Check out the contribution YOU’VE made in this really short video below:

Every day I wake up in a free country. I have no one telling what I can and can’t do, no one coming after me if I do the wrong thing. I can do or say almost anything I want.

I have every advantage in life. I was born with not a single disability, not even a disadvantage. I don’t even have an allergy to speak of. I was lucky enough to be blessed with a perfectly decent brain and a perfectly capable body.

And I was born into perfectly decent circumstances. I was born to loving parents and into a perfectly comfortable environment.

Here’s the thing:

None of us gets to choose how or where we come into this world. It’s a lottery.

It’s a lottery, and I won it. I won it, and if you’re anything like me, so did you.

You don’t have to look far to find billions of people who didn’t win near as much as we did in that lottery. Many won nothing at all.

So you won. Question is: What are you going to do with your winnings?

Will you waste them, or use them? Will you squander them, or share them?

Some people think the world owes them something. I feel like I owe something to the world… and I’m behind on my payments.

This is why I try to do and be and give as much as possible in my life.

This is what drives me.

This is a post about dreams.

I recently reached what had been a goal, perhaps a dream of mine for some time.

You’ve heard me talk about Kiva.org before – the site that lets you make micro loans to hard working entrepreneurs in the 3rd world (and the first world now too actually!) and in doing so empower communities and help defeat poverty from the inside etc etc.

The goal I had was to reach $1000 a month in my loans to 3rd world entrepreneurs.

And a week or so ago, I hit it. I was extremely excited, very proud of myself, but naturally my first thought was…

I reckon I can make it $10k a month!

And so my next goal was born.

Then a funny thing happened.

As soon as I said that figure out loud to myself, I was taken back to a single moment in time… a moment from earlier in my life. A moment when that figure had a completely different meaning to me. I remember it vividly…

I had just started experimenting with online marketing. I guess I was 18 years old. I was driving home from my day job and talking to myself in the car… as I have a habit of doing.

I was dreaming about making $10 000 a month online. The conversation I was having was probably one you’ve had…

“So $10 000 a month… that’s $2500 a week… that’s about $330 a day… SURELY I can do that! And $10k a month! I don’t even know anyone who makes that much money… that would be bad ASS. I HAVE to get to $10k a month asap.” and so on.

I was bigger on dreams than I was on plans but I had that figure stuck in my head. I thought about it so often.

Over time, as our consistent thoughts have a tendency of doing, that dream became a reality.

In fact – and it didn’t happen overnight – today if I made $10k in a month I’d be SERIOUSLY concerned. Something would have had to go terribly wrong in the month for that to take place.

When I realized all of this it was almost surreal.

At one point, not that long ago, I was making a goal to have $10k a month as my income… now I’m making a goal to have $10k a month as my contribution to others!

And to think that one day I”ll be looking back, having made my first 5 figure monthly donation to Kiva, thinking “I remember when this was just a dream”… brrrrrr – it’s goosebump material.

I guess the moral of the story is one that’s unfortunately cliched, and yet timelessly important. It’s perhaps best summed up by a quote that I used to have stuck on the wall of my bedroom (which was also my “office”). It said:

“Aim high, for stars lie hidden in your soul… dream deep, for every dream proceeds the goal”

That last part gives me chills.

EVERY dream proceeds a goal. For every goal there was first a dream.

EVERY dream takes you somewhere.

Where are your dreams taking you?

I always love hearing more about the personal lives of the people who’s opinions I care about. Not presuming that you care about my opinion or anything But I want to know what drives them, how they came to be where they are, how they go about their day, and more.

So I thought I’d share a little about my life, for anyone who’s interested – my story, my failures, my goals for the future, and more  – the good and the bad.

Here goes:

I’m 24 years old, born and raised in QLD Australia, engaged to be married to the beautiful kiwi Elysia Brooker, and I expect to die without ever having had a “proper” job.

Because looking back, I have always had a problem with authority.

Early Years

In my schooling years I was the naughty kid. Right up until the last 2 years of it, I was constantly being sent to the principal, being kicked out of class, told to pick up rubbish and even at one stage, suspended from school for a few days! Luckily I was smart, so I always did well at school – but I hated it.

I remember being 12 years old and having conversations with teachers like this:

Teacher: “Put your hat on when you’re outside!”
Andrew: “I’m not even in the sun… why does it matter?”
Teacher: “Because those are the rules!”
Andrew: “Why do I have to follow a rule just because it’s a rule?? The rule has to make sense!”
Teacher: “Alright – you can go and tell that to the principal”

Turns out that became a bit of a theme for my life.

Fortunately my parents did for me what I think is the best thing you can do for a child on top of loving it unconditionally. They constantly told me:

“You could do anything you want with your life. You have the world at your feet.”

I took what they said seriously.

