Let’s go!

Today is an exciting day!

Not only did I just arrive in Hong Kong for a week, but it’s also the day where I announce the opening of Get Busy Living in 30 Days!

Join now if you want to make 2013 your best year yet

How did this start?

I get a lot of emails with people telling me about their problems and looking for some advice. Some are short, but some pour their hearts out. Many of the situations I can relate to because I used to feel like that.

I reply to as many emails as possible, but I know just one email isn’t going to make a huge impact. It might motivate them to take action, or shed some light on something they didn’t realize, but one or two replies isn’t enough to make a huge dent in their beliefs.

I wanted to do more, but how?

Get Busy Living in 30 Days

So after wanting to do more to help, I decided it was time for to put together a plan of action that goes into more detail on how I finally got unstuck in life.

It covers two years of learning and doing. I’ve found what works for me and now see the truth about what it takes to be happy and successful (in that order which I cover in the course).

It’s called Get Busy Living in 30 Days and it’s a course that’ll help if you’re feeling stuck in life, or you just want to achieve more than you have so far.

It’s going to help reprogram your mind so you’ll be more motivated to create positive change and do what’s necessary to achieve your goals.

What this course also is about is cutting away all the fat and unnecessary advice and focuses on what really matters. What can you focus on that’ll give you the most result?

What do you need to learn first? You need to learn how to walk before you can run. I don’t want you to run a marathon yet. We’re going to be taking easy jogs around the track.

This course is the foundation for everything else you will do in life. Without a strong foundation, you’re not going to be able to build your dream life. You can only build an average one that will crumble after one minor setback.

I’ve taken the best stuff I’ve learned and used the past two years to turn my life around and put it in this course.

How will this course be delivered?

The course will be delivered by email. Once you join, you’ll get one lesson a day for 30 days straight to your inbox. The emails will show you behind the scenes of truly what it takes to be more and do more in life.

They’ll inspire you and give that kick in the butt you desperately need.

Some lessons will have action steps or a worksheet for you to do. It’s an important part of the process.

I chose email because I asked YOU! I did a survey last year to my subscriber list on whether to deliver it an email a day or put it all in an ebook. The majority said one email a day and that was my preference as well.

With one email a day, it breaks down all the information one day at a time.

There will also be a premium package where at the end of the course you will get all the emails and worksheets in a beautifully designed PDF ebook. You can go back and review everything in one place.

Some of the topics I’ll cover in the course

• Why boring, unsexy, unnoticeable steps will always create massive results.
• How to release those chains holding you back in life.
• Why you really feel stuck in life and how to get out of it.
• How to reboot your mind to get it work more optimally.
• Why you must find happiness before you can find success.
• How to properly set goals that’ll empower you.
• Why you might need to change your friends if you want to succeed.
• Why a morning routine can be the best thing you do all day.
• How to achieve more in three months than some do in a year.
• And much more!

Limited Time Only

The course is open now for registration, but will only be available a limited time until Saturday, March 2nd at 11:59 AM EST. (Registration is closed. Will reopen in the near future).

I want to spend my focus with the first group of students going through their first 30 days and getting their feedback. That’s why I’m limiting registration.

I’ll re-open the course in the future, but not sure when yet.

I’d love to help make this year your best your year.

If you’re ready to finally do something with your life and become the person you’ve always wanted to be, I’m ready to help you.

All the risk is on me

I do have a 60 day money back guarantee.

No questions asked. Just send me an email saying you want a refund.

All I ask is that you go through the course, do the worksheets, apply what I’ve taught you. In 60 days after you’ve joined (30 day course + 30 days afterwards), if your life is the same and you haven’t improved, I’ll give you your money back. I don’t want your money if I haven’t helped you.

How’s that for a guarantee?

Disclaimer

I wondered if I should add this because it might scare people off, but that’s my goal, so I’m gonna be upfront and honest.

Before you decide, I have one warning. Change is hard.

Years of bad habits and bad thinking is hard to change. Being successful in your life is hard. The process is tedious, tough, and sometimes even boring. Becoming the person you want to become with the life you want is slow and challenging.

Don’t get me wrong. After going through this course and following these steps, you’ll see immediate results.

But if you don’t like to roll up your sleeves and put in the work, be disciplined and committed to changing your life, you’re welcome to turn the TV back on, have the same boring routine and bad habits, and keep hoping your life will change.

