I Am The Guinea Pig

John Lennon, famous member of the Beatles, once penned a song called “I Am The Walrus.”

Well, I am neither a famous singer or a famous songwriter, so walrus seems a bit grand for me.

For my next bunch of posts though-  I am the guinea pig.

Let me give you some background info so you know what to expect with what you’ll be reading about.

I am in the midst of conducting a Rich and Happy experiment.  And the test subject is... me.

Here’s how this came about.

Even though I’ve been researching, documenting and putting to use the Rich and Happy formula for almost two decades, there are definitely still times when I get myself out of synch.

For example, about three months ago I felt like I had let things get a little out of control in my life.  I liked the ways I was spending my time each day, and lots of exciting opportunities were coming up.  Yet somehow it felt like I wasn’t doing a particularly effective job of guiding my life.

Normally I like just being in the flow, as long as the flow is in alignment with my Big Five for Life, and logging me lots of Rich and Happy minutes.  In this instance though, something was telling me that I needed to take the tiller and become a bit more proactive about which stops I was choosing along the river of life.

So I sat down with a blank note-book, and wrote on the front- My Rich and Happy Goals/Dreams/Ideal Life.

I’ve done this many times before, and for whatever reason, it seemed like the right time to do it again.

One of the ideas that had been floating around in my head for almost two years was that I wanted to go study Spanish in an immersion program.  There were multiple reasons for this.  The first is that I love to travel.  As a matter of fact, travel the world is one of my Big Five for Life.

So hanging out in a Spanish speaking country for a while and going to language school sounded pretty good all by itself.  Then there would be the added benefit that since I love to travel, having a greater command of the Spanish language would open up the ease with which I could adventure through spanish speaking countries.  And there are a lot of those.

For example, I’ve done extended trips in Peru, Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico and Honduras, and they were great.  My only frustration was that although my Spanish language skills enabled me to cover the basics, it wasn’t nearly good enough to sit down and have a meaningful conversation with the people in those countries who only spoke Spanish.

And that just didn’t cut it, because I like meaningful conversations.  Especially when I have the chance to learn about the lives of people who live in cultures different from my own.

So that was one big reason.  The other was because I want my daughter to grow up speaking multiple languages.  Right now she gets English from her mom, me, and her environment, Chinese from her mom, and the occasional Spanish word from me.  Hardly the path to fluency for Spanish for her.  So me learning to speak Spanish more effectively would enable me to help her more.

So with notebook in hand I started writing.  And among the many items I wrote down, on page one I put- “I want to go learn Spanish in a 4 week immersion environment before my daughter turns 3.”

And there it was in black and white, or in this case, blue and white.  Just sitting out there waiting to become a reality.

In the How to be Rich and Happy book, we talk about how knowing what you want and writing it down has yielded amazing results for so many people.  There is, without a doubt, a certain power that comes from writing down what it is that you want to do, see, and experience in life.

I don’t know all the reasons it works.  It certainly keeps the items top of mind, so when opportunities arise, such as my re-scheduled engagement, you sort of already know what to do.

There’s also the group impact. Where when you write something down and tell others, then all kinds of people are pulling for you.

Then there also just seems to be an intangible element to it.  It’s like saying to the universe, “No, seriously, this is what I really want.”  So then the universe (insert God, Allah, Buddha, or your alternate preference for the word universe) kicks things into action to help make it happen.

Think of it like turning on the mac daddy of all OnStar systems.  Once you write down your desired state, the system kicks on and starts throwing the appropriate advise, resources, and opportunities your way.

Hey, it doesn’t really matter why it works.  The point is- it works.

And as it always has in the past, it worked again for me.  Two weeks after I wrote my intentions in my notebook, a client called and asked to reschedule a speaking event originally slated for the late fall. When I looked at my calendar I realized that because of the timing of the holidays, and some breaks I had scheduled in after the release of How to be Rich and Happy, that cancellation opened up a six week block of time.

When I told my wife about the schedule change, the first thing she said was, “Cool, let’s go to Costa Rica for the Spanish training you want to do.”

And that leads us right into the experiment.

I thought it might be useful to not only go through the experience of hanging out in Costa Rica for six weeks (It’s tough, but someone has to do it), but to also document the experience from the perspective of the Rich and Happy formula.  In other words, to be the participant as well as the observer to the experience of logging some major Rich and Happy minutes.

After all, while doing whatever you want, whenever you want can have a different look and feel for people depending on their interests, the challenges they face are often similar.

So just a few days into the experiment, here’s what I’ve faced, and what I’ve learned.

We arrived on a Thursday and by the time we drove across half of Costa Rica to where the school is, the day was pretty much shot.  Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were great.  The town where the school is located is right on the beach, very remote, not many people, and spectacularly beautiful.  Fits my ideal scenario of where to hang out for a while, which is a big reason we chose this location.

