Manifesting Your Ideal Lifestyle (Practical Tools and No BS) with Heath Armstrong

I must admit, I do a bit of waffling when it comes to downloading new apps. I'm always hesitant. Like, do I really need another app? Maybe you can relate, but I've got one for you that's definitely worth trying out. Because A, it's free. B, it takes five seconds to set up and C, it's going to help make your trips and your travels so much easier. It's called Trip Waffle. Did you see what I did there? Waffling Waffle, you get it. You can stop juggling confirmation emails. You simply forward them to Trip Waffle and they turn them into a beautiful itinerary in second. So I tried this out actually before I recorded this and I wanted to see how will this perform. So I found some old booking emails from a trip I took last year forwarded them to the trip waffle email and voila, it appeared right in the app. Beautiful visual layout of the itinerary. The concert tickets had the flights and everything was all right there. So this is a wonderful app for organizing your itinerary. Just go to tripwaffle.com or search Trip Waffle wherever you get your apps and give it a go. I fall into the category of play in cultivating the feeling of excitement and letting that lead the way because I think the other direction is pure forced action and forced action implies effort and effort implies lack. And if you're operating from a space of lack, you're not able to open your energetic field up to to space that allows abundance and prosperity to come in. And what am I doing on a day to day basis that's keeping me without having opportunity? And usually it just comes down to me thinking like maybe I'm not communicating about this enough to people. Am I reaching out to enough people? Am I switching environments enough to have more opportunities open up to me? Because if you do the same thing every day, if you just stay to yourself and you or whatever, you get on your computer, you're like scrolling your phone, you journal like all that's great. But if you do the same thing every day, you're not actually opening yourself up to new experience. If you walk down the street with your head down, you're not going to see the people walking by that could change everything for you. The ability to do what you want when you want and to pursue the things that help you feel at your highest good, your highest wealth, anytime that you want is freedom lifestyle to me. That is today's guest in my buddy, Heath Armstrong. And yes, I use the word manifesting in the title purposely. I know that can be a word that triggers people, maybe turns people off. But what I mean by manifesting is just having a vision for your life and taking action towards making that vision a reality. I mean, everything we do starts with an idea or a vision, right? You want to travel the world. You have that idea and then you take steps to make it happen. And Heath has done really an incredible job with doing this for himself, making sure that sort of he's aligned with his values and the things that he creates are aligned with his values and the lifestyle he wants to live. I thought it'd be the perfect person to come on and talk about this. Also because he has a way of explaining it and sharing it and wanting to bring value to somebody listening. It's not just about his experience. He's giving these practical tips so you can take some things away from this conversation, implement that into your life to manifest that next ideal version of your freedom lifestyle, your location independent lifestyle, your travel lifestyle, whatever it is you want to create in this conversation. He shares some simple daily practices that can help you continually move toward your goals. Heath's totem pole method for achieving your goals. This is so practical and so straightforward and it makes so much sense that I love this framework. You're going to get his number one piece of advice for designing or redesigning your ideal lifestyle business, biggest lessons from his nomadic fan life days. He shares a genre of books I've never heard of before, which was a funny moment. There's so much more. It's all happening in this show right now. So buckle up, strap in. Thanks for being here, and welcome to the Zero to Travel Podcast, my friend. You're listening to the Zero to Travel Podcast where we explore exciting travel-based work, lifestyle and business opportunities helping you to achieve your wildest travel dreamers. And now your host, World Wanderer and Travel Junkie, Jason Moore. Hey, Jason here with Zero to Travel.com. Welcome to the show. Thanks for hanging out, letting me bring a little travel into your ears today. This is the show to help you travel the world on your terms to fill your life with as much travels you desire. No matter what your situation or experience, as I mentioned, Heath Armstrong here, you can check out his work at ragecreate.com. He's a co-founder of that company that makes these unconventional affirmation decks, Oracle decks, other motivational products. Their decks have raised over $200,000 through crowdfunding, and they have 3 million of these affirmation cards floating around the world. And I have an affirmation card of his sitting up right in my office, and that's what I'm going to leave you with today, the quote that's sitting on this card that I see every day. And that's, I think, perfectly encapsulates a lot of the conversation that you'll hear today. So stick around for that. And for now, please enjoy my conversation with Heath. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you on the other side of my friend. Cheers. Heath Armstrong, welcome back to the Zero to Travel Podcast, my friend. It's been way too long. Way too long. Well, Heath is a part of my everyday life, actually. He's unbeknownst to him. Well, maybe be knowns to him. Can I say that? I don't think so, actually, I have to look that up later. You make these awesome, sweet ass affirmation decks, these card decks, and I have several up around my office. So I actually spend time with Heath through his writing every day. I have one posted up over here. I have another one back here. And anyway, so I want to say thanks for the daily motivation even when you're not around. And we've known each other for quite a long time. And so, man, I just want to say thanks, thanks for your friendship. And I'm excited to bring you this episode, not just because it's an excuse for Heath and I to catch up as friends and just record the call. But because you have a ton of lessons to share through your experience running these lifestyle businesses, which for you, like at points, have incorporated a lot of travel. And then, you know, now maybe it's shifted. And that's the thing I always loved about sort of like if you want to call it lifestyle entrepreneurship for lack of a better term. It's what we could talk about playing that game, I suppose, if we want to look at it from a meta point of view. But you've done it in so many ways, but the one consistent thing I think if you've been able to create things that get you excited creatively. And then, you know, design those around sort of like the lifestyle you want to live at that given time in your life. And I think there's a lot for listeners to learn from that who are in the process of designing a life or maybe in the middle of it and we're always tweaking and changing. So anyway, sorry, enough rambling from me, Heath. Welcome to this show. Freedom, freedom lifestyle. You know, it's hard to even any of this that I have actually roots back to a very exciting point in my life that involved you directly. You know that too. So it's crazy because it's been like, man, over 10 years now, 12 years, I think since we first interacted 2014, 2013, I think was when we first started interacting. And I've been an entrepreneur kind of living my lifestyle in the way that I choose and whatever freedom that I choose for 10 years now, which is nuts. But that all started with location in the back. And having the inspiration to watch what you all were doing and that's just matter of fact for me. It's not like, oh, I'm saying that to try to tell you that you're a trophy or something. You legitimately chose, of course, my life. So it's cool to be full circle now. And also when you said the game, it brings up something that's been very special to me over the past few years. And it's a book called The Game of Life and How to Play it. It's by Florence Scubble-Skin and she was a kind of a mystic in the 1800s and into the early 1900s. And she's teaches a lot with kind of the law of assumption similar to Neville Goddard's type stuff. And so if anyone's interested in getting into that, it's really good. I love those older mystical books that tie in these principles of how to bring your dream lives to reality because they're very effective. And it's also like, you know, it's not some modern day person just push a bull to make money. They were actually doing it from the core, you know, like there was no internet or anything. So. Right. Now that makes sense. Yeah. I haven't read either of those books. So we actually send those over so we can put them in the show notes. People can check them out. Well, first of all, thanks for the kind words. And just so you know, mention Location, indeed, that's a community. We used to run. It no longer exists. It was, you know, based on sort of lifestyle entrepreneurship and trying to bring people together who wanted to kind of live that lifestyle of having freedom to travel and all that sort of thing. And you were a part of that early on. So right back at you, thanks to you for, you know, supporting that stuff early on. And these books you're mentioning, it sounds like they were almost like when you think, when I think about that genre of book, but later, when I say later, I'm thinking 1920s, it. The Paul Lee and Hill. The, of course, the same era, same sort of era, but perhaps he was drawing inspiration from these people even before him. Yeah, I think Neville Goddard was drawing inspiration from from Florence. There's actually a slew of ladies that I've been getting into recently over these topics and it's really fascinating. And of course, a lot of the Bibles tied into it too because if you really get into the depths of that book, there's a lot of metaphysical teaching in it. And it's, so they're referencing, that was a big part of the time. And so there's a lot of reference to that and other religious texts, which is, it's all, you know, if you like metaphysics, it's pretty fascinating. So that's actually just one book I mentioned though. I'll send it to you. I quickly explained your business, rage, create, which we'll link up to. I encourage people to check it out. Maybe we'll post a couple pictures of a couple of the cards you make so people can get an idea. You've created this thing that is really infused with your creativity, your sort of unique take on life. And it's not always easy to, to like kind of translate ideas like that into a physical product into a business, something that gets you