So you start to rummage around in the seat pockets in front of you looking for some interesting reading matter to fill some time. Fortunately for you, it’s your lucky day, because some muppet inadvertently left a book behind in their haste to disembark the previous flight.

You look at the deep red cover and the rather provocative title of ‘How To Be Rich and Happy' and maybe even have a chuckle to yourself. “Yeh, that’s be nice you think, but what’s the odds of a book delivering on that promise”

You then laugh out loud thinking about the poor sucker that coughed up $25 for a book about being rich and happy and then left the thing on a plane before they had chance to put it into practice!

You’re still smiling and shaking your head when you open the book to realize it wasn’t a mistake after all. Inside the front cover there’s a handwritten note from the previous owner saying:

“If you find this book, the it is meant for you. When it changes your life, like it did mine, please pass it on” - GM Baker 7/01/10

Now what would you think? Would you be more inclined to read the book, or would you still scoff?

I got tagged on Facebook last week. In and of itself that’s not very remarkable, until that is I tell you I’ve never met the person that tagged me and to the best of my knowledge she has no photos of me.

I tend to ignore 90% of the Facebook communications I get, but this one definitely piqued my interest and I obediently clicked on the link that took me to the tagged photograph that you now see in this post.

I cannot begin to tell you how pumped I was reading the note and and what a brilliant idea I think it is, it really made my day. What if everybody that bought the book did something similar and we started a real grass roots movement, wouldn’t that be something?

Paying somebody’s bridge toll or parking fee for them is a cool way of paying it forward, but not as cool as giving somebody something tangible to positively effect their life, right? With that in mind and if you decide to do something similar, please let us know so we can blog about it and tell others.

GM Baker (Twitter link) is currently undertaking a huge project of her own on her path to being the worlds most famous adventurer.

She’s embodies so much of the Rich and Happy spirit and formula because she's not listening to people that tell her she's being unrealistic, or that she should be settling down with a nice cubicle job and looking after her kids (they are going with her by the way). After all that would be ignoring her values, her calling and denying her authentic self, which incidentally, is not something Rich and Happy people do.

A day or so after this I got an e-mail from James the mastermind behind Men With Pens, the Canadian-based web design and copywriting site that has in excess of 20,000 subscribers. James read the book cover to cover over the previous weekend and really loved it? How much did he love it? Enough that he was willing to offer a free advertising spot on his site, normally worth $199, so that we could promote the book to his loyal readers!

So today I wanted to thank GM and James for paying it forward and allowing us to do the same!

This past week my wife had to change her dental appointment.  She had already canceled once, and so she asked me if I needed the slot.  I did.  I had been planning to schedule one for months, and just didn’t make it happen.

When I walked in I was met by the hygienist who would be cleaning my teeth.  I’d never met her before, so we were engaging in some get to know you banter.  She asked me what I did for a living. I asked her the same thing, which made her laugh.

When I told her I was an author, and that I traveled a lot speaking to audiences, she expressed how much she really wanted to travel.  This is a dangerous admission around me.

After backpacking around the world in 2002, and many shorter, 4-6 week length backpacking adventures since, my life has been forever positively changed by getting out there and seeing the world.  So when someone says they really want to do that, it’s hard to shut me up.

In between the scraping, water spraying, open wider, and the rest of the teeth cleaning process we managed to have a life conversation about what she really wanted.  In other words, what did Rich and Happy look like for her.

Her answer was pretty straight forward.  She wants freedom, and she wants to travel.  It was also very clear that she was suffering from Mad How disease.  “I’d go but I don’t know how to get started...  How do you speak with people when you don’t know their language...  How can a single woman travel alone...”

Those are all items worth figuring out, but you don’t do it by asking how.  You look for someone who has already done it, and JUST ASK THEM.

We don’t need to figure all of life’s challenges out on our own.  Just ask people who have done, seen, or experienced them already.  They already know the answer.

