Afford Anything - Chris Guillebeau -- How to Live a Remarkable Life in a Conventional World

Episode Date: August 8, 2016

#37: Chris writes about life, work and travel. He has visited every country in the world and written a number of New York Times best selling books. He joins us to talk about challenging ourselves, experimentation,and deliberately changing our direction. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/chris-guillebeau/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your money, work, career, and life. My name's Paula Pan. I'm the host, and today I'm excited to introduce you to Chris Gillibault. Chris is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and world traveler. He visited 193 countries before he turned 35. That's every country in the world, as measured by the United Nations list of member states. Chris writes about life, work, and travel. His first book, The Art of Nonconformity, was translated into more than 20 languages. His second, third and fourth books, which are called The $100 Startup,

The Happiness of Pursuit, and Born for This, are all runaway New York Times bestsellers. He's also the founder of the World Domination Summit, a yearly gathering of entrepreneurs, artists, thinkers, and creatives that takes place every year in Portland, Oregon. Chris is absolutely remarkable. so much. I've been reading him and wanting to meet him and wanting to talk to him for years. So I'm thrilled to be able to introduce you to him. Before we get to the interview, I want to just pause for a moment and send a special message to anyone listening who is an entrepreneur. If you run your own business, whether it's full time or something that you do on the side, you probably deal with a lot of invoices. Some of your clients pay right away, but some of them take their merry time. And that can be really frustrating. Our sponsor, Fresh Book, handles all of that for you. They have a super automated easy system that allows you to quickly and easily send invoices to all of your clients with minimum time and hassle. It automatically tracks whether the clients have even opened the invoice or not. It automatically

sends follow-up reminders to any clients that are late in making their payments. Try them out risk-free by going to freshbooks.com slash Paula. You'll get a free month. Again, that's freshbooks.com slash Paula. And when they ask, how did you hear about us? Write Paula. With that being said, I'd like to introduce you to the Master of Nonconformity, Chris Gillibow. Chris, I'd like to have this conversation in two parts.

First, I want to introduce you and tell a little bit of your backstory for the listeners who are meeting you for the first time. After that, I want to turn the conversation to your most recent book, finding the work you're born to do. Awesome. I would love to talk about

whatever's best for your great listeners. All right. Just to start with, Chris, when you were in your mid-20s, you initially set the goal of traveling to 100 countries and then you upped it to every country, 193. What were you hoping to learn or experience or teach? Why did you set that goal? Yeah, I don't know if it was about teaching so much. It was more about, it was just like a personal quest.

Like I felt like I had the opportunity to do it. And once I started thinking about it, I couldn't get it out of my head. it was like, is this actually possible? How many countries are there in the world? How much would that cost? Like, what would be the financial cost as well as the time costs and all that kind of stuff? So I love to travel. I had been traveling since I was a kid. And then I spent about four years living in West Africa, working as an aid worker. And then I had that hundred country goal. And as I started working toward the hundred countries, like I was always a big list maker. I was like writing down my lists and I had a list of all the countries I'd been to. And so I had the hundred country goal. As I got closer to it, I realized that a real challenge would be to go to every country because if you kind of pick and choose which countries you go to, then you can go to the easy ones or if you run into some kind of obstacle, you can just kind of give up on that one and do something different. So that's where the real challenge came in. And I set the goal of doing that by my 35th birthday, which was three years ago. And I managed to do it. What was the benefit of challenging yourself in that way? Because there are many ways that a person

can challenge themselves. Yeah, of course. I guess for me, I mean, that just kind of, that related to me. Like I liked to travel. I liked goal setting. And I kind of put these two things together. And that's what I came up with. Like I wasn't a mountain climber. You know, I wasn't going to go climb, you know,

scale Everest or something. I ran a marathon once, but I could never run like an ultra marathon. Like when I think about challenging yourself, that to me was, you know, kind of what sparked it. I was like, okay, here is something that it seems really difficult, but it's not impossible.