excited. And yeah, I mean, even like your early kickstarter video, when you guys did some crowdfunding stuff, it was like, you guys running around unicorn costumes and downslip and slides and stuff. It's just like, it's just having fun. I don't think people always associate business with fun necessarily. It seems like you've been able to infuse like sort of the fun, the other elements of your personality that you're interested in into the things that you create. You know, this is coming back to like this question of, you know, I have the Steve Jobs sort of approach to things where it's, you know, create something before they know they want it. And then, you know, create something awesome, then they're going to want it. And then the other sort of more sensible business person is like, we have to find the product market fit. And then you just create that thing. Where do you fall in that realm of things? Because I'm curious how you ended up here with all of this. Because you didn't know if it was going to work or necessarily, you know. Well, no. And I also, I tried very many different things that didn't work. So I fall into the category of of play in cultivating the feeling of excitement and letting that lead the way. Because I think the other direction is pure forced action and forced action implies effort and effort implies lack. And if you're operating from a space of lack, you're not able to open your energetic field up to, to space that allows abundance and prosperity to come in. I tried it the other way for so long, man. That's why I was miserable. It's why I was absolutely miserable when I met you. And why I was drinking, you know, fifth, fifth of whiskey every single day for so many years. And I was forcing. I was trying to figure it out. I was trying, trying, trying to figure it out. I was like, what kind of market is here? And I would have little wins, you know, of course, who was like, oh, I forced so much that now I have this opportunity to make a website for holiday in. And they're going to pay me $8,000 or whatever. And then I'd have that win. But you can't sustain that from from an internal flame because it's just going to keep going out. And you're going to be miserable over and over again. And you're just kind of like chasing something that's not real. So if the universe doesn't make mistakes as to why we're here, then I can perceive that if I do decide to lean into something with the feeling of excitement, then it's going to work out in one way or another as long as I keep feeling that. There's a lot of really actionable things that I do on the back of that because, you know, like with my products at Rage Create, I'm not. I'm really bridging the gap between this physical action masculine side of the world, which you do need and the woo woo like kind of metaphysical and how to actually make them both work for you. So, you know, it's it's play for me. And I think we can get into lots of ways that I I've sustained that and make it actually work for me as opposed to just thinking like, Oh, this guy is just saying, Here's my vision. And now it's going to come to life while I just sit here on my thumbs, you know, because that's absolutely not what the case has been. I do put tons of effort in, but it's inspired effort. It's inspired action. And that's a huge difference between inspired action and forced action. Okay. Well, let's take this from the top level then for people listening, I wanted to hear your sort of philosophy around, let's say lifestyle entrepreneurship or lifestyle design or whatever you want to call it. Is it something you even think about from a meta perspective when you're building projects and you're trying to figure out how they're going to fit in with like, now you have a family, you have a little one, you know, before maybe it was we're having the freedom to travel and things like that. Living in the van. Yeah, yeah, living in the van. Well, yeah, maybe that's even a better place to start is giving people a little sense of kind of the journey, the life journey you've been on over the last, you know, decade and a half. I don't know. That's kind of hard to encapsulate in an elevator. I can encapsulate it. Kind of give people a sense of that. And then, you know, the main topic today where that kind of fits into what we're talking about today. Yeah, with the birth of location, Indian moving into that, I've one of the important things is surrounding yourself with like-minded people. I was able to do that with your group and I was inspired enough to actually have the confidence to take inspired action in the direction of that. So there was years where I was writing down, I am location independent on a no card every day and then two things I was going to do that day to move toward that goal. And I still do that practice today. And so there was that phase transitioning out of a kind of lifetime job into this, this unknowingness of being location independent and just selling everything I had and selling my house and moving into my car and driving across the country and having no idea what was going to happen. And that led me into the years of like kind of world domination, summit, Portland, home base, you know, you and Travis and like lots of the location indie people would come through there and getting really deep into like some of the things Chris Killabo is teaching and and that led directly into being pretty much a digital nomad for several years and traveling around the world and and all of those things wouldn't have worked unless I was willing to continue to follow that inspired action and like that feeling of excitement and just saying yes to the things that the old version of myself would never say yes to like you meet somebody in a in a winery or something and they're saying, hey, I'm I'm flying to Africa tomorrow. Like you could come if you want it's like saying yes to that and just doing it like that's something that's very hard to do in this world where everybody's kind of promoting fear and and lack and like this isn't going to work out for you, this isn't going to work out for you but when you make the decision to do that unlimited opportunities can open up for you that you would have never had the chance to meet before and so then from that it was going into I had the vision of building the van, you know, building out a van and living in it and and having that freedom and working from that and being able to spend lots of time in different parks, climbing mountains and national parks and so all of the sudden that was on my vision board for years at all of a sudden one day it just all happened and I ended up with this shallow of an and and I built it out and then from there it was like the vision was oh I've got this beautiful lady who's coming in and like I have to go to this specific place to meet her like that was actually a download that I was getting in my when I would sit in silence and so I went down the Tennessee all the way from Oregon and I was there for a couple months and then I met her like two days before and she was like I'll move into your van with you and you know that's how he met and she moved into the van and then there was a couple years of that like living in the van together and going around and continuing albeit this whole time to build business to operate business to have lots of struggles and successes in various ways and then once we had Opal in the belly it's just my daughter Ashley was like give me out of this van I can't she was she had a very like you know nauseous pregnancy and so I flew her back to her mom's house in Nashville and then I we were in Lake Tahoe at the time and I drove took a straight shot right back across the country and so we we still get in the van a lot but we we now have one of my biggest dreams for the years is this farmhouse that was coming and this acreage so now we're actually sitting in this farmhouse on four acres and it's like a very surreal thing to be here and it's another moment of vision to reality and and it's full circle because now I'm here and I'm like okay now I have the home base to where I can go and and travel more and feel more stable in the capacity of like I have a place to go retreat to if I need to which is always one of the hardest things about being a nomad was that you never really had that you know it was like well what is the next home that's one of that was one of the the hardest parts so it's very it's very magical that was that's that's kind of a quick view of all of it we'll get back to the interview in just a moment are you the type of person who really enjoys doing deep travel research building unforgettable itineraries figuring out the best accommodations sending recommendations to friends did you ever think hey people actually get paid to do this why am I not getting paid for this well that's where fora comes in for as a modern travel agency designed for people like you who want to turn their passion for travel into a real business here's how it works fora gives you everything you need to get started access to tech training in a thriving community. Everything on the platform is built to help you start, grow, and scale your own travel business with confidence. So you can turn everyday travel planning into real income by booking trips for others and earning commissions on hotels, cruises, experiences, and more. Many advisors start by booking for friends and family and just grow from there. It's time you turn your passion for travel into a business with Fora, become a Fora advisor today at ForaTravel.com/0detravel. That's ForaFORATravel.com/0detravel. Make sure to tell them we sent you ForaTravel.com/0detravel. Now, back to the show. That's crazy. So for each of those steps, were you doing this exercise? Were you writing down something on a card and writing two things associated with that? What is that practice now? What is your card saying now? So I'm in a very-- this is like a 10-year-- this is a very interesting part for me because it's actually now that I've gotten to where I am at. It's a complete reshuffling of what my vision is because everything has finally come into-- you could say manifestation-- or into this physical reality from what was on my vision boards for so many years. They've just kind of trickled off. And now, for the first time I'm sitting here, what's next? Where am I? But the principle stays in tact. I think if we're going to talk about things that help you promote your lifestyle, freedom, lifestyle, or whatever it is that you want to do that is driven by your excitement or your passion, becoming the feeling of the wish fulfilled, as Neville Goddard would say, is the principle that guides all of those little actionable tactics like using the no card. That original no card idea came from listening to Earl Nightingale's The Stranger's Secret many, many years ago, where he talks about the difference between successful people and not successful people. And I do that still. And I mean, it even transformed into that journaling system that I made many years ago. And