To get at the truth of your calling, you have to crack open that false self and see what lies within. – Justine Musk

Digging into the depths of your soul to find the REAL you is something that many people avoid because they’re absolutely terrified of what they might find. In the depths there are our dark parts, imperfections, flaws,  and inadequacies.

But that’s also where the things that make you unmistakable, and unforgettable lie.

• It’s the part of you that’s capable of making dents in the universe
• It’s the part of you that’s capable of pursuing a wild eyed dream
• It’s the part of you that can create art for the sake of art. 
• It’s the part of you that can experience the purest form of joy

But this kind of self exploration is not encouraged. There’s no system designed for it. The closest to thing to it is a mid life crisis followed by years therapy. That’s if  you arelucky. Otherwise you go to the grave with your music still in you, wondering about all the things you wish you had done.

I had a conversation a few months ago with a kid who quit going to school when he was roughly 12 years old. The most interesting thing he said to me when I asked him about designing is curriculum is that he never chose any of the things he wanted to learn based on their external value.  And yet almost everything we choose to learn is based on the external value it might give us.

• I took a semester of Japanese in college because in the movies guys who could speak it had corner offices and wore nice suits. One semester and I couldn’t hack it. 
• I took a semester of computer science at Berkeley because computer science grads were in hot demand and it was the dot com boom. They got to this concept called recursion, my head almost exploded, and I dropped the class before I got an F. 

The only reason I took those is because my first attempt at majoring in something for its external value, getting into the undergrad business program, was a failure.

I see it in the online world too. People want to learn how to do something not because of the joy it might bring to their lives, but because of the external accolades: traffic, book deals, and more clients.  I love what Jaimal Yogis told me in an interview about the need for a renaissance man/woman. You’ve got all these things you could be learning and maybe you could become the most interesting person in the world… (but don’t do it for that label). When I start most of my projects it’s because of the sense of fulfillment they bring to me.

Nobody had ever said “why not just study something you’re interested in?” In my life I’ve met very few people who actually use their college degrees. Engineers, and computer scientists maybe the only ones.  The rest went to law school (I’m kidding…kind of). Apparently on the first day of law school professors ask “how many of you are here because you don’t know what else to do with your life?” Most people raise their hands.

Most job interviews are bullshit. People put on an act. They tell people what they think they should and they scratch their heads wondering how they ended up in a job they hate. How about saying “you know I think I would really hate doing this. I’m probably not the right person for this.”

Easier said than done. I get it. THe lights must be kept up on and the bills have to be paid. So, then you create your art in your spare time. I promise you that building something with your own two hands, even a lego castle will be one of the most rewarding things you can do in adult life.  I heard the other day that child development specialists encourage hobbies. I thinks we might need adult development specialists (is there even such a thing?)

My friend Shannon told me her daughter was going to college and she asked if my I would advise my 18 year old self not to go. My answer surprised me. At the time we didn’t have the world we do at our disposal. I had two pieces of advice “Be open and study abroad.”

No five year plan

No straight and narrow path

Just open to possibilities, and what might come from being an explorer of the world instead of trying to be a  pre-insert career aspiration of your choice (well is it even your choice or one that was a byproduct of your social programming?).

And with rare exception you find it a young age. My sister did at a very young age. I can see it in her eyes when she talks about the work she does. I can hear it in her voice. The theatrics of what go on in a hospital are conveyed like an episode of Grey’s Anatomy and people sit around a living room listening to her stories. It’s clear this is a calling, not a job.  Lucky for her the pay is pretty decent too.

I got a book in the mail yesterday called The First 20 Hours: Mastering the Toughest Part of Learning Anything. A few thoughts ran through my head:

• I should learn Spanish or Portuguese so I can flirt with hot Brazilian girls or other South American girls on my year long surf trip. Damn it that’s not the point of this book and I’ve become hypocrite.   
• I should learn guitar so I can serenade some girl with my new found musical abilities. Ok, seriously I need to find some skill I can learn that doesn’t involve impressing some girl. The one time I tried to do that when I was surfing I busted an eardrum and my board hit me in the head. To make matters worse the girl in the water never even saw my epic injury and I was out of the water for 10 days. 

All this is ego based learning. So what do you choose to learn? Something that you’d enjoy doing even if you’re not good at it.

