Unshackling the chains of society as a digital nomad

8 Years ago i started my journey as a Digital Nomad.

Not in some Exotic location like Fiji or the Maldives,

I was at home, bootstrapped down to the core.

I was broke and in debt to both the government and my hardworking Asian parents

Being a graduate from a respected University with an engineering degree, and then choosing to make a living with my laptop and an internet connection wasn’t exactly what my parents had in mind.

But I wanted to learn.

I really liked the idea of making money while travelling.

My plan was as clear as day;

1. Study all about digital marketing
2. Build websites and create tons of content
3. And then make a shitload of money.

Deep down, I was thinking, “I’m going to be Rich, Rich, Rich…”

How well do you think that worked out for me?

It bombed out.

After all, I’ve never done this before.

Paid some “Guru” thousands of dollars to teach me the secret.

Instead it threw me into a thousand different directions. A thousand different strategies.

Tried a hundred different ways to succeed.

Well back then if you’re making a fixed income on the internet, you’d found success. And people paid you big money to teach them how.

This was how the gurus were raking in millions.

Where I wish I’d have done things differently was with how I proceeded afterwards.

I found out that the more I aimed at success and made it my target, the more I missed it.

Success, no matter how different you may define it depends on two things, your bow and arrow.

The problem I had was with my aim. I had the arrows, but I was aiming at Success and missing the mark.

Our entire society today is fueled on that notion. Aiming to succeed as quickly as possible.

The very idea that “Success can be pursued” is an example of our expectations bounded by society.

Our selection bias only allows us to identify the one in a millionth person who failed and failed again but ultimately found success.

What about those that keep trying and trying and failing.

A lot of footballers never got to the big leagues. Pursuing success never did help them.

The reason I do my magazine is to study what people who are the best in the world actually aimed for and how success ensued for them.

The qualities they all share and what success means to them?

But still, there are a lot of people who keep trying to get better but still failed.

Getting better may not be the success they wanted, but who cares? As long as it helps them lead a better life.

Focus on getting better 1% more than someone else each day leads to 3778% after 365 days.

That’s the power of compound interest. 

It’s happened with me starting from a time when I was splashed with acid and would’ve loved to end my life. 

Of course life is hard and difficult. You hold the choice in your hands.

You either grow or get worse.

Don’t aim at success. Aim at getting better. You have to let it happen by not caring about it. Dedicate yourself to a cause greater than yourself and work on it to the best of your ability. Then maybe in the long run, success will follow you.

Did I mentioned Maybe?

Somebody like Elon Musk didn’t plan for success. Putting a person on Mars. Kill Big Oil Companies. Self-driving cars.

Maybe you shouldn’t too.

How do You Measure Success as a digital nomad?

Is a million dollars successful, $10 million or $100 million ? 

Money is not really a good measure of success.

Its not a good measure of success because that’s not what we should be aiming for in life.

But then again, that’s why a lot of people today get involved in making money on the internet in the first place.

They hear it is a great way to get-rich-quickly.

Then they discover over the next harrowing months — or sometimes just weeks — that it can also be…

a one way ticket to the poorhouse.

If you got into this space to get rich, you may succeed, but there’s a high possibility you won’t.

Because that’s not a very good motivation to start with.

The measure of success is not how much money you made.

It’s not about making money in the way that you think it is, where everybody knows this is part of their life.

It is a much more subtle measure of success.

Before 1822, the word employee didn’t exist. Then large centralized organizations arises from corporatism. We started to let others choose what our best interests were in exchange for a fixed and stable income; we killed our sense of risk and adventure, stopped being creative, stopped venturing with our ideas and just relied on taking orders from our superiors.

Corporatism created a society of employees. 

A growing labor force that keeps the top 1% wealthier than ever.

They’ve got us living the dream by living beyond our means buying more expensive houses, cars and buying cheap plastic material with plastic cards.

Social media accelerates this lie even further through perpetual staging, carefully orchestrated and pretentious unveiling of the good life.

We allowed ourselves to be programmed by society itself. Curated by a never-ending thirst for luxuries and lavishness.

At the end, we’ve placed on ourselves the invisible shackles of servitude. A chain that binds each of us to accept the limits imposed by our society and the government.

It started when we’re just babies. Like a baby elephant.

A baby elephant tied with a rope, grows up to be the most powerful land mammal on the planet and yet those invisible chains remain. The baby elephant struggled to break free but ultimately realizes its pointless, as the elephant grows up so do the chains placed in its mind.

Unfortunately, we don’t know any better from that elephant. Most of us fall into that trap all the time.

In our case, a simple paycheck is designed to do just that.

Fact is, most people today have grown accustomed to a paycheck.

We speak in absolutes like: “I won’t be able to keep food on the table without my job.” or “I can’t put a roof over my head without a salary.”

Habits have made us dull, uncreative and stupid.

And today we know a “job” isn’t as safe or stable as it used to be.

So what’s unfolding over the last couple of years is the rising wave of digital nomads and solo-preneurs making a living with nothing more than just a laptop and an internet connection.

The internet opened up this whole new world.

It gave us the freedom to communicate and transact without even knowing how the internet worked.

It meant that anyone can start a company building, writing or producing what they loved. It breaks the monopoly of the big corporation and gave us back that freedom of choice reserved only for the elites that we have so long envied. 

If you look closely enough, you’ll notice that there’s an engine of freedom and choice there for anyone.

The internet is open and anyone can create and innovate on it. 

That’s why its important to learn how to break-free from the addiction of a paycheck. Not because I’m against working for money, I’m against financial slavery.

Success would be if nobody had to be trapped like that again.

On those measures, you would become a big corporation’s greatest foe.

Don’t just be a society of consumers, be a society of creators.

Encourage yourself to invest in the scarcest commodity in your world. Yourself.

Create value for society by helping others. Success and happiness is parallel to how much value you can create for others.

Stop scrolling down Facebook or Instagram feeds in envy. Stop paying attention to endless political debates and in the immortal words of Marcus Aurelius, don’t waste time arguing what a good man is. Be one.

If making money means sacrificing our time, health and relationships, then by that measure of success, we’d lose the game.

That is the measure of failure.

The measure of success to me is remaining free to wander, play, grow and contribute while also being able to meet all my fundamental needs.

That’s my measure of success.

Perhaps your measure of success is very different from mine.

What i’m reaching at: is that life goes by far too quickly.

And part of its poignancy is its purposelessness of it all. You don’t need to know where you’re heading all the time.

Variety adds spice to life. So does being playful.

This is one way for all of us to live until we die. Its essential to prize those little moments so that you’ll keep noticing things around you.

I’ve seen people who live in the most beautiful places on earth and they’re blinded to their surroundings.

I’m guilty of this too. I love hiking this hill with its wonderful view at the top with its exercising facilities. So I do it three times a week. After about 2 years of doing it, I became oblivious to my surroundings. I got sick of it.

If you do the same thing day in and day out, your brain gets used to it. It becomes a habit.

That’s why people who work in the same 9-5 job for decades feel like the years just flew by.

Because the brain grows bored after awhile and passes the job down to the part of the brain called the basal ganglia where it all becomes automatic animation. 

The work you’re doing now doesn’t require much conscious thought. That’s why your brain shuts down and you begin to feel hours of work just like seconds.

Be very careful. We’re habitual creatures. Don’t blindly devote yourself to a certain habit.

If you do that, you’re going to turn 70 years old in a blink of an eye.

 

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