The place we are staying at will do perfect.  It’s really nice, and has enough creature comforts that I know my family has everything they need to enjoy their time while I’m in class.

The setting is excellent, the place is surrounded by jungle and we have seen monkeys and wild parrots right outside our windows at least twice per day.  The beaches are perfect for my little girl.  There are small shallow rivers for her to play in and tide pools to explore when the tide is low.

My commute to school literally is a 10 minute walk along the beach, including wading across a small river.  I stopped in the school during the weekend and it looked very nice and everyone was friendly.

So imagine my surprise, when about mid-day on Sunday I started to feel an emotion I haven’t felt in a long long time.  Something right in the neighborhood of trepidation and anxiety.

What the...?  Where in the world could that be coming from?  And why?  I’m in paradise on a six week vacation doing something that is right in the sweet spot of my ideal Rich and Happy life.

Why would I feel trepidation and anxiety?

Welcome to the world of values, beliefs, and lots of old code.

If you’ve read the value section in the How to be Rich and Happy book, you know how critical it is to understand your values.  They are at the core of who you are and when you are out of synch with them, it’s impossible to be logging Rich and Happy minutes.

If you’ve read the reviews on the book you’ve no doubt seen a lot of comments about the values section and how great it is.  Well, Tim, my co-author gets all the credit for that and I couldn’t agree more with the comments.  What he created is an excellent tool for deciphering a key piece of what it takes to be Rich and Happy.

And I’m glad he did because as I was experiencing those twinges of anxiety and trepidation I asked myself where the heck that was coming from and why?  And thanks to Tim’s value exercise, I had some great clues as to the answers.

One of my very top values is freedom.  Not surprising given that I’ve spent so much time   looking for the answer to how people get to spend their life doing whatever they want whenever they want.  Also not surprising given that I have created a life where I answer to no-one.

I left the traditional work-force almost a decade ago, I control my own schedule, I live on my terms, I teach and write about living your life, whatever that means to you, and I do everything possible to make sure I get to do whatever I want, whenever I want.

So imagine what just happened in my brain when it finally kicked in that for four weeks, four hours a day, every day, I am going to be on someone else’s schedule.

In addition to that, something else is starting to send massive warning bells through my system.  My previous formal training in learning Spanish was in high school.  Foreign language was a required subject for two semesters and so I took Spanish.  I would rate my overall high school experience to be poor, and my Spanish classes to be below that.

How I still remember this I have no idea, but for one semester my classmates and I had a very nice portly Jewish man from NYC who was teaching Spanish in a Catholic school, and who had never been to a Spanish speaking country.  I’m pretty sure he was about two pages ahead of us in the textbook.

The other semester we had a guy from Bolivia who had such a thick accent we couldn’t understand half of what he said.  I’m pretty sure he hated teaching and I do remember he had a general disdain for how lazy students were in America-  my classmates and I included.

Now to be fair, my overall goal with high school was to get through it and get the best grade possible for doing the least work possible.  And when it came to my Spanish classes they were just a necessary hurdle along the way to graduation.  At that time I saw no relevance at all as to why I needed to learn another language.

Regardless though, because of my previous experiences, my belief system about formal Spanish teaching consists of the following type of data:  boring, irrelevant, uninteresting, and often involves being harassed by authority figures.  A necessary evil that will occupy much of your time in ways other than you want to spend it.

Which means that when those beliefs are matched up with my high value of freedom,  my internal guidance system is starting to send out- what they heck are you thinking, and why oh why, are we going to re-enter formal Spanish training- types of signals.

Incredible isn’t it?  My rational mind is fully aware that what I am about to experience will be nothing like high school Spanish.  The school I will be attending got great reviews when I looked it up online, and everyone I’ve ever asked about immersion programs has always given them rave reviews both for the experiential elements as well as the impact on Spanish language competency.

Add on that that, I’m not a fifteen year old kid anymore who sees no relevance to learning a foreign language and doesn’t want to be in class.  I’m a seasoned traveler who WANTS to be fluent in Spanish, and who CHOSE to be in an immersion program.

That rational mind only has secondary data going for it though in terms of what this experience will be like.  And that secondary data is trying to compete with a belief system filled with old code that was written through first hand experience.

And thus the conflict.

If I wasn’t able to step back from the emotions and look at them from the position of an observer and analyst, I bet the emotions would be out of control right about now.  Perhaps so out of control that I would either be second guessing my decision to attend school again, or in a worst case, I’d completely talk myself out of it and bail on the idea.

I might walk away from six weeks in paradise spent logging an almost constant stream of Rich and Happy minutes.  All because of beliefs and code written in my brain a quarter century ago and the resultant values conflict they cause with my current state.

I can see that this is going to be a very interesting experiment.

More to come in the weeks ahead.

John.