Basically stated lifestyle design is living your life in a way that you want to.  Typically you are free from a job and you are able to enjoy things in life that most people are not able to do before retirement.  Timothy Ferris uses a technique he calls “mini retirements”.  So this brings up the tricky part of the lifestyle design

“Work is a must, it is good, healthy, and it provides me with income to do the things that I want to do.  Jobs only take my time away and cause me to miss out on opportunities that I would otherwise be able to take.”

I may not be describing it very well but the  The 4-Hour work Week does an excellent job so go get a copy.

Chang Hong Kung-Fu Exhibition

Being deported from Taiwan was probably the best thing that ever happened to me.  As my wife keeps telling me it was my karma.  Just before we took teaching jobs over there I was ready to pull the trigger and break away from the traditional job setting.  But I was not quite there with my independent income so I took the job over there.  Karma would just not let me stay, I had a different destiny.  That destiny is not just to live a lifestyle that I control but to teach and coach others how to live a lifestyle that they want and can control also.

While learning Kung-Fu from a true Kung-Fu (or more accurately Wu-Su) Grand Master it really made me realize that life is all about real experiences.  It is my time to do this now.  I hope that you can make the journey with me.

Once the decision is made to be healthy is made it is up to your mind and body to work together to achieve your goals. It does not matter if your goal is to lose weight, to get in shape, or just to feel better about yourself it takes both parts of you to make it happen.

The first and most important thing that you have to do is to get the right mindset. It is your mind after all that makes all the decisions about everything you do. It is your mind that you need to use to get your body into the shape and the look you want.

Diets don’t work

If you simply decide that you want to lose weight and go on a diet the mind is really not active. You want your body to be a part of it but what always happens with every diet? Sometime along the way we all say to ourselves ‘I can cheat just a little’ and that just a little turns into a lot and your body suddenly becomes worse off than it was before. How can this happen? Your mind was not involved, your body was, but your mind was on auto pilot. It was not ready for the change. Your mind controls everything.

So your mindset:

• Have a Positive Attitude — Your mind needs to have things positive in order to work effectively. Your mind has to set a positive attitude about what you are trying to achieve. Be happy about your new body. Be happy to be able to get outside and have a good sweat. Don’t make it a chore, you will eventually not want to do it. Make it fun. Run with a smile on your face. Eat right with a positive attitude “This carrot is going to make me healthier, and stronger, than I was before”. It may sound a little funny but it works. Even if you have to fool yourself for a little while do it with feeling and you will be successful.

• Believe That It Can Be Done — We all know those people out there who say “I can never loose weight” well guess what, they won’t. If you really believe that you can loose weight, be more fit, feel better you will. It is a matter of belief. You can do it, and your mind will lead the way.

• Focus on your Goal — If your goal is to lose 20 pounds then focus on that one thing very intently. Don’t worry about how your belly looks. Don’t look for bigger bicepts or sculpted legs. If your goal is to lose 20 pounds then focus only on the weight loss. If your goal on the other hand is to have nice long slender legs that have good muscle tone, then focus only on making your legs look good. Set a goal and stick to it until you achieve it.

So we have a goal, we have a positive attitude about the goal, we believe that it can happen, and we are focused. We have not even started on the body. In reality once you have to proper mindset the body is the easy part. It is the part that is happy to do what you want to. Your body wants to be in a good fit state. Everyone knows that their body feels better when it is healthy. So be healthy.

Your Bodyset:

• Eat Right — Eating right is the first step to a more healthy you. You don’t need to diet, again diets don’t work. Just eat right. You know what is right. You know that prepackaged food is not healthy. You want to know how to buy the right food? It is simple, shop around the outside of the grocery store. The stuff that is bad for you is in the isles of the store. If instead you shop around the outside of the store, that is the area with the fresh food, fresh meat, and dairy you will be well on your way to eating right.

• Exercise — Sorry you couch potatoes you have to get off your butt get out of the house and do some activity. Any activity is better than no activity. Here is the key…MAKE IT FUN. You don’t have to go out and kill yourself to get some exercise. You don’t have to make laps around the same neighborhood. Get outside and get moving. Go to a festival the next town over and walk around. Find hiking trails. Get out with the kids and play basketball, or throw a baseball, or heck take a camera and walk until you find the perfect picture to take. It does not have to kill you, any activity is better than no activity.