In addition to Mad How disease, she was also incredibly unaware of the great big assets she had at her disposal.  For those of you who already read the How to be Rich and Happy book, this is straight from the chapter “You have no but, you’ve got a great big asset.”

For example.  She has almost no obligations holding her back.  No debt, no kids, no husband or significant other.  She does have a dog, but when I asked her, she said her mom would probably take her.

Your Mom!  You have a mom close by?  Even better.  Now you have someone who can help out if any little things pop up during your trip.  Yet another great big asset.

She also mentioned she owns a 4 bedroom house free and clear.  Which she said she would have to wait to sell before she could go.  Wait a minute.  FREE AND CLEAR.  Forget selling it.  Rent it out.  That right there will pay for your travels.  Heck you will probably make money while you’re traveling.  Why would you sell it?

She’s also in an amazing position with her job.  As a hygienist, she has a skill that can plug and play.  Dentists are always looking for good hygienists.  Existing one’s move out of town, take leave because of kids... She could leave for six months to a year and pick right back up when she got back.

That is a huge asset.

So I gave her the whole low down on getting started, where to go, books to read, etc.  And I could see she was getting excited not only with the idea of it all, but with the fact that this could be her reality.

As I was paying my bill, I told her to have an amazing trip and that I didn’t expect to see her the next time I came in because she would be out there traveling the world.  And she replied...”I hope so.”

And there it was.  The fears, the potential unknowns, the potentially overpowering realization that what she wanted could be hers...all brought to a head in one phrase.

I hope so.

I looked her in the eye and smiled.  Then I told her a piece of the Rich and Happy formula that took me years to learn.

"It has nothing to do with hope, my friend.  It’s about choice, and action."

Her future is entirely in her hands.  She is loaded with great big assets to help her realize the Rich and Happy life she wants.  But all of that will be wasted if she fails to draw the proverbial line in the sand and say, “This is my future.”  And then take the steps to make it true.

Speakers at TED are only allowed to talk for a maximum of 20 minutes and as such all the talks there are punchy and to the point. They are also almost always brilliant as TED only invites the most engaging and interesting speakers. People that have valuable stories, information and insights to share and people that are more often than not living the Rich and Happy life.

I don’t even know if the person that sent it me had my post in mind because I was blind-copied in and don’t know how many people she was e-mailing, but either way it doesn’t really matter as the timing was perfect.

The talk I’m referring to is from ultra-rower, Roz Savage and is about 18 minutes long. Actually, a more accurate summary would be it’s 18 minutes short, because quite honestly I could have watched for another hour or more. By the way if you're reading this via e-mail you may need to click through to the site to watch.

I implore you to read it. Ok, maybe imploring is taking things a bit too far, but I am pretty sure you’ll love it and it will probably make any obstacles you are currently encountering in life seem like small potatoes.

I know I felt very humbled and a bit of a whining wuss after hearing Roz describe her accomplishments. It’s something I’m going to think of every time I hit a road block in our quest to give away 1,000,000 copies of How To Be Rich and Happy from now on.

Below Roz’s speech, is a very short YouTube clip I made in response. It’s only about 3 and a half minutes long and not quite as impressive as Roz’s speech! It also includes the ‘f’ bomb, so please don’t watch if that will offend you.

At around about 55 seconds something happened in my video that had my crying with laughter. See if you can see what it. I’ll give a free ebook version of How To Be Rich and Happy to the first person to leave a comment telling me correctly what I was laughing at.

What I didn’t say though was that you will have to wait until you hit middle-age to achieve the life you want to live (unless of course you’re already middle-aged like me, in which case, tough!).

The truly amazing thing with the Rich and Happy formula is that is doesn’t care how old you are. There’s no assessor checking proof of birth, asking for years of credentials and making sure you have the worry lines to prove you’ve served your time, and then if you haven’t, saying:

“Sorry, you’re too young, you need to call back in a couple of decades”

The younger you are when you start the process and adopt the formula, the younger you’ll be when you hit full stride, get it into your unconscious competence and start living the dream.

