Disrupting the Rabblement

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I’ve lived in New Orleans for the past three years. I leave on Wednesday.

Writing this post has been a struggle. I want to express how much New Orleans means to me, how much it has shaped me — I’m a much different person now than I was when I arrived here in December of ’07 — but I find the task to be overwhelming. I’m not sure where to start.

But I guess I can look back and describe who I was when I arrived in the Crescent City three years ago. Yeah, let’s start there.

What brought me to NOLA

They always react one of two ways. The person I just met realizes I’m from Ireland and asks what brought me to New Orleans.

“I actually came here because I was a big fan of the basketball team, the Hornets.”

I either get a blank stare or a laugh.

“No, seriously. That’s why I came.”

Eventually they believe me, but it takes some convincing.

All I wanted to do when I moved to New Orleans was watch and write about my favorite sports team, get drunk and hook up with random American girls. I was the sports-beer-boobs guy, armed with a foreign accent, and that identity suited me just fine for about a year.

Then came the vegetables.

Growing up

I decided to do a 30-day trial of vegetarianism in January of ’09. I was curious to see what the diet could do for me. As it turns out, it blew my mind and opened up a whole new world of possibilities. I came to realize that things looked a lot different from the inside looking out than they did from the outside looking in, and I wondered what else I might be missing out on due to social taboos or my own preconceptions.

I started to question assumptions and pursue growth opportunities more consciously. I joined Toastmasters and some meetup groups. I became an avid reader and found myself having frequent conversations about personal development.

Eventually I came to realize that I wanted to help other people grow like I had been growing, hence this blog.

Finishing strong

The past 7 months have been the best of my life. Back in April I made a firm decision about the next chapter of my life and opted to make the most of my time left in New Orleans.

It’s amazing what happens when you give yourself a deadline like that. Your focus intensifies, your priorities become clear. It’s much easier to say no to projects you’re not passionate about and people you don’t care for, making more room for real passions and friends.

Fear also takes a back seat. You figure you’re leaving town soon anyway so you might as well try stand up comedy or tell that person what you really think. And then you find that life becomes a lot more fun when you’re taking those chances and speaking those truths, and you resolve to keep doing those things even when you’re not getting ready to leave a place.

Only in New Orleans

Many of the lessons I’ve learned these past three years I could have learned elsewhere, maybe anywhere, but New Orleans has undoubtedly taken up residence in my soul and greatly influenced the person I’ve become.

The people I’ve met here — whether they be natives or immigrants like myself — are a special breed. They’re fiercely proud of this city, and the rest of the country doesn’t quite understand why. Hurricane Katrina was a terrible thing, but a silver lining is the abundance of kindhearted, goal-oriented people who arrived in the aftermath, people who wanted to help, people who wanted to be part of something bigger than themselves.

I can’t claim to have come here for those same charitable reasons, but they seemed to have rubbed off on me. Our environment shapes us, whether we like it or not. New Orleans and its people have made me a more caring person.

Living here has also helped kill my attachment to material things. My friend Justin refers to the omnipresent cracked sidewalks and peeling paint in New Orleans as “the beauty in decay.” He’s right. It is beautiful. There are lots of things in this city that are old and decaying and lacking actual functionality, but that imperfection is perfect in its own way. Efficiency and getting things done are not the priority here. That’s a gift and a curse, sure, but it’s refreshing to find a place like this in a world where everything is getting faster, cheaper and less personal. Life in New Orleans truly is about the journey, not the destination.

Loyola University also deserves special mention for having helped me become the person I am. It’s no secret that I was delighted to quit my web design job there on November 19th. But that doesn’t mean I disliked my job. (As I wrote in a previous post, I liked it just fine, it’s just that I’m looking for love.)

I’m extremely grateful for my time working at Loyola. I was looking for a job in New Orleans for months and suffered dozens of rejections before Loyola stepped up and took a chance on me back in 2007. Working there for three years helped sharpen my web design skills and I learned a lot about being part of a team and prioritizing. As 9-to-5 jobs go, I don’t think I could have had it any better. I also admire what Loyola stands for. Their focus is on educating the whole person and teaching students how to teach themselves. They believe in diversity and service. It’s a school I’d be proud to send my kids to.