now it's back. I literally just use no cards. I have it right here. I don't know if this is on video, but I have this no card pack here that I pull one out every day. And so if I'm writing now to answer your question, it's a lot to do with this card debt creators community that I'm building. But also it's moving back into more of a freedom lifestyle of traveling and experience. So how do I expand from this home base back out into the world? And it hasn't had a consistent one like I am location independent that I'm writing every single day at the moment. It's kind of changing. But becoming the feeling of your wish fulfilled, I want to talk about that because if you use the no card, the principle of it is, OK, what is the visualization practice of this place that I want to go? This is really, really important for me. I'm going to stress on it because it is the most important thing that I've done over and over again. Is instead of just writing it down like, you know, I live on a farmhouse and I have four acres and I'm building a greenhouse, like writing it with action, writing it in the present tense is helpful, right? But if you're writing it in the present tense, but you don't actually believe that it's real, you're just reinforcing lack to yourself. You have to be writing it in a way and you have to evolve yourself in a way to where you actually believe that this stuff is coming to life so that that excitement and that inspiration is there. And the way to do that is to go into that dense visualization process, which you actually were a spark for many years ago because you gave me that visualization practice to do when I was in the middle of a hotel room in Chattanooga, like wondering if I should quit my job or not. You actually helped me go into this practice of, okay, visualize both scenarios and when you're in that visualization, which one feels good, which one feels exciting. And that actually helped me make this mass transition in my life, like without that moment, I would not be in this place. And so I take that very seriously and I will construct worlds in my mind, like that can start on paper where I'm writing out all the things that I want. But then it becomes how do I feel this? How do I feel the emotions of this? How do I actually close my eyes and go to that place, see who's around me, eat the foods that are in front of me, like celebrate, have fun here. Because when you can do that, you're actually sending signals to your subconscious that this stuff is real. And then it automatically starts to help you make decisions that are in alignment of your dreams. So the inspired action that you take that would be the two things you're putting on the note card, automatically start coming out as opposed to you having to think about it so much. And it's a process. I mean, it's not something that just starts clicking every overnight, but just like anything else, it's a habit that you're building. And so the more you do it, the more you get used to it. And there's ways to take that even farther that are a lot more advanced than that. Like just for example, thinking back to yourself now, if I were to close my eyes and go to that visual space, thinking back to myself where I am now as a memory. Because one day you'll be there and it's like, oh, I'm thinking back to myself now as a memory. And that's a bit more of an advanced technique, but it works really well too. So that would be probably number one for me is just becoming the feeling of the wish fulfilled in using all of the principles I can to make that, to make sure that it's effective. - Wow, okay, that's, I mean, you're inspiring me to take some action in that way, 'cause that's not a practice I have been doing and I like the idea of sitting down and taking time to put yourself there, you know? - Do you know how powerful your voice is, dude? Like if you, you know 'cause you're on the mic, but if you were to take those visions and actually record them as I am statements or actually speak your visualization out, like, you know, I am, like I'm lifting kettlebells in the morning on the farm with my shoes off and I can hear the birds chirping. And I can feel this do on my face. My daughter's running around, you know, barefoot free range with the chickens and I'm getting ready to go inside and, and, and, like, you know, roll up the sourdough bread with my hands and I know that in a couple hours I'm gonna get to sit down in my wealth shed and start working on all of the projects that I love working on that are helping spread creativity and positivity throughout the world. And like when I go to that world and I'm thinking and I'm speaking that, I will actually record it. And Joe, Joe dispends a teacher's that too, like, recorded in your own voice and then every single morning when you wake up, if you have a chance, and I know if you have kids, it can be chaotic, but at least once per day if you can do it, or right before you go to bed at night because that's one of the most powerful times for your psyche, you listen through that audio of yourself speaking and that, if you do anything, like, even without the note card and all that, just listen to yourself speak that it will actually ingrain in your brain the same way too, because it's your real voice. So that's a, you should try, you could start with that one, dude, 'cause it's a good one. - Yeah, I love it. It's one of those things where it's easy to not make time for that, right? You're just like, well, that's not-- - You could resist it. - I have 20 emails to send. I gotta drum up some business here. I don't have time to sit around and talk about who I'm gonna be coming. That's not, that's not gonna grow my business. I'm playing the other side of the spectrum here, 'cause we started at the top here with the, sort of the woo-woo and the inspired action and this sort of thing. And I think, one of the things I would say coming out of this and this is for myself included is to just be open-minded with what may be included into your daily practices from today, from this episode going forward. That's for myself, too. This isn't something that I do. I have never recorded myself in that way and played it back. And maybe at first that might feel weird. Like, well, what am I doing up here? I should be getting some things done. But I'm inspired to give this a go, because clearly it's worked for you. I mean, there's the four acres. I'm sure the cattle bells are on the other side of the wall. You're in the wealth shed right now. (laughs) - Yeah, there's air. And this, but the thing is, it doesn't, like we create this illusion that it takes so much time, but it actually doesn't. You record it once and then you listen for three or four minutes once a day and like, the amount of excuses that we all make for not being able to do the things that actually bring us our highest excitement are the exact same things that are keeping us from living that. So my ability to live all of this is because I can look and identify resistance and be like, no, no, like, no, no. This is not like, I have the other voice, too. And like, I've, last year actually was a whole year of me stringing myself out and forcing myself through forced action and losing my way. And like, there were a lot of really crazy things on my list that manifested. Like, I sold a business that I was not expecting at all to sell randomly. And then I got this farmhouse, which I was not expecting at all when our house flooded out in the hurricane just months before that. And there was like financial uncertainty and like, everybody's leaving the city. And so I went in that darkness of not knowing and being frustrated and trying to force everything back to my principles of visualization and believing and trusting and even using weird things like sigils and stuff. And all of this sudden, it was like boom, boom, boom. I was aligning the proper actions with the right path for me. And so taking those actions was actually unfolding things that were very beneficial as opposed to just hammering a square peg and a round hole, which I have done for many periods of my life as well. And, you know, it doesn't work. Like, it doesn't work. work, man, it just makes you, it's just come to the same resolution over and over again. It doesn't work. That idea of, I'm going to ask you about the resistance and sort of keeping that in check of that something we all battle, right? Whether we're deciding if we're going to take a gap year or start a business or things like that, we're going to have the voices, the naysaying voices within. And they're going to be there, but it's how can we better ignore them, I suppose? But before I get some advice on that, I just wanted to go back to what you said before about thinking of yourself as, now as a memory, I think that is a very interesting perspective to consider today. When you were saying that and I was thinking about that, I was like, "Oh wow, that kind of opened up some different trains of thought. Like, well, what, you know, would I be proud of? How I spent my day? Would I be, would I consider myself being somebody who is in the moment and present for their family at this period of my life? Would I consider these choices I'm making in business to be smart and on the right track? What about the, these other dreams I have? Am I taking them seriously enough? I mean, it's just like, you know, all of these sort of different things. So that perspective is mind opening in a lot of ways. So I just wanted to highlight that. And also when you talk about like sending those 24-stimals, right, like, maybe they're not forced. If you're sending 20 emails because it aligns with something that you really care about, then it's great. Like, that's action, even though it might feel tiring and it might feel like a lot, it might feel overwhelming. You're doing the right thing. You just have to make sure you're giving yourself rest in between, you know, doing the things to take care of yourself. So that's, you got to discern between that too. Like, there's a difference between, you know, taking heavy amounts of action and alignment. You talk about Steve Jobs, like, you think that guy was, he was taking things in alignment with, with where he was going. Like, he had that vision, right? He was lining stuff up and the universe was just conspiring to help him do that. But for me, it's like, if you, if I'm sending 20 emails and it's out of desperation, it's out of lack, it's out of like, I need these people to respond to me because if not, this isn't going to work and I'm going to be screwed and I can't feed my kids, then I know that that is such, like, that's such poison, man. I have to catch myself and then pull myself out because I do that stuff too, you know? Sure. Well, yeah, I mean, we're all just human. And so, you know, when you talked about going through the tough time, I think the awareness of the resistance is step one, right? It's like the awareness of, okay, just because my mind's telling me, I can't do this or being an Acer, doesn't mean that that that's