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2008 was an amazing year for me. I lost my dad, travelled out of the country twice, met new friends, opened my mind… the list can go on and I am truly blessed for all the experiences I had come to me. Most importantly I became a stronger person and took responsibility for my life and my role in creating my own reality.

2009 will be my best year yet and the start of designing my own life. My primary goals for the year are:

• Create fully self automated business
• Visit Bermuda again
• Personal Development Seminar in San Francisco
• Spiritual Retreat to Big Sur in Esalen
• Speak Spanish Fluently
• Visit Washington State for my buddies wedding
• Visit Rhode Island for my buddies wedding
• Visit Boston for my sister’s graduation
• Volunteer for a Cancer Research Foundation
• Finish Atlas Shrugged
• Be at 200 pounds
• Go Sky Diving

But having the goals in mind are useless, they are just the start of bringing your dreams into your personal experience. You must take massive action in order to realize your dreams. In my opinion, what “The Secret” and other mindsets like it fail to properly address is the need for action. Below is the beginning of an action plan to accomplish what I have set out to do.

A lot of my 2009 goals involve a lot of traveling and visiting new places. So the first step in creating an action plan was listing when I wanted to visit the places. Some were already concrete (ie wedding dates, birthdays, etc.) others I wanted to visit by season. I simply made an excel spreadsheet detailing the travel dates to start my action plan:

By creating this blueprint of the entire year, I was able to “visually” see when would be the busiest times and understand different time frames when I could complete and/or concentrate on other goals that did not involve holidays or travel.

After the visual blueprint was set, I made a financial blueprint of what it would cost to attain all these goals. Here are the steps I took to make the financial blueprint:

1. Calculated my monthly living expenses: rent, insurance, food, gas, entertainment.
2. Added a 30% contingency on my monthly expenditures.
3. Started to budget for goals
• Trainer to get in shape + gym membership,
• Skydiving,
• Airfare,
• Lodging,
• Etc.
4. I then took the excel spreadsheet from above and overlayed the budget according to the months I wanted to do them. In addition to a visual blueprint of my 2009, I now had a financial blueprint that corresponded to it.
5. From “The Four Hour Work Week”, I then broke up the year into 3 parts… a 6 month period and two 3 month periods. Each period was then divided by 30 (basis for days in a month) and the number I got was the amount of money needed to be generated per day in one months time to achieve those goals. I then took my monthly living expenses (calculated in steps 1 & 2) and divided that by 30. Add these two numbers up and you derive your Total Daily Income to pay your monthly expenses and achieve your goals. I now have a tangible basis of what I needed to create in order to help bring my goals into reality.

Here is what the spreadsheet ended up looking like with the financial blueprint overlayed on the visual blueprint:

The most amazing thing for me was at the end of the day, it was a lot less expensive than I thought it would have been. I challenge you to make your own blueprint- write what you think the cost will be and then run the numbers

In another post, I will be detailing how I energized my goals by giving them meaning and purpose.

I wrote about entitlement in designing your life HERE. Before you take the first step in any journey, you need to have at least an idea of where you want to go. As we enter 2009, I have framed my mind for allowing the new year to be my best ever. Below is my personal bucket list if I had to live for 5 years. I have no clue how it will be accomplished but know I will be a better person for going after all of them. While it will be an amazing process for me to cross off each item, what is more important is the type of person I will have to transform into to allow these things to come into my life.

So in no particular order… I share with you my 5 Year Bucket List, creating and designing my life:

In another post, I will detail how I have already designed a 1 year plan to start tackling these goals. I challenge you to design your life and take full responsibility of living your dreams and the life you are entitled to live.

In my last post I discussed the importance of creating space in our lives so we can do the things we love and manifest them.

That was my ethereal concept of creating space. But in the Law of Attraction, thoughts are part of the process. In order to manifest those thoughts we must have action to help energize the thoughts.

