It’s not so much that I don’t approve – it doesn’t actually affect me, it’s that I see so many people failing to perform and I would honestly like to see them achieve.

We’re on this planet for a maximum of what, 100 years? It sounds like a long time but as a 25 years old I already realise that I am a 1/4 of the way through a best case scenario.

I think about my parents, newspaper articles, stories of grandparents, movies, and so on and what people have and haven’t achieved in their lives. Everyone effectively lives the same life;

1. Go to school
2. Go to work
3. Buy a house
4. Have children
5. Wait for the children to leave the house
6. Retire
7. Wait to die

Granted that’s a fairly subjective way of looking at it all, but if you break it down, it is what most people do with their life and what many more will do.

People are concerned with the small things along the way. For instance during the younger working years they might be able to buy a nice motorbike. Their friends at the time will tell them that they have “made it”. Years on they will have seen their children through school, and being so “successful” they will have funded their children’s tertiary education. The children move out, they retire at 65 and then go on a three week cruise with their wife. They have won the game of life.

…Or have they? Chances are this same person has spent the last 45 years working a job that they hate. They always wanted more time with the kids but couldn’t afford to work fewer hours because of the mortgage. Their kids are on track to live the same life as them because of how they were brought up, and unfortunately the cruise was a challenge more than anything else because they had to spend so much time in close quarters with their wife who they have lost touch with after years of stress and neglect due to their work.

As children we have these dreams of being all sorts of things. I remember wanting to own a black Porsche 911, being a BMX champion, live in a rainforest, and so on. Things that most adults would put in the “unobtainable” category. Are they really that ridiculous though?

Granted nowadays I lust over a Porsche but know full well that the money spent on one would help me attain many other things ($200,000 would bring in enough income every year for me to justify taking a day off of work every week).

These supposedly unobtainable goals are the ones that keep us excited and ideally, happy. I strongly believe that if I’m not happy, my wife won’t be happy. This means that while I always take her into account, from time to time I need to be honest to her about what I want from life. The alternative is “forgetting it” and ultimately living a life of regret.

Our society breeds mediocrity and no one can break you out of this mold aside from yourself. If you are very lucky a close friend or loved one may push you, but ultimately it’s up to you to make the choice to break free.

Start to define what you want from life, then start living your life in the direction of achieving your goals.

It’s not to say that you need to always be meeting goals and turning your life into some sort of statistical report, it’s just important to make sure that you are where you want to be or on track to where you want to be. Goals could be as simple as “be happy” or be ridiculously complex too. My goals are relatively simple, although will require some effort from myself and my partner.

I want to remain free, happy and healthy. I DON’T want the same lifestyle until the day I die. I don’t want the same job, same bills, same day to day frustrations and hassles. I want the both of us to be able to change when we need it. When our lifestyle becomes one that doesn’t facilitate a good relationship, we’ll change. Ultimately everyone has the ability to do this, it’s just that many people tie themselves down and then it all becomes too hard.

Think about what you would like and start to work towards it. Try not to think too much about possessions, they will come with the lifestyle that you want to attain.

If life isn’t how you pictured it would be, make some dreams.

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Dreaming Bigger than Mediocrity

It’s interesting how we change during our lives. As a child we are completely free. We are happy to attempt anything, laugh and play and run and smile and whatever happens happens. Never thinking of the consequences, just acting in the moment.

As we begin to grow up though, we learn that there are consequences to our actions. While this is healthy – learning for ourselves that we can get hurt from jumping from something too high – we also learn a lot from our parents. We are told not to climb too high – “you will fall and hurt yourself, come down please”, told to slow down on our bike – “don’t go too fast, you will hurt yourself” and told not to eat too many lollies – “you will feel sick if you eat too many of those”. It’s not a negative thing – parents look out for the well-being of their children.

From the innocent advice given by our parents when we were young, we are then bombarded with why not to do things. Fear on TV, fear in the paper, fear everywhere. If we aren’t given the advice directly by the TV, our parents are. Stay in line and everything will be ok, you will be safe, but be different, and who knows what will happen!