normal, you know, kind of normalizing that. That's something for me that helps because it's there for all of us at certain points on some level. And of course, we're going to have doubts and things like that. But I mean, how do you push through those difficult things like for somebody listening right now and they're having, you call them gremlins or, you know, resistance or, you know, Stephen Pressfield calls it the resistance or, you know, something in your head that's, you know, the sort of the fear based negative talk. And again, this isn't like about pushing that down and being like, rah, rah, you know, everything's positive. And, you know, we're not saying that. It's just more like, you know, how do you act in spite of the things when you know that the thing you're trying to do is aligned with your soul in some way. But the practical sort of fear based stuff comes in and sort of gets you off track. How do you personally deal with that? What kind of advice do you give to somebody listening where they're ears are perked up now? They're like, oh, like, I just went through that. Where I'm going through that right now. I want to draw a correlation between like myself 10 years ago and myself now because there's a lot of similarities in this practice. But in the beginning, when I didn't have a muscle to be able to identify resistance and it's really figuring out the difference between resistance and intuition because sometimes they can feel the same, you know, and like, it's like the difference in those two is one of them's coming from fear and one of them's coming from abundance. One of them's coming from excitement and one of them's coming from lack. That goes back to the same. I'm just going to reference the visualization process you gave me Jason because it's an easy way to think about this. But if you're sitting down and you're feeling resistance towards something and you think about the alternative of another thing that might be better for you or you want to maybe do what you're scared of, you close your eyes and you feel yourself in both scenarios or you flip a coin and each one of them represents the side of the coin. You know which side of the coin you want to land on. You know, and that's your intuition. You might be scared of it. You know, and if you're scared of something, that's resistance. But you can tell pretty quickly with the habitual patterns of just like practicing this over and over again, which one is actually coming from a place of like your heart center and your excitement and not this kind of elusive mind that's trying to shut you down. For my practice over the years, it's been me. I actually have to write stuff and I have to return to it a lot and I know not everybody has to do that. There's some people that can just like move through stuff really quickly. When I have a resistance towards something that keeps popping back up to me, I will write down what that is. Like I will write, I will script it in a journal like this is the thing that is making me feel shut down. I'm scared of this because of, you know, why? And I try to diagnose exactly where that feeling is coming from because it might be something that happened when you're a kid. It might be something that somebody in society just told you randomly at some point in your life and you believed it. It can be a fear of success even fear. Oh, dude, totally all the time. Fear and fear of success is just like you think it's like, oh, I'm not confident in my ability to hold that success. But then you're like, well, you're confident in your confidence. You're confident in your incompetence. Like that's also just an illusion. It's like, so it's kind of in this, this principle of the law of knowing that it can work out. And I will just write down like the feeling that comes from me being scared of it. And then I will just script. I'll just start scripting a whole page about the alternative. Like what if it does work out? Like this feels this way for me. And like I have pages and pages in my journal where I'll take like an emotion and it's just like, okay, anger. I'm feeling angry today. And then I start scripting out how I can use that anger to benefit me. Like oh, I can use my anger to do something creative. I can use my anger to jump up and down. I move my body and lift weights and feel energy move through. I can use my anger to chop wood and like put stuff into fire later this week for my daughter to play with. And when we're not in the fire, but like she likes to build fires with me. So I try to just, it's not necessarily like, oh, this is all just positive stuff, but like you're taking it, everything has a polarity. So it's in simple, the simplest way to say it is like in any given situation that you have in any emotion that you're feeling, you can choose to either let it destroy your life force energy or contribute to it, feed it. And that's your ability to move toward the life that you want or to stay in exactly where you are in a routine and just keep returning back to the same place of feeling limitation. And every, you know, whether I'm writing note cards or I'm doing visualization practices or I'm taking inspired action or not, it all comes down to my ability to make a decision in each moment to move toward my goals and dreams or to be scared and stay away from them. And so building habits on that, you know, like it takes me things like I have this, there's an alter back here that reminds me. Each here reminds me, my kid reminds me, my wife reminds me, getting in the van and taking an adventurous trip reminds me like all of the things that are exciting remind me to keep doing that. But it is easy. I mean, as a human in this experience to just get completely blindsided by something that feels really heavy and dark. And I mean, even right now, like I'm having financial on the back of selling that business and building a new one, like I'm bootstrapped really heavy right now. And so it can feel very stressful and I have a decision now to be like, oh my gosh, I need to shut like I can't do this anymore. I have to go get a job or whatever or to just start letting it feel good for me again. Like, okay, this is fun. This is a game. This is the game of life. This is how to play it. And I am going to do these things that inspire me. I'm going to start talking to people about this because if you're not communicating, then how is anybody going to know? How is the world going to know what you want? Then nobody's going to conspire to help you if you're not talking about it. I'm going to do the things that help my body feel good, right? Make sure you're not everybody's like a gym. I'm not even a gym buff or anything like that. But like, there are things like running on a trail with my dogs or getting out and yeah, doing some squats in the barn barefoot with the kettlebells, whatever it might be. You can do it for five to ten minutes. Like you don't have to do 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour or whatever. That just gets your blood flowing and remind you where you're at. So yeah, what is that? What does that look like for you? What are the things that can fortify your feeling that you are trying to cultivate and then doing it, you know, habitually, like making sure you're doing at least one of those things every day and listening to yourself with your visions, writing your two things on your note card. And if it feels like it's still not working over and over again, keep doing it. Eventually, you're going to get wins and logging wins is another one we can talk about if you want because that's huge. We'll get back to the interview in just a moment. Now back to the show. I love that idea of moving towards the life you want because sometimes we want it all and we want it yesterday, right? the idea that you can chunk it down. I mean, it just sounds so much more manageable if you're working towards a gap year or something like that. It's not like you have to have it all figured out and you have to have all the money saved and everything like that. It's just like what are you doing today that moves you sometimes a big step towards it? Maybe it's like the tiniest little baby step, right? But you're still moving towards it and that's okay because you know the decisions are moving you towards that. I love that idea. The money part, I mean, I just mentioned money. We can't like say all this without talking about financial. Well, actually, before I ask you about the, as it relates to some financial decisions, I wanted to ask you about moving towards a life you want and balancing that with also being happy with the present life you have. Well, yeah, I think moving towards a life you want is actually being happy with the present life you have. Okay, there you go. Because you're cultivating self-love. That's a mic drop. Hold on, mic drop moment. There we go. You can't drop it. Because it's on the thing. (laughing) I hate it. Yeah, self-love is at the core of it, man. Like I don't, becoming the feeling of your wish fulfilled is embodying the excitement of where you're going in the present and really at the core, it's understanding that you can love everything exactly as it is right now. Every bit of anxiety that we have usually comes from something you're thinking about the past or the future. So maintaining your presence, which is also in the presence is when you take inspired action. It's not getting too far ahead and thinking about what you're missing. Because if you think like, here's the stuff that's coming but I'm not there yet, you're never gonna get there because you're always thinking that it's far away. Like if you visualize like, I want to be rich and successful. I want to be location independent. And you're saying that over and over again, well, by saying I want is just implying that you don't have it. And so you're pushing it away. Like you're never gonna have that if you say that. You have to remove it the want and go into the I am of the feel good. Like I am living this way. And then you just start feeling what it's like to live that way. I mean, like a rich, let's just, this is an easy example. But like a rich person isn't that drives a Porsche, isn't walking around every day saying like, yeah, you know, I drive, I drive a Porsche. Like I drive a Porsche. I'm rich, I drive a Porsche. Maybe some of the, maybe some of the ego-tistical ones are potentially, but they're insecure. But like a secure rich person isn't walking around saying like, I drive a Porsche, I drive a Porsche. They're just aware that they have the Porsche. Like at any given moment, they know that the Porsche's in the garage. They're feeling, they live the life of feeling that they have that there. And so that's what you're trying to accomplish is like, just be aware that this stuff is present because it is. And if it's not on the physical, visible world yet, like there is an unlimited aspect to universal creativity. Like you're, we're taught that the body is holding the spirit inside, like it's captive or something, but really the body is inside of