Personal Development

I read my first personal development book when I was 15 years old and it changed my life forever. It was (believe it or not) Dr. Phil’s “Life Matters” (this is before he went mainstream – when he had interesting things to say) and I still remember some of the lessons I took from it…

It was where I first heard the principle of “accountability”, and remember doing the exercise of looking back at your life and thinking about the things that had gone wrong, and thinking honestly about how in fact, you are accountable for what happened, and you could have either changed it, or change how it affects you today.

Because when it’s your responsibility, YOU can change it. If everything and everyone else is responsible, it’s out of your control.

Money Issues

Our family was never poor growing up, but looking back, money often seemed to be an issue. As kids we had everything we needed and more, but only thanks to my parents working their asses off and sacrificing for us more than we understood at the time.

I saw how hard my Dad worked for our money in particular and I remember making a decision early on that I was never going to let money be an issue in my life.

I decided I needed to be “rich” or there was going to be trouble.

My “Career”

My first adult job out of school was something I’ll always remember.

I wanted money and bad, so I basically took the first job I came across.

For about 6 months I worked 9-5 at a factory that made hats. I was a cog in the machine, a member of a production line. Every day for 6 months I did this one task over and over again – folding the top of this particular hat down. Standing up, in the one spot, no music allowed, talking permitted but only until it affected concentration, for 8 hours a day.

At lunch I used to sit at the table with a calculator I’d found, adding up how many weeks it was going to take me to save enough money to buy this particular car I wanted. I’ll never forget being mocked by another factory worker, maybe mid 40′s:

“Working out how long it’ll take you to retire mate?” He said with a sneer. Like aspiring to something more than slaving away at this sh**hole was such a childish idea.

That year I actually worked 4 different jobs at the same time to save up as much money as possible. Shortly after I wasted all the money I’d saved, but I learned some important lessons about work and money that were more and more valuable as time went on.

University (College)

I am a proud college dropout. I lasted 2 weeks.

I walked in – realized that these people weren’t going where I wanted to go, and left.

Best decision I ever made.

Business – And Failure

After my stint at university, I realized that if I wasn’t going to get “an education” – I needed another way to make money. I started attending those “wealth creation” seminars to learn everything I could about making money. I remember hearing some statistic like:

“92% of the richest people in Australia are business owners”

WHAT?? I thought. Why did no one tell me THAT in school?! I need me a business!

That was also the first time I heard about selling ebooks on the internet. That was my start in IM.

As I’ve written elsewhere, my early years online were just one failure after another. I tried various things that ALMOST worked, but didn’t quite. But I never once entertained the possibility that maybe this wouldn’t work out. I had too many people to prove wrong. Too much pride on the line. I got by with the money from my day jobs at that time and just kept working at it.

I worked my ass off back then. I still do in some ways.

I remember hanging out with friends in the evening, finishing at 10pm, then driving out to a friends place (who had this computer software I needed) to work there from like 11pm til 4am… go home to sleep for a few hours, then waking up at 8am to go back to my 9-5. Man, I was hungry.

Overnight Success

After a few years I had my “overnight success”.

There came a point where I had more money in the bank than I knew what to do with. It was a very strange feeling.

I went crazy, I bought everything I wanted, I started to travel and then I hit an even stranger point.

“What next”?

I had no desires left. There was nothing else I wanted. I didn’t need any more “stuff”.

I remember thinking “Is this all there is? Is this what having money is?” I thought there had to be more to do than this. There had to be bigger fish to fry – things more meaningful than just accumulating.

Teaching & Sharing

In the period after that I got by on the motivation for helping others, sharing what I’d learned, improving other people’s lives by sharing with them how they too could make money from home.

I got, and still do get a lot of fulfillment from this, but after time, that started to wear thin too.

I saw that, particularly teaching IM, there are so many people who, it doesn’t matter what you give them or what you do, they don’t want to be helped – you can’t do anything for them. And of course there are those amazing folk who take one email you send them and create whole businesses out of it… but those people are rare… and most often they are so committed that they will usually make it whether you help them or not.

I was, and in ways, still am, a bit jaded by teaching IM. Not to mention the endless swarms of scam artists, liars, cheats and unsavory people who abound in a profession that sits right on the cusp of fraud and legitimacy.

That brings me about up to today – that’s it – those are my current feelings about teaching IM.

Today I’m (kind of a secret too) trying to get away from IM. I have some outside interests that I want to commit more time too and I’m trying to scale down the teaching side of my business to have more time for them.

Outside Work

Besides travel and my guilty pleasure MMA (mixed martial arts) I have very few hobbies. Pretty much 24 hours a day I’m working, reading, or sleeping. I read ALOT. Parts of this year my amount of work, and reading have been almost equal. And you want to know a secret?

This year I’ve read almost no books on marketing. And no personal development.