I’ve always been a writer, but not a great one.

• I wrote when I was in high school
• When I graduated from college, I wrote a 63 page autobiography. I wrote in 8 days. 
• I wrote a 40 page story about my first startup. It was some of my best work. I had nowhere to share it, so I emailed it to a few friends. And now that story has come full circle 10 years later. 
• The worst writing I ever did was my admission essays for business school. I hired an admission consultant t and paid him $5000.00. I might as well have titled the essays “The Bullshit Version of Who I Am.” 

I don’t even know why I wrote in the early days. There were no blogs then. There was nobody to read  my work. But I did it anyways.  So that returns us to one simple point.

style="color: #ff6600;">What would you choose to learn if there were no external rewards? What would you choose to learn if the only reward was a sense of self fulfillment. That’s where the ego disappears, art gets created, and callings are found.  

• Day 15: Feel The Fear And Embrace It Or Tell It Where To Go
• Things I Learned in 2012 That I Never Learned in School
• Day 13: How Facing Your Fears Can Change Your Life.
• Day 18: On Becoming Fear-Aware
• How to Really Learn From Failure

My friend Torre De Roche, met a man fell in love, and sailed the world with him even though there was a chance of drowning. Her book comes out this week, so be sure to check it out.

Equal parts love story and travel memoir,  href="http://www.amazon.com/Love-Chance-Drowning-Torre-DeRoche/dp/1401341950">Love with a Chance of Drowning is witty, charming, and proof positive that there are some risks worth taking.

I like the water because it’s quiet. The mental chatter in my head stops. The voice  in my head shuts up. I get to experience the real me instead of the voice that pretends to be me. It’s one of the rare times I don’t mind being completely alone.

When you see the world through the lens of waves, everything seems much clearer. 

The future seems brighter

The past seems to get washed away

You get to experience what it truly means to be present. 

I haven’t been in the water since last Sunday, the waves are shit, and the voice in my head is getting restless with it’s endless commentary about all my shortcomings, downfalls, and failures.  I surf because it all goes away when I’m in the water.

A few years ago I was standing on the shore at Playa Madeiras  in Nicargua with a surfboard in hand. I turned to my friend and said “dude, this looks pretty big. But I guess   we’re already here.” I didn’t just step outside of my comfort zone, I drove across it at 100 miles an hour.  I always said that surfing in Central America was like a constant balance between courage and stupidity. For me to get in the water that day was just stupid.

I had never surfed waves like that, and I wasn’t skilled enough to surf them. The day before had been one of the most challenging days I’d ever had in the water even though I managed to snag a couple waves.  But, something made me get in the water despite knowing I might not make it out.

Maybe it was the fact that I had finally been excommunicated from corporate America a few days before. I received one of those emails from my boss that said “can you give me call.” I knew I was going to be fired. If I drowned it would finally be over. At least I’d never be fired again.

Despite my better judgment, I paddled out. I don’t even remember how the hell I made it to the outside with the waves as big as they were. Over the next several hours my frustration increased because I watched every other surfer take off on wave after wave. It’s an interesting thing because we do this in life.

We watch people around us succeed catching one perfect wave after another, and think “how the hell is it I can’t even get one?”  But if we’re too busy watching other people catch waves, we won’t be ready when it’s time to take off on ours.

The waves seemed to keep getting bigger and breaking even further out. I had to keep reminding myself “don’t panic or you won’t be able to paddle.” Every set was a scramble not to get caught inside. Live in the moment but keep your eyes on the horizon was the mantra of that entire session. My job that I had been fired from seemed to matter less between every set as I contemplated the possibility of being washed up on shore. At least a friend from LA was visiting so he could inform my friends and parents everything that had gone wrong. He was smart enough to sit on the shore and drink a beer after the day before

And then I saw it in the distance. A gargantuan set was about to start. Every surfer in the water paddled as if we had now entered a race in which there was a prize for getting to the take off point. The prize was not getting your ass handed to you by the ocean in one of her biggest mood swings of the day. My arms were like jello and my muscles were burning  as I paddled like hell.  And then  I heard something. A guy to the left of me yelled “oh shit.” I figured that I had just escaped being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he was the one who had escaped. The “oh shit” was meant for me and if he had time he would have said “hey dude, you’re about to get your ass handed to you.”  All the love I’ve ever had for the ocean was about to be returned with complete indifference. I was in the impact zone of the biggest waves I’d ever seen

In moments like that there is no time. All your most primal instincts kick in.  You go from worrying about all the pointless shit in your life to really experiencing what it means to be present.  In the movies when people die, their life flashes before their eyes  in a marvelous tapestry of scenes experiences, memories, and pictures. This was the closest I’ve ever been to thinking I was going to die, and my life didn’t flash before my eyes.

