Live the Good Life

I've been on a hiatus from blogging at Rock Your Genius for the past couple of months (more on that later), but this story was just too important to wait.  Here goes.

These are my friends Betsy and Warren.

Wait, no, those are some penguins in Antartica that were photographed by my friends Betsy and Warren.

That's Betsy and Warren . . . in Antartica.

Here they are in England.

And, in Scotland.

In Argentina.  I don't think they were drunk here, but I guess it's possible.

Here's Warren in Scotland taking over a bar.  See what I mean?

All jokes aside, Betsy and Warren are living a pretty good life.

They've been all over the world - to Ecuador, Columbia, Peru, Argentina, Ushuaia, Antarctica, across the Atlantic on a 37-day cruise to Norway then England, to Scotland, Belgium, Germany, house-sitting on a boat in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, to France, and to Thailand - all in one year!

Not long ago, it was an entirely different story - in their words, "climbing the corporate ladder, getting married, buying a house, getting divorced, climbing the ladder some more, getting married again, accumulating more crap, and keeping repeating the process like hamsters on a wheel."

Then, after a serious wakeup call and several margaritas, Betsy and Warren decided to jump off the hamster wheel and embark on an open-ended trip around the world.  They originally set a goal of traveling for a year, but ended up accumulating enough cash for five!

But, here's the best part.

They're sharing their strategy so that you, too, can live your dream life!

Dream. Save. Do.

Imagine waking up every day knowing that you are living the life you always wanted.  Your bills are paid off, you are living where and how you want, and pursuing the work or activities that bring you the most satisfaction.

Betsy and Warren have just released Dream, Save, Do: A Step-by-Step Guide to Amass the Cash to Live Your Dream, which shares their proven strategy for saving big bucks in a short period of time for your own specific dream: travel, starting a business, creating something like a book or an invention, or even buying a house or starting a family.

Take my word for it.  As Betsy's accountability partner for five years, I've personally witnessed this entire dream come to life, from the Monday morning after their margarita-filled dreamfest when they decided to travel the world, to this very day when their new book is released showing you how to do it, too.

If you're ready to live the good life, it's waiting for you. Dream. Save. Do.

About Married With Luggage

Want to learn more about Betsy and Warren's travels?

• Check out their website Married With Luggage.
• See all their photos on Flickr.
• Follow them on Twitter: @BetsyTalbot and @WarrenTalbot.
• Follow them on Facebook.

Images courtesy of Warren and Betsy Talbot's Flickr photo stream.

What One Metric Could Change Everything?

I'm continuing on with The 4-Hour Body, and at this point, Tim Ferriss is talking about tracking and how "if you are very overweight, very weak, very inflexible, or very anything negative, tracking even a mediocre variable will help you develop awareness that leads to the right behavioral changes."  I actually know this to be true, but hadn't thought about it this way until just now.

Over the years, I've experimented with changing a variety of circumstances and outcomes in my life and business, and each and every time, I've had success.  The techniques and strategies used to change those circumstances and outcomes were often considerably different, but there was one thing that was the same with every single attempt (at least the ones that worked): I was tracking something.

This is a very powerful observation, and it gives us an easy method for effecting change in our lives.

If you're like me, you continuously focus on or complain about one or two key areas in your life - maybe you're overweight, maybe you're not as comfortable as you'd like to be financially, or maybe your relationships are not as strong as you'd like them to be.  Whatever the case, if you could change that one thing, it would have a huge impact on the rest of your life, your overall satisfaction, and the way you feel about yourself.

Think about the thing you would like to change about your life.  Is there something you could track about it?

• If you're overweight, you could track the number of times you eat or what you eat in a given day.

• If you're not comfortable with where you are financially, you could track your spending or the amount of money you earn in a given month.

• If your relationships are not where you want them to be, you could track the number of phone calls, emails, and in-person contacts you make with family members and friends each week.

The point is, find something to track about the thing you dislike about your life right now.  If you track that one metric consistently for a given time frame, say one month, I'm willing to bet that you'll find some way to move that metric in your favor.  If you're trying to improve your relationships, for instance, and see that you rarely pick up the phone and call your loved ones and even more rarely get together with them in person, it's a lot more likely that you'll be more proactive about increasing the number of calls and in-person visits you have with the people who are important to you.

A very empowering strategy and definitely one worth trying.