I think that was a key point because if something is like truly impossible, and I don't really think that should be your goal or your dream. But in my, case, or at least the case of going to every country in the world, it wasn't impossible. It just seemed really difficult. And so I was attracted to the idea that I might actually be able to do that, or might actually be able to make it happen. And if I don't, well, you know, as you said, I'm still going to have, like, all these experiences. I'm still going to learn a lot about the world, probably a lot about myself. So there was really no downside to it. So what did you learn about

both the world and yourself? You know, so like I said, when I started the actual quest, I'd been a bunch of places. I had been living in Liberia and Sierra Leone for several years. So I, I think, I was kind of used to working cross-culturally and being in settings that might be a little bit challenging for some people who haven't experienced that. So maybe I already had a little bit of understanding of different worldviews and different perspectives. And I actually really liked that. I liked going places where people did things differently and that, you know, had different

food and different languages and cultures and customs. So I was really interested in seeing, you know, the comparative aspects of that. So there's a lot of stuff that I learned, you know, throughout 11 years of travel relating to that. but you ask about what I learn about myself. I think that was probably maybe the greater lesson because when I started, I was kind of insecure and I lacked confidence and I was afraid and I double-checked everything and triple-checked everything.

And as I kind of went through the whole process, I made lots of mistakes and things went wrong, but I just became comfortable with saying like I'm going to be able to figure it out. It just gave me so much more vision for what I wanted to do. And about halfway through, I started writing the blog, The Art of Nonconformity. So the first half of the quest was completely personal. I just did it for myself and there wasn't anybody reading or following along. There was no business model. And then the second half, like I started like incorporating stories from readers and writing

for this audience. And so that shifted things a little bit too. But, but I mean, mostly for a positive way because then like now I'm traveling to countries and I'm meeting people and I'm hearing their stories and I'm learning about their experiences. So, you know, no regrets. I mean, it was a wonderful thing. I'm so glad I was able to do it. Challenging yourself in that way, choosing a goal that's difficult but not impossible,

have you carried that into your business life? I think so, but my business life has been, I don't think it's been as strategic as yours. You know, like we were talking before we started recording. Like, I'm a big fan of your blog and what you've done, the properties and everything else. And my business, for what it's worth, like I've been able to work for myself, you know, since I was 19. I've always valued freedom and independence. I don't have any debt. So those are all good things.

But I haven't really built like a scalable business. Like I've just, I've kind of done things that I enjoy. I do things that I like that I'm motivated to do. I knew from a young age that if I was motivated to do something, I would work really hard at it. Like, I like to work hard. I would give 110%. But if I wasn't motivated, then I would give 5%. So I had to kind of find a way to structure my life around things that I was excited about

and things that I was motivated to do. Eventually that turned into writing. And once I learned more about publishing and started sharing online and thought about doing a traditional book, like I loved everything about the process. And I still love sharing things online. but I actually like writing books and working with Random House as a traditional publisher and going out on tour and doing all these kind of things. So I don't know if it's super challenging to me because it actually feels very normal, but it's something that I like. It's something that I kind of gravitate toward.

A couple of more questions before we move on on the same topic. How did you define a visit to a nation? Was there a minimum time period you'd have to stay there? Yeah, great question. I didn't really have any set criteria. I didn't have like a thing or a stick that I did in each country. Like I probably would have been a good thing if I did, just like marketing wise, you know, but I didn't have like a sign that I held up in each place.

Like by the time I started thinking about that stuff, I was already like 80 countries in, you know, so I couldn't go back. But I didn't count airport stops. Most places I was, you know, at least a few days, if not longer. I lived in different countries for months at a time. You know, plenty of places I had been for six months or three months or one month. But there were some places that were relatively, but I never, I didn't just, you know, touch down somewhere and go somewhere else.

I didn't really have criteria, but I tried to make. make it a meaningful experience, even if it was short. Did your commitment to the goal ever falter? Were there times when you wanted to just do something else? Yeah, I don't think there was ever a time that I really wanted to give up. I think I was always pretty motivated to see it through, especially after a certain point because momentum kind of kicks in and it's like, okay, I've got 150 countries done. Like, I've just got 43 left, you know?

Like, maybe some of them are hard, but like I don't want to be the guy who went to every country in the world except 10 of them, you know? So I think so momentum helped. I definitely got tired. I definitely got tired. And the other thing that happened was, you know, you mentioned my business, once that started taking off and I started having this community and lots of different opportunities came my way, you know, I could build this product or I could go and give this talk or whatever.

I had to say no to a lot of that stuff. And so I did feel a little bit of tension between, you know, the fact that I've got this quest that I've committed to and I totally believe in it. But yet I'm also really excited about this new career and this whole new world of online publishing and making products. And like that was really fun too. And so I managed to do some of both of them. But obviously, like if I had devoted more time to the business, then that would have been great in some ways.