How To Be Rich and Happy is full of case studies demonstrating that the Rich and Happy cat can be skinned in many different ways (sorry cat lovers for that thoughtless analogy).

One person that didn’t hang around waiting to get old before he took control of his life was Glen Allsopp. Now my guess is unless you’re a blogger or a regular reader of blogs, you’ve never heard of Glen.

He’s one of thousands of people quietly living the Rich and Happy life doing what he want, when he wants.

I first heard of him when he commented on my blog at A Daring Adventure a couple of years ago. Over the following months Glen slowly and surely made his way up the blogging ladder until he became very well known in the self-development blogging circles.

What I didn’t realize at the time though was that Glens forte wasn’t self-development at all. By that I don’t mean he wasn’t good at it, just that his real skill was in online marketing and social media and he was even better known in those industries.

About 4 years prior to that he was working in T K Maxx, (no that isn’t a typo, it’s bizarrely the European name for what we know here as T J Maxx) earning minimum wage putting labels on clothing and avoiding Rich and Happy minutes like the plague.

However, unlike a lot of people in similar situations Glen refused to accept that was his lot in life, and he had a long-term plan that involved lots and lots of travel and of course, lots and lots of Rich and Happy minutes.

In his spare time he started building websites and raising his profile on the social marketing scene determined to be viewed as an expert in his field. And yes I do mean websites (plural) because he had several, all of which were earning him a steady income.

By the time he was 18 he was headhunted to go and live in South Africa for a couple of years and become the Social Media Manager for some rather large brands. You may well have heard of Land Rover, Hewlett Packard and Nissan.

That was almost 3 years ago and in that time he accrued enough money to leave the north-east of England where he had moved back to, to be with family, and spend 6 months traveling including an extended stay in Amsterdam. During his travels The Guardian a very well respected UK broad sheet newspaper, featured him in an article on location independent people.

He’s now back in Cape Town running his Viper Chill website and sharing the knowledge he’s accrued with people that want to make a living online. He intends to stay there at least until the end of 2010 when he plans to set off on his travels again.

So Glen has hit his Rich and Happy life and on the whole doing whatever he wants whenever he wants and that’s the end of that, right?

Wrong.

Glen doesn't just want the lifestyle for himself, he wants it for his brother and sister too. His latest goal is to earn enough money so that they too can wave goodbye to the rat race and join him, wherever he is.

It doesn’t end there either, because as he said in a recent e-mail to me:

“My big goals now are to open a school in an under-privileged country (probably Vietnam, where I have family) and buy my own nightclub. My goals are big, but life is too short for them to be small.”

Glen demonstrates there really is no need to wait. What you do today is practice for what you do tomorrow, so get practicing the Rich and Happy life sometime right around now.

An interesting case has come up recently that illustrates this. It involves a thirteen year old girl who wants to sail around the world. I’ll give you the particulars and then some thoughts on how she, and you if you face something equally ridiculous, can get beyond it.

The young lady’s name is Laura Dekker. She has been taken into court custody in the Netherlands to prevent her from attempting to sail solo around the world.

Yes, God forbid we should want our young people to aspire to anything greater than playing video games, reading fashion magazines and hanging out at the mall.

Laura, who was born and spent the early years of her life on a yacht during her parents' own round-the-world trip, shared with media that the motivation behind her sailing dream is to “learn about the world and to live freely.”

Oh, bad, bad, Laura. Get back to the mall and the fashion magazines.

Learn about the world? Live freely? Who do you think you are? Why those kind of thoughts will enable you to be energetic, fulfilled, Rich and Happy.

Apparently this is not Ms. Dekker’s first brush with authorities. At the age of six she had mastered small sailing boats and was going solo across large lakes in the Netherlands.

By the time she was ten, she was sailing on her own aboard a 21 foot sailing boat. Despite lock operators giving her a hard time because she was a young girl in charge of a boat on her own, by the next summer she was sailing solo out in the Wadden Sea.

