Outrageous Travel Lesson 8

Posted on by
Reply

Don’t blame your partner for anything.

Any problems are your responsibility to fix.

There is an important life lesson that I learned late in life.  It says that you can’t fix anything unless you take responsibility for it.  Most people blame something or somebody every time life goes wrong.  It feels so good to tell yourself that it isn’t your fault and that you can’t to fix it.  So many people approach life that way that it seems normal.  You aren’t to blame is such a comforting thought when you find yourself in a bad situation.  But taking the easy path is seldom the road to happiness.

BV5 020 300x225 Outrageous Travel Lesson 8The problem with this thinking is that if a bad situation is someone else’s fault, then you are helpless to change it.  You are a passive, powerless leaf in a windstorm and your life is a crapshoot.  It is far better to take responsibility for everything that happens because if you are responsible then you have the ability to change what is happening.  When you look at life with this perspective, luck is irrelevant and blame or excuses are meaningless because you are the master of your life and there is always something you can do to make it better.

Whenever you have a partner there are complications and compromises.  Successful relationships work these out and distribute responsibilities.  From time to time, however, one partner might find that decisions or actions by the other partner cause  undesirable outcomes.  When this happens, it is natural to blame, criticize and argue and it is hard to move on afterwards.  A small disappointment can grow into something serious. A minor situation can grow into a major conflict.

One example from our recent trip was a decision to visit downtown Buenos Aires at sundown and have  dinner before returning home.  We strolled around, selected a restaurant that looked pleasant and settled in for a nice meal.  The restaurant featured Italian food but my wife wanted a steak.  No problem because how could you go wrong ordering steak in Buenos Aries?  To our surprise, the steak was overcooked, my wife was unhappy and the evening was ruined. We sent the steak back and left.    My mind was reeling.  It had been a great evening up to the point the overcooked steak arrived.

In my mind it was all my wife’s fault.  I knew who to blame.  She should have known better than to order a steak in an Italian restaurant.  How stupid!  If she had wanted a steak then why didn’t she tell me to find a Parrilla (Argentine Steak House)?  In Buenos Aires, they are as common as Starbucks here.  We had passed several.  What possessed her to order a steak in an Italian restaurant?  Why did she have to ruin the evening?  You can understand where this thinking  leads and it isn’t pretty.  I wanted no responsibility for this unfortunate experience.  I wanted to blame my wife.  After all she had ordered the steak.  But I stopped myself.

I bit my tongue, gritted my teeth and escorted my wife out of the restaurant and into a cab.  It wasn’t my wife’s fault that the restaurant couldn’t cook a steak.  There was no reason to blame her for ruining an evening just because she wanted a steak in an Italian restaurant.  After three weeks in Buenos Aires we didn’t think it was possible for an Argentine to treat a steak badly.  The truth was that up until the steak arrived at our table, it had been a great day.  Why let an overcooked steak turn it bad?

In the cab ride home we moved on and talked about what to do tomorrow.  What might have been an evening of blame and conflict tuned to the good.  Some wine and cheese on the balcony made the steak a distant memory.

I decided that if there was blame for getting a bad dinner experience, it was mine.  I might have tried harder to learn what my wife wanted- or didn’t want- for dinner.  I might have suggested that maybe an Italian restaurant was not the place to order a steak.  Most important, I decided that a bad steak was not going to ruin my evening, my day or my life.  I took responsibility and resisted the urge to blame my wife for something beyond her control.

By taking responsibility on my shoulders, a bad steak was just a minor event not the ruin of an entire day.   There is even a silver lining.  It’s a great story now that we are back home.  How many people ever get a bad steak in Buenos Aires?

Outrageour Travel Lesson 7

Posted on by
1

Take chances!

You aren’t reading this post because you are looking for the fanciest cruise line or the best tour company.  You want your travel to be special and unique.  You don’t want average.  You don’t want to go with the herd and so you didn’t choose the 10 day all expenses paid tour with a new city every night.  You decided to spend enough time in one place to learn its rhythms and idiosyncrasies.  But don’t stop there.  Get off the beaten path.  Go where the tourists aren’t.

LostVenice2 Outrageour Travel Lesson 7

Get lost!

Outrageous travel is an attitude adjustment.  It changes you from passive observer to active adventurer.  When is the last time you took a chance?  Picked the road less traveled?  Chose the action where the outcome was unknown?  If you can’t remember, then you haven’t been living life to the fullest.  One of the reasons for spending one month in a place is to get yourself out of a rut.

Many decisions in life are driven by a scarcity mentality; People avoid making risky decisions because they can’t afford to take a loss.  If you travel on a tight schedule, you can’t afford to waste time and so you pick the sure things- the guided tours, the ‘best’ attractions,  the ‘top rated’ events.  You follow the herd.   As a result you get ‘programmed’ into the crowd of ordinary tourists doing ordinary things and see more of the back of the tourist ahead of you in line than the place you are visiting.  You see the same things that everybody else sees.  Your pictures look like everybody else’s pictures.  Your memories of your ‘once in a lifetime’ trip consist of standing in line.  It doesn’t have to be that way.

A month long outrageous travel experience gives you other options.  Certainly you want to see the famous attractions which will inevitably mean crowds and lines.  But there is more you can do.  You can take chances.  You can check out some of the not-so-obvious attractions, go where the crowds aren’t and where the natives are.  You can experience what regular life is like in Rome or Buenos Aires.  When you approach travel as a lifestyle choice instead of a schedule of events, each moment is an adventure.  You don’t know the results.  You can’t predict what the day will bring.