And there I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. These were my options

1. Let the board go: If the leash snapped, I’d be completely screwed because we we really far off shore and I’d have to swim out of this mess. 
2. Duck Dive: There was no way that was going to happen since the board would hit me in the face. 
3.  Hang on to the board and pray that it didn’t whack me in the head.  

My primal instinct settled on option 3 and I got to experience what it must feel like to be inside a washing machine.

The wave dragged me under water, and I was no longer on my board even though I felt  it attached to my foot. I covered my head with my arms so I wouldn’t get hit by the board. Eventually I came up for a breath of air, and because this was the first wave in the set, there were more coming. I took a breath and the next washing machine cycle started. It felt like I was being dragged across an underwater football field where the shore was the end zone.

And in the last cycle of the washing machine I felt my rashguard get ripped off my body.  The ocean had decided she needed to undress me to show me that she always has the upper hand… And then she was finished, bored, and ready to move on to another lover and tossed me on shore.

My friend Tobias was looking at me with his beer in hand and said “dude, what happened to your rash guard?”

I said “it’s in the water, give me a beer. I think I’m done surfing for a while.” 

Two days later all I could think about was getting back in the water. And I returned to Tamarindo and did exactly that.

Sometimes you get caught inside, you end up in the impact zone, and you take a beating. This happens in life and surfing.  But if you want to surf, you have to get back in the water, live in the moment and keep your eyes on the horizon. Sometimes you fall in love even when there’s a chance of drowning.

• The View from the Water
• 30 Days to Mastering Your Fears: Leaving Fear At Shore
• Day 4: Put a leash on fear and ride it to success
• How to Grow 10 Feet Taller In the Next Year
• Day 14: 4 Practical Tips for Overcoming Fear

Sometimes our search for adventure lets us down.  It doesn’t Iive up to our expectations or the pictures in our mind. My recent search for adventure and waves during a journey to Santa Teresa initially let me down.

When my shuttle dropped me off I felt like I was in the middle of nowhere.

The first hostel I checked out resembled a meth lab more than a hostel. It got robbed that evening. Luckily I didn’t stay there.

I wandered up and down the streets in the scorching sun in search of a hostel that didn’t resemble a meth lab.

I found one, but it felt a bit more like an outdoor camp ground with a lodge and Indian people don’t really camp. Even when our surf club here does camping trips, I show up in the morning for the surf.  Despite my taste for adventure I happen to think Christian Lander was spot on when he said camping is for white people.  But I stayed at the hostel. It was fairly dead.

The evening surf session didn’t make things much better. I didn’t catch a single wave and I started to question my decision to visit Santa Teresa. Then I found myself so dehydrated that I got dizzy and went to sleep at 7:00pm.

The next day I checked out of the hostel with plans to find a less “rustic” place. When I arrived things were already starting to look up. A clear social scene with people from around the world and even a girl from California made me think this might not have been a waste after all.

I spent some time talking to the Argentinian guy at the reception desk. I asked him about taking a shuttle the next day. He suggested that I stay one more day because I might actually catch some good waves and the hostel was cool.  But what really struck me was something he told me “You came all this way. You might as well leave here with a smile.”

So I decided to stay the extra day. In the evening session on my second night I caught some incredible waves. Just thinking about them makes me glow. After that session, I knew I could leave with a smile.

Take a look at the situations and experiences that you end up in. Obviously there are going to be many situations that you could never leave with a smile.  But those are few and far between. You don’t have to take life so damn seriously. You might as well leave with a smile because that’s how you href="http://theskooloflife.com/wordpress/ending-on-a-high-note/"> end on a high note.

