you are also wasting your life.

But I think the solution is to see your finances as a sort of ‘cost of doing business’. As rent on planet earth. Time spent there is just a necessary expense.

The flip side of that is that money is not an end in itself. It’s like electricity. The wise person stays focused on what they’re going to do with the power they have, not the power itself.

And that’s all not to say that you should stay in a job that makes you miserable. There are better ways to earn money – methods that are better suited to your personality – just as there are nicer things to eat, better vacuums to use, more efficient ways to commute to work.

It’s worth spending the time finding the systems that work for you.

But don’t think you’re winning any righteous points by shirking your chores.

Pull the finger out and just get it done.