Just Say “No!”
Hey, we need you to come in and work over the weekend again.
No.
Can we watch Sex and the City part 2?
No.
Buy me a drink?
No.
Can you skip the gym and help me do this BS?
No.
Got any spare change?
No.
Maybe you should give up on that and just get a job.
No.
Can you tell me about your future plans?
No.
Let’s just “veg out” and watch TV today.
No.
I know I’ve just me you but can you help me move into my new apartment?
No.
Let’s mindlessly go out to the club/bar every weekend.
No.
Gentlemen, “No” is the most powerful word in the English language. Get to know it. A “No” response need not be followed by a long, drawn out list of reasons why. “No” is sufficient.
It’s Monday Motherf*cker
Are you a winner or are you a loser?
Are you a Lion or are you a Gazelle?
Are you a do-er or a do-ee?
Did you strengthen your mind, body and soul this weekend or did you spend your time on the couch?
Are you the Alpha or the Omega?
Do you face your fears or are you a coward?
Do you have a single-minded focus or just “hanging out” and “going with the flow”?
Did you think to yourself this morning “Fuck yes, it’s Monday!” or “Fuck, it’s Monday again!“?
Are you waiting or are you preparing?
Choose your answers. Make your decisions. Prove it and then do it. Don’t tell us about it because we don’t give a shit about your words. We care about what you DO.
Get your game face on, Motherfucker. It’s time to do some killing.
How To Go On An Urban Vision Quest
American Indians, and other indigenous peoples, would head off into the forest all by themselves where they would spend time alone, searching for a vision to help them attain a new level of understanding. Some might go on a vision quest as a right of passage, other might go on a vision quest because a change must happen and a vision quest can force that change to occur. The length of time can be anywhere from a single evening, to a week, to much longer.
In the world we inhabit, spending time alone in the forest is not an option for most. It can certainly be tried but the likely outcomes can be 1) Being arrested for vagrancy 2) Dying from ingesting poisonous berries or 3) You obtain your vision. In this post we will go over an Urban Vision Quest.
An Urban Vision Quest is a quest one takes in a city or other populated area rather than spend time alone in an unpopulated piece of nature. An urban vision quest can be had anywhere except for the city you live in. It must be an unfamiliar place where you know not a single soul. It can be the next city closest to you, it can be in the next State closest to you, it can be in the next Country closest to you. As anyone who has ever lived in a densely populated megapolis knows, walking through a crowded city can be every bit as lonesome as being in the forest. To go on an urban vision quest you only need to be alone with your thoughts, it matters not how many people are around.
The amount of time is up to you. You can choose to spend a single evening in a new city, a few days in a new city, a week, or months. The rules are simple: pack as light as possible. Only bring necessities like a few pieces of clothing, toiletries, and money. Arrive at your destination with no plans whatsoever. End up wherever you end up. Just let yourself be guided. The very likely outcome is that you have a brand new appreciation for what you have. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Spending a night alone in an alien city is a surefire way to make you thankful for everything great you have in your life.
If one is only doing one-day, mini excursions then one will not be enough. Going on a mini vision quest once per month is ideal. Take the time to get away from all the nonsense of the daily grind, live life anew, if only for an evening, and return with a new sense of appreciation.
A week in a foreign place is great. Perhaps the greatest thing a one week vacation can do is help you realize you have been slaving away like a racing dog for this one week vacation per year when you could have a vacation like this all the time. Spend a week on the beach in Thailand and then go back to work Monday morning and pretend you don’t want to yell “I QUIT” at the top of your lungs. This could light a fire under your ass and motivate you to start your own gig where you are making money for yourself and, more importantly, have more of your most precious commodity - time.
The most extreme option, and, therefore, my favorite, go live in a completely foreign place for 6 months to a year. A few months of savings in a western country can equal 6 months to a year of living in a 2nd or 3rd world country. After living in a foreign country you can never be the same person you were before. Whether good or bad, a change will occur. In this authors humble opinion, everyone should spend at minimum 6 months abroad to live life in a different way and obtain your vision.
If a change is needed, an urban vision quest is the answer. Get going because time is wasting.
“I’m a thousand miles from nowhere, time don’t matter to me.
I’m a thousand miles from nowhere and there’s no place I wanna be.”
-Dwight Yoakam, A Thousand Miles From Nowhere
The Beauty of Simplicity : Spartan Living
There is no better advice than K.I.S.S.