the spirit. So if you look at it from that perspective, then yeah, man, like feeling good about the future actually starts by just feeling good in the present because you have unlimited potential just based on who you are right now and what you're doing. That might have been a little bit intense, but. - No, that's great. - I think about the body within the spirit as well. I'm a visual thinker so that imagery makes me feel connected to everything in a different way rather than, like you said, something trapped inside. Okay, so we're talking about kind of moving through resistance, moving towards the life you want and being content in the fact that you're in the present moment moving towards the life you want and thus being happy in the present, but also are not happy. That's the wrong word, but I guess being sort of satisfied. - Just being in the present, even if you're feeling horrible, like just being in the present and like understanding, I'm feeling extreme frustration right now in the present. I'm not gonna suppress it, I'm not gonna hide from it. I'm gonna feel this and then flipping that, like what can I use this frustration for good for? It might just be punching a punching bag for two hours, you know, like it might be going on a hike in the woods, like there are ways to use that energy to your benefit. And so if you don't know what those ways are, the first step is figuring out what those are. Yeah. - Yeah, no, that makes sense. The financial aspect I was alluding to earlier, you know, when we think about resistance, I think about some things being, not that you have to rank all of them, but I'm just using a couple of examples. Let's say it's pretty low stakes to think, oh, I'm having resistance about sitting down and trying to write, you know, a letter to a friend or whatever. What are they gonna think of me? And, you know, that can be very high stakes for somebody as well. But there's a different kind of high stakes, I think that comes with some financial stuff where you're like, oh, God, am I gonna have enough money to go to the grocery store and feed myself when I'm talking about, you know, the Maslow's hierarchy of needs and you're like at the basic level and you need the financial means to achieve the basic, things that you need, like having a place to live and all that kind of stuff. When you're trying to move towards a certain life you want, but you have financial challenges, how do you think about that with all the sort of, some of the frameworks you shared today? - So when I think about financial challenges, I immediately start thinking about what kind of lack it is for my mindset. 'Cause it just happens to me a lot. I'm like, what am I lacking? That keeps me from having more streams of revenue or more money coming in. Because there's also infinite money and money is just in energy and you see all sorts of people around the world good or bad that can use money to their effectiveness, like whatever they want, right? So it's like, well, why don't I have it? I start to get into that like victim mentality of like, why do I not deserve this? Why does my family not have a type thing? And what's really lacking there is actually opportunity, 'cause opportunity can create money. There's all sorts of different forms of abundance actually away from money too that can help with this. But then I'm like, okay, well, if I don't have any opportunity to make money, what is it that's blocking me from that? And what am I doing on a day-to-day basis that's keeping me without having opportunity? And usually it just comes down to me thinking like, maybe I'm not communicating about this enough to people. 'Cause if you do the same thing every day, if you just stay to yourself and whatever, you get on your computer, you're like scrolling your phone, you journal like all that's great, but if you do the same thing every day, you're not actually opening yourself up to new experience. If you walk down the street with your head down, you're not gonna see the people walking by that could change everything for you. Financially, I had no idea when I first started, right? Like I had no idea. But by starting my podcast back then, way back in the day, the first one, the artsy now show, is like so long ago, I opened myself up to my biggest fear, which was being vulnerable in conversation with people about my situation. 'Cause I had, I was very much in the victim mindset. I was very much struggling. I had many times where I considered not being here on this earth anymore. And meeting you all helped bring me out of that, because it changed my environment. It changed the people that was around me. It changed my idea of like, oh, this is actually possible for people not just that I see on TV, but it's like real people doing this stuff. And so I would suggest in any capacity, like if you're afraid to do anything that caused that takes finances to make a change, just go somewhere. Like just go somewhere and be in a different place and talk to people. You can find local meetups usually that are like, there's digital nomad meetups, there's entrepreneurial meetups. Like just going and having conversations with people or just listening to people at those places. Like you never know what one person you meet, that one conversation can do to change your life. And that can steamroll. Like when I did that podcast, Jason, I met, I interviewed this other guy named Jason, who I met through like a Twitter auto direct message thing. And he ended up becoming a business partner of mine early on. And he's still my co-founder at RageCreate. Like none of that stuff would have ever happened. Had I not found location in D, had I not found your all shows back in the day, right? And started, like this is the show. Like your show, Travis's show, inspired me to start podcasting. And so I listened to that. I was so scared of it. But I was like, you know what? Maybe I can start asking people what they're doing to live the life of their dreams. And then there's going to be some things in there that I can find and put into practice myself that are going to lead me down that direction. And so I met him and then it evolved from there. And like financial stuff just started working with me being open to the opportunities that were coming my way. Because opportunities create financial success. So if I were to stay in a place when I have no money and do the same thing over and over again, I'm never going to have more opportunity to come in. And the money's never going to find me. Because I'm going to actually be operating in a place of lack, like a fear that I don't have enough money. And so therefore the universe is just going to give me that same experience over and over again. So I know it's a really hard concept to think, especially in this kind of false spirit. There's a lot of like superficial spirituality happening new age stuff right now where people are like, you know, just think of the money and it will show up. And like it's absolutely not going to work without that inspired action. But the ideas will show up. And then it's up to you. Like if you have those ideas, if you're practicing every day, writing down a whole page full of ideas of things that could be opportunities for you. And you're not actually putting any of them into action, then they're just going to be pages of ideas. But if you're doing that and you find the ones that maybe feel like they're vibrating the hardest with your excitement, and you're like, "Okay, what was one thing I can do today to explore that a little bit farther?" That's where opportunity starts to show up. So that's what my practice is. I'm sure that there's infinite numbers of practices for people and how to get more into that mindset. But going back to that book, I mentioned at the beginning too, people in that specific position, Florence shins the game of life and how to play it. It's a great place to start with these practices. Also, there's a book called Love Money, Money Loves, Love Money, Money Loves You, I believe. It might be Love Money, Money Loves Me, and it's really, really good. She's writing it from the perspective of like, "It's like money has written the book itself through this woman to you." And it's a very special, unique book that it's a quick read and it's really good. It diagnoses all of those things that we've been talking about. I think it's called Love Money, Money Loves Me. That's great. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff around Money Mindset that was important for me personally, and my journey to unpack and to understand, I don't know if these books are about this, but understand the messaging, some of the messaging I got growing up and how it was impacting me in the present moment. I would just sucked into my creative bubble here, Heath. I got my guitars here. I got my podcast stuff here. I could just do my thing, but to your point, maybe getting out and then seeing people every now and again, which I did yesterday. Is it good when you do that? Yeah, it feels great. It can also feel good. I like playing music too. We have all sorts of instruments. I love that too. It goes back to that present moment thing of like, I do catch myself. I'm just going to do this again. There is something beautiful about learning a song on the guitar, just playing it over and over again and developing that. I think that's really therapeutic for you as well, and can actually help open up opportunity in many different ways too. It's just like, are we hiding when we're doing this stuff? Is Ashley inside the house under the covers reading "Fairy Smut" for seven hours at a time? Because she's resisting something else that she should be doing. Is that a new genre? Oh, dude. It's a big genre of books, man. Wow. It was to me. It is taking many women, and I'm sure some lots of men too, under its wings. But anyway, like "Fairy Wings." Yeah. Yeah. When you do get out of that bubble, because the bubble can be fun too, like producing, like any of that can be so fun. But you go out. I'm extremely introverted. It may not seem that way in conversation with a good friend like you, but dude, I'm a wallflower. If I go out, I'm feeling everything. I'm feeling all these energies and emotions, and I'm like, "I, please don't talk to me." But if someone does talk to me, I'm like, "Oh, dude, that was so great." That was such a great thing to open up that conversation. And now maybe I have a new friend. And that friend comes over and we hang out, and opportunities come from that. So it's important. It's important work. Yeah. Now that's great. It's a great reminder for me. You mentioned the game "Life Book" a couple times, and we talked about thinking of things as a game in general. Life is a game, right? And this is circling back to the topic we talked about in the beginning and this idea of lifestyle entrepreneurship or just being a lifestyle entrepreneur. Whatever you want to call it, building the lifestyle business, the business that, building the lifestyle first and then kind of building your business within the