I want to be upfront about this because I don’t want you to waste your time if you believe this course is like finding a genie bottle with three magical wishes.

Let’s get started!

Go to the Get Busy Living in 30 website to learn more and join the course.

I look forward to helping you become the person you want to be and do more this year!

photo credit: Xavier Donat

This is a letter for that person who feels stuck in life and feels hopeless. That person who doesn’t know if life will get better. That person who’s been trying to make a change for so long, but hasn’t been able to. 

If that’s you, you’re not alone and I’m writing this to you.

To my friend,

I know things have been tough lately. Every day feels the same and you want to scream from the top of your lungs because it sucks. Every day you feel like you’re on a downward spiral. You just hope that your life starts to change real soon. Thoughts of suicide have crossed your mind because then you wouldn’t feel like this anymore, but just know there is much more to life than you have now.

It does get better if you want it to.

I was once you. I searched for what was the one thing I was supposed to do with my life. I was looking for a career not just a job. I thought by the time I graduated college I was supposed to know. When I turned 30 I still had no idea and wondered what was the heck wrong with me. I felt like if I knew what I wanted to do with my life everything would be better. Everything else would fall into place. I’d get married, have a nice house, have kids, and live happily ever after. Once I discovered what IT was, that’s what I’d be doing for the rest of my life. That’s how life goes, right?

I’ve learned that life doesn’t have to be about finding that one thing you’re meant to do and then do it forever. Some people do find that one thing and dedicate their whole lives because they love it. I’ve realized that isn’t for me at this moment. I am done searching for it too.

To me life is about exploring everything out there. It’s trying different things and putting more attention on certain ones. There’s so much out there that it’d be a shame to not have more than one interest. Is what I’m doing now what I’ll be doing forever? No, but I’ve found something that I enjoy at this moment. I know new opportunities will present itself and my need for a new challenge will come along. Who knows what I’ll be doing five years from now, but for now, I like what I do and have stopped searching for the meaning of life.

If you don’t know what you want to do with your life, it’s okay! The answer doesn’t come to you at a specific time. Some find it when they’re a child. Others discover it after they’ve had three children. Some go through ten different jobs before finding one that is right for them. It doesn’t matter if you’re 21, 41 or anywhere in between. It’s never too late to start going for what you want. Even if someone is 41, they’re still pretty young. The average life expectancy for an American is 78.5 years. At 41, you’ve only lived 52% of your life. That’s it. You still have 48% of your life left to do what makes you truly happy. That’s still a lot of time.

However a better life isn’t going to be found watching television, keeping up with Honey Boo-Boo or the Kardashians, mindlessly surfing the internet, or checking Facebook every five minutes. It’s not found sitting on the couch after work every night or drinking your sorrows away every weekend with your buddies. Your life won’t improve if you constantly feel sorry for yourself or rely on others to make it better for you.

Nor is a better life going to happen instantly. We’re used to wanting everything quicker. We want to reach our destination as fast as possible. We want our internet speeds to be lightening quick. We want our food fast. This obsession with speeds translates to the results we want. Marketers know that so they blast us with headlines like “Make money quick!” or “Lose weight fast and easy!”

Your life isn’t going to change by clicking your heels together. I had always hoped it would be that easy! I wanted it to be like the movies. My rise from the lowest point in my life to the top would be in under 2 hours and I’d get the girl at the end. There is no quick fix in the real world. I hate to break it to you, but you’re not going to lose all the weight you want in two weeks and keep it off forever. You’re not going to forever eliminate years of bad habits in a month. You’re not going to have $100,000 in a year if your bank account only has $100 now. You’re not going to build an online business making $1,000 a week working only four hours with no skills and no money to start.

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One of my favorite photos from this year. View from Bryant park.

Last week I gave you a worksheet to help you review your year and see what went right and what went wrong. If you haven’t had a chance to do it, I highly suggest you take the time to fill it out. You’ll learn a lot about yourself.

I went ahead and filled mine out and saw areas that went well and others that didn’t go so well. I also noticed that when it came time to write down things I needed to do less of or eliminate, I wrote a couple of the same things as last year. That’s definitely not good. I wouldn’t have really noticed it unless I did the worksheet.

It’s a wake up call to really get control of that area. I don’t want to write the same exact thing one year from now!