Full circles

As I leave this city, I leave behind a lot of community. I’ve run in many different circles. I have friends from my days of basketball obsession. I have friends from the Loyola community. I have friends from Toastmasters. I have veggie friends, Art of Living friends and Law of Attraction friends. I have Saints-fan friends, CouchSurfing friends and improv comedy friends. I have friends of friends who have become friends, and I have still more friends who are impossible to categorize.

I’m grateful for them all. Those people have made my life better, and I hope I’ve been able to return the favor in some small way.

I came to New Orleans very much looking to make a positive difference in my own life. I leave looking to make a positive difference in the lives of others.

Thank you, New Orleans. I’m a better person for having met you.

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I’ve been house-sitting for more than two months now. Part of the gig is looking after two dogs named 81 and Havana. I feed them, I take them for walks, I get naked and jump in the shower with them when they start to smell bad.

I often take the dogs down to the levee near the house. I let them off the leash and they run around for a bit, swim in the Mississippi and generally have a good time. There didn’t seem to be any problem letting them off the leash. They were friendly with other dogs and nobody else on the levee seemed to mind. Then, one day, I had them off the leash and 81 spotted a lady walking her dog about 30 yards away. He dashed over to them, tail wagging, wanting to say hi. The lady didn’t seem impressed. Her dog was on a leash, and she started shouting at me as 81 engaged in the butt-sniffing ritual…

“Call your dog!”

“It’s okay, she’s friendly.”

“Call your dog!”

“It’s okay, really.”

“Call your dog, ASSHOLE!”

Whoa. I called 81 away and the lady walked off.

Now maybe her dog wasn’t friendly and she was trying to protect 81, or maybe she was just the biggest bitch on the levee that day. I don’t know. Everyone else I’ve met while out dog-walking has been cool.

But here’s the thing: that one shitty interaction made me rethink letting the dogs off the leash. For several weeks afterwards, I kept them on it all the way to the levee, waiting until we got out of sight down by the water before letting them run free. I’d see some other people walking along the levee with their dogs off the leash but still figured I shouldn’t be doing that anymore.

Then one day a few weeks back I was listening to the Accidental Creative podcast, and Todd Henry asked a question that stuck with me: “Are you creating permanent solutions to temporary problems.” Todd was asking that question in the business sense, noting that we often spend a lot of time and energy setting up extensive protocols at work as a knee-jerk reaction to temporary problems, and then those same protocols hinder us from coming up with creative solutions down the road.

That question is worth asking outside the workplace as well. Where are you creating permanent solutions to temporary problems?

For me, it was cool to let the dogs off the leash down at the levee, until one person complained about it. That was a temporary problem. I haven’t seen that girl on the levee since. But for weeks I behaved as if she was hiding in the bushes, waiting for my dogs to run free so she could jump out and call me an asshole again. My permanent solution to the temporary problem was to keep the dogs on the leash, which sucked because they might get 45 minutes of real exercise per day and they should be able to run around as they please and sniff whatever they want for those 45 minutes.

Since I came to realize that I had created a permanent solution to a temporary problem, I’ve corrected course. 81 and Havana are running free on the levee again. It’s been a while since anyone has called me an asshole. If that does happen again, the solution will be to put the dogs back on the leash until the offended party leaves the area. Temporary problem, temporary solution.

What about you?

Where in your life have you created a permanent solution to a temporary problem? Maybe one loud-mouth disapproved of something you once did, and you changed your behavior to please them. Maybe you took a big risk one time and got burned, and so vowed never to aim so high in future.

I’m asking you to question those solutions.

Are they really serving you well, or are they just holding you back from something special? Just because you upset a few people or fail a few times doesn’t mean you should change everything. Many problems are temporary. You don’t need permanent solutions to overcome them.

In December of 2007, I finally realized my dream of living and working in New Orleans. I had started actively pursuing that dream about four years prior. All I wanted was to be in the city where my favorite basketball team played. I would watch their games and write all about them on the website I had started back in Ireland.

A couple of years later, things had gotten even better, as I had earned a media credential which allowed me to attend games free of charge, sit along the baseline each night, and even interview players and coaches in the locker room before and after each game.

Oh, and the website had become affiliated with ESPN.com, solidifying it as the go-to source for educated analysis, opinion and discussion about the New Orleans Hornets.

And then I started losing interest

There were nights when I really didn’t feel like going to a game or interviewing anybody. There were nights when I would have preferred to be doing anything else. Those nights became more frequent as time went on.