• Enjoy The Time — For many of us the only time we have to ourselves is when we get out and exercise. Enjoy your quiet time by yourself. Get an MP3 player, download a good book and listen to it as you are exercising. Heck just listen to the birds, to nature. Find a place with activity and just relax and enjoy yourself. This is your time feel good about it.

Get your mind right and your body will follow. Then enjoy yourself and your new body, it will be there before you know it.

http://siteflipu.com/30-days-of-site-flipping-contest/

The contest is to get an original site up and running and attracting visitors within 30 days.  It does seem like a long time, but to get some good visitors it is no time at all.

So here is my entry Professor Prosperity (http://www.professorprosperity.com)

How can you help?  Sign up for my feed, and visit often.  This may be against contest rules, but if you are not cheating (or maybe just bending the rules a little bit) you are not trying .

Here is my competition:

http://blogfluff.com

http://acthighbrow.com

http://traveltipsdigest.com

http://gogreenlifestyle.net/

http://reggae-artists.com

http://bloggerssearch.com

http://frugalzeitgeist.com/

Again vote for me by subscribing to my RSS feed and my soon to be email list.  Also don’t forget my competitors.  Visit them also there are a lot of very talented people out there.

Conceive It, Believe It, Achieve It

Coach Kip

“Poor people have jobs, Rich and Successful people have careers.” – Colin Cowherd ESPN Radio

I heard this over the radio one day and it took me a while to figure out what he meant. It was one of those days where I just had a few minutes to tune into the radio. As soon as I turned it on I heard this. I don’t know what lead up to this statement but it struck me and stuck with me.

I brought up this statement with my students, most of whom fall into the poor or poverty social class, and they all understood exactly what I was saying.

I explained it like this:

Poor people have jobs. They work for money and nothing else. So what happens? Is a person who makes $250,000 a year poor? Maybe not by money standards but what is their life like? How much do they work? How much do they enjoy themselves?

If they just have a job that pays well they are probably not completely happy. Actually if they are like most of us they have a job that they just don’t like. It is nice to make a lot of money but are they happy?

What is the sense of making a lot of money when all they do is work? Then what happens? When people work in a job that they are not happy in they need to supplement this unhappiness with something. Some buy toys, a bigger house, new cars, and more. Then what happens? They have to keep working to pay it off. Some are more destructive and turn to alcohol or drugs. Still others take their frustrations out on others.

Rich and successful people have careers. What do they work for? They typically don’t work for money, they get money as a result of their effort and their hard work. Instead of working for money they work to learn. They learn what it takes to get to the next step. That next step may be the next rung up the corporate ladder (something I have no interest in). For some the next step is to open their own business. For others it simply is a case of lifelong learning.

These people may not be rich with money, but they are rich and successful with their life. They are happy because they are doing things that they love to do. They are successful not because they work hard, but because they enjoy their work. Since they enjoy their work they tend to spend more time with it, and they tend to do a better job.

So what are you doing? Are you happy with your job? If you are maybe you should begin to learn and turn it into a career. What is the next step? Where will it take you in the future? If you are just starting out don’t worry about the money right now. If you work for money you will rarely get ahead. If you work for your career then you will find the opportunities will come to you and you will get paid soon. The money comes as a secondary result of how well you develop your career.

Be patient, I know it is hard, I fell into those same traps, but there is a payoff in the end.

On Sunday I posted an article about acting as if. Simple acting as if you already have something will bring more of that thing to you.

You want to be successful in business? Act as if you are and people will treat you that way. They will offer you more opportunities, more responsibility, and eventually more success.

So what can you do now? If you are spinning your wheels, wondering what can be done to get you out of where you are at, if you are looking for a change what can you do?

I have a little story for you. I told this to my 9^th graders. I hope that you can translate it to something you can use.

I would guess that somewhere in your city there is some sort of financial district. Somewhere that has some really big buildings. You know the nice shiny ones with tinted windows that go right up to the clouds.