lifestyle you want to have, which I'm a huge proponent of. And you know, this is where I wanted to start with this part of the conversation. I know we've already talked about a ton of things that play into that. I believe all this feeds into that. But for me, you know, I realize that this is, it's not, it's not the right way to do things. It's just another version of the game of business, right? And it's like, what game do you want to play? That's why I started doing some consulting for a software company in town. You know, they're in the startup world. And I see the startup world. That's like a separate game, right? You can get funding. You can do all this stuff. And that's like a path to wealth or a path to certain types of businesses that you can build. But it's a different type of game if you want to put it within some gaming ecosystem, right? Perhaps the lifestyle entrepreneur, quote unquote, game is its own sort of thing where you can choose to play that game. You know what I mean? You can choose to play the whatever business game you want to play. Right? I choose, I always have chosen to play the lifestyle entrepreneur game because it's, it's me. I enjoy it. You know, I like, I like the idea of trying to make that fit with sort of the lifestyle I want to have and being able to update that and have that flexibility. I never wanted to create a desk job for myself. I was going to work for myself, you know, and be, be holding to investors and that sort of thing. But I mean, may I, may I want to play that game later? I don't know. We'll have to see. So how do you think about this type of stuff? Just from a very top level, if we're talking about, you know, building a business that allows you the flexibility to travel. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Yeah. Which recently I've been running an e-commerce business on Shopify and I've actually had so many orders and I've been packing them myself. So I've, I've had a taste of not being so location independent because I got going to the warehouse several days a week. I've had a great reflection of like the freedom that comes along with that. That was a commitment I made to myself. Like I knew it was going to be a thing and I was okay with it. Like I wanted it. I was like, yeah, so cool to go put these things that I've made into boxes and send them. You were like, that's going to be part of my lifestyle. Like that's I'm choosing that. That's a lot different than just making decisions and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, what have I done? You know, you did it consciously. Consciously. Yeah. This was part of it. But I was just bringing it up to because I was getting a reminder of like light. Like I keep putting the word freedom in there because freedom lifestyle for me is I would imagine something that maybe not everybody but like the ability to do what you want when you want. And to pursue the things that help you feel at your highest, you know, your highest good, your highest wealth. Any time that you want is freedom lifestyle to me. And so it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be working from some exotic beach. Although that is going to make you feel really awesome when you're doing that too. I mean, those moments where you're sitting with your toes in the sand over a tropical beach working from a laptop. Like it's hard to beat that. So the birds IV perspective for me has always been like, well, what are my core life principles that I'm working toward? You know, like I want to be the greatest father that I can be for my daughter. I want to be a fun, you know, playful father for my daughter. Like that's a core life principle that I have. I want to teach her to operate from a place of abundance and having fun. So when she wakes up every morning, she's like, yeah, what are we doing today? Because that's going to steamroll her into being that way when she's older, you know, and like being able to use that that higher frequency. I don't even like to use the word frequency because it's so misused these but that higher excitement inside of herself to to become everything that she wants to become in the world. So I usually have four or five core principles that I'm always working with, which can change over time. And then my long term visions, they align with those core principles. So your long term visions are kind of just the vision stuff we were talking about earlier. Like where am I, what am I cultivating, you know, and then I make sure that that's an alignment with the core principles, which is basically like an ethos as Stephen Pressfield would call it. Like just this core ability for you to operate like I always return to my ethos and I'm like, am I doing these things like my living within these parameters of who I want to become. And then short term visions just line up under your long term visions and then your daily actions that are inspired just line up under your short term visions. So it's just kind of like a totem pole. That keeps me there. If that answers the question. Yeah, yeah, that's great. And just we touched on a ton here. So I'd love to hear if there's anything missing if you want to share your sort of top two or three. Well, yeah, we could talk about the mistakes to avoid for sure. If you have some overarching principles to share there. But if you have any other like one, two or three other sort of big takeaways or a piece of advice you'd want to share from an overarching perspective to somebody listening. Who is designing or redesigning a lifestyle business. Anything any big points that we miss that you might want to highlight. The biggest point for me when I first started and it continues. Well, I'm going to say that it's a little bit different because it's it's part of everything we've talked about already, but it's a very important part. It's eliminating distractions. It seems very baseline, but like in a world of constant distraction. Literally everything is built to knock you off your focus like immediately, right? Like that they want like it's built to make your attention span shrink. And like you know, one's reading books anymore. It's just like a three-second real and all of that. Removing distraction and allowing that space to be focused. Without that, nothing gets accomplished. You know, like nothing I can't get anything done if I'm constantly ping ponging between different chaotic things that are happening throughout my day. And I have days like that where it's like 30 things I've written. down that I'm gonna do because I didn't use my system and I'm going back and forth between them and then at the end of the day, I'm like, "Did I get anything?" Like, I did like an eighth of all of them and nothing actually got done. So you're. Obviously, an easy place to go. He is with the phone, but you have created that being box thing that you sent me a sample of and I've been using it. And dude, I'm saying this from a place of extreme sincerity, putting my phone in that box. Like, for hours and hours a day, has not only restored these focused principles that I kind of lost for a little bit, honestly. Like I said, last year, I was just in this chaotic, like, forced action thing. But it's allowed me to find myself in a place of momentary bliss over and over again, where I'm just spending time with my daughter. I'm actually bringing my passion into my work without distraction. That's just. The phone is just one example of distraction, but if you go back to the beginning, I did that whole minimalist. The minimalist, if we all remember them, I think they're still doing their thing, but I went through that whole selling everything that I had and getting down to just a couple belongings because I realized I was living a life where I was like spending all my time and money, taking care of physical things that were not actually contributing to my ethos or my long-term visions or my short-term visions or the things that I needed to do for that day. And so, I'm not such a minimalist anymore as in like, and I lived in a van and I do keep things pretty minimal, but removing distractions in itself has been has been massive. So that's a big one. Like, there's a lot of ways to do that. Thank you for the box, by the way. Thanks for that. Yeah, for people that don't, they're like, if they're like, what are you talking about? I made this cell phone lock box slash comes with a journal and a whole daily practice to help you lock your phone away so you can have better habits at home around your digital technology, specifically your smartphone. So, yeah, that's very working with small amount of people to kind of just make sure people get results and things are working, but because you're listening to this show, I will put a link to that in the show notes. And if you want to pick one up, you can you can do that because it's not a necessarily totally public yet, but well, I didn't know it was a public, but I have I have it in my laundry room, right? Like, and I have a little farmhouse, so there's actually no closets in the whole house, so I built this laundry room out and I have it in the laundry room and I have like symbolic things in there. A lot of things I keep, which actually I've these I brought these in here today because I'm these obsidian blades that I found is a crazy story behind this if you want to hear it in a little bit, but I just mindfully like I've always used these apps that shut my phone down whatever like, but I keep breaking through and like I get it's just they're built to make you addicted and it's okay. Like you don't have to feel shame that it works on you. It works on me and I'm like I'm stuck here again. I've been doing this, but there's something about that physical box, man. I told you this over and over again, it has drastically changed the energetics of my life in terms of like bringing me back into the moment. I no longer feel like I'm missing something if my phone is in on my person. I feel like something's wrong if that phone isn't in the box. Like if it's not inside of its home. It's like that happy, you know, more moment. You got to go to your home. Go to your home. Yeah, I think about that too when I was first going to that journaling system, I was writing down like go to your home phone, you know, but like it is it is something that has been has been very special for me. So I just wanted to say thank you. Thanks, man. No, that really I need to hear that because it's it's tough to get a new product launched, you know, and we've done a small people that are part of the newsletter community. I did a small sort of announcement there and we did a small group of smartphone habits reboot group and you know, to hear that you're getting results. The group has been getting results. We've been getting great feedback and I need to hear that at this stage of the business when you're trying to get something going that you want to make a difference of people's lives, but you need to get the work out. Because the Netherlands are coming in. You get people results. You want to make sure it works. So