~Jeff Bezos – Founder & CEO of Amazon speaking to the class of 2010 at Princeton (read the entire address here)

P.S. Enjoy the weekend.

Thank you for reading what I’ve had to say over the past few months.

Thank you for leaving comments.

Thank you for sharing my thoughts and ideas on Facebook and/or Twitter.

Thanks so much.

P.S. Feel free to continue to conversation with me via eMail. I always respond to all emails. You can contact me here. If you have any comments, suggestions, requests, or just want to chat, send me an email.

The cottage was absolutely stunning even with its lack of hydro, hot showers, flushing toilets, and massive swarms of killer mosquitos.

I thought about this blog post during our final moments of relaxation this morning while sitting on the dock waiting for a boat to take us back to civilization.

When I say go away, I don’t mean it in a rude way. Instead, I just want you to take a vacation.

And I don’t mean a tour. A tour is what happens when you’re on a bus or a cruise ship. I also don’t mean trying to see six European countries in 10 days –  that’s just a collection of  snapshots. I mean a real vacation.

No plans. No advanced tickets. No reservations. No Rick Steve’s travel books.

The type of vacation I’m talking about can happen in your backyard. It can happen on your lunch break. It can happen this weekend. And it’s relatively affordable. And while a pristine Northern Ontario cottage helps, it’s not absolutely crucial.

Most people use vacations to escape from work, and end up bringing the stress of work with them. I used to be as guilty as the next guy. I’m talking about a different type of getaway.

Here’s the itinerary.

Find a spot/time/place where you can allow your mind to truly reflect on your future goals. Don’t dwell on the past. Learn from the past, but let it go. Stressing about the past is  simply wasted energy.

Attempt to gain some perspective and clarity around your goals and future plans. Search and strive for pure relaxation. Let everything else go. Simply focus on where you want to go…and aim yourself in that direction. (personal or business)

These vacations can be short and sweet, or they can be long and extended. Spread them out and take them often.

It’s those moments when you’re most likely to have a major breakthrough. It’s those moments where the real magic is going to happen. It’s those moments you’re going to solve that problem that’s been driving you crazy, or come up with that new idea you’ve been searching for.

That’s a vacation.

Go.

We’re adults now. We know everything we need to know. Why would I need any help? I’ve put in my time.

Coaching? Why would I need a coach?

This of course, brings up the obvious question, why do sports teams need to be coached?

After all, these are guys and girls that have played the sport their entire lives, they’ve reached the pinnacle of success – the pro-leagues, - and yet they are still constantly under the wings of professional coaches and leadership.

Of course teams are different from individuals, right?

But…

Why would Lance Armstrong need a coach to improve his cycling?

Why would the manager need a coach to improve his management skills?

Why would the brain surgeon need coaching on learning new brain surgery techniques?

But us regular folk – we’re beyond that, right? We finished school. We got our degrees. We got drafted into the real world. We’re pros now.

But we’re driven by our egos. We believe it’s easier to look strong, stand up tall, and put on a smiley face, than it is to resort to asking for help.

Seeking help has been typecast in our society as a sign of weakness. We’ve gone and made it almost embarrassing. We’d rather just muster on and try to do it ourselves.

Before Tiger’s “issues,” he was often used as an example by coaches about the importance of continued coaching and training. Tiger is adamant about constantly improving his skills. He was never beyond learning from his coach. He could always learn from his coach, or even other golfers. Tiger was known to practice for hours and literally BEG for his coach to point out an issue with his swing, or his stance, or his grip.

He obviously could have used coaching beyond his sport, but that’s beyond this post

Here’s my take on it.

When you’re willing to accept that there IS a lot more to learn, you can drastically improve your skills. A coach can actually teach you something, or point out your flaws or help you with where to focus your  practice time. That’s when you’ve entered the professional league.

Seeking help, guidance, and new knowledge to become bigger, stronger, faster, is the ultimate sign of strength. The real pros always know there is someone better out there who can teach them a thing or two.

So ask yourself, what league are you in? Pick one.

The Pros or  the Amateurs?

You’ve gone to Google and typed in “How to quit smoking“.