If you are in a small city like the one that I grew up in you may have to go to a larger city to find such a place. This will make it even easier since you will not know anyone there.

Go downtown to that area sometime during a normal work day. Make it a Tuesday or Wednesday. Help break up the monotony of a regular work week. Dress nicely but casual. Dress business casual. Dress to make an impression, but be humble, that is the sweet spot.

Look for the suits. They will look like bustling ants scurrying from building to building. Watch them for a few minutes. Look at which building has the most traffic, then follow them in. Ride the elevator up with them. Get out when they get out. Find the largest office on the floor and walk right in.

Now just before you go in look at the name on the door. Companies are proud and they will display on the door their name and what they do. Walk into “KIP Inc. Financial Services to the World”.

There will be a receptionist, secretary, or some other person sitting at a desk right up front. This person is the gate keeper of Midevil times. They will most likely ask if they can help you.

Say “Yes. I would like to get into Financial Services” or what ever else their door says “and possibly work for KIP Inc. I was wondering what I should do to be able to get a job. Is there a manager, or possibly the president that I can speak with for a few moments?”

About 85% of the time it will work. Say it with a smile (see my post on smiling) Stand at the desk and let them call the person in charge, don’t go away and sit down. Don’t leer, just stand there with a nice smile. Act as if they are going to do this for you.

Soon the president or manager will come in. They will probably say something like “Come on in but I only have about 5 minutes for you.” They really don’t but they like to act really busy.

They will probably lead you through the company. Past all the workers at their desks. Casually look around and observe what is going on. This will give you a good idea if you really want to work in this type of company. If you feel good about the people that are working around you then great, you may have found a place that you would like to work. If it is a bit scary for you then that is good too. You may not want to work at this company but you will still get something out of asking the manager for his opinion.

When he sits you down to talk to him simply ask one question.

“What do you do, and how can I do it?”

It is very powerful. Watch the beginning of In Pursuit of Happyness and see what happens. Watch the rest of the movie to see how hard you will have to work to really get what you want.

The manager/boss/president will be very happy to tell you all about what they do and how they got there. You may or may not want to do the same thing, after you ask a few of these people you will begin to see common things come up.

What can you learn? What can you find out? How valuable would this be?

SCARED? Good! How bad do you want change? Try it, it might even be fun.

You want a really powerful technique that will knock the socks off your competitors and your customers? Just act as if.

Act as if you have already made the sale, you will sell more.

Act as if you have already beat your competitors, they will pick up on that and begin to panic.

Act as if you are already successful and people will begin to treat you that way.

My father was a master at this. He was a great salesman and later a great teacher. We would go to a college campus, or a football game, or sometimes just be out and about. I am always curious and would ask about a building, or I would say out loud how I wish we could go in there.

Off he would go, just pulling on doors to see which one was unlocked. I would get scared, but he would turn to me and say, “Act as if you were supposed to be here and no one will say anything different”.

Guess what? He was right, he was always right. We would get inside the private practice facilities of major sports programs (I will not tell you which). One day we decided to go into the science building of a large university. Before we knew it we were in the reptile lab with several graduate assistance and they were pulling out exotic snakes, lizards, turtles, and things that I did not know even existed.

Why? My father just went in and started asking quesitons. He was genuinely curious. When he asked he acted as if he expected them to answer him. He was not rude or disrespectful. He was not loud and boastful. He was not overbearing. He simply asked and waited for them to answer in a very polite and respectful manner.

You know what? They always answered. They always were happy to answer. No one ever questioned why we were there.

He acted as if. It was great fun, it was harmless, and I got to see many things that I never thought I would see.

Just act as if, and see where it gets you!

I remember going into the guidance office and they said “Coach Kip, what would you like to do with your life?”

Heck I didn’t know, at that time I still wanted to be a professional football player. I had no idea what my career was going to be. I stammered “A teacher I guess?”

And so it was, from that point on I was defined by what I wanted to do. I was put in classes that helped me get into college. I was advised on the best colleges for teaching. I went to one of the best Universities in Michigan for teaching, Northern Michigan University. I then promptly dropped out of the teaching program.