it's like, yeah, been 100% positive feedback and that it's been working. So yes, if you're listening to this and you want better smartphone habits at home, I will link to something where you can yeah, you can pick it up. Dude, what's your biggest like I'm just curious because I I'm co-creating things alongside you in the capacity. Like I know what it's like to make something put it out into the world and and there's always this period for me that's like, is it, is Pat Flynn used to say, is it going to fly, right? Like I create all of these scenarios in my head as to why something won't work out. You know, and I do that for so long and then eventually I will finally break through with my habitual patterns that I've built of of of construct kind of constructing the vision in my head that it will work and then it starts working when I do that, but it takes me a while. And in the period that you're at right now where you have kind of like a testing thing going on, but you haven't actually launched it yet is when it can feel the darkest for me. So I'm just curious, you've obviously worked through so much to get to the point that you're at now, but are you feeling like what kind of are you feeling tension? Are you feeling oh yeah, feels the dark is now feels dark. Yeah, yeah, well, it's because first of all, I don't have the experience of physical products and all of you, I don't want to get into the all the dynamics and bore everybody, but you know, with the tariffs and everything like that, it just adds a whole other element of complexity. I'm like the general numbers guy. I'm like in my head, I know if it's generally working, but there are so many numbers involved with shipping and tariffs and this and that and that you have to get really detailed with that and that's not one of my strengths, you know, I mean, I have an accountant and stuff like that, I can get help with some of this stuff. I can talk to you, you know, I'm you've done an experience with this, but I don't want to make this a therapy session about me and my current business state, but I think where I'm at right now is I have, you know, X amount of boxes, which is a very, you know, it was a small order, but we want to like just get those out and get people results and make sure it works. And so that's been super exciting to get the feedback and everything, but it's just getting it into people's hands, you know, the resistance for me comes from, okay, well, let's say we do all that and, you know, we are doing that, but like, you know, we move through this inventory. What's next? Like, am I good enough to figure it out in terms of numbers and how we're going to actually do this and then the unpredictability of tariffs and things like that to like actually scale this up to place an order of 10,000 of something, you know, like that would be a great problem to have, but then I just know I just need to get some help here, because but you know, it's just the unpredictability of the, of really the tariffs that that's the thing that holds me back from like trying to go super big with this because you could, you know, how it is, man, I mean, you can have some stuff on a boat and then all of a sudden somebody's like mad. Oh, it happened to us. Yeah, and then all of a sudden you're just like, wow, I'm going to lose all my money now. We had a big ship and hit customs and they, they were like, here's a giant bill. Yeah, you can't have no control over it. And if you don't pay it, they just basically like confiscate or destroy your items or whatever. But I look at that exact since situation is like the reason I talk about resistance, Grimlands is because if you, if you add Grimland to the back of any of these problems and you look at it, we talk about gamifying this. I look at it as a game and like, well, this is a big boss that we got to get through. How are we going to do this? And so I thought through that process and I was like, there has to be some sort of opportunity here to make this break and work because it's here. It's supposed to work and supposed to come to me and I'm being tested right now, you know, and I went back to the supplier and I basically was like, look, they're charging us this much to get this through. Can you, can you cut, you know, the amount due back to you, like by this percentage so that we can actually get this shipment released to us? And dude, I mean, I guess there was a part of me that expected that maybe they would say yes, but they said yes. And then all of a sudden, like our unit cost ended up being the same as it would have been because they gave us breaks because they needed to keep the business too. And I was like, okay, and that the rates went back down the terrors went back to normal for now for as far as I know. But I'm always looking in those situations of like, okay, if I'm feeling this resistance Grimland that's attacking you or this big boss, okay, I'm lacking opportunity. What's the opportunity that I need to find? What am I not asking myself? What am I not seeing? So yeah, it's a scary place to be. Feel, feel into it. I mean, dude, if you ever need anything, hit me up. I'm happy to talk through stuff with you. Thanks. Yeah, I'm, but you need to be feeling good about it because if you do it and you're not feeling good about it, it could turn out really bad, you know. Well, this is one of the, you know, here you go, sneak peek into what it is to run your own business. You need a lot of therapy sessions like this. No, even going into this though, and this might be helpful for people. My mentality was, I'm going to create this thing. I feel passionate about it. I want it for myself. I'm like a scratcher and itch kind of entrepreneur. This is something that I created for myself to help myself. And then I know it can help others. And I have to have sort of that purpose driven mission behind anything I put out there just because it's the thing that gets me out of bed, right? Like, it's not just like, if I want to just have a business, I'll start like some kind of counting business. That would be way more profitable. I'll find accountants, a market, financial service, business, and, you know, probably make a lot of money because everybody needs that. But that's not, you know, that's not what gets me out of bed. Like, making stuff that can, can provide value in people's lives in some ways, that gets me out of bed and keeps me motivated. So, but going into this, I was like the physical product thing. I was like, well, anything can happen. But I'm going to look at this as, you know, all right. Yeah, I'm paying all this money, I'm going to make these things go through this whole process, but that is going to teach me. It's almost like an education, like instead of going to buy a degree in e-commerce, well, I'm just going to do it. I'm going to do all the things you need to do. And even if I lost all my money, it's like I'm paying for the education of learning all of these skills. So that's a way to think about things as you go into them as well, you know. And also try to remove the idea that it's going to fail. Because I think a lot of successful entrepreneurs, like, you know, remember that old sales book that go for no? Like, even my old boss in the concrete industry, when I was working in that concrete manufacturing plant for $13 an hour, building receptacles that carry human feces underground. Like, that's where I was before I met you, right? And like, I literally got fired because I grabbed the Forklift driver's junk because he kept calling me a gay boy. And like, that led me on this path. It's like insane to think about. But the boss back then was like, he was always like, I would go to these sales meetings and stuff. And like, these people would be like, no, no. And he would be like, he'd leave the meeting with me and be like, I think we got a good shot at that one. And I was like, this guy is nuts. You know, like, what are you talking about? He always believes that like it was going to work out for him. And I learned a lot from that. I was like, you know, man, like maybe that guy didn't sign up for an account, but like, that principal that he had over time actually worked out for him more often than not. You know, so I tried, I tried to remove, yeah, I tried to remove those blocks and I don't usually move forward until I've removed them. And the way that I've removed them is sitting in that dense darkness and building the visualization practice of it working out for me and like feeling that and being like, hey, you know what? If this works out in the way that maybe it isn't exactly like, I think it's going to be like, maybe it's not exactly what my expectation is. But it can still be good. And so I think this or something better, like it's going to be this or it's going to be something better and that's something better may not look exactly like it. But it's going to be something better or this. And then that's, you know, it works. It works in one way or another. It has to. What were to bring this back to travel. And then we'll let you get out here in a short bit. What were some of the biggest lessons from your van life, from your nomad days? Like that you still carry with you that you think still impacts your life today. Oh, man, sitting sitting in complete isolation with nature, like sitting in front of a fire, just sitting in front of a fire. What that can do for your nervous system and like the vision, the visionary process of like having your ideas flow through you that are actually in alignment with who you are is incredible. And so in the van, you know, just being in nature so much and sitting in isolation, like those were the years where I was really building out things without trying at all. I mean, it was just always inspired action because I was just being completely charged all the time by the trees and the fires and sounds hippie, but it's like also not because we are a part of nature and it makes total sense to not be stuck in a box of concrete all day and like not touching these things. And so that was good. Another thing was I, you know, when you live in a van, you're going to face the darkest aspects of yourself a lot more often than if you're somewhere that feels like you have lots of places to put your attention in and you know, make yourself feel great or eat nourishing foods like you're, you know, just trying to find something to eat before the sun goes down. And there's all there's so many different examples of like being in a van where you're living with someone that you just met in the van and like you're having these intense like wow, meeting of each other like one on one, like we have to work through this stuff right now because there's no other option. It kind of just removes all the superficialness of the world. Like I stopped thinking so much about all of these fake problems that I'm making up for myself that didn't actually exist. You're sitting out there and like you're looking at the stars like there's nothing in your nervous system that's like gosh, I shouldn't be looking at these