I read history, politics, science, literature – almost everything is interesting to me at the moment. If my early years were learning about and understanding myself, I feel like now I’m learning about and understanding the world.

This year I’ve read (and loved) Tolstoy’s War and Peace; I don’t know any copywriter who can paint an image in your head like Charles Dickens can; My life won’t be the same when linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky dies; And my favorite non fiction author at the moment is George Orwell.

But what I am most interested in today is finding a way that I can serve people more meaningfully. The more I read and travel the more I realize that there are so many people in the world with such great suffering that can be so easily diminished, that I can’t bare to commit my life only to me. Not because I’m religious, not because I’m “spiritual” – just because I can’t see any better way to live.

I can’t stand that poverty exists. I feel tight in the chest when I contemplate the reality of war. And while I know I won’t ever stop these things, I feel like the least I can do is give it a shot. A friend of mine has a quote on their facebook page that says:

“It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little – do what you can.” ~ Sydney Smith

That’s about where I’m at in life right now.

Future

As I’ve mentioned before, my soon to be wife and I live in a new country each year, so it’s possible that I’ll end up in your neighborhood some time in the next 5 years.

And if you live in the UK, it will be much sooner than that. I’ll be living in London by this time next week!

I’m getting married on a beach in Thailand in 2012. It’s going to be amazing.

I want to keep sharing what I know about making money without a “job” with anyone who is committed to applying it, and I will never email you about something that isn’t true, doesn’t work, or that I don’t believe in.

That’s me, friends.

When you open those emails in your inbox – that’s who you’re listening to. If you read this far, we’re buddies now

I realized this past week that everything that I call a success in my life started with either something I read, or someone I met.

Lesson I took: You can never read too much, and you can never meet too many people.

Yikes, what a week!

If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been or why I’ve been ignoring you, this post hopefully exonerates me!

Last Monday, months of secrecy and preparation culminated in a romantic (writing my own review) proposal to my girlfriend of 4 years, Elysia, (who many of you know!) in Central Park, New York!

Man, with arranging a ring, both that the girl will like, and that’s the right size, picking a location, and keeping it all secret from a partner who, also working online, is around you basically 24/7… Let’s just say it makes “making money online” look easy!

Anyhow, it’s a super exciting time for us so I couldn’t help but share. Here’s some pics for the nosier among you as well:

This is near where we were in CP:

And for the ladies, this is the ring:

We’re back in Mexico now, ready to get stuck into some serious work and enjoy our first few weeks of the “affianced” life! haha

You’ll be hearing from me again soon.

Alot of people have goals, both financially, and as regards their online business. I assume you are one of them.

Maybe you want to make an extra $1000 a week to help pay the bills. Maybe you want to build your business to $10k a month to replace your work income and quit your job. Maybe you want that mansion and Ferrari that you see in those “how to get rich” advertisements.

Knowing WHAT you want is important. But knowing WHY you want it, is VITAL.

Because money – including that which you hope to make online – is always a means, never an end. It’s only ever a vehicle by which you can obtain something else.

Maybe that something else is security – the feeling of greater comfort and less stress related to your finances.

Maybe that something else is freedom – a greater level of choice over how you spend your time.

Maybe that something else is respect – a way to gain greater admiration from those around you. (the “something else” isn’t always a positive thing).

For me it’s freedom.

I just got back from a little jaunt snowboarding in New Zealand with a group of old friends. The past month I’ve been back at home in Australia visiting family but for the rest of the year I’ve been living in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The ability to live and work anywhere, choose my own work hours and freely decide exactly how I spend my time every day is the peak for me. That’s what life’s about for me right now and that’s the WHY that my financial goals move me toward.

There are 2 reasons that knowing what that something else is for you, is important.

1. For your own motivation

Because “what’s” aren’t inspiring. $10 000 a month as a physical object is nothing. It’s just paper. But the changes that would make to your life are inspiring. What you would DO with that income is inspiring? What WOULD you do with the level of income you desire? Do you even know? Alot of people don’t.

Moving toward “Freeing myself from my day job to spend more time traveling with my family” is a lot easier than moving toward “10 000 a month in income”.

2. To make sure your goal is really going to bring you the “something else” that you want…

There’s a good example of this idea in the movie Wall Street. The guy is a big financial trader, hoping to do these massive deals and become a multi-millionaire. When asked what he will do after that, he says something like “Just retire, buy a motorbike and ride across China”… ie, something you could do for probably $5000 if you really wanted!

So many people say for example “I want to take my business to 7 figures a year” – and I often think: “What for?”

What will you do with 7 figures a year? Do you even know? What is it that you REALLY want?

I don’t say so to blow my own horn, but my girlfriend and I have this year lived a life that it seems alot of people dream of. Classified “retired” by our level of work in most people’s standards, living in a beachfront, oceanview apartment in the basically year round sunshine of west coast Mexico. We have a lady to do our washing, clean our place if we want, we eat out probably 4-5 times a week…

Want to know the big secret?