Why?

I was beginning to see how that would define me. As I got into my teaching classes I found that students were already getting cynical. I found that I was not getting support for math and sciences in our open discussions in class. I was finding it difficult to write papers on philosophies and issues that I did not agree on. I would not let it define me.

I got a degree in physics instead. Why? I thought physics was cool. I had no idea why. I had no idea what I was going to do with it. I just liked science and physics. So I graduated.

I got a good job but it did not satisfy me. Heck I lived in Russia for four months, I lived in Argentina for a month, and in Dubai for three months (I stayed in the original buildings that are shown with the arrow). Besides that I traveled all over the United States. Still not very fulfilling to me. It was not me. It was not the definition of who I wanted to be. So I went back to school.

I got a teaching degree along with a mathematics degree. I became a teacher. I was lucky. I did not get a teaching degree because I wanted a job, I got one because that is who I am.

So what does that mean to you?

Define – Learn – Do.

The better question that the guidance counselor could have asked is “what do you want to be?” I may have answered a professional football player, but hopefully she would have steered this 145 pound weakling in a different direction. I could have decided who I wanted to be. What I wanted to be. How I wanted to live. What I wanted to have. I could have formed a decision on that

Define

Instead of finding something that you want to do, define who you want to be. Once you define who it is that you want to be the steps are more simple. The steps are also in reverse order that we usually take them in.

Learn

Once you have defined yourself you learn how to become that person. For some it is education, and schooling. For some it may be an internship. For others it may simply be setting a stricked budget to get what they want.

Do

Once you have learned how to get what you have defined for yourself it is a matter of doing it. This can be very difficult because you are bound to make mistakes. Guess what, making mistakes is part of living. It tells you that you are alive. So make mistakes.

Let me give you a little secret. Instead of doing what it is that you think you need to do to get to your definition of life…that sentence and the process is very difficult to understand, I know I have done it that way for a long time…FIND SOMEONE WHO HAS DONE IT BEFORE AND DO WHAT THEY DO.

I am not yelling, just using it for emphasis. Don’t reinvent what has already been done. Just find someone who has the life that you want and copy what they do. Will that make you successful alone? No. But it will get you started. It will then be your task to make it your own. Making it your own, and living the way you want to live will be your success.

After reading all the get rich quick, and make money now posts on the Internet I decided to see if it was real or not. I decided to see if it really was possible to make money quickly on line. So I set a goal. A big goal (at least to me). I decided to see if I could make $10,000 in about 4 months. This seems very possible if you read the Internet gurus, and the blogs about people who have done so.

I would not get rich, but it would prove that it could be done. I like money, and I thought that money would help us out a lot. But things change.

I was trying to do this while I was working two full time jobs. I am currently an Algebra I teacher in a Metro School in Nashville, TN. I was an Assistant Varsity Football coach who coached the Receivers in a Spread Offense, and the Outside Linebackers in a 3-3 Stack Defense. I also played a very significant role on Saturdays in planning for our opponent for the next week. For those of you in the know Receivers in a Spread Offense are a very key component. We threw for over 2,000 yards this season. Outside Linebackers (Bandits, Rovers, each defense has a different term) are a very important position on the defense.

I worked from 6:30am to 2:00 pm on academic related issues and from 2:30 to 6:30 on football issues. I woke up in the morning at 5:30am and went to bed at 9:30 pm.

So here is my time breakdown:

• 8 hours of sleep
• 7 ½ hours of academic time
• 4 hours of football time (7 hours on Saturday morning)
• 19 ½ hours dedicated to time that I could not work on the business. I really thought I could do some things while I was at school and my students were working on things. I forgot that I cared about my students and most of that time is taken up answering questions and solving 9th grade crisis’s.
• 4 ½ hours is all I had left to work on the business, eat dinner, try to stay fit (not working out too well), spend time with my wife, and be social.

So things change.

I recently spoke with the rest of the coaching staff and informed them that I will not be coming back next year. That alone frees up 4 hours a day and 7 hours on Saturday.