But I wouldn't have been able to finish the quest. So I didn't really want to give up, but I did have that conflict or that tension at some points. Ah, that actually leads perfectly into what I was going to ask you about next, which is, because this is a theme that comes up in your book, born for this, you know, what happens when you have a lot of different interests and a lot of potential worthwhile goals and directions that you're choosing between. How do you select among many good options? I think what you do is this changes over time. Like over time and your experience and your career path and your life journey. In the beginning, I actually don't think it's a great idea to be super selective. Because, you know, most people don't really know what it is they're going to be when they grow up

or what they want to be or what their life purpose is or any of these kind of higher value sort of things. We put a lot of pressure on people in our culture to kind of like, oh, when you're 20, you should know what you're supposed to do for the rest of your life. And there's really no way to know that, at least not completely and to feel confident about it without experimenting and without doing different stuff. And so I think it's great to change your major when you're in college. I think it's great to have one career. And then if that's not your career, then do something different. And it's great to have hobbies. It's great to have side hustles. And I think over time, what happens is for a lot of us, like a theme emerges. And we kind of latch onto something. And we're like, oh, okay, like I tried a bunch of stuff with this one thing.

Like, I'm actually really good at it. And I like it. it and maybe it's actually a sustainable thing. So not just that I enjoy it, but I can actually make a good living at it somehow. And then I think over time you start to be more selective. And then you say, okay, I'm going to apply whatever the opportunity is or whatever the idea is. I'm going to apply it to this filter of, you know, does this connect, does this blend with the vision of the theme that I've chosen? And if yes, then great.

If no, maybe I have to say no to it because I'm already on course to do something that I really believe in. Right. That's what I've done. You talked about, I remember you talked about the road less traveled. and how despite what is said in that poem, you know, that I took the road less traveled by and that made all the difference, there's probably a pretty good chance that if you took the other road, you would have been happy as well. That's the thing. We don't know the other story. You know, we only have one story like you go on this path. You know what happens. But maybe the other story was just as good, as you said. And, you know, I did a lot of research recently looking at how people like found or created their dream job, either for themselves or within a company or an organization. I was really surprised to see that almost none of these people had chosen a linear path. Like almost none of them had known from a young age, like here's what I'm going to do. And I'm going to follow that course and never deviate from it. Almost all of them went down a lot of different paths. they weren't afraid to kind of back away and say, actually, I thought this was the right thing,

but, you know, maybe it's not, or maybe it was the right thing for a time or a season, but I'm actually going to go back to that intersection and take the other path, or if that path is closed now, I'm going to forge a new path. So I really think there's a lot of value in that experimentation, willingness to abandon ship on something, you know, that isn't working. And I think that's kind of what leads you to, you know, the work you're born to do or however you like to conceptualize that. How do you know, what are the indicators between,

deliberately changing your direction versus giving up. Well, I mean, it's kind of like this question, like, how do you know if you have found your dream job or something? I think somebody asked that on my recent book tour, and I was like, well, if you have to ask, you know, the answer is probably obvious. Like, if you're sitting there like, yeah, do I actually love what I do or do I not? Like, you probably know, you know? And I don't think it's bad to give up at all. I think this is something that, again, in our culture, we have this belief that's kind of handed down that persistence is the most important predictor of success. And all we have to do is just kind of keep trying and keep trying and

keep trying. But, you know, if we keep trying the same thing and nothing, you know, we're not getting different results. I think it's actually much wiser to do something different. So, you know, the saying is winners never quit. And what I saw through a lot of research is winners actually quit all the time. Winners are not afraid to it. So as for when it's like, you know, when do you actually quit? You know, when do you keep going? I think you ask yourself if it's working and, you know, if you still believe in it. And so, you know, if it's working, you still believe in it, great. Keep doing it. But if it's not working and you don't believe in it, that's when you stop. So, you know, we were talking about this quest to go to every country in the world. You know, well, it was working for the most part.