Most people, myself included to an extent, grow up into people that just conform and do the same as everyone else. We no longer laugh and run around and jump and do whatever we choose. We know that if we laugh at the wrong thing people can be offended. We know if we run around and jump up and down we will look like an idiot, so we take the safe option.

We all call it “growing up” and “being sensible”, but from my experience most people hate the constraints in which they live… They crave the freedom that they had as a child, it just takes a long time to realise this.

It seems almost a textbook lifestyle cycle for the Baby Boomers – my parents’ generation. They were born, free spirited fun loving children, then “grew up” and did the “sensible” thing and bought houses, had families and so on. Now as the kids are moving out, they are wanting their freedom back. Some may be rich enough to buy a holiday house, some travel around the world by plane or on a cruise ship, while others buy a caravan and drive around, stopping wherever they please. It’s becoming less and less common for them to just grow old in their house nowadays.

It’s been something that I have been aware of for a few years now, but only now am I piecing it all together. Humans are creatures that are born in nature. We need our freedom to be sane. Early this year my fiancee and I made the decision to lead a life of change. We will still buy a house. We will still “be sensible”, but we will force ourselves to retain some level of freedom in our life. By “mixing it up” we hope to lead an exciting life, with plenty of choice and an easy going lifestyle. We don’t need a lot, but we need our freedom.

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Freedom

On the weekend I had to go to work as my team was moving some servers. It was a full weekend’s work and on the whole I thoroughly enjoyed it – I enjoy the physical work for a change. Unfortunately though, one of the team members invited to “help” was just an absolute waste of space. All he did was get in the way and essentially cable things incorrectly, which I would then have to come back and do properly later anyway. Long story short he cost us time and money by being there and we would have been ten times better off if he just stayed at home.

This is a man that only wears clothes in shades of brown or grey, smells like a stale closet, and by the sounds of it the most exciting thing he has ever done was catch the bus to work when his car had broken down.

The whole weekend he’d try and strike up a conversation with anyone, but it was just never about anything important. It was always about his cats, or how he liked earl grey tea or something. About two hours into the second day of working with him I realised that he is a man with pretty much nothing else in his life than dinner and TV at home, driving to and from work, and working itself. What a sad life!

While I don’t want to come across as arrogant, I suppose it gives me a bit of a boost – my life is just so much more exciting.

It’s just further confirmed my plans for life. I just can’t do the “same old same old” that a lot of people tend to sink into. It seems to be a typical theme for Gen Y’s to need to live their life with plenty of change to the Baby Boomers in this respect, and maybe it is just our impatient nature, but to be honest I don’t really care. Life’s too short to just do the same thing over and over and over. I need to mix it up a LOT!

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What a sad life!

I’ve always had an issue with image. Not personally – as mentioned I’m a fairly resilient person, so I don’t hugely care what other people think of my lifestyle or how I look, but coming from a private school I was inevitably part of a competition to look as rich as possible, regardless of where I actually stood in the pecking order. It’s amazing how some parents push their kids out of the car in Ralph Lauren and Nautica, despite their car running on three cylinders.

Only now have I realised that a large part of a lot of males’ image is tied up with cars. I personally have had a few nice cars, and while I have never consciously bought them for the image factor, now that I think about it image is the only reason for your car to look good. While nowadays it’s easy for me to let go of that dream, I find that most Australians consider others to be “successful” dependant on how new their car is. Going on that judgement, I must be fairly unsuccessful, right?

Whether it be for a car, house, TV, boat, bike, clothes, laptop or so on – are people actually getting into debt purely just to boost their self-image? In this crazy world that we are living in, I’m a firm believer that nine times out of ten they are.

I don’t profess to be exempt from this, although I consider myself to have things under control – a good friend of mine asked the other day if I was sick of not having a car, and that “surely you could afford it”. Quite honestly, we could afford another car, but we just don’t need one at the moment – it doesn’t make any sense.