One of the best changes that happened is that I have a completely different view on what I want to accomplish. I no longer am tied to money. I no longer pray to the money god for guidance, a new house, and a brand new car. Those things were not the motivating factor in me becoming an independent business owner, and working from home. TIME! Time was the factor. In trying to do what I was doing the biggest thing I found was that I had no time.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved coaching. And I will coach again. I just plan on taking a year off to set up some income streams. I like teaching. But I do not see me going back in the classroom for a while. I am going to do some personal coaching and that will keep me connected with students, and able to still teach. I love getting on the Internet and developing businesses and business ideas. What I had a hard time doing was following through with those plans. I had a very difficult time staying focused on things. To me coming up with a plan is the easy part. Executing is not hard either. What I have a difficult time with is finishing.

Let me relate it to coaching. I love coming up with the game plan. I love coaching during the week. I love Friday nights under the lights. There is nothing better on earth. For those of you who have not been to a high school football game lately you should go next year. Just sit and enjoy it. They are great. The best part of Americana. Ok back on track.

Games are not the end point to me. The Championship is. The championship is the end of the season. Games individually are great but they are just one step closer to the end. The championship. In all my high school career, playing and coaching, I have always made the playoffs. It is great, and I am very greatfull for that. But we always got beat. Actually in all my high school career I have always lost to a team that made it to the finals.

I never got to finish a season. I never got to the end. I always was stopped. I don’t think that I am sabbatogeing myself toward my goal. I think that I desperately want to find the end. I desperately want to get to the end.

What is the end? The end for me is having a steady income stream that is passive. Something that I do not have to put a lot of time into to keep going. Something that will give me time. TIME TIME TIME! I like doing things. I do not like working. So I need to have something that will give me time.

Step back for just a minute.

My stats up until now are as follows:

9/9/2007 Begin $0.00
11/16/2007 Previous $345.17
12/7/2007 Gross $105.66
12/7/2007 Expenses ($49.92)
12/7/2007 Net $400.91

Which is pretty good considering I have done virtually no marketing other than social marketing.

If you look back at the stats, when I was primarily doing marketing I was making about $100 a week with just two products. I think that it is very plausible to make $1000 a week on ten products. But I decided that is not the direction that I wanted to go. Expenses were about ½ to ¾ of the profits. This still leaves you with a good income. But it takes a lot of time to keep up with them. It takes time to write the ads, and make sure that the keywords are still active. Google and Yahoo frequently change the price of keywords so it is a constant battle of changing keywords and bids to keep profits as high as possible. So I stopped doing that. It was too much work for to little profit.

What I have done is this:

• I have collaborated on two ebooks.
  I have updated and revised the 3-3 Stack Defense on EZ Playbook.
  I have written a book for Professor Moolah that is awaiting approval from Clickbank for marketing and sales.
• I have done a lot of back end work on Professor Moolah to get it set up for a complete learning and teaching site.
• I have in the works a complete redesign of EZ Playbook that will launch in February of 2008. This will add many interactive functions to the site and develop it into a social site for coaches, players, and fans. There is a lot of back end work being done so that the site can develop and grow in the future.
• I have done a complete custom WordPress design for http://www.trekkingaround.com and have begun the launch of the site. To do these things right it takes a lot of time.

So what is Trekking Around? It is me and my wife’s site about traveling. More specifically it is about us taking a year off and getting a boat to travel the Great Loop. A tour that will start in Nashville, TN this spring. We will travel up the Mississippi and cross over into Lake Michigan. We will go around the Great Lakes and end up in the Atlantic on the Easter Seaboard. From there we will travel down to the Bahamas or the Caribbean for Christmas and then we will either end up traveling back up to New York, or we will travel back to Nashville. That all depends on the next adventure.

As we travel we will promote Green living and run our Diesel engines on Biofuel. We are currently contacting boat manufacturers to find a live aboard that we can use in promotion and travel. We will use the boat to test the viability of Biofuel in a pleasure cruiser, and we will promote the manufacturer along our route by hosting open boat tours for people who are interested in boating, and doing so with low environmental impact.

We are far from hippies, and we are not into Greenpeace. We simply live in the environment and like it. So why not find ways that are inexpensive and low impact? We will be answering that question.

