It’s three in the morning in Zadar, Croatia, as I write this. I’m awake in the middle of the night because of the jet lag.
My family just spent the last 24 hours on four flights from St. Louis to Washington DC to Zurich, to Zagreb to Zadar. We will spend three months here on the Dalmatian coast, living and exploring as a family.
I had to get up and write this because I was lying there, feeling the tears well up in my eyes with gratitude: my family is really tough. My 5 month-old, Axel, made it through all those flights and security lines and turbulence practically without crying.
My partner Heidi was so tough today too. We travel with a ton of luggage for the baby (like our enormous SUV of a stroller.) She had no problem lugging the stroller and diaper bag through all these airports,
My friend Scott McKay takes his kids on lots of trips. He says that when they are traveling the kids don’t complain at all about being hungry or something going wrong like a flight delay. But at home, when their sandwich is a minute late they throw a tantrum.
A couple years ago when I was going through my divorce and my ex wife had just left the country, my friend Les said he would help keep me fed, rested, and surrounded by friends. When you start to miss too many of these key ingredients you can loose your cool.
If you want to see how tough and resilient you are, change as many things about your life at once as possible.
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One thing we were saved by on this trip was the airport lounges. We recently got a global membership to lounges. So we would have a couple hours between flights and duck in and grab a bite to eat and some champagne (because champagne fuels me), take a catnap, and off to the gate again.
When we boarded our long transatlantic flight, we gave a box of nice chocolates to the flight attendants and thanked them for working so hard and being so friendly. I’ve been really excited about this idea for weeks, just to see how they would react. Of course they didn’t expect it and were thrilled (nobody does this.)
They gave us an extra row of seats, checked some of our extra carry on bags, and brought us essentials from the first class section. People are amazingly helpful.
If you ever want to realize how helpful people are, take a trip where you really need to rely on other’s help.
If you want to see how tough and resilient you are, change as many things about your life at once as possible.
When you are a baby, you just trust. You trust that your crazy parents are going to take care of you. In one sense, it is easy to be a parent. Just keep your kid fed, rested, and loved. We try not to change too much at once.
On the other hand it’s scary, what if everything comes crashing down and you wind up on the street?
I was recently doing an interview, and the host asked me: “Are you afraid of anything?” Maybe I was sounding cocky because most things in my life work out perfectly.
I told him I’m afraid that I would lose my career or my family or my health. Maybe even my life. But If I were dead I wouldn’t worry so much.
Basically fear is no longer an excuse when you remember you will die.
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How do you balance living for today and planning your life in the long term? We are all going to die. Some people will die tomorrow. I hope its not you. Or me.
Basically fear is no longer an excuse when you remember you will die. Yes you may be afraid of speaking in public, or starting a business, or calling someone on the phone, or doing a job interview, but remember, you will die someday. So fear doesn’t even matter. Just do it anyway if you want to.
You can beat fear by thinking of your own death.
I used to carry 600 calories of snack with me at all times, in case it was an hour or two before I got a meal. This is when I was training for cycling and burning 6000 calories a day. I would start to panic if I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from.
These days I’m not so on the limit of fatigue and hunger.
I fasted for 7 days without food to start 2016. Now I don’t feel the need to eat so urgently.
Buddha said he can do two things really well: he can fast, and he can wait.
I still make sure I nourish myself because my physical state is so important. Your brain and your thoughts are part of your body too. You get better thoughts when you treat your body right and fuel it right.
One time I was caught out in the wilderness in a snowstorm. The trail was packed down fine, but and everything off the trail was 6 feet deep of powder. If you went off the trail and fell in, it took a TON of energy to dig your way out. We had to make really sure that we stayed on the trail, which meant moving very slowly and deliberately. For the last few hours before we made it to safety (arriving at a fire lookout tower late at night) I made sure we kept nibbling on snacks and drinking our water, so we could keep making good decisions.
How do you make sure you stay resilient?
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