Like I had struggles and challenges, but I was still making this linear progress. And even though I might be frustrated or fatigued or something at different points, I still kind of believed in the ultimate vision. And so I kept going. We're going to continue this conversation with Chris in just a moment, but I want to pause for a second to remind any entrepreneurs who are listening to this. You want to spend your time focused on building your business. You don't want to spend all of your time dealing with paperwork and administration. So check out freshbooks.com slash Paula in order to streamline your invoicing, streamline all of that necessary but annoying rigmarole that you do. They're a great service

that helps you track your payments, make sure that you're getting paid on time, and not spin your wheels on paperwork hassle so that you can free up your time and focus and energy to building your business and pursuing your goals. You can try them for free for 30 days by going to FreshBooks.com slash Paula, P-A-U-L-A. And when they ask, how did you hear about us? Just type in Paula. Thanks so much. Here's Chris. You talk about optimizing three elements, joy, money, and flow. We all know what money is, but how do you define joy and flow? Well, joy is also kind of basic. I mean, joy is, you know, things that you love to do. And so if you think of this as, like, like an intersection of three circles, of three concentric circles. You have joy, you know, something that

you love to do or something you enjoy, money, something that sustains you, something that is financially viable. And the third one is flow. And that's something that you do really well. It's something, it's a kind of skill that you have that you put to good use. Maybe you're uniquely good at it. Maybe you're not the only person in the world good at this thing. But for whatever reason, like, you can do this kind of work and you get lost in it. And you don't realize that the time has gone by. And so it feels very natural to you. And I think most successful people, they have not just one, not just two, but all three of these qualities. And it's possible in life to be fine and to get by by doing a job that you don't love.

I mean, lots of people do that. Or you can also, I don't know, do a job you love but not make money at it. And people do that too. Or people do things that they're not particularly good at, but they just kind of muddle through. And all those things are fine, I guess, but they're also compromising. They're also settling. And, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably already in that self-identifying group of saying, I actually want to better myself. I actually want to pursue the goal. And so to me, the goal is actually to have all three, you know, to be able to wake up and say, like, actually I'm excited about today. I've got these goals I'm going to work toward.

And, you know, my business or my job, whatever it is, is doing well. It is providing all the income I need, not just, you know, now, but for the future, for my security, from my family, whatever. And also, I'm pretty good at what I do. You know, I think that's, that's the goal that, you know, we can. continue to work toward. And it's not just like, we wake up one day and you're like, oh, I'm there. Like, you know, we're all on a journey, of course. But I think in the long term, you really won't be totally happy unless you have some element of all three. Let's stick a little bit more on the concept of joy because you tell a story in the book that I loved. You talked about when you were six years old, you wanted to either be an astronaut or work at Burger King. Right. And I can relate when I was a kid, I wanted to work at Taco Bell.

Oh, great. Perfect. In fact, I still have the... journal in which I wrote down that my dream was to work part-time at Taco Bell. Okay. I think most people do work part-time at Taco Bell. To this day, I've still never achieved that. That's good. Some goals, it's okay to change. I think you and I both, we never achieved our goals in that way, but that's okay. One of the lessons within that story is that sometimes when you set goals, you don't understand the implications of what those goals would entail at the day-to-day level. Right. So how do we choose better goals? How do we move in the direction of something that will provide joy if we don't know what's down the corridor?

Well, I think that's why we experiment and go down different paths and we travel. You know, like I know in your life, like your story, you went and traveled for what two years or something like all over the world. And like, I don't know your complete story, but I would imagine that kind of opened your eyes to all kinds of other things and, you know, led you to where you are now. And you wouldn't be doing what you're doing now without that experience, even though it didn't, you know, directly qualify you. But there is like this indirect correlation. So when I was six, like I had the thing about my dad worked at NASA. And then I also loved Burger King, my favorite restaurant. I couldn't choose, you know, which career was better. Because when you're six, you don't really understand like the difference in environments and like what it's like to work at a fast food restaurant versus, you know, support the astronauts.

And I actually didn't grow up to support the astronauts either because I wasn't smart enough to do that. But, you know, eventually I kind of figured out my own path. So I think it's wise to not to not lock yourself into something, you know. And again, like we've talked to, we touched a little. bit on giving up. You know, I heard a story the other day of this guy who got an education degree and like he did like all four years. And once he started teaching, he knew pretty much like right away that this was not for him. And it wasn't just a question of like, you know, he has to kind

of overcome some obstacle like it's hard in the beginning of course. Like he pretty much knew. He's like, I made a mistake. And I think this is a really interesting example because a lot of people would just say, like, look, what you've done, you've invested all this money. You've invested all this time, you're just going to have to suck it up and eventually, like, you know, maybe you'll come to terms with it. And I think I don't remember the details of exactly what he did if he stuck through the first year or something, but he essentially like made a whole about face and ended up, I think, eventually developing an app or something. And it's a great story to look at that and say, well, okay, so what if he invested that money, you know, that's already in the past. You know,