Embarking on the journey of the entrepreneur time is a luxury item that is finite on a daily basis. Therefore, in order for me to start my entrepreneurial endeavors while still working a full time job and having a personal life:

• Outsource. This is the number one concept I have gained from Tim Ferris’ “The Four Hour Work Week”. The advice alone is worth the cost of the book. Learn to outsource things you do not like to do, especially if you are an entrepreneur. Why waste time learning a skill set that doesn’t inspire you? Here are some things that I have outsourced:
  • Set-up of social networking sites,
  • Submission of blogs to different directories and engines,
  • Implementing different widgets and code on my blogs, etc.
    (before you start thinking about cost, try a freelancer site like www.elance.com and post a job… I guarantee you it will be cheaper than you think)

• Batch your time. Another one from “The Four Hour Work Week”
  • I have multiple e-mail accounts for different projects I work on. A program called Nutshell Mail will take all your e-mail accounts and send you a report. You select the time and the frequency of the report.
  • Most of my outsourced work is in India. I usually try to dedicate some time around 10PM-12PM EST which is the working hours with them to clear up any confusion and to track process.

• Get crystal clear, so you can get hyper-focused.
  • If you outsource, get crystal clear of what you need done or else there will be variance in expectations. What you think is not necessarily what you communicate. Avoid pitfalls and time delays in projects by getting crystal clear on what you want accomplished- use pictures, video, chatrooms, etc. to manage both expectations and processes along the way. Most importantly, getting clear in the beginning will save you time and stress later on.
  • Make clear goals for yourself. It doesn’t matter how much time you allocate towards project, you must get clear of what you want to accomplish AND adhere to it. Without an end in mind you will be going all over the road.

While the old adage is you can’t buy time, these are some effective concepts I have implemented to help create space to become an entrepreneur.

(Video from one of my personal favorites- Eckhart Tolle author of The Power of Now and A New Earth. Highly recommend to get in touch with your true authentic self.)

The greatest gift you can give anyone this holiday season is the gift of yourself… the gift of presence. Be present to everyone… to your loved ones- friends and family AND to those you may hold negative feelings towards. Life is to short to be living in the past- what matters is right NOW. Do you realize how much space you have right NOW to forgive, to share your love, and to show appreciation. The only control you will ever have in this lifetime is in the NOW, embrace that space and understand the power of your presence.

Give of yourself and start to see how others start giving back to you.

Happy Holidays!

“Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.”—Norman Vincent Peale

I remember when watching “What the Bleep Do we Know” they discussed consciously creating your day. As the New Year approaches, one of my goals is to become highly organized as my time is valuable and I do not want to waste a precious moment of it. Today, I am going to test out batching my errands and tasks and see how much more effective I am.

Instead of just making a list of goals, I organized them into my Outlook calendar and set a time frame for each one. The one thing I hate to do during the holidays is be out in the last minute holiday traffic jams. So as Rick Pitino advocates, I am going to do the tasks that are the hardest for me first.

Part of the law of attraction is getting super clear and focused on what you want to manifest- small and large. I will focus on the small today so I can create time and space to go back home tomorrow and spend time with my family. Instead of focusing on getting the tasks done, I am focusing now on what the results of completing each tasks will bring me.

Here is the day I created:

• 11:30-12:30- Run all errands on the road, so I can avoid wasting time by going in and out of my home and allow me to concentrate on all tasks that need to be completed at home without having the mental clutter of knowing I will be wasting time while driving around.
• 1:30-1:45- Make phone calls and schedule appointments for next week, so I can build and plan my schedule accordingly.
• 2:00-2:45- Wrap gifts, so I can mentally clear myself knowing my Christmas shopping is “done”
• 3:00-3:30- Follow up on social networking sites, so I can add value and insight to others and learn more from like minded people
• 3:30-4:00- Write Christmas cards and send out holiday wishes via e-mail, so I can show my appreciation for other
• 4:00-5:00- Laundry and cleaning, so I can be organized for when I come back home next week and have a clean environment to work in.
• 5:30-6:00- Set up Wordpress on new site, so I can be ready to go full force on designing and creating the new business next week
• 6:30-7:00- Check statistics on blogs, so I can know what is working and what is not.
• 7:00-7:30- Follow up on forums , so I can learn more from like minded people and drive traffic to my sites
• 7:30-8:00- Follow up on bills, so I do not have to worry about bills or money issues on Christmas
• 8:00-9:00- Write an article, so I can share myself with people on Christmas

Off now to work my plan Results to follow…

I had dinner with my mom the other day and she shared a story with me that touched and inspired me. The story was about an addict sick out of their mind from withdrawal who had come to the hospital with two kids. This family was poor and the addiction obviously had become a priority in this person’s life and influenced how the family was provided for. As this person was being treated, my mom saw these two kids asked if they wanted to go to the gift shop with her. She bought them some stuffed animals and some candy trying to comfort these little kids.