stars because I need to go write that email. It just doesn't happen. Like you're just like whoa, whoa. And so the more you do it, the more you train yourself to be like, oh, I can go there whenever I want and feel better no matter what's going on. This is all going to work out because nature just works. Yeah, I also think like I got really good at being effective when I was on my laptop, you know, because like when you have a computer up all the time, I got really good at being like well, when I get to a place where I can set the star link up or I have Wi-Fi, I'm going to do these three things really quickly and I'm not going to be at, you know, I'm not going to just get lost in something else. And so that habit, you know, now when I'm working, it's like I can just do very effective things over and over again because I have the list that's in alignment with my dreams. But a lot of that was built off of me being in that situation where it's like, oh, I'm only going to have internet for this period of time. And so I need to do this right now. If you're talking about doing travel lifestyle and working from a computer, like that's a paramount skill set that you're going to need to have meeting people too. That was, that was something that I, all these different opportunities that kept opening up for me just by going in like local grocery stores that are, you know, in a random small town and meeting someone randomly or meeting people at campsites, like people's life stories will immediately change your perspective. So a constant evolution of perspective change in life for sure. Can you share your top two or three favorite off the beaten path destinations you visited, hidden gems and places that in the van or just overall anywhere, anywhere in the world, places that really still stick with you that you know listeners here. I mean, you know listeners here, you know, that they would appreciate. I will share that this isn't probably something that most people are going to want to go to, but it has had such a drastic impact on my heart. Like, Ginger Uganda has been something that massively impacted my life. And that's just me working with a school out there that started with just a couple hundred kids that this amazing kind of travel nurse brought in that were basically living off the streets. And she's built this out now like 10 years later to all these just big concrete buildings. And there's 105, 600 students there and that has been something that's been very magical for me. I really like Nika Raga a lot. Oddly like I guess not oddly, but the Pacific coast of Nika Raga and Tola's Rivas and like, gosh, there are some really wild things that happen for me down there that help just I've got so many stories, man. I can't like they're all I might be able to tell one of them. Like the places that I'm speaking of are generally because something happened to me there that profoundly changed my life, you know, inside the United States in the van, the place that I kept returning to was Lake Paulina, which is in Oregon. So the cascade mountains are like I feel like my energetic home climbing the cascade mountains, like, you know, Mount Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, don't, don't do that if you don't have any experience. It's like a legit climbing mountain's like, you know, you need gear and stuff. But being out there in that area, there's something so serene about it. But Lake Paulina there's there's a campground there. I think it's called little crater campground. If you go before the season opens and there's still snow like it's just an open into campground and there's no one there. If you can handle snow, you can walk around the backside of this lake. If you go in the summer, there's going to be lots of people there in families, you know, it's still a great spot. But like it's in the winter, there's just like nobody there. And I'm talking like it could be early June. So like the first week of June, it's still going to be a close campground because of all the snow. It's pretty high elevation, I think like 6500 feet or something. And you can walk, don't look at the map of where they say hot springs are because it's wrong, but like you can walk from that campground all the way around the other side of the lake. It's only about a mile and a half or two miles to get there. And there are hot springs that come up out of the, so it's a collapse of volcanic lake. So the deeper you go in it, there's actually active lava. So like the deeper you go in the lake, the warmer it gets if that makes sense. But you can dig out the sand bank and the hot springs will come up into the pools and you can soak in them. And I've been to this place like 10 times is super magical. But really when you get there, usually there's already dug out, like people keep them pretty maintained and dug out so you can just like go and sit in the pools. And there's like usually no one out there. And if you go in an evening and it starts to get dark and the stars come out, it's super magical. And it's the place where I found those those obsidian blades I was talking about earlier, which, oh really? Okay. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Those are great recommendations. We want to plug your company here so people can check it out ragecreate.com. Is there anywhere else that people should go to find your stuff? Yeah. ragecreate.com is pretty much everything I'm making right now physically. Yeah. I'm working on a kids' affirmation deck right now. I'm going to send you one when I have a quote. It's like, it's really good. It's fun. Yeah. ragecreate.com for affirmation like Oracle Decks getting into like the masculine brain to productivity paths and stuff like that. Deckcreators.com is where I'm teaching people how to make car decks, which has been we're kind of coming out of bed on it and it's interesting. You've run a community before you know, it's like, I mean, that phase. where you were where it's like, it's coming, it's coming. Like I'm keeping positive and trying to get through that, that slow phase of like being uncertain. That's cool. But yeah, he tharmstrong.com is kind of my base. I'm at heath. I am on Instagram stuff like that. So. Thanks so much. I am in the debt creators community. I should mention. So if you, if you end up in there because you want to create some decks, you can, we can say hi there. Thanks for taking the time to do this. We're bringing all the value you did today. Thanks for being a great friend over the years. And yeah, look forward to the next time we can, we can meet up in person, man. Gotta do it again soon. I appreciate it so much. Obviously I, I can sincerely say that I would not have this life path that I had not interacted with you. So it's a special thing in every person. I think this is important for everyone. Every single conversation you have, you have no idea what that effect is having on the person that's receiving it. So leading with this idea of being of service and being as, as helpful as you can with your energetic field, that sounds woo. But like the more you can play and dance and have fun, the more you give permission to everybody around you to do the same thing. And that feeling of excitement and light hardness is what's going to bring more experiences like that into your life. And so I would not have this without those conversations that we had, dude. So I, I really deeply appreciate it. I will, I will tell you that till the day I die. It's, thanks, I'm very humble. I believe in you. I still think you would, but thank you. And you know, I would not have a lot of the things that I've had over the years without you, you know, and others just supported the work along the way and things like that. And I'm just so glad that we have been able to get connected and just remain friends all these years. So look forward to more, some more great years of friendship, man. And thanks, thanks again. Yeah, man. [Music] There you have it. Thank you to the incredible Heath Armstrong. So glad to have him in my life, grateful for that, dude. And as you heard him there at the end, play, dance, have fun. I mean, why not include these things into the things that we do, infuse those things into the life that we're living, the business that we're building, the travels that we're creating. Maybe, or hopefully this one is hitting you at a time where you're able to pull out some of the things Heath shared today and implement them and use them to work towards whatever it is you're working towards. So I hope this one was helpful, it was a fun one for me. And I'm going to read to you the affirmation card that I have sitting at my desk from Heath's decks or one of Heath's decks, which you should check out by the way at ragecreate.com. They're awesome. They're like high quality. I put them up anywhere. I love them. And I'll read that in a moment. First two quick housekeeping things you heard. Heath and I talk about the Being Box method, which is the thing I created to help you with your smartphone habits at home. If you want to pick one of those up, just email me and type Being Box in the subject header, Being Box. And I can send you the details there because I want to keep this with the community right now as I mentioned here in the show. I'm really trying to keep this minimal. I want to bring groups of people through and working directly with people. We've done a few cohorts where we've basically gone through the method and then done it together so we can encourage each other, help each other out, have a little mini WhatsApp group and things like that. And if you want to be a part of something like that, you want to do something together. If I get enough emails after this episode, I'll put another one of those together. I'll send you the Being Box and the journal that goes with it and we can start working on the cellphone habits together because we all need some time, more time offline. And lastly, I just want to say thanks to AirWave Media. We're now part of their podcast network. They've got some incredible shows over there. If you go to airwavemedia.com, you can see the other awesome shows that they have. Now let me read you this affirmation card I look at every day. It's perfect to wrap this one up. It says, "As I align my habits, decisions and actions with my dreams, my creative ideas become real things." Thanks for listening and have a great one. Peace and love to you and your listeners. "VIA Podcast" is a travel podcast by AAA Mountain West that goes beyond destinations to uncover the stories that make places unforgettable. Hosted by Michelle Donati and Mitty Hicks, the show explores the American West through fascinating stories of history, culture, wildlife, folklore, and adventure. This season features stories about Route 66, wolves in Montana, Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest, and much more if you love great storytelling and discovering the hidden side of the places around us. Search for "VIA Podcast." That's the letters "VIA Podcast," wherever you get your podcasts.