It is a sad thing that this lesson is necessary but getting older makes it harder to embrace uncertainty.  Life, the accumulation of relationships, assets and experience encourages caution.  Young people have little to lose and time to recover.  As people age, each year adds something more to protect and reduces the recovery time for loss.  It is natural for people to increasingly avoid risk until it becomes a principle.  But much is lost as well. Taking the safe path lowers risk but limits adventure, personal growth and joi d’vivre.  This could be the beginning of a treatise on life but we will focus on travel for now.  On your travel, playing safe minimizes risks but until you look at the balance between risk and reward, you won’t know that playing safe is the best course.

There is a lesson for life from finance.  Financial analysts don’t avoid or embrace risk.  they manage it.  Portfolio analysis manages risk by combining high and low risk investments to maintain a comfortable overall risk level while maximizing income.  This is important because low risk investments almost always provide lower income.  The highest income results from using high risk instruments.  A financial analyst’s job is to select the proper portfolio of low and high risk investments to provide the highest income.  It is the same with life.

So on your outrageous travel month in Rome or wherever you decide to go, manage that risk.  Take some chances on your schedule.  Look for the minor attractions because they are often better and more accessible than the tourist must see list.  Do what the locals do.  Ride the bus or subway.  Check out the markets.  Get lost.  Sit in a sidewalk café and let the world go past.  Don’t worry about wasting your time because an adventure is never wasted time.  At worst, your experience will make a great story once you get back home.

Productivity Tool – The Hipster PDA

Posted on by
3
cards Productivity Tool The Hipster PDA

Photo by Hawkexpress

I have been trying the Hipster PDA for one of my projects.  The picture isn’t one but follow the link in the previous sentence to see it.  (I think the picture may be the son of Hipster PDA and way out of my league.)   I discovered it while working on an earlier post.  It seemed like a great idea but I havn’t used it until now.

It is working slick. This project involves twelve topic that I am developing for a marketing course. Right now I have the 12 cards for the twelve topics. They have been filled front and back so as I proceed I am adding a second card for each of the twelve with the additional information. What I like is how portable it is. I can put it in my Franklin Planner. I can put it in my briefcase. I can put it in my pocket. I can add information to it. I can organize the cards. I can delete or add cards.

I have only scratched the surface. I can envision my Hipster in action and my Franklin staying home, particularly when I get my Smartphone to keep my calendar with me. Technology is grand but paper can’t be beat.

How about you?  How do you stay organized?

Originally posted 2009-05-03 13:37:59. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Here’s to Success

Posted on by
Reply

Success Heres to Success

Much as I like electronic media for it’s easy access and inexhaustible resources, for me, it will never replace print. I read books and magazines and can’t imagine life without them. They are portable and readable in ways that will never be satisfied by a kindle or laptop. An example is Success magazine which I have been reading for a year or so. Sometimes an issue may not resonate but usually each is full of easily digestible chunks of wisdom and suggestions for deeper study.

The October 2009 issue is no exception. Inside you will fine a reprint from 1977 of an article by John E. Gibson with this insight that caught my eye.

Is the person who has a modest opinion of his own worth, but is actually more capable than he thinks, the most likely to succeed in whatever he undertakes?

No. Vocational studies at New York University show that the person who underrates his abilities has two strikes on him before he starts. He is inclined to accept jobs “where he does not think he will be adequate and where he actually will not tend to be adequate.” This vicious circle traps the person whose opinion of himself doesn’t match his abilities an makes it extremely difficult for him to succeed. Moral. Don’t sell yourself short in the self-esteem division.

If you need more motivation to seek out the issue, Serena Williams graces the cover. I recommend that everyone who is serious about stepping up their game read Success regularly.

Heres to Success

Originally posted 2009-10-05 09:26:38. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Christmas Vacation

Posted on by
Reply

We decided to spend Christmas away from home this year. The idea was to simplify and to eliminate any holiday craziness. Both of our grown-up sons joined us but not for the whole week and only overlapping each other on one day. We had great plans. I was going to sort out my priorities for the new year and come back with a refreshed perspective and a plan to build income. My wife’s plan was to take photographs of the beautiful northern California coast.IMG 1292 300x225 Christmas Vacation

We also planned to read. My wife selected mysteries. I took a thick Sci-Fi novel that I had deferred for more serious reading but I also took some business reading that I hoped to study.

We packed carefully, loading the car with food and gifts, dropped off the cats and then drove the three and one-half hours to the Pacific Ocean and the quirky, architect-designed house we rented just feet above the crashing surf.IMG 1317 300x225 Christmas Vacation

Now, one week later, we are back home. Did I accomplish everything I wanted? Do I have the plan for next year? Am I reved up and focused on making money? Not exactly. We did read. There is nothing more wonderful than reading with the surf crashing on the rocks and a blazing fire. I did take some walks. We did get a chance to talk with our sons and renew some intimacy which we had lost in recent years. But my big plan for next year is still somewhere in the clouds waiting for me to pull it together.

I feel like I squandered the opportunity to make those plans in a relaxed environment but maybe the truth is that the real value of a vacation is the opportunity to unwind, enjoy the beauty of nature and bond with my family. The plan needs to be done but maybe I undervalue the benefits of play. This past week was a wonderful time where I could let go and enjoy scenery and relationships. I can still prepare my plan now that I am back at home but a new part of that plan will be figuring out when we can get back to the coast for some more vacation.

Originally posted 2009-12-29 15:48:23. Republished by Blog Post Promoter