Keep it Simple Stupid.
Simplicity works. Complexity is often a waste of time. The Deadlift, for example, is just about the simplest exercise in existence. Pick up a heavy weight from the ground. That’s it. But this simple exercise will produce more results that the most complex of exercises or any combination of complex exercises. The guy who deadlifts all the time is worlds apart in muscle mass and strength than the guy who stands one-legged on a bosu ball while curling and pressing kettlebells.
If it can be said effectively in one sentence there is no earthly reason to expand it to 4 or 5 sentences. Succinctness and brevity are always more effective than 13 pages of literary diarrhea. If it can be done in 5 minutes there is no reason to stretch it out to 30 minutes.
Simplicity makes things easier. Hard work is it’s own reward, but making things harder just because is flat out stupid. If it can be done one of two ways 1) the simple way and 2) the complex way only the idiot takes the complex way for the same (or often inferior) result.
Food cooked with 10 ingredients is always inferior in taste and nutrition to food cooked simply and with minimal ingredients. Steak and eggs cooked in butter and seasoned with salt and pepper tastes better than any restaurant meal with a list of fancy ingredients and a 30 minute prep time.
Paying $5,000 cash for a used pickup truck that you will own is always a better idea than leasing a brand new vehicle with a $2500 down payment, paying $487.92 every month for the next 48 months, limiting yourself to 12,000 miles per year and then giving the vehicle back to the dealership and starting the process over again. You could explain those options to the dimmest of dimwits and have him tell you which is the better choice.
Living simply allows you to live freer. You could buy yourself a bunch of fancy new dishes, eating from a weeks worth of dishes before you have to wash them or you could own 2 forks, 2 knives, 2 spoons, 2 bowls, 2 plates, 2 glasses and a spatula and be just as happy with less clutter.
You could have a collection of 1,000 DVD’s that take up a galactic amount of space or you could get rid of them and put all your media onto a computer or an external disk. You could buy new CD’s or you could simply put 5,000 songs onto an mp3 player and listen to anything you want at the drop of a hat. You could have a nice big book collection or you could get an e-book reader and have only one physical book and thousands to read. You could get yourself an expensive phone that will alert facebook if you’re stranded in the Australian Outback or you could get a cheap phone that makes phone calls and sends text messages. You could constantly buy new clothes and never be happy with what you have or you could buy a few items that you can wear for years.
You could strive to own more stuff and deal with the self-imposed imprisonment of you can strive to own less stuff and be free.
The choice is yours. I have already made mine.
How To Be Thrifty
Thriftiness is the ability to live comfortably while spending considerably less than the majority. Where the normal person rushes out to the store to purchase a full-priced whatever, a thrifty person uses a little common sense, patience, and discipline to purchase the same item at a steep discount. Like most people, when I want something I want it 5 minutes ago - I don’t want to wait at all but unlike most people I DEFINITELY don’t want to pay full price. I want it at a discount and if I can’t get a discount I’ll just wait until I can. There isn’t much worse than a man who is a spendthrift, wasting all his money on nonsense, acting like a child with money.
Here are some extremely simple ways to buy items at a discount:
Scour the internet: This is a big duh! There are millions of websites that offer products for sale. Doing a simple google search can often get you a better price than driving to the store and purchasing at full price. With an eye for thrift and a little patience you can find many things at a huge discount.
Example: I found a website with a bunch of stylish tank-tops on sale for between $1-$3. I did a further search and found a promotional code for free shipping. That means I bought 6 badass tank-tops for less than $10 and free shipping all the way from the UK, all because I spent a few minutes looking for deals.
Buy the older model: Anytime a new model of electronics comes out, the older version will always be on sale. Buying a brand new piece of electronics when it is first released is a pretty good way to waste money.
Example: I bought my blackberry at a steep discount because it was an older model and a new model was just being released. The old version does all the same bullshit as the new version at a fraction of the price. Buying that brand new, hip, sleek phone will make you happy for about 5 minutes until the new version comes out. Then you will rush out and buy that one. It’s never ending. Opt out of the bullshit and buy simply for function and performance. I’ve had my phone for years and I’m not about to go and buy a new one and sign a contract.
Buy Used: This is the best advice I can give. I have bought so many used items at a steep discount it’s un-imaginable for me to go to a big store and pay full price. With sites likes craigslist and ebay it’s beyond easy to buy the same product at a huge discount. With craigslist you can even view the item before you buy.