If you’re overweight, you’ve probably done a search for “how to lose weight“.

There’s a simple little trick to ensuring your success when it comes to “how to do something.”

The trick is this:

It’s realizing that it really has nothing to do with the HOW you do it, it has everything to do with the WANT to do it.

How to = Hoping someone externally will tell you how to do it. We’re willing to spend money on this. Usually we’re hoping the how is quick, easy, pain-free, and fast. This is the reason the world will never have a shortage of “how to” products and diet pills.

Want to = Internal motivation. This is the force inside you. Think Star Wars.

Stop looking for the “how.”

When you truly want to quit smoking, or change a habit, it’s easy.

Yup, I said it. It’s easy.

Question: How do you quit smoking?

Answer: You stop smoking, if you want to. Your internal strength is stronger than the addiction. It comes down to want.

The desire, the thirst, the inspiration, the motivation, all come from deep down within. It’s not about finding a method, or buying another information product, or paying for hypnosis. It’s all about getting that desire’s temperature up to a boiling point. When it reaches the boiling point and you truly “want” to quit, the how part is easy.

When I sat down to write this post, there was one lesson that kept returning to my thoughts.

For as long as I can remember, my father has worked his ass off. I remember while growing up when he’d work the midnight shift, but still be awake the next day to be with the family.

Thirteen years ago, due to a strike and labor dispute, my father was forced to look for a new job. He found one a few hundred miles away. This meant packing up the family and moving away from the place where we’d been born and grew up.

He was our tribe leader. He led us into the unknown and asked us to trust him. It was a pivotal and life changing moment that I’m now extremely grateful to have happened.

I watch my father now and he’s still going. Sometimes I think he’s working harder now then ever before. His career now has him traveling a few times a week and putting in many long hours.

He loves what he does.

He’s one of the lucky ones. But my father has always had a strong entrepreneurial spirit bubbling up inside of him. He has always been cooking up new ideas on the side.

As an example, he told me about the potential of this thing called the “Internet” before most people had any idea what it was. He was building websites and brewing up ideas before I knew anything about the web.

When AOL spammed us with CDs offering “free internet,” he encouraged me to get on the computer and learn what it was all about. “This Internet thing is gonna be big!” he’d say.

After 30 years of watching my father working at his career, you’d think the message he would have taught me was to follow the path of least resistance.

Find a good career, work hard, plug away and aim for retirement, but feel free to dabble on the side.

But rather, my father has always suggested taking the entrepreneurial route.

He’d say things like,

“If you want a big paycheck someday, there’s only one true way of getting it. Make sure you’re writing it for yourself.”

Or,

“If you want a few extra weeks off when you get older, make sure you’re the one writing the schedule.”

The message was always the same. While school and a university education were seen as an extremely important part of the equation, my father always urged us to look at building a career for ourselves instead of allowing someone to build it for us.

It’s no surprise to me that both myself and my brother are now writing our own checks and setting our own vacation time.

As a soon-to-be father, I’ll be passing on a similar message to my kids.

The really cool thing about my dad is, he’s still planning a major ass-kicking even as he creeps closer to his retirement.

He has his fingers on all kinds of cool stuff. I make sure to keep tabs on him so I don’t miss the boat when he starts sailing off.

If you ask my father what his favorite books are, you’d hear titles like “The 4-Hour Work Week,” “Crush It,” and “Linchpin.”

He’s my Linchpin, and still crushing it after all these years.

That’s me on the left in the green. My brother Wes on the right. Dad in the middle.

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P.S. Here’s something new and a simple request from you.

If you like this post, or know someone who might benefit from reading what I’m saying, please pass it along. You can easily do so by using the buttons below.

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If you agree, disagree, or have something to say about this post, please leave a comment.

Thanks,
Noah

If your boss is upset, tell him I gave you permission. Go ahead. You can leave now.

I punched out ten minutes ago.

And if you absolutely can’t physically leave your place of employment, I’m giving you permission to mentally check out of your daily job early today.

Go ahead. Close your email. Log off of Twitter. Shut off your computer. Turn out the lights. We don’t want any more interruptions.

Excited?