For a while I resisted how I was feeling. I felt obligated to keep running the website and doing all the work because that was my identity. I was the Hornets guy. Everybody knew me for that. I’d moved 4000 miles away from home because of a sports team. That was me. How could I walk away from it all?

Eventually I accepted that I really didn’t enjoy covering the Hornets — or any basketball for that matter — anymore.

So why was I still doing it?

It was because I still held onto that identity, afraid to give it up because it was safe and familiar.

But it was making me miserable at the same time. When I finally did give it up, I felt liberated, and I was free to craft a new identity for myself.

Now that’s not to say I have any regrets about moving to New Orleans or running the Hornets website for all that time. On the contrary, I’m extremely grateful that I was able to live out my dream and meet some great people along the way. I’m also very proud of the online community of Hornets fans and the good reputation we’ve built up over the years. I’ve been working hard this past summer to ensure it carries on strong without me.

The lesson I’ve learned though is that dreams change

And you can’t go on living a dream that has faded and died. You can’t carry on being who you’re expected to be if that identity doesn’t resonate with you anymore. That just makes you miserable. You have to let go, and perhaps risk being lost at sea for a little while until you figure out your next move, your next identity.

Having left my old identity behind, I’m now free to spend my time, energy and focus working towards my new dream. I’m much happier for it, excited about the path I’m on and the person I’m becoming.

What old identity are you clinging to? Would you be happier in the long run if you let go? Who might you become if you started again from scratch?

Back in April of this year I attended a Get Motivated seminar, at which Drew Brees, quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, was a featured speaker. I already had a tremendous amount of respect for the man since he was just two months removed from leading the Saints to their first ever Super Bowl, but he still managed to wow me with his speech.

Brees shared with the audience what he called his 5 pillars to success, which were collectively represented by the acronym FAITH. Some notes and comments on each:

F is for Fortitude

Fortitude is defined as “mental and emotional strength in facing difficulty, adversity, danger, or temptation courageously.” You could also define it as the mental and emotional strength to carry the 40-year-old hopes and dreams of a wounded city on your shoulders.

The Saints had a good run in 2006. They could have left it at that, figuring they’d done their part. But Brees and company wanted more than a good run. They wanted it all. They had to endure disappointing seasons in ’07 and ’08, but all the while they stayed strong and they believed in themselves. They knew that if they could persevere through the tough times, they’d eventually get what they deserved.

Do you have fortitude? Can you keep your head up when times are bad?

A is for Attitude

You have to have the attitude that adversity equals opportunity. Brees signed with the Saints after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to New Orleans. Most people just saw adversity, Brees saw opportunity. New Orleans was where he would resurrect his career and help build something bigger than himself.

Brees mentioned guys on the team he loved being around because of their attitude (e.g. Billy Miller). If you want to win, what kind of people should you surround yourself with? Who are you most likely to succeed with? People with great attitudes of course.

“There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.” – W. Clement Stone

How’s your attitude? Would you want you as a teammate?

I is for Integrity

Brees spoke about keeping promises and doing your part. Be there early for practice if you say you will. Help your teammates get better rather than stand back and criticize them. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

A word from M. Scott Peck:

The word integrity comes from the same root as integrate. It means to achieve wholeness, which is the opposite of compartmentalize. Compartmentalization is easy. Integrity is painful. But without it there can be no wholeness. Integrity requires that we be fully open to the conflicting forces and ideas and stresses of life.

Would those who know you best describe you as a person of integrity?

T is for Trust

“Trust is the cornerstone of every meaningful relationship.” Brees paused after speaking those words, then repeated them. He has to trust his linemen to protect him. He has to trust his receivers to run the routes as practiced so they’re in the right place at the right time and the pass doesn’t get picked off.

The message: You can’t do it all yourself. Sooner or later, to really be at your best, you need to put your trust in others.

Do you trust others and work as part of a team to achieve great things?

H is for Humility

Brees quoted Harry S. Truman: “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

A great leader never asks someone to do what he’s not willing to do himself. Brees stays back after practice and helps guys get better. He busts his ass on every sprint, leading by example. It makes a big difference to have your superstar going all out for every drill. The rest of the team follows suit.

Do you have humility? Are you willing to accept blame and share praise?

Goals

One other thing that stood out from Brees’ speech was his few words about goals and their importance. He has goals written on the inside cover of his notebook that he reviews every day. His goals are concrete and measurable, so he can evaluate his progress daily.

