Have you ever booked a random flight that leaves 8 hours from now?
How about eating Chipotle eight times in one week?
What about staying up til 8am because you couldn’t stop working on a new project?
Or running a 5K race in -20 degree weather?
These are just a few past experiences that popped into my head while writing this. I read through those things and nothing stands out as ridiculous or crazy. But that’s just me.
Your normal is too boring for me
Of course I do “normal” things from time to time, but for the most part, I try to keep my life weird and interesting.
Almost to the point where if people aren’t saying things like “what the fuck” or “are you kidding me” or “Jesus you are seriously insane” or “only you would do something like this,” it’s not as exciting to me.
Of course I’m not purposely trying to impress anyone, or do things just to get a rise out of people. I just think the things that sound cool to me coincidentally get mixed reactions from average people. Which usually makes me want to do it even more.
Oh that’s just what he does
At some point, the weird shit I do starts to become my normal. Sometimes that turns into a slight feeling of routine, and it loses a little bit of the excitement factor.
But routines build habits. So if I’m doing bizarre things so often that I’m creating a habit of it (as long as it’s legal and mostly safe), I think this is a good thing.
Like the first time I jumped on a plane to go meet someone in person for the first time, people thought that was insane. Now if I do it, people have already got used to it, so it’s my new normal.
Always be trying new things
So when some of the wow factor wears off of something, it sparks my curiosity. It makes me want to try something else that I haven’t done before.
Even when I wake up in the morning and want to post something on Instagram. If I start looking through my photos and can’t find anything cool to post, I literally say to myself, “wow, you’re becoming normal and boring, it’s time to go do something worth posting.”
I think we all have bucket lists, I might just be growing my list daily. Some people just want to visit all the continents before they die, or watch every top 100 movie, or eat at every Taco Bell location.
I even heard of an elderly woman that just wants to see the ocean in her lifetime. Wow. Her head would explode if she heard the things I’ve done.
Every day I’m learning about new things, reading stories from people that I think are cool, listening to inspiring podcasts, etc. All of these things and more keep me wanting less stuff and more experiences.
Which in turn has me intrigued by so many things, which makes my to-do list a mile long.
Do more epic shit
I remember reading a blog post titled this several years ago. Ever since then, I think I’ve always tried to up the bar. Again, not to impress anyone, but more to challenge myself, explore things that I have zero knowledge about, and find out what I really want to do with my life.
How can I know what I really want until I try as many things as I can? I’ll never meet everyone in the world or try everything, but the more amazing things I involve myself in, I get closer to knowing what I want and don’t want.
People ask me all the time what kind of business they should start. I ask what they’re into. They usually reply with 0-1 things. I always tell them this: do more shit.
Try everything, travel more, be random, meet new people, sell everything you don’t need, quit the job you hate, remove toxic people from your life, learn new technology, study people that are doing the things that you want to do, etc.
Live the life you want
It’s really not hard to do whatever you want. I’ve been doing it for almost five years.
People call me lucky, but that’s not really true. I may seem insane to some people, but I just wake up every day and do whatever I want.
I have bills just like everyone else, but I put in the time to learn new things that can generate income, whether that’s a service or a product.
Everything I’m doing, anyone could be doing. And there are tons of people doing it. You just have to decide what you want, what you don’t want, and take action.
It’s seems so simple, and it really is. It’s not easy, but it is simple.
So the next time you think about doing something that scares you or makes you nervous, you better do it. It’s better to live a life full of “oh well’s” than a life full of “what if’s.”