Bummer, because I’m going to need you to come back to work. I’m going to need you to come back to your real job.

Your real job is the rest of your life. Your real job is the next five, ten, twenty years of your actual life. Your real job is not the place where you go between the hours of 9 a.m and 5 p.m.

Here’s your duties for the rest afternoon:

Dream about the next five years of your real job.
Fantasize about the next five years of your real job.
Plan the next five years of your real job.
Set goals for the next five years of your real job.
Figure out how to achieve these goals, dreams, and desires over the next five years of your real job.

I need all of this done before 5 p.m. Oh, and I’m going to need you to work on the weekend too, because we need you to start implementing this immediately.

It’s already late. We need you to make this your top priority.

I know – I’m terribly sorry. I know you wanted to watch Dateline tonight, but I really need you to get started on this immediately.

Here’s the story:

After reading the passage, please take a moment to read my questions below.

Throughout the Tour de France, a Colombian rider on the Kelme – Costa Blanca Team, Santiago Botero, has been keeping a diary in a newspaper. Each day the newspaper published his diary from the previous day. Unfortunately, the only diary entry I have seen appeared in this past Sunday’s edition, however, it was worth the read.

“There I am all alone with my bike. I know of only two riders ahead of me as I near the end of the second climb on, what most riders consider, the third worst mountain stage on the tour. I say ‘most riders’ because I do not fear mountains.

After all, our country has nothing but mountains. I train year-round in the mountains. I am the national champion from a country that has nothing but mountains. I trail only my teammate, Fernando Escartin, and a Swiss rider. Pantani, one of my rival climbers, and the Gringo Armstrong are in the Peleton about five minutes behind me. I am climbing on such a steep portion of the mountain that if I were to stop pedaling, I would fall backward. Even for a world-class climber, this is a painful and slow process. I am in my upright position pedaling at a steady pace. I’m willing myself to finish this climb so I can conserve my energy for the final climb of the day. The Kelme team leader radios to me that the Gringo has left the Peleton by himself and that they can no longer see him.

I recall thinking ‘the Gringo cannot catch me by himself‘. A short time later, I hear the gears on another bicycle. Within seconds, the Gringo is next to me – riding in the seated position, smiling at me. He was only next to me for a few seconds and he said nothing – he only smiled and then proceeded up the mountain as if he were pedaling downhill. For the next several minutes, I could only think of one thing – his smile. His smile told me everything. I kept thinking that surely he is in as much agony as I am. Hopefully he is struggling up the mountain as much as I am, and he only sat down to pass me to discourage me. He can’t be playing games with me. Not possible. The truth is that his smile said everything that his lips did not. His smile said to me, “I was training while you were sleeping, Santiago”. It also said, “I won this tour four months ago, while you were deciding what bike frame to use in the tour. I trained harder than you did, Santiago. I don’t know if I am better than you, but I have outworked you and right now, you cannot do anything about it. Enjoy your ride, Santiago. See you in Paris.”

Obviously, the Gringo did not state any of this, but his smile did dispel a bad rumor among the riders on the tour. The rumor that surfaced as we began the Prologue several days ago told us that the Gringo had gotten soft. His wife had given birth to his first child, and he had won the most difficult race in the world.  He had no desire to race or to win. I imagine that his smile turned to laughter once he was far enough away not to embarrass me. The Gringo has class, but if he heard the rumors, he probably laughed all the way to Paris. He is a great champion. I must train harder. I am not content to be just a great climber. I want to be the best.

I learned much from the Gringo while climbing the mountains. I will never forget the helpless feeling I had yesterday. If I ever become an international champion, I will always remember the lesson the Gringo taught me.

The original post and story can be found here.

Here are some questions for you to think about:

How are you training in your life?

Are you training hard enough?

Are you focusing on the right areas of self-improvement? Is it sufficient to be really good at one skill, but lacking in others?

As a business owner, do you believe you’re unbeatable in certain areas of your business? Are you working to improve the weaker areas?

And if you’re not, are you prepared to let the Gringo pass you?

Of course, there’s always a flip-side to these posts….

Instead of training to avoid being passed, you could train to be the smiling Gringo.

