Life

Getting The Quote

Garth Beyer

A lot of journalists will say that nothing feels better than getting the quote you need within the first few sentences of talking to someone.

You can tell if they are a professional journalist if they continue to say that despite having a quote within the first two minutes, that they continued to talk with their interviewee.

I say that nothing feels better than getting seven exemplary quotes you don’t know what to do with and a handful of tips on life than stopping when you get your quote.

Journalism isn’t only about words on paper, it’s about the connections and relationships you have to people. It’s about growing as a person and making your career and life a learning experience.

There Is No Stopping Naievety

Garth Beyer

1.  How much money in U.S. currency do you need a year to support yourself and anyone you currently support in a modest lifestyle?

2. Describe in some detail what type of project or projects you would pursue if you didn’t have to work or make other compromises to have money.

3. Discuss how this is different from your current circumstances.

 

I have recently read an article that the magic income number to have a relative and consistent happy lifestyle is annually $75,000. The article stated that even those who made $50,000 to $65,000 still felt financial stress and bound to always make careful decisions when it came to money. This idea of making about three-quarters of a hundred grand a year is what I would consider modest living. I currently make about $20,000 a year and find that this lifestyle works. I have a relatively nice apartment on the lake, I can get a couple of cups of coffee each week, and a short vacation each year. This lifestyle, though it may seem normal and modest, is not. The beauty of being human in this world is that we can make anything work and we can make anything look like it works well. People can be happy with $10,000 a year and people can be just as happy – that is, no happier or no less happy – than someone who is making $45,000 a year. For me though, with high expectations for the quality of life; for me, who believes that the current standards of living are far below what the standards should be, I believe that an annual income of $75,000 would be the right amount to support a modest lifestyle.

“He’s got some high expectations,” you might be saying. Yes. Yes I do and I often get a good chuckle or two when I tell people about my bucket list. This is also when I come in conflict with the prompt. There are no projects that I’m not pursuing solely because I have to work or I make other compromises or because of money. I don’t so much believe that the greatness of a bucket list is having checked off items, rather that you made it one hell of a ride to checking them off. See, my bucket list isn’t something I’m waiting until I’m 70 years old to take seriously. (Be ready to be surprised) Nor is it a list of some five to ten items. It’s a list of 200+. This list ranges from speaking at the White House, to pepper tasting in Chile, to fire walking, to experiencing zero gravity, to learning calligraphy, to owning Le Corbusier’s (famous architect) chair. To say I am crazy about goals would be an understatement. I read them over nearly every week or two and try my hardest to cross at least one item off the list each week.

It would be wrong for me to not include a certain five word quote to help you better understand my mindset. This quote sums up why, though I may not be in the perfect situation to do everything that I want to do at this single moment, I am working as hard as I possibly can toward it. Every moment of mine is put to use, exploited, taken advantage of; every moment is put towards pushing me forward, doing what I love, getting to where I want to go, and enjoying the journey of checking items off my bucket list. It really comes down to this, “I’m naïve, but I’m not stupid.” Think about it.

 

Stay Positive & Life Really Is What You Make It

Garth E. Beyer

Waiting For Your Hero

Garth Beyer

Whenever you watch a Superhero film, or nearly any film for that matter, you are always waiting for the hero’s success or failure, survival or death. This hero’s journey that keeps the audience waiting for one event to take place after another is called the monomyth.

To the hero though, they never feel like they are waiting, they are always involved in the rising action that leads to the point the audience is waiting for. While you are waiting, the hero is not. If the hero were to wait with you, nothing would ever happen.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say we are all Superheros. We all have a special superpower if we think hard enough about what we are truly great at, whether it’s a natural talent or not. If we are Superhero’s, then why do we do so much of the waiting ourselves?

It needs to be realized that you are not your own audience. It’s not your responsibility to do the waiting. It’s your responsibility to create the rising action, to give the audience something worth waiting around for, someone to root for, something to be excited about.

Let’s not be confused about who the Superhero and who the audience is in our lives.

 

Stay Positive & With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

(You know this post would have been incomplete without ^ )

Garth E. Beyer

Once You Leave

Garth Beyer

Once you leave your cubicle, your apartment, your comfort zone, your box, you expose yourself. You risk at all levels. Most people stay in their zone because of that risk, because of their fear. Nothing can throw you out of wack if you stay put in your structure. The interesting revelation is this:

Once you leave your cubicle, your apartment, your comfort zone, your box, you expose yourself. But what you expose yourself to is never what you think and worry about. Once you leave your zone, everything that you dreamed of, craved, and desired in your zone, comes to you.

Want to find love? How can you do that when you stay in your room all day? Forget it. Anyway, love will find you….once you leave your room.

Want to see something truly beautiful? Even more beautiful than what you can Google on the internet or see out your window? You have to leave your space.

Want to laugh unexpectedly? Once you leave your box, something will happen that makes you crack up.

Just getting out of the place you confine yourself to, that you are comfortable with, is all it takes to get what you want. You don’t have to go after it, you don’t have to jump 50 hurdles to get it, all you need to do is get out!