It was about that time when she first shared her dream of becoming the youngest person to ever sail around the world.

A lofty and impressive goal. One that her supportive, albeit skeptical, father supported. He made sure she took intensive navigation lessons, then safety training. Then he told her she would have to sail solo from the Netherlands to England and back, to show she was serious and could handle things on her own.

According to Mr. Dekker, when he told her that he was thinking, “So long on the open sea with wind, rain and waves - that will soon end any ideas of sailing the world.”

Except that it didn’t. Because as is the case with all people who are living a Rich and Happy life- getting a taste of what you love does not discourage you from getting more, it inspires you to even greater heights.

Laura made it to England. Where, get this- “British authorities judged it too dangerous for a 13-year-old to be at sea alone... They telephoned Mr Dekker and asked him to accompany his daughter on the trip home. When Mr Dekker refused, the English authorities in Lowestoft placed Miss Dekker in a children's home.”

Was she stealing things? Causing problems? Being a bad role model? Had there been problems during her voyage, expenses to governments because of her activities? No, she was just busily and SUCCESSFULLY positioning herself to be ready to do something no-one had ever done at her age. Bad Laura, bad Laura.

With his daughter placed in a children’s home for her naughty behavior, Mr. Dekker traveled to the UK to get her. He then allowed her to sail back on her own. Nicely done Mr. Decker.

I mean, bad Mr. Dekker. How dare you support your children’s dreams. Tell her to go the mall with friends, and hang out aimlessly for hours.

The British police were no doubt pissed at Mr. Dekker and Laura’s obvious refusal to live a “normal life,” and so they contacted social services in the Netherlands.

That’s when the courts stepped in and decided Mr. Dekker must be handling his role as a father poorly. I mean, his daughter was self-reliant, confident, incredibly skilled, well trained, driven, accomplishing amazing things well ahead of other children her age... Clearly those are signs something must be wrong.

So Laura was taken into court custody. She is allowed to live at home, but “her parents will not have the right to make decisions on her behalf for two months, at which time the case will be reviewed.”

It’s hard for me to even know where to begin with this in terms of how ludicrous I feel the situation is. This is all taking place in a country where you can smoke pot legally, prostitution is both legal and flaunted as a tourist attraction, and the history and financial well being of the country is linked to their prowess as sailers of the oceans (Dutch East Indies Company ringing any bells??)

Yet here we are, with officials deeming it inappropriate for a master sailor who just happens to be thirteen, to go out and sail.

Let me quickly finish my rant, and then I’ll become more productive and provide some suggestions for Laura and you, if you encounter something similar.

Back to the rant.

When did we as a human race stop celebrating the adventurous spirit and start trying to squash it?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was composing music at age five and wrote his first symphony at age 8. If he lived today, would “experts” be telling his parents to give him some toys to play with, and take away his instruments?

Fu Mingxia won her first world champion title in 1991 at the World Swimming Championships. She was 12. That made her the youngest world champion ever in any sport. At the 1992 Summer Olympics she became China's youngest Olympic champion ever when she won the 10-meter platform gold at the age of 13.

Louis Crane entered the University of Chicago and began taking graduate-level mathematics courses at 14 years old. He is now a professor at Kansas State University and a quantum-gravity researcher.

Sho Yano started college at nine years old and graduated summa cum laude at 12 from Loyola University in Chicago. By 15 years old, he attended the Pritzker School of Medicine.

At the age of nine, Jackie Cooper became the youngest nominee for the best actor Oscar.

Those people, and I would argue Laura Dekker as well, are prodigies. They are the ones who re-define what is possible, in no small part because they have found something they are so intensely passionate about, that they love spending their time on it. The more time they spend, the better they get, to the point where they know more and can do more, at a young age, than most people can ever do.

THIS IS A CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION, NOT OPPRESSION!