My mom’s eyes start to tear up as she continues with the story. She starts telling me how happy and ecstatic the kids were that they were running through the hospital to show their parent the gifts my mom had bought them. It was as if it was Christmas for them, and for my mom it was a small act of kindness and only one tiny way to extend her heart and care for them. Then my mom says, “… they were so happy, just so happy for something so little.”

And that is when I was really moved, because I saw and felt through her eyes  a genuine and pure appreciation for life. It was almost as if I could sense at that moment how appreciative she was for everything that the Universe had blessed our family and her life with.

As Prem Rawat says in the video, appreciation is one of the most powerful gifts that we have. When my mom was finishing her story, I knew exactly how she felt because true appreciation vibrates at such a high energy. I know she saw the beauty in the innocence of those kids, who were too little to know what was going on. That at that moment, she recognized a strong inner sense of care and tried to comfort them even though they were naive to the situation.

Conversely, I learned about appreciation through the kids as well. Appreciation of a stranger giving them gifts. Appreciation for something new… I mean when was the last time you ran down a hallway with joy for a new gift?

Somewhere down the line, we forget to show appreciation for the simple things that we are entitled to every single day and at every single moment. Off the top of my head, here are some things I am appreciative of:

• For the time I spent with my dad while he was on this plane of life,
• For having a kind and loving mom who always shows me love,
• For my sister that no matter how far away she lives nor how busy she is, I can always call on her for advice or to joke around,
• For having access at all times to my mentors who help me with my personal and business life,
• For my friends who help me snap out of any stress and I count on in any situation.

The list could go on… but the most important part is that I carry this appreciation for the above all the time. They will never go away. Make a quick list of what your appreciative for… how does it feel… how will it feel tomorrow, next week, next month? My bet is it the same.

To be open, a lot of times I feel my thoughts going everywhere and get to tied up in my mind. Sometimes it is best to slow down, quiet the mind, and just be appreciative of all the good the Universe has provided.

As I continue down the path of becoming an entrepreneur, one of the biggest obstacles that I have faced is trying to find the time to work on my entrepreneurial ventures, continuing to work at my present job,handling my personal life and health, etc. Here is a secret that I learned while trying to figure out how to manage everything… I can’t… and it’s OK. Throw time management out the door, because trying to stay “balanced” and attending to every single sector of your life is not worth it. Just focus on what you think is important at the present moment.

When I decided to start the voyage of becoming an entrepreneur so I can design my life, I thought I needed to have everything in working order. What I found I was trying to manage so many things the quality and value of my work began to slip. It was a blessing in disguise, because this simple realization came to me- time and energy are finite. There is only so much time and energy you can spend in a day. Yes, I do believe in vertical time and unlimited energy from our Source but in practical applications the human form can only do so much in a day. One development aspect of myself that I am working on is creating the space to allow things to come.

What does that mean?

By designing my life, I want to be able to focus my time and energy on the things that inspire me, allow me to be creative, and stretch how I think. In trying to learn the internet business industry, there are a lot of components I have no interest in learning (mostly from the tech side). What I want to focus my attention on is creating a business out of an idea, developing a network to test ideas out, writing, and developing products that serve a niche. It would take me a while to learn the tech side of the business, so in order to create space I outsourced it to people who loved doing it and did it as their profession. Outsourcing has created the space to allow me to use my strengths, expand my skill set, and do what I love doing.