One of his daily goals is to show at least one small act of leadership, whether that be staying back at practice, offering a few encouraging words to a teammate, working harder than everyone else during drills, whatever.

Brees noted that it’s also important to have team goals, and everyone must know how their individual goals fit in with the team goals. Everyone must know their purpose.

If you don’t have goals or a purpose in life, these two articles from the archive may help you:

• Finding your life purpose
• Prioritize your life

The 2010 NFL season starts this Thursday. Two Dat!

As you may already know, my grand plan is this:

• Leave my 9-to-5 job at the end of November.
• Return to Ireland and set up my own business.
• Build the business to the point where I’m delivering more value and earning more money than I am now, while working a maximum of 20 hours per week.
• Move to Spain by May 1, 2011.

I have already begun setting myself up for success. One of the ways I’m doing that is by moving decisively towards a minimalist lifestyle.

What is minimalism?

Minimalism is me selling my TV, canceling my Netflix and giving away all my furniture. Minimalism is me realizing that I don’t have to pay $800 a month for rent (I recently moved apartment and saved myself $65 a week). Minimalism is donating all those clothes I never wear and all those books I never reread.

Minimalism is getting rid of all the crap and clutter so I can be free.

I counted up all my possessions at the start of May and found I had 330. As of this writing, that number has been reduced to 193. I’m aiming to own less than 100 things by the time I leave New Orleans.

Why minimalism?

I believe a minimalist lifestyle will help me succeed in my grand plan for several reasons:

Minimalism cuts out distractions

Less clutter helps me focus, helps me keep the main thing the main thing. Since I began the elimination process, I’ve found it much easier to find the focus and time needed to do my writing, planning and studying.

Minimalism saves money

I’m amazed at how much I can now save per week while earning the exact same income that I have been for years. All along, I was spending huge chunks of money on things I didn’t really need. I’ll go into detail about my financial situation and aspirations in a future post.

Minimalism gives me freedom to move

My new apartment is a temporary sublet, but having to move again next month won’t be a problem. I imagine it will take about two hours, total, to pack, load, transport, unload and unpack everything I own. At the end of November, when I move my entire life back to Ireland, I don’t expect I’ll have to check a bag at the airport.

Minimalism detaches me from material goods

Most people fear a big dip in income because it would force them to drastically change their lifestyle and give up all their toys. But what if you choose to embrace a minimalist lifestyle regardless of your income? You’d realize that you really don’t need to live that superficial lifestyle to be happy; in fact, that lifestyle was one of the main hindrances to your happiness in the first place. Having embraced minimalism, I’m well prepared for the temporary dip my income will take when I quit my day job and start my own business.

Minimalism works

I’ve been following people like Everret Bogue, Colin Wright, Leo Babuta, Karol Gajda, Tammy Strobel and Raam Dev; just a handful of online entrepreneurs who have adopted a minimalist lifestyle to achieve success. They’re living proof that minimalism works.

Helping the movement, the homeless, and myself

Everett Bogue’s fantastic e-book is what got me seriously considering minimalism in the first place, so I’ve decided to help spread his message. I’ve signed up to be an affiliate, meaning I get a 50% cut of sales generated through this here blog. The arrangement should give me an idea of what my current earning power is like, so I won’t be starting out clueless when I quit my job in November.

Unfortunately, since I’m currently a non-immigrant worker in the United States, it’s illegal for me to earn any extra money beyond that which I’m paid by my sponsor/employer. This law is in place to ensure I don’t take more work away from Americans by doing side jobs. Damn Government’s holding me down, man.

So since I can’t get paid, I’ve arranged to have my affiliate earnings deposited directly to the PayPal account of a non-profit, namely The Desmond Project, an organization that provides hearty meals to the homeless in New Orleans every Saturday. I’ve volunteered with them several times in the past year and can testify that they’re great people doing great work.

So if you’re interested in learning more about minimalism, feeding some homeless folks, and helping me figure out how much money I can earn through this website, click here and continue on to buy the e-book. The cost is just $17, though you’ll probably end up saving a lot more than that if the message impacts you the way it did me.

But wait

Everett encourages everyone who buys his e-book to make five copies and pass them along to friends, free of charge. So before you go spending your hard-earned cash, leave a thoughtful comment below and you could win one of the five copies I have to share.