• The View from the Water
• 30 Days to Mastering Your Fears: Leaving Fear At Shore
• Stop Acting your Age and Embrace Your Inner Misfit
• Sometimes You Fall in Love, Even When There’s a Chance of Drowning
• Check out these online sources for job listings

I get quite a few books in the mail and I read one book every week. It’s one of the things that will cause you to grow 10 feet taller ever year.  Do it and you’ll be ann old, wise giant by the end of your life.  A few weeks ago I received a really interesting book called  The Power of Starting something Stupid. Just in case you didn’t know, this blog was the byproduct of a stupid idea for a web site to help me find a job.  The blog was called 100 Reasons You Should Hire Me. I couldn’t come up with 100 reasons anybody should hire me, so that site bombed and eventually The Skool of Life was born.

Speaking of which? I’m guessing there’s something you’ve been putting off. Most of us usually are. I’ve used the fact that I live at home to put off just about every part of my life other than building my business and finding a way out of here. In the midst of all that I lost sight of the importance of having some fun. I’d been putting off any attempt to travel so that I could keep inflating my bank balance. But the other day I saw an important reminder on Chris Guillebeau’s blog that life is for spending. I realized I had been setting aside a travel fund of $50/month for the last 3 years.  The point of that money was to use it for a vacation. So I finally sacked up and booked a ticket back to Costa Rica to do some surfing.  I’m still alive  and kicking. It didn’t give me a heart attack and I’ve been enjoying the warm water and nice waves.

Tomorrow is not promised to any of us even though we act like it is. We simply don’t know what’s going to happen. Life is precious. Time is the most valuable asset at your disposal.  For the most part we’re brought up on a deferred life plan:

• style="font-size: 13px;">Go to school
• style="font-size: 13px;">Get a job
• style="font-size: 13px;">Get promoted
• style="font-size: 13px;">Go back to school
• style="font-size: 13px;">Get a  better job
• style="font-size: 13px;">Make more money
• style="font-size: 13px;">Retire
• style="font-size: 13px;">Work on the Crazy Wild Eyed Dream style="font-size: 13px;"> 

But let’s not forget there are factors at work here that are out of your control.  style="font-size: 13px;"> 

You might be a bit too old to surf every coastline in the world when you’re 80. Not only that, you might get laid a little less on the trip. What fun would that be?

Your health may not be what it is right now. Ever since I was diagnosed with IBS in my 20′s I realized that health is a precious gift that too many of us squander.

My grandfather died a fairly wealthy man. But he hardly lived a day in his life. He never ate in hotels because he thought the food would make him sick.  He hardly ever traveled from what I remember.  When he was in his 80′s he broke his hip and things went downhill from there.  He was on a deferred life plan and eventually the plan expired.  style="font-size: 13px;"> 

Sometimes I wonder if Indian people are on a deferred life plan because they believe in reincarnation. But then I wondered “what if you come back as an ant in your next life?” It will have been all for nothing. It doesn’t make sense to me to put off living this life to the fullest, in hopes that you’ll have a better one on the next go round.

Some people simply live this way. They wait forever to do that thing they’ve been wanting to do. My friend Maria wrote a somewhat tragic post about her accountant who had been putting off her big dreams until someday.  Someday came and instead of going on the trip, or starting the pursuit of a crazy wild eyed dream, she got cancer. Who would have guessed that?

This might sound morbid, but one day you’re going to die

Are you going to look back at your life and think you should have added more accolades to your resume?

Are you going to wish that you had bought more useless crap that didn’t provide any real fulfillment?  style="font-size: 13px;"> 

Are you going to lie on your deathbed thinking “I wish had bought a bigger house”?

Are you going to think, I wish I hadn’t started that stupid project?

There are so many href="http://theskooloflife.com/wordpress/7-things-that-wont-be-mentioned-in-your-eulogy/">things that won’t go in your eulogy, but we live life as if they will.

I can’t fathom the idea of ordinary, average or settling. As painful as it has been at times to deal with the critics, the people who doubt me, and the people who judge me, living live according to their rules, and their expectations has never resulted in anything fantastic. The outcomes are average at best, mediocre and catastrophic at their worst. This is where so much good advice leads many people. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. style="font-size: 13px;"> 

• Day 2: The Fear of Mediocrity
• Making Each Day Your Masterpiece
• Why a False Start is Better Than Standing Still
• The Worst Case Scenario is You’ll be Better off for Having Done It
• Day 19: Overcome Fear by Thinking What’s the Best That Could Happen