Nowadays you just don’t seem to get any kudos for paying down your loans and owning things freehold. To date I have never had a loan for a car, and only ever taken out a loan to buy our property. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I wrote an article about the Minimalist Lifestyle not too long ago, and I feel that this ties in perfectly – to me, debt means stress. It is something that will always be in the back of your mind until it’s gone. Get rid of it and it will be one less thing to think about. Be content with less, and enjoy life rather than worry about it constantly.

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In Debt to Your Image

It’s easy to see how people can enjoy travelling for work. Let me set the scene…

Sunday afternoon my chauffeured car arrived to drive me to the airport. At the airport I meet my workmates, we check in, and then head to the Virgin Lounge for some pre-flight drinks and something to eat, all complimentary of course. Just before the flight boards, we drop through Travelex to withdraw our meal allowance in cash, then board our flight. It’s only a short flight – around an hour, and after we arrive we continue to drink at the casino, grab some dinner, then head to another pub to finish off the drinking.

Monday morning rolls around, and we all meet for breakfast at the cafe across the road. Normally the three of us avoid buying food for breakfast or lunch, but when you have a large allowance for food, it’s a lot easier to justify spending the money. The day is a fun day of catch-ups with team members from interstate, a few activities, and before we know it we are eating an expensive meal at a Greek restaurant – drinks included, and we don’t have to pay a cent for it. While half of the team go home, the other half hang around and go somewhere else to drink. Before we know it, it’s bed time at 2am and we’ve all clearly had enough for one night.

Tuesday is a very slow day, half of us are hungover, and it’s all a bit of a joke. The boss doesn’t mind – after all, most workplaces are a bit of a boys club, and realistically, alcohol does make you some friends in the workplace. When the day is over, we jump in a car and head back to the airport, hang around in the lounge for a few hours, and then fly home.

All in all it’s been three days of fun, free everything, and you can’t complain. Or can you?

While I’m mindful of only looking on the negative side of the trip (I’m not – I did enjoy the trip), I wasn’t at home to support my fiancee while she could have done with the support (her work is very busy at the moment). In addition to this, my diet suffered big time during the trip, as well as my exercise and my sleeping pattern.

I suppose I am always conscious of falling into the trap that so many others fall into – thinking that their life is great, just because of the luxuries that they have. Climbing the corporate ladder, going to free dinners and travelling around the world has some obvious attractions, but I believe it’s important for people to think about what they might be sacrificing by living that life. If they can truly justify it, great, but if they can’t maybe they need to consider their options a bit more before making the decision to climb the corporate ladder, rather than enjoy other aspects of their life.

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The Corporate World

We all had a good chuckle at the botanic gardens… People’s laziness never ceases to amaze me. They make all the effort to pack half of their house in their car, along with their kids and then spend the time driving for an hour or so to a nice botanic gardens.

Presumably people go to these places to “escape”, yet when they get there they seem to flock like sheep. Everyone tries to score a park as close to the gardens as possible, then after five or so laps finally concede defeat and park the extra fifty metres away. Being such a busy day at the park there was never going to be a chance that someone would get a close park, but they always try.

After parking they get everything out the car, and everyone in the family loads up with things to carry. It’s time to find a “spot” – they walk to the closest place that they possibly can to sit down and have their lunch. Because so many people think like that, they end up “escaping” to a park where they are surrounded by others that are also “escaping”. Yet they are surrounded by others that they were trying to escape from in the first place. Insanity!

My fiancée said to mum at one stage “I can’t get over these people, not walking five more minutes to get to the nice spots that we go to. Although I suppose it’s good so those areas are free for us!”. Too true.

I really love not being lazy. Today gave me the biggest boost just walking around the gardens. The air was freezing but it just smelt so clean and fresh. Walking around to the much quieter areas the three of us had a good chance for a catch up and could actually talk without others being around. Good times.

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Flocking like sheep

Leaving work, I decided to ride the long way home to put a smile back on my face. The whole way home I was riding into a head wind which is fairly normal for the ride home. Usually I get about half way home and want to give up, but for some reason yesterday I just powered through the whole ride. While I was tired, I think I was enjoying the challenge for a change.

