Welcome to Chez Cliff!

It was the 2nd to the last day of the trip.  Our Croatian friend Matko had just shared one of his favorite swimming spots on one of the many islands that make up Croatia.  This swimming spot was actually an underwater cave: under-water in the sense that the entrance is underwater.  You dive down, swim through the opening, and emerge in an cave.  Getting into the cave was easy: the Adriatic practically pushed you into it.  Getting out was another story.

At first, I made good progress escaping the cave.  The tides and currents seemed to pause long enough for me to get away from the cave entrance.  But they came back, pushed me right back towards the mouth.  A few minutes of swimming had just been nullified by 5 seconds of under-current.

My upper-shoulders were completely exhausted from all the swimming we had done.  Fortunately the salt content of the Adriatic Sea is so high that it is nearly impossible to sink.  So I flipped over onto my back and started to use my legs.  I had a swim mask on thus I suddenly found myself completely shut off from everyone else who was swimming towards out boat.  In that isolation, my mind started wandering.

Never has an experience like this enraptured me so.  This entire vacation . . . no, expedition had exceeded all of my expectations.  I had seen beautiful country-sides, met fantastic and wonderful people; ate some of the best food.  To top it all off, I was with my best friends in the world who saw and experienced everything I had.

Then my mind went deeper.  I thought about all the things in life I had done, all the things I had accomplished.  Many times did I hear phrases such as “You’ll never amount to anything” or “You can’t do that.  That’s impossible.” only to have proven them all wrong time and time again.  It had also come full circle.  Those people don’t even register: if I want something, I get it.  If I want to do something, I do it.

And so what if I didn’t have millions of dollars sitting in my bank account.  So what if I’m not on the cover of Fortune magazine.  I’ve accomplished a lot, doing even more, and have bigger plans for the future.  But everything to date that I’ve done, I’m happy.  I’m content.

It was at that moment that I realized if something had happened and I were to suddenly drop from exhaustion or have a heart-attack and drown at least I would die knowing that I was truly happy and proud of my life and what I have done.

Sometimes you have to be impulsive.

My vacation is being extended by another week.  The country-side is beyond words.  Everything that everyone has said about Tuscany is true.  Believe it all.

For those of you in love with the movie “Under the Tuscan Sun” we visited Cortona.  Our timing couldn’t have been better for it rained and hailed, thus pinning us under the awnings outside the shops littering the medieval town.  The only thing we could do was sit on the curbs and drink red wine.

As I type this, we’re sitting in Bari which is along the west coast of Italy.  Somehow we’re going to get on a boat to take us to Dubrovnik.  Half of our crew insist Croatia is beautiful and we must go.  Ok!

I do have to say that while we were in Tuscany, the villa we were staying at didn’t have the advertised internet.  So we drove around, with my iPhone scanning away, until we found a free hotspot.  What a site we were: having four people parked in their car alongside the road of this old town of Monterchi and using our Macs.

I haven’t had a vacation in over a year and a half.  And I’m feeling it.

I’ll be back in a few weeks.  Check back from time to time whereas I’ll probably be writing about my experiences.  Travelling makes me do that. 

Number three on my list of Self Help books that actually helped me would be “The Four Hour Work Week”.

While the book may be chucked full of great information, only a few items actually stuck with me.

Concept 1:  Automate your life.

This is cool.

Keeping my life in Quadrant 2, everything was getting taken care of except those unforeseen emergencies which life throws at you.  But some tasks are about as fun as watching paint dry.  Those tasks, Tim argues, can be assigned to a personal assistant.  I did one better: I completely automated them.

The results are incredible.  No longer am  I spending time taking care of bills each month.  Everything is automated.

A side benefit to this was discovering I could cut down on the amount of paperwork coming to me.  I hate paperwork.  My accounts are now all tracked electronically, thus eliminating the time needed to file paperwork.

Concept 2:  Hire out to freelancers

I had never heard of eLance.com or Guru.com until I read his book.  Suddenly assigning out these little tasks that I had no idea how to do made sense.  You could pay via credit card and have people carrying out these designs.

Suddenly I realized I could spend more time managing my business rather than doing all the technical aspects of it.  Those technical duties suck up a lot of time simply because I’m not great at it.

This has created a great pool of resources that I can now draw on and get results within a matter of days.  Granted, most of my resources are located on the other side of the world.  But that’s ok: I use that to my advantage.

The second self-help book I read which had an impact on my life was

The Richest Man in Babylon

Even though this book existed for many moons, I never bothered to read it until my mentor verbally flogged me about it.  Then I read it.

Two concepts of this book reached me.

Concept 1:  Save 10% of your income, no matter what that income might be.

Yes, I also understand this tidbit of wisdom has been around for the longest time.  But it wasn’t until I read the book that I decided to truly act on it.

Before, my concept was to always have 3 months worth of living expenses saved up.  Now I just wanted to continually expand that number.  But it was hard to try and figure out how to cut 10% and stick it into a savings account when rents are coming in, paying mortgages, receiving paychecks . . . and that is when I figured out the Bread Crumb savings plan.  It’s still going strong, by the by.  A few months back, I increased the amount going into my money-market accounts.

Concept 2:  Lady Fortune favors those who take advantage of opportunities.

Sure some lucky person could win the lottery or inherit a large, wealthy estate.  For the other ninety-nine percent of us who achieved their personal desires and dreams did so by actively pursuing those ambitions.  I’m not talking about researching something to death but rather making something happen.

The more you are actively working on your dreams, the more opportunities will present themselves.

This is one of those undeniable truths I’ve discovered, since changing my direction all those years ago.