he's not investing it right now. He's not enjoying what he's doing. He actually feels like he's not, it's not really what he's supposed to do. So to me, I would say the best thing for that guy to do would be to change as he did. You know, somebody else might say something different, but you have to think about not just what you've invested in the past, but your whole life that's ahead of you. You know, your whole life, like all the different things that you could do, you know, that's what I'm interested in helping people with. You also give the piece of advice not to make choices based on the fear of missing out. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, well, I think we all kind of experience this thing about the grass is greener on the other side or if we miss out on something,

then it's the end of the world. And, you know, there's a great quote by Richard Branson about business opportunities. He says business opportunities are like buses. There's always another one coming. And I thought about that a lot in my life because I, like, I always see, I'm very easily distracted. You know, even as focused as I am on my projects and my books and things, there's all kinds of things that come up that I want to pursue. And I've had to be very mindful of that and say, you know, something else is going to come along. It's okay. I think in the book, I told the story of being at the supermarket. And like, you've been waiting in the checkout line for like 20 minutes and like you're almost at the front. But it's just been so slow. And maybe.

maybe the cashier's slow or something, but then right next to you, a new lane opens. And you're kind of afraid to go to the new lane because you think, well, I've already spent 20 minutes here. The whole point is it doesn't matter what you've spent. You know, it doesn't matter because like if there's a new lane, you should go and get in the new lane. And don't worry about missing out on, you know, whatever else. Right. Sunk costs. Exactly. You suggest an exercise that I think is great.

You talk about listing your top 25 goals, circling the top five and eliminating the rest. And that's the key, not just deferring the rest, but straight out eliminating them so that you can focus your attention on those five. I love this advice because of the power that happens when you give goals, a limited number of goals, your total focus. But what, I guess, running on this theme of sunk costs and pivoting and changing direction, you know, what happens as you're pursuing those five goals if you're not getting the results that you want? How long do you keep trying? I think I stole that from Warren Buffett. he has a whole story about, you know, the crossing out all your other goals and identifying what's most important to you. I don't actually know if I always follow that advice. Like, I think it's a

great story and so I put it in the book, but I try to be clear like, you know, this is a model for people and some of us might, you know, want something different. I don't know that I've only chosen, you know, five goals or whatever. But I think it's wise. Like if you're struggling, if you're the kind of person who's indecisive and we all struggle with indecision, but if in particular you feel stuck or paralyzed with choice or something, then maybe it is good to like clear the slate and say, like, you know, whatever I do is going to be measured up against these three or four or five things. And as we were saying earlier, if as you go through them, your goals change, well, then I think you change the goals.

I mean, if your motivation changes and, you know, you have stuck with it for a while and it's not interesting or exciting to you or if it's a business goal and it's not achieving the results that you hoped for, as you said, you could pivot. You might be able to tweak or you might just, you know, need to do something entirely different. I guess I've become a little bit less rigid, even though I believe in goals very much, and I was pretty rigid with the every country goal, I guess as I get older, I realize, like, there are some different things that I want to do. And if I had kind of locked myself into something else, then I wouldn't be able to open another door. Chris, part of your philosophy is that if you don't decide for yourself what you want out of life, somebody else is going to decide that for you.

Can you explain that a little bit to the listeners? I think there's clearly at least, you know, two paths, two broad paths in life. And there's probably more, but let's just, you know, for the sake of simplicity, there's a passive path and an active path. And the active path is a lot of what we've been discussing about being intentional, about setting goals, you know, deciding for yourself, what are your values and then letting the goals kind of follow from that, continuing to challenge yourself, not being afraid to change directions, et cetera. These are all making active choices. And the passive way to live is to simply kind of go along and say, well, this is the track that I'm on. and at a certain point I'll have to make decisions, but I'll just make those decisions, like, as they come up, and then once I make those decisions, once I decide on my college major, once I decide on my first career, you know, or whatever,