Our rent is $695 a month! I pay $1.50 for beers – $20 for a high end meal.

I always said I wanted to be a millionaire. But the longer I live, I only grow more convinced that you don’t really need to be!

The point is that if you know what you REALLY want (that something else), underneath the monetary goals, you might realize that you don’t actually need anywhere near as much money to achieve it… you might even see that no level of money is going to get you to that thing you really want. Maybe it’s time that you really need… maybe it’s love? It’s always something.

So what is that WHY for you? What is your “something else”. I’d love to hear from you!

Or if you don’t want to post, give it some thought in your life this week. What is it you really want, and are you really moving toward it…

I think the world would be a better place if more people were able to allocate more time to the ancient art of reflection.

In my mind, there are few things that seem as conducive to a happy, valuable and prosperous existence as the mindset that, when it can, seeks time to try to understand itself, it’s experiences, it’s desires, and those of others.

It’s the mindset that is inquisitive, that is always trying to understand, that is always open to learning, that is always seeking an opportunity to adapt or improve the way it does things by knowing a thing or a person or a circumstance or oneself in some new level of depth.

Because it would appear that it’s through this type of mind that so much other good flows. For to grow and improve at anything we do as humans, reflection is required, analysis is vital, understanding is mandatory. So that mind that always inquires sincerely, must always expand. Our experience of life and of good must be enhanced by our willingness and capacity to explore them.

It might seem like fluffy theory but it’s easy to discuss real examples of the reflective mind in action.

Maybe you had an argument with someone. Did you go back later and ask “Why did I say that particular thing? What was I really feeling that maybe I couldn’t say? Would the outcome have been different if I had said something different? Is there something I could do differently in that situation next time?”

Or something even simpler…

Maybe you feel a bit “off” in your day to day life sometimes. Do you ever stop and ask “I wonder why I’m feeling this way? Is there something I value in my life that isn’t being fulfilled? What is it that I really value? Is this what I want to be doing with my life?”

Or conversely…

Maybe you had a big success and you’re feeling on top of the world. Do you ever stop, delve into your joy, and ask “Why am I enjoying this? Could I be feeling the same thing in another way? How can I put more of this feeling into my life?”

Maybe those questions are my own projection and aren’t relevant to you at all, but the questions and answers themselves are irrelevant, it’s the matter of asking the questions  (and sometimes acting on them) that’s important.

And maybe it’s not even questions, maybe it’s just statements. Particularly for positive experiences.

Maybe it’s just stopping to really think through how special a certain experience was, how much you valued a certain moment, just to drown yourself in the gratitude for a particular thing… that’s reflection too.

But I don’t know if we get enough time for it.

The world moves so fast, there aren’t enough hours in the day, we’re inundated with information, and stimulus, and things that want our attention… and all those other 21st century cliches… that to sit, (heaven forbid) do nothing, and think, is the last thing on our to do list. The benefits from it are intangible, they can’t be quantified, we can’t show them to anyone. Yet without new thoughts, new ideas, deeper understanding, better connection to ourselves, where are we?

If only we could fit it in…

Imagine more people taking time trying to understand why they upset someone… More people thinking about why another person did what they did… More people trying to see other people’s perspectives… More people taking time to fully appreciate the beauty and joy in their lives… More people with time to understand why their idea isn’t working out, their relationship isn’t as happy as it was, or their business isn’t moving forward as they’d like.

I can’t speak for everyone, but it’s a world I’d like to live in.

I get the feeling that most people live life in a state of anticipation.

I know I do.

We do the things we do day to day in anticipation of a future benefit.

We’re hitting the gym so we can look great at the beach this summer…

We’re working hard so that we can advance our careers or grow our businesses…

We’re meeting people to network in the hope of doing a business deal…

We’re saving money so that we can buy a nice something or other that we want…

I get the feeling that the secret to life, the ultimate happiness and fulfillment we can achieve as human beings might just be…

To live life for it’s own sake.

To learn for the pleasure of stimulating our minds.

To work for the pleasure of challenge and the pride of daily progress.

To interact with others for the joy of connection.

To eat for the pleasure of enjoying our meals…

Just maybe…

What do you think?

Remember…

You’ve only got time to meet so many people in your life…

Who are you going to choose to meet?

You’ve only got time to read so many books in your life…

Which ones are you going to read?

You’ve only got time to see so many places in your life…

Where are you going to go?

You’ve only got time to eat so many meals in your life…

Which are you going to try?

You’ve only got time to take so many risks in life…

Which are you going to take?

You’ve only got time to love so many people in your life…

Who are you going to give yourself to?

You’ve only got time to build one life…

What kind of life are you going to build?