Want to know something better? Because I created that space to focus on the side of business I love working on, I was able to learn the other side of the business I am not to savvy towards. Although I am not too sure how this happened, I have a pretty good guess- by creating the space to do the things I love doing, there were no negative energies suppressing my thoughts. When I have unobstructed thought, everything flows so naturally and I am able to see and feel about the steps I have to take to get my businesses moving. The only things I think about is how can I expand, grow, and provide quality. The rest of the things fall in place. Right now, my thoughts are energized in finding a way to create an automated business through the internet so I can create the time and space to allow me to experience a life I design and control.

Presently, my life is not the most balanced because I have thrown myself off balance to get my entrepreneurial ventures started. But who cares? I really don’t, because by focusing on the new business ventures I have been able to tap into a creative and driven side of myself that I haven’t felt in a while.

Keep your thoughts energized, passionate, and vibrant on what you love doing and find ways to minimize your involvement (both mental and physical) in the things you don’t like doing. I challenge you to find ways to delegate your tasks so you can be hyper focused on manifesting your dreams and seeking the life you want to live…

“Life is like an ocean. You can never feel its true power until you are drowning in it.”—George Jung

This is a follow up post to What Are You Passionate About- Part I.

A good definition of passion I found from Webster’s Dictionary is “ardent affection”.

When I think of passion, I think of emotion. An emotion that is so strong and intense it is part of your core being. The recognition of what you believe is truth found in something external. You can be passionate about your soul mate, work, sports, hobbies… the list can goes on. But I think if you break it down, there is a common element in whatever your passionate about that can not be described except you know it’s a fundamental truth that is aligned with your inner being.

But that answer for me is to esoteric for me. I believe passion is rooted in a fundamental singular concept- love for life. That’s it. If you have ever spoken to someone about their passion, you’ll see there eyes light up, they get more energized- you can feel them, and then they start talking a thousand miles per hour because they are so excited that they are thinking faster than they can get the words out. Why does this happen? I believe it is because whatever passion that person has, it encompasses their whole being- every single aspect of who they are. That is why passion mutates and is able to identify itself with different things and concepts… but at its core, passion has the same roots.

The core of passion is not individualistic. Everyone shares the same Eternal Source of passion… love. Think about the greatest men and women to grace the Earth. Each one had a different passion, but if you examine it they had a strong love for their life, their existence. They realized they had the ability to create and design a lifestyle based on their love. They were a medium to express love through their passions.

Right now, I am in a period of finding what drives me. What inspires me to such a great extent that I embrace around it.

A few years back, a mentor had me write a list of 100 things of what I wanted to do in my lifetime. A couple of months ago I redid the list determined to find inspiration through experience and discover what I am passionate about. The list has now become my personal bucket list and is constantly in the works.

Accomplishing things off the list is an amazing experience, but its not what the list is about. You’ll find if you try the exercise that you have some goals and experiences that will be outrageous to yourself. You’ll begin to question how you will be able to attain these desires. When writing my bucket list, it was pretty fun and exciting but I admit somewhat frustrating because I did not know where to begin to start taking it down.

My bucket list-

On a recent trip to Sweden (check one of the bucket list , I brought the list with me and sat down at a desk and reviewed it. Then I had this realization- ultimately, the goal is not about crossing off every single item. Some things will change, removed, or added throughout time. The goal of the list is to see how far you can stretch yourself to become the person you want to become. Each and every single item on that list has a reason and purpose related to the person you are and want to be. Any doubt or frustration (like I encountered when drafting it) means you are not the person you want to become…. yet.

So I started meditating over the list and did some deep thinking and a shift occurred in me. I am entitled to design my life. I analyzed the belief systems that made me feel frustrated when writing the list and realized the basis for those limiting beliefs were rooted in fear. It is ridiculous- living in fear. And then I had a paradigm shift, where I started letting those limiting beliefs go? How do you let go of those limiting beliefs? Eckhart Tolle put it best in “The Power of Now”- how do you let go of a burning piece of coal? You just let go.

Fear, anxiety, worry… whatever you want to call it is not real. You create it. I made the decision to let these limiting beliefs come into my mind somehow… and I am now making the decision to eliminate these limiting belief.

Everyone is entitled to live a life of passion, everyone is entitled to love their life… what are the beliefs that are holding you back?