Example: I’m typing this on a used laptop that works just like a new one. I found a nice video camera that was brand new (never opened), the gentleman who had it didn’t need it and just wanted to sell it for a few bucks. My other camera was purchased at a steep discount and it was only a few weeks old. My office desk was purchase used for $40. I outfitted my garage gym full of used barbells and weights for less than a few hundred bucks. Hell, I my two favorite suit coats I bought at a goodwill thrift center in Wichita, KS over ten years ago for a couple bucks apiece. I purchase(d) all my vehicles used from craigslist. I even bought my dog used on craigslist. When you’re willing to put in a little time anything can be found and the price can always be negotiated to bargain basement prices.
Stock Up when you find a nice discount: With a little searching you can find cleaning products and other grooming products at a steep discount, you can buy a bunch of them and use them later. It’s a pain in the ass buying that stuff anyway so you kill two birds with one stone. Even meat can be purchased in bulk, frozen and used later.
Example: I stumbled on a huge discount on roasts. Huge roasts were on sale for a couple bucks apiece so I bought about ten of them and froze them. I ended up feeding them to the dog (overcooked beef, like pot-roasts, is disgusting) but that was dog food for weeks and weeks.
Buy Generic: When you buy brand you aren’t paying for quality, you are paying for the feeling it gives you. Does it really make a difference which soap you use to wash your clothes? No. Buy the cheaper stuff and save your greenbacks. This can go for anything. After my ipod (which was given to me years before) was stolen I bought a cheap Chinese knockoff for less than $10. It plays music just like the ipod does.
Let People Give you Gifts: Take advantage of the good nature of friends and family and wait for Christmas or your birthday. I needed a new belt for months but I’ll be damned if I’m going to the mall and searching for a belt. My girlfriend brought one over on my birthday, exactly as described by me as what I needed. Problem solved.
Fix stuff if it breaks: Fix something instead of throwing money at a new one. Recently I had a backpack break and an mp3 player stop working. I gave the backpack to my girlfriend to sew up, now it’s perfect. I paid a couple kuai (maybe $1.50) to get the mp3 player fixed rather than buy a new one.
D.I.Y.O.D.S. - Do It Your Own Damn Self: If you’re handy you can do it yourself. If you know someone handy you can have them do it. Fix your car yourself. Paint your own house. Cut your own hair. Raise your own chickens. Build your own furniture. Most important of all, cook your own food!
Example: The only piece of furniture I still own is an exquisite bookshelf my dad made for me many years ago. I sold every single piece of furniture I had except for the one piece of furniture that didn’t cost me a dime. I even sold all the books that sat in it but I kept the bookshelf. Homemade items are always more valuable than anything you buy. How many people do you know in credit card debt for buying furniture? Don’t be like those dummies.
Buy for Value: Being thrifty isn’t the same thing as being stingy. Being thrifty means being smart with your money, knowing when to spend it and when to save it. For items that will last you a very, very long time it’s preferable to spend the money and purchase the value. Some items will be more expensive upfront but they will hold their value and you will not have to continuously re-purchase them. Electronics will always break at some point so there is no point in spending top dollar.
Example: My safety razor was certainly more expensive than a disposable razor but I will never again buy a razor, spending that money is no issue. High quality cookware can last you a lifetime. That new high tech phone will last you maybe a year.
If you don’t have the cash money, don’t buy it. Debt is slavery.
Start Monday with a GROWL!
Today is the day to let go of the weakness that the weekend produces.
Today is the day to train like an animal. Get in the gym and throw the weights around like a monster. Get mad at those motherfuckers. Put your headphones on and crank those motivating tunes up to 11. Sing along with it. Pace around the gym and pump yourself up. Today is the day to break PR’s, to lift some heavy ass weight. Forget about triceps extensions and machine presses and concentration curls. Load up a barbell with a ton of weight and deadlift it from the ground. Load up a heavy barbell, put it on your back, squat it to the floor and back up. Load up a heavy barbell, pick it up from the ground and press it overhead. Other people will stare at you. So what. They’re invisible so they can stare all they want. Today you have a 13 inch cock and there isn’t anything in the entire fucking world that’s going to stop you.
There is only one King of the Jungle. And today that motherfucker is you.
Nick
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