I'm not really going to deviate from that much unless some external circumstance comes along to kind of force me to deviate, which is also interesting because you probably hear this too, but I hear from a lot of people who have been fired or laid off from their job that they've had for a long time. And they talk about how, like, it was this huge shock and felt devastated at first, but then they ended up, like, making this huge life change as a result. of it in starting a business or going into a totally different career and they talk about how if that hadn't happened to them, they never would have actually, you know, made the shift. So the passive life is just kind of going along and the active life is being more intentional and asking what are motivations and how can we live a remarkable life in a conventional world. And when I talk about these things, like I try to be really clear in all my work that I am

writing and speaking to a self-selected audience. You know, I'm not an evangelist. I'm not out there to say, I'm not out there to criticize people who are living. you know, that kind of passive lifestyle, it's fine. Like, if they're happy, that's great. But there's a lot of us who kind of do have our hand raised and we're like, actually, I want something different. Like, I want that active life. Like, I have this crazy idea in my head and it won't leave me alone. Or maybe I don't even know what the specifics are, but somehow I have a dream and I want to follow it. Like, those are my people. And so for everybody who's in that group, you know, I'm trying to say, like,

here are alternatives, here are resources, you know, here are strategies and here are examples of other people who have followed this active path and here's how they've navigated different decisions and maybe they made mistakes along the way sure of course but here's how they were able to recover from those mistakes so that's kind of what I'm what I'm focused on about these two paths like how can you take the active path how can you choose more for yourself what you want and then how can you make that happen I'd like to wrap up with one final question this is about actually something that you coined while you were traveling it's called the $10 rule in which you decided if something improves your day and it costs less than

10 bucks, you'll buy it. Yep. I realize this is a total shift. We're no longer talking about goals. But this is a piece of advice that I've incorporated into my own life. And it makes a massive difference. Tell me a little bit about, tell I guess everyone who's listening a little bit about the $10 rule. Yeah, this has changed my life.

I mean, this has like made a huge difference. I don't know when I started this maybe six years ago or something. But, you know, historically I'm very frugal and not just frugal because frugal has like a positive quality to it. But I was actually very cheap. and I didn't like to spend money on anything, which is good for some reasons. But it was to the point where if I was at an airport and like I was just offended at the price of the sandwich, I'd be like, how could the sandwich be $12 or whatever it was? I'm like, I'm not going to buy that. And it's kind of like, you know, I'm just harming myself in the long term here. I'm like, I'll show them. I'm not going to purchase that expensive sandwich. And then, you know, I'm just kind of tired, you know, the rest of the day. And I don't get any of my work done, which hopefully my work is worth more than $12, you know, in the next three hours or whatever. Or I'm not going to take the taxi. I'm going to spend two hours like walking around the rain with my bags, you know, or looking for the bus or something. So once I started spending like small amounts of money that really didn't make a huge

difference in my bottom line for the long term, I was so much happier. I was so much happier. And so the rule was like whenever I came across something that would make my life better in a small, small tangible way, whatever, if it costs less than $10, I wouldn't even think about it. I would just like go ahead and buy it. I know that advice is kind of contrary into a lot of personal finance stuff. But for me, like I said, it made a huge difference.

It's not like a $1,000 rule. You know, it's not like every, it's not like every day I'm like, oh, it's something that'll make my life better for $1,000. You know, here's my credit card. But it was a small amount of money that had a real, you know, positive effect on my life, especially with travel. Right. I love this rule because I had exactly the same problem that you did. I would be the person who would walk two hours in the rain instead of paying five bucks for a taxi. And I mean, this is the rule of focusing on big things rather than, you know, sweating the small stuff.

Yeah. It's hard to do, though. I mean, because if you have this mentality and grain, which again is not totally a negative quality of being very conscious of your money and stuff. But at a certain point, it does kind of take over to where it's adversely affecting your life. And you're like, actually, I can do much better if I make a little shift. So I'm glad I made that shift. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. Great. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Chris. Where can people find you? Awesome. It's a huge honor. I would love to connect with your great listeners. I'm chrisgillibow.com online.

Nobody can spell Chris Gillibow. But if you just type in something like that in Google, I'm sure you'll be able to find it. Or, of course, in the show notes. and Chris Gillibow on All Social. And the new book is called Born for This. Awesome. Thanks, Paula. What are some of the key takeaways that we've learned from this conversation with Chris? First of all, I love that Venn diagram, that intersection of joy, money, and flow that he talks about.

Joy is finding joy, finding pleasure and passion in the work that you do. Money, of course, is money. We all understand that. But flow, that's the most, to me, most important part. And this is something that we're going to talk about in our upcoming interview with Cal Newport. Flow happens when you are so engaged in something that time itself seems to disappear. A lot of athletes talk about finding flow. A lot of musicians talk about finding flow.