There are thirteen year-olds all over the world, who are getting pregnant, which not only involves their life, but the life of a baby. I haven’t seen any courts taking away parental rights from the parents of those kids.

Because of where she was born, Laura has citizenship in New Zealand as well. She considered the option of just leaving her current home and setting sail from New Zealand. However, it looks like that is a no-go option as well, as she could be treated the same way she is being treated in the Netherlands.

The deputy chief executive of the New Zealand Child, Youth and Family agency, Ray Smith, said “He did not think it was sensible for a 13-year-old to sail solo around the world. I think most people would share that view,” he told the New Zealand Herald.

Wow, way to go Ray. Very open minded of you. Oh, by the way, “most people” is a lousy proxy when it comes to doing something no-one has ever accomplished before. I’m sure “most people” didn’t think it was sensible for the Wright Brothers to try and fly either.

I had a teacher in college who kept a brilliant quote on his door. I saw it all semester while I was waiting for class, and it is perfect for this moment (apparently that professor had a ton of foresight, knowing it would only take me two decades to re-quote it).

“You don’t raise the skill of the runner by lowering the hurdles.”

And you certainly don’t raise the potential of the human race, or inspire future generations of kids, by dumbing things down to what “most people” believe or do.

Ok, enough ranting. I love the Netherlands by the way. Unlike what is evidenced in this court ruling, I have found the Dutch people to be incredibly free spirited, full of life, and adventurous. My guess is that this issue is a hotly discussed one. I’m leaving for the Netherlands in about three hours, so I’ll find out.

So how does Laura deal with her situation as she is trying to live a Rich and Happy life doing what she wants when she wants?

For this particular situation, she has a couple of options. For right now, I’d recommend using another piece of the formula- You Have no But, You’ve Got a Great Big Asset.

It would be easy for Laura to say “I wanted to sail around the world, BUT they just wouldn’t let me.” That won’t get her anywhere. However, she can turn this entire situation into a Great Big Asset.

The fact that her situation has generated so much publicity puts her in an amazing position to get massive sponsorship for when she can attempt her trip. She should be able to get the boat, all her equipment, and all other expenses paid for by someone else.

Having become newsworthy, her story is now also great material for a book. Had she been able to attempt her trip when she wanted to, regardless of the outcome the result would not have been as newsworthy as it is now. Newsworthy gets book deals and sells lots of copies, and in this case, because her story is so inspirational, the net result of the court’s efforts will be EVEN MORE PEOPLE will end up reading her book and being inspired.

I’m sure that’s what they had in mind.

Not hardly. But it’s a nice potential end-result.

This current situation also positions Laura well to speak about her experiences. She now has supporters around the world who via the Internet have read about her challenges. What she is facing could easily become a life-time worth of speaking engagements if she wants them.

In my mind there is also an issue of gender bias here. The current record for sailing around the world is held by a sixteen year old young man. I have a hunch that there would be a lot less fervor about Laura if her name were Bob. For some reason, a young woman out sailing the world is too dangerous, but when it’s “Bob,” he’s touted as an adventurer.

So if I was Laura, I’d take this opportunity to generate as much publicity as I could, and use that to turn sailing around the world into a zone three experience versus a zone one experience. (If you have no idea what that means, re-read the section of the Rich and Happy manual on the Rich and Happy matrix). That way not only is she doing whatever she wants, she’s also earning money in the process, which can then be spent doing other things she wants.

This will probably work best for her if she partners with others. A writer for the book, maybe some people to help her secure sponsorships, a good PR person... I have no doubt she could do all this on her own, it’s more a question of what does she WANT to be spending her time on. From what I’ve read, the answer to that is sailing, or preparing in other ways for her adventure, which means in order to log the maximum Rich and Happy minutes, her best bet is to partner for those other things.

I don’t know Laura personally, but I’m going to ask around when I hit the Netherlands and see if I can meet her. If not, I’m going to find a way to wish her good luck and tell her I admire the heck out of her.

I’ll let you know what happens.

John