Go to the park. Find a place to see the sunset. Walk to the grocery store. Don’t worry about how you dress, what you carry, or if you wear any shoes. Just leave.

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This post was inspired by the experience I just had. I’ve been in my apartment all day (got off work early) and wasn’t planning on leaving it. I was comfortable, I was safe with my books, my notepads, sticky notes, pens and laptop. I was content, even happy with the breeze and the sound of the water (how could I not be?). Then I decided to do something off Michelle Welsch’s Manual For Daily Adventure. I got up, grabbed a favorite book (Keri Smith’s How To Be An Explorer Of The World) and went to the park. The following things are what I got to experience because I left my apartment.

  • See a runner giving it her all.
  • Laugh and shake my head after watching two black basketball players almost get in a fight and one repeating to the other “you’re not gangsta!”
  • Three girls checking me out.
  • Laugh at a women on the phone only talking about getting drunk, hammered, plastered. Quote: “We will get drunk Sunday, that’s what labor day is for”
  • Pinpointed where an odd noise I kept hearing was coming from to a woman practicing opera.
  • Felt soft grass.
  • Got to observe more things, people, animals, sounds, sights, etc., than I would have in my apartment.
  • On my way back, had a good conversation with the three girls. If they didn’t smoke, I would have asked one for her number. Oh well.
  • Got to feel the ground. (Went barefoot)

That list sure beats the hell out of a list of what I would have experienced if I stayed in my apartment. The same goes for your cubicle at work, your comfort zone at school, your chair in the meeting room, your spot on the bus, your way you walk to work, your seat in class, and any “square” that you feel comfortable in.

 

Stay Positive & Experience Life

Garth E. Beyer

Re: A Manual For Daily Adventure

Garth Beyer

You’re in rut. Maybe you agree, maybe you don’t care. But you are.

I can’t say that I am or was in a rut, but I could ALWAYS use more adventure in my life. Lucky for me, and now you, Michelle Welsch created a list of 80 ways to get started. She calls it her manual for daily adventure.

I was not going to accept the challenge at first, but after fighting the lizard brain, I said “What the hell? Let’s do it!”

I’ve done four out of the eighty ways to get started. I’ll keep you posted later in the week with more accomplishments.

62. Visit a farmers market (Madison, WI farmers market on the square)
64. Buy yourself flowers (got them from farmers market)
14. Ride a bike (I have one but I rented the B cycle because I never have before and always wondered how they worked)
66. Style your hair differently (angled fohawk)

 

This wasn’t one but I got excited to try new things so I told the Smoothie Crafters to make me a surprise – it was a win!

Stay Positive & Adventurous

Garth E. Beyer

Die Early On To Live A Full Life

Garth Beyer

Death is meant to be superfluous, but it’s not. It’s important, it’s vital, I may even go so far as to say that it’s the meat-and-potatoes of your mom’s cooking – no meal is complete without meat-and-potatoes.

Death is an angel in disguise, a miracle worker’s shadow, god’s secret power, the greatest treasure in all the world, it is a stronger truth bearer than the greek mythological messenger, Iris.

Death has a message of its own. This message is one that should never need to be delivered but must. This message, once delivered, forces you to challenge every theory you have, it makes analyze your worldview, and it eliminates your perception of risk which is made by the amygdala.

Hundreds of thousands of cancer patients get this message every week. The message is that they only have three months to live. Or six weeks. Or twenty days. And just like that, life begins for them. Honestly. Passionately. Truthfully begins.

Jim Rohn says the following in his book The Seasons Of Life,

“It’s when a human, with sufficient disgust, desire, and determination to change his life finally steps up to the bar of human justice and shouts for all the world to hear, ‘I have had it with defeat and humiliation, and I will tolerate it not longer.’ That is when time, fate and circumstances call a hasty conference, and all three wearily agree, ‘We had best step aside, because we are powerless to stop that kind of resolve.'”

Must you die early on to live a full life? A life which uses your muse, passion, and creativity as the foundation. A life absent of fear, regret, self-degradation and hate. A life that remains intolerant to failure, set-backs, or humiliation. Must we die early on to live that life?

This is not a rhetorical question. The answer is yes. We really must die early on to live a full life.

Contrary to belief, terminal cancer patients are not the only ones who are lucky enough to die early on and live a full life. A rare headcount of people are lucky enough to die early. For some people it takes half of their lives to die and that only leaves half a life left to live, really live. For most, people never die until they are much too old to live. That is the death of death.

You’re likely confused, so let me elaborate. The death in which I write about is the death of the ego. When a person is diagnosed with terminal cancer, or hits rock bottom in life from drugs and alcohol, or gives so much love to one person and then that person leaves them, there is a shift in the psyche of that person. That shift is the death of their ego.

Upon their death, they question everything: tradition, their fears, their relationships, their work, their ethic, their personality… to discover what truly matters and to live a full passionate life.

The only thing I don’t know then is whether the miracle is being told you will die soon or the fact that after you are told, the cancer goes into remission, the addict never touches a drug again, the alcoholic never drinks, and the lover begins to love themself as much as they loved the other?

 

Stay Positive & Diagnose Yourself

Garth E. Beyer