But, you know, you can find this in any type of work. You begin to achieve mastery in. beginners, by definition, don't often find flow in what they do. Because you're a beginner, you're just learning the ropes. You can't get lost in an activity. But once you develop mastery, once you start developing skill, and build up some rare, valuable contribution to your work, that is when the skills that you've developed begin to intersect with the concurrent joy

that you also have developed, that concurrent passion that you create as a result of doing the work every day. And that is when you achieve a state of flow. And that, to me, is one of the most insightful things that Chris and many other authors talk about. We are often led to believe that passion is a pre-existing condition, that we are supposed to wake up and know what our passion is and then just have the courage to go out there and pursue it. But in reality, passion is often something that is uncovered over time concurrently as skills develop within a given field. And that passion and flow are inextricably linked. One cannot necessarily exist without the other.

So when you start developing skill in a given field, whether that field is writing, design, programming, accounting, management, whatever that field may be, you develop skill. And as a result, you also develop passion and joy as a result of developing that skill. and concurrently you also begin earning more money because you have that skill. So joy, money, and flow are things that develop over time as you progress down a path. If you're standing at a fork in the road thinking, well, I'm not satisfied with my job, I want to be making more money, I want to be more excited about what I do, sometimes developing a skill, driving yourself further down the road in pursuance of a goal, is exactly the thing that you need to do in order to simultaneously develop money, flow, and joy.

In other words, you receive a value for what you do as a result of bringing value to what you do. And bringing that value in and of itself can often produce that passion that you are looking for. So that's one of the big takeaways that I got from this conversation with Chris. Another one of my favorite takeaways, as I've already mentioned, is the $10 rule. The idea of not sweating the small stuff, if spending $10 on a cab ride or on an overpriced sandwich is going to substantially improve your day, don't cheat yourself of those small victories. Buy the latte. Give yourself that $10 treat because you're focused on bigger goals ahead. You want to keep your eye on the prize.

And that big prize comes in the form of developing those skills, bringing value to your work, building a stronger investment portfolio, upping your game. And as Chris mentioned, if you can give yourself an extra two or three hours of productivity and happiness, well, your time is hopefully worth more than that. You are hopefully bringing more value to the table. And if you're not yet, then your ability to develop that value in and of itself is worth more than that. So don't sweat the small stuff. Embrace the $10 rule and keep your eye focused on the big wins, the big victories, because if you can get those right, everything else falls into place. Now, I'd like to end by reading an excerpt from a blog post on Chris's website.

So this is from chrisgillibow.com. And it's called Life is for Spending. We'll link to it in the show notes. In this blog post, Chris writes, Someone told me he had earned more than 400,000 frequent flyer miles. That's amazing, I said. Great work. He had a question on how to earn even more miles and points.

Well, we can talk about that, I told him. But first, what are you using all of these miles for? Oh, I haven't figured that out yet. Maybe next year I'll go somewhere. Whoa, that's not the point. Miles are for spending. If you earn miles or points, you should put them to good use. All the frequent flyer miles in the world won't help you if you don't get on the airplane.

Your life, too, is for spending. Your life should not be reserved for something great one day in the distant future. Your life should be spent today. Sure, you should plan for the future, and you should take care of yourself. But no amount of flossing will defer the inevitable. Every day, we grow older. So why not give all you can today? Spend those miles and spend that life.

Don't save it all up. Those are wise words from Chris Gillibow. Again, that was an excerpt that I read from chrisgillibow.com. I'll link to it in the show notes. And it's part of his message that I really treasure and value quite a great deal. The reminder, not to become so obsessed with saving everything for a distant future that we forget to live in the present moment. So thank you for joining us. This is the Afford- Anything podcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please do me a huge favor. Head to iTunes and leave me a review. Reviews make a huge difference. They help grow the community, and that helps me book better guests and impact more lives. Reviews also help me get closer to achieving my goal, speaking on this conversation about goals. Reviews help me get closer to achieving my goal of reaching 1 million downloads in our first year on air. And right now, we're about one-third of the way there. So please visit iTunes and leave an honest review for the Afford- Anything podcast.

Also, please don't forget to subscribe to the show. And if you'd like to know more, head to podcast.orgad-anything.com where you can view all of the show notes and check out all of our previous episodes. Thank you so much. I'm Paula Pant, signing off. I'll see you next week. You're too smart for your own britches, Paula Pant. Get it?

Britches? Ah!