You were on the path a few minutes ago, it was as clear as day. And now, you’re alone and lost in the woods.

Everything was going smoothly and the tracks of others before you had left a clear-cut path you could follow. Suddenly, it’s not so clear anymore.

This way looks like the path…That way looks like the path…

This is the moment where you’ve got to make a decision.

1) You could take a wild guess and continue on without really thinking about it.

2) You could re-trace your steps, moving backwards, and try to find out where or what went wrong.

3) You could give up, sit down, and avoid making any type of decision at all. This is what your lizard brain would prefer.

Of course, there’s always another option. Sometimes I think this one is the best because, quite frankly, paths are never as clear-cut as we want them to be.

You could rely on the tools you already possess to guide you.

If you have a compass, and if you know you should be headed north, go north.

You might recall a prior learning experience. Maybe it was something you read in a book. Maybe it was something a great teacher once taught you. Recall the training you already possess to guide your decision.

You might trust your gut instinct that is pushing you towards a certain direction

Many times by using the tools we have, such as past learning experiences, or raw gut instinct, we often end up making the right decision. It’s when we keep pushing through and go a little further, we find ourselfs back on the right path. Suddenly, we’re back on track.

Or you could fail miserably. You could make the wrong choice all together. You could spend hours heading the wrong way only to realize you made the wrong decision.You might have to turn around and come back. You might not even make it out alive, so to speak. You’ve  experienced total failure. The tools didn’t perform at the moment they were needed most. The thing your teacher taught you, or you read in a book, turned out to be wrong. Your gut instinct was wrong.

But at least you tried. That’s what matters.

Being named Noah in 1980 meant my parents were on the cutting edge of coolness. The name was still largely reserved for the ultra-religious families, but it was starting to make the transition to the side of cool. The name hadn’t yet reached the ultra-mainstream popularity it has now.

My parents are religious people and I’m sure I was named Noah for religious reasons. I still think they were going for the coolness factor.

Growing up, I bore the brunt of all-things-religious jokes. Some people would call me Moses. People would constantly ask where the Ark was or if and when the flood was coming.

Anyone named Noah knows that the “Ark” jokes will never end.

Throughout my life, I’ve also received countless “Noah’s Ark” theme related gifts. I guess we like to associate people and their names with other people sharing the same name.

The funny thing is, the story of Noah’s Ark has always resonated with me personally.

And now, many years later, I’m actually building an Ark. Seriously, it’s true. And I’m working on my Ark as we speak.

Each day when I write this blog, I feel like I’m adding to the construction of my Ark. Cut a few boards, hammer a couple of nails, do a little work on the interior; it’s coming along rather nicely if I may say so myself.

The act of blogging for me is a personal one and part of my daily Ark construction duties. It’s been enlightening, over the past few months, to strike up a routine of blogging on a daily basis. It’s changed both my life, future outlook, and my mental clarity tremendously.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s often a struggle. Each day, the lizard rears his ugly head and I engage in a brief struggle. Usually, I can overcome. If I get the lizard pinned down, then sometimes I’ll write two or three posts in one sitting.

And even though I’ve suggested that the act of blogging is a personal one, it’s also become my primary outlet for sharing things I’ve wanted to say about business, marketing, and entrepreneurship. These are the three things I’m extremely passionate about.

As of just a few months ago, I maintained both a personal blog and my corporate business website. That was the website that shared all the types of services my company of one had to offer. The corporate site is now gone, and that website’s domain name has been forwarded to this one.

My business card used to carry the information about my corporate business and it’s more professional name. Now, my card simply contains my name, a link to this blog, and my phone number.

I’ve stopped worrying about the endless pursuit of making more and more cash and to focus more on doing work that’s important and things that matter. I’m working on creating products and information that will inspire both people and businesses to grow and make positive changes.

There’s not room for everyone on my Ark, but there’s room for a few, if you want to hitch a ride..

And, if you’re not ready to climb on to my Ark because you’re still unsure about my construction abilities and worried there might be leaks, then for heavens-sake, start building your own Ark ASAP.

Don’t end up extinct like the dinosaurs.