Plug plug – if you are interested in helping or sponsorship you can contact us directly at sponsor@trekkingaround.com until the site is fully up and running. Until then we hope to hear from you soon – end plug

Whew! I have done a lot. Nothing that will get me $10,000 by December 31st, but I have done a lot that will get me an income stream that will allow me to take a year to study environmentally low impact boat travel, and put my life on track for independent living in the future.

And I am Happy!

Conceive It, Believe It, Achieve It.

Coach Kip

What I have found is that the key to true life happiness is Healthy – Wealthy – Wise.  Further explained: Healthy; take care of your body, Wealthy; not just rich but having time and money, Wise; always learning, always growing.

In my own education I found that every part of the three step process can be broken down even further.  Then each individual step can be broken down even further and so fourth.   Healthy – Wealthy – Wise can be broken into Conceive It – Believe It – Achieve It.  That can be broken down into Define – Learn – Do and so on.

For example lets say that we want to work on our Health.  Here is how it would work:

Step 1 Conceive It – The first step would be to decide what your goals are going to be, what your time line is, and just what it is that you want to gain with your health. You Define what you want.
Next you figure out just how you are going to do it.  You need to do the research and Learn how it is done.  Finally you just Do it.

Step 2 Believe It – Nothing comes easy, and absolutely nothing comes without belief.  You must know for sure that you are going to get what you want.  You must Define that belief.  How are you going to trust yourself that you will achieve what you want.  You then need to Learn how to get that belief deep seeded not just in your mind, but in your body and soul.  Finally you just have to Do it.  It may seem like you are faking it at first, but eventually you will become that.  You will Believe.

Step 3 Achieve It – Now you are beginning to get to your goals.  You have to be ready to Achieve what you want.  If you are not ready the slightest misstep can change your results.  You must Define exactly what it is to have reached your goal.  You them must Learn about how to make that happen.  Learning is a continuous process.  Keep Doing.  That is the final part.  As you get close do not quit.  Keep going, keep trying, keep Achieving.

It may be kind of vague but this post is just a bridge to get to where we want to go.  To get to defining the Conceive It – Believe It – Achieve It.

More to come

Coach Kip.

Let me give a little history of how it came to be. My first big mentor was my High School Football Coach Jim Ooley. He was at the time of his retirement the greatest high school football coach in Michigan. Anyone who followed high school football in Michigan from the early 1970′s to the early 1990′s knew of Jim Ooley and Traverse City Football. I played for him during his final year. Err, I was on the team. I did not play much at all my Senior year compared to my Junior year. Maybe it was due to some nagging minor injuries or maybe it was because I was 145 pounds trying to play for the biggest school in Michigan and the #1 ranked team in the State.

I can’t recall how many times I heard Conceive It, Believe It, Achieve It, while I was playing for him. I did not completely understand it then. At the time I knew that the reason we were told that is because we were small, slow, and weak. We were frequently over matched athletically on the football field, but we rarely lost. Actually we only lost three games my entire Junior and Senior years, two in the semi finals, and one to our rival where we completely overlooked them. I knew that we needed to play as a team, and we needed to believe that we could win. I don’t remember a time that we did not think that we could win, and except for that one game. At the same time there was no time that we thought we could just walk in and beat anyone with ease. We knew we would win if we played as a team and played as close to mistake free as possible.

We simply had great coaching, and an undying belief that we could do it. It was not the X’s and O’s as we football coaches call it. In laymen terms it was not due to the plays that we won. It was how we were coached. I understood that part. What I did not understand was the rest.

While my wife and I were transforming our lives we kept running into things that were grouped in threes.

Be – Do – Have
Define – Learn – Do
Healthy – Wealthy – Wise
Ask – Believe – Receive
Conceive It – Believe It – Achieve It

and many more. It was then that suddenly I knew exactly what it was. It is a process for life.

Everything that you ever want to do, ever want to have, ever want to achieve can be broken down into a three step process. All those steps can be broken down even further, and further, and so on.

So what is next? First I will break down the different steps and what exactly they mean, then I will give some examples of how they can be used.

Until Then

Conceive It, Believe It, Achieve It

Coach Kip