The problems of my day had been solved, or at least I’d been distracted by the awesome ride home.

My mum also rides to and from work, and we are currently living with her. After having tea with my fiancee, it was dark outside and it had just turned 7 o’clock, although not normal, mum still wasn’t home from work. I went out the front to look down the street to see if she was coming, and as soon as I opened the door she arrived. I threw a smart remark at her as I usually do – she works far too hard and always ends up riding home in the dark, without decent enough lighting (despite me giving her the appropriate lights last year). She didn’t respond like she usually does though. She was hurt.

Sure enough, she had clipped a gutter on the way home that she didn’t see and went over the handlebars, cutting her lip and chin. Obviously in shock, she didn’t realise it was a major injury and rode the rest of the way home.

After being hand balled by the medical system for a while she had the wound cleaned and it was obvious that the cut had gone right through to her jaw. For someone that had such a serious cut, she was coping really well. I was fine at first but after a while felt really tense, like I did when my fiancee was very sick earlier on in the year. My chest was tight and I just thought about the possibilities of what could happen here. My fiancee, some months later is fine, and I’m yet to find out what will happen with mum. Now that I have a clearer head it’s obvious that she will be fine, but she’ll be nursing a fairly serious cut for a while.

At around 10:30pm, I went home to pick up some clothes for her as she was staying the night. Half way home I came across a major car crash. By the looks of it, a car had ran a red light and t-boned another car at speed. Flashing lights everywhere, the bit that struck me as scary was the fact that a police officer was holding a small child. Not a good sign!

It was enough to make me think, “why do I worry?”. I’m not the sort of person that is just going to ignore untruths or corruption, but I can’t let this stuff stop me from living my life.

Last night put me in check. The game of life can be over well and truly before you know it, so we need to enjoy our lives while we can.

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Perspective

Through the later school years and a year or so after leaving school, I was finding my place in life. It was hard to see mates getting handouts from their parents while I had to work my ass off to get anything, and even then I couldn’t compete in their world.

Nowadays though, I see that everything I’ve been through has taught me some serious lessons. Small lessons like appreciation for money, but more importantly knowing what is actually important to me.

Time after time back in the day, I’d be annoyed that I didn’t have something that one of my mates had, when in reality although it would be nice to have, it wasn’t really that important. (Eg. a mate gets a nice new skateboard from his parents, but I can’t afford one so I don’t get one – in reality I was never into skating anyway). Nowadays, it’s financially a lot easier for me to buy something just because the next person has bought it, in “keeping up appearances”. I used to do this, but now I’m over it – as far as I see it, it’s just another form of competition.

Buying a nicer car, renovating the house or moving to a more upmarket suburb. Even just the places that you go out to dinner. It’s fine when you’re making the choices for yourself, but it’s crazy if you’re just doing something for first place in the game of life.

I know a couple that live well outside of their means, just to try and keep up with the rest of their family. The whole family competes constantly. Houses, cars, TV’s, computers, and now children. You name it, they’ll all try and outdo each other. It’s sad really, because when they actually want to do something, they can’t afford it or don’t have the time, because they commit so much of their resources to their competitive lifestyle. They end up living someone else’s life and not the life that they truly want to live.

I had a (cross country) mountain bike race on yesterday. My first race since last year and in a higher class than before. It was a real challenge for me, but I realised a lot of things while I was racing. A fair few of them unrelated to this post (things about technique, etc) but most importantly that I wasn’t really that interested in winning. I’m more of an “I wonder how fast I am” racer. It’s a personal challenge more than anything else for me. Sometimes when it comes to sport I wonder if I should try and be more competitive, but really, why? For the kudos of other people? I just want to go out and ride, and do the best that I can. If my best is first place, great, if it’s 20th, fine. I came 7th on the weekend.

I’m happy with where I’m at. Sure, a bit of competition in sport is healthy, but to me not being too competitive in life means staying true to what you actually want, rather than living a life of competition between friends, family and colleagues. It means you can live the life that you want, not what others want you to live. I couldn’t think of a better way to live really..

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Competitive nature