Last year I filled out my worksheet and posted the whole thing here. This year I’ll do it a little differently and just highlight some things.

I’m going to follow Chris Guillebeau’s style and ask myself

• What went well this year?
• What didn’t go well?

What went well

Get Busy Living

The blog has grown this year and I’m still blogging! I have not lost interest in blogging and that’s a great thing. I knew if I wanted to start a blog that matters, I’d need to find a topic I enjoy writing and I did. Two year birthday is almost coming up and I feel like I haven’t hit my peak yet with this blog.

What’s more important are the emails I get from people who get inspired by what I write. It’s great to know that I can help out in some way.

I also get a lot emails looking for help. As I wrote this year, many take that advice and do nothing with it and it can be frustrating. However, some have taken that advice, taken action, and turned it into something positive. That’s awesome.

(And if you’ve emailed me this year about help, I’d love to hear an update from you!)

Feedback from the ebook continues to be tremendous as well. Lots of people love it and it gets them to start making positive changes. One memorable feedback about it said that my ebook told her what she nearly paid $400 to a career counselor for.

I also formatted the book for Kindle because I wanted to try and get the ebook out to a different audience. Sales have been enough to buy a movie ticket, but making money wasn’t the goal of it. I made it free for five days (the max at the time) earlier this year and got about 800 downloads. Not too bad.

I went to Blog World New York in June. It was my first ever conference so I was naturally nervous but excited. Had a great time and got to meet many online faces. Eleanor went along and we had a great time sightseeing around New York during our free time.

This week I’ll be going to Las Vegas for my second conference! It’s New Media Expo, which is the new name for Blog World. Maybe I’ll hit the jackpot while I’m out there.

Finally I got a couple national media mentions for the first time. A blog post I wrote called “How badly do you want it” was mentioned at the beginning of a blog post on the NYTimes.com called “You Probably Don’t Care Enough About Your Goals”.

Then I had answered a reporter’s question on HARO about making money and emailed back and forth answering her questions. Was not sure if and when her article would run. Another app developer told me he saw my article at the bookstore. I went that day to look for it and found it!

It’s a small mention but still happy to see it in U.S. News & World Report.

Travel

One of my main goals this year was to travel. I just got married last October and since we weren’t doing the long distance thing any more (her in Taipei and me in Florida) I wanted to make sure we went on some trips.

We did a pretty good job of it! We started the year going to back to Taipei to visit her parents and so she could vote in the Taiwan election. We had to wait for her immigration documents to be approved so she could come back in after leaving. When it arrived, we booked the tickets, and left the week after. First time booking on short notice, but prices weren’t too outrageous.

Our two biggest new destinations this year were to California and Costa Rica. We both have always wanted to drive the Pacific Coast Highway. We started in Los Angeles and made our way to San Francisco with a few stops along the way. It truly is worth the drive! We then spent five days in San Francisco since Eleanor had never been there. We saw all the sights, ate some great food, and saw great friends.

One of the best things about the trip was that nine out of ten nights the hotel rooms were free. All coming from my new favorite hobby travel hacking.

This was the year I got to put together all my new travel hacking knowledge and credit card points and put it to use.

Next Februrary we’re heading off on a trip I’ve been looking forward to since July. That’s when I spent about six hours researching itineraries to book a trip I hadn’t even planned on making. I wrote a post about it so I won’t talk about it too much again. I’m still amazed it all cost 260K points and about $400 for the both of us to fly first and business class. Looking forward to going to Sydney, Hong Kong (changed from Bali) and flying in the A380 private suites on one flight! (read my post to find out how I booked this)

In October we went to the Arenal Volcano area in Costa Rica for five days because last year I bought a Groupon to take advantage of 20x bonus points for my Chase credit card. The package included white water rafting, rapelling, zip lining, hotel, and all meals. I had never done rappelling or zip lining and it was a rush if not a bit scary if I looked down. We had a great time though and happy we bought that Groupon.

Also I finally got the chance to go to Hawaii in August. I went with my mom and her husband, while Eleanor headed back to Taipei. My mom wanted to go and I was happy to go along as a travel planner. We hit Honolulu, Maui, Lanai, and the Big Island in 10 days. I now know why so many people love it there. I’m so ready to go back.

Spending money on experiences is definitely worth the memories. In five years, I won’t remember what I bought this year, but I will remember the trips we took.

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