This is going to be a quick post as I do not have time to elaborate. I was having a discussion with one of my best friends last night who was asking me about my decision to leave my job and jump into business on the internet. Here is the statement that I have been thinking about:

“You have to have something to be passionate about.”

So I pose this question… is it really necessary to have something concrete to be passionate about or is it possible to be passionate about not knowing what you want (yet) and being passionate about the process of finding what you want out of life. All who wander are not lost… more to come.

“The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours- it is an amazing journey- an you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.” –Bob Moawad

A few months ago I made the ultimate decision to leave my job. Correction, I made the decision to leave everything I had trained myself to do career wise.

However, during my tenure at my position something inside of me changed. I grew tired of working for other people, disheartened by how people acted in my industry, and most importantly deferring the life I wanted to live all in the pursuit of chasing money. An entrepreneurial spirit emerged and I listened to my instinct and followed it.

The catalyst for me leaving was my father passing away unexpectedly and so suddenly. The 24 years I spent with him on this plane of life seemed so short and regretted the time I could have spent with him but didn’t. While I think about it everyday, my dad’s ascension into pure spirit was one of the Universe’s biggest lessons to me- The only axiom of mortal life that hold’s true is that you will die. It’s a morbidly beautiful truth. So what is the point of waiting? Our time here is so short and we take life for granted like we will live forever. That tomorrow, next week, next year will give us the big opportunity to LIVE like we wanted to. It’s all a creation of your mind that traditional educational systems, the media, and societal conditioning has helped foster. They teach a linear lifestyle where if you go to school (A), then get a job (B), save up some money (C) you get to do what you want to do (D): A+B+C=D. The equation should be called slow death. In order to live an extraordinary life, you have to think, believe, and act way above the ordinary.  

A few months after my dad passed away I took a trip to Bermuda where I met up with some old college buddies and had time to do some serious thinking. It was there I finished reading a book called, “Harmonic Wealth” by James Arthur Ray where a message hit me deep inside: In order to manifest the lifestyle I want to live, I had to become the person entitled that lifestyle. I remember sitting on the beach alone, looking out towards the clear blue ocean and thinking to myself: “What am I waiting for? Do I work my ass off in a high stress environment so I can take a one and a half week vacation and experience this just to go back to an office.” So the deeper question became, who would I have to become and what would I have to do to create the lifestyle of my dreams? I had read too much, listened to too many audio programs, made too many lists, and thought too much on what I should or shouldn’t be doing. While it is important to learn and plan, knowledge without action is worthless. The gift of life experience my mentors, family, and friends gave me were useless. All the knowledge I gained from college, internships, books, audio programs, DVDs meant nothing. They all meant nothing because I put no action behind it.  

I came back State side inspired by wanting to change- mentally, spiritually, and physically. I started taking massive action- hired a personal trainer, incorporated my own business, found a therapist, sought out alternative health practitioners. For a few months, I stopped reading and listening to audio programs and even took a break from listening to the news. I just followed my intuition of what I felt was right. Most importantly, I took full responsibility for my present condition. I accepted responsibility all the stress, all my anger, all my pain in how disappointed I was in my life was my fault. I stopped blaming others and situations. I embraced what the present moment offered me and recognized the same moment which offers pain and anger can also offer change. It was only me who stood in the way of changing my condition.

Somewhere along the line I found Tim Ferris’ “The Four Hour Work Week”. It blew my mind of what was possible and how things should be. I tried implementing it immediately in my work life, but it wasn’t meant to be. So I had to make the ultimate decision, (A) continue to work, chase the money, and defer my life so I can do the things I want later on or (B) create something that would support the experiences I wanted to bring into my life. It was a tough decision and I consulted mentors, family, and friends on it. In the end I chose the latter option- even though some of the people I respect the most told me to go with Option A. I’ve now partnered with a long time mentor and now business partner to find out a way to make Option B work. I plan on using this as a vehicle to help document what works and what doesn’t and more importantly help others learn along the way.

If I was 30 I don’t think I honestly could have made this decision. I’d be too invested in my career not to be able to step away. I’m blessed to have this opportunity, to unplug and reset.