For the past few days I've been just kicking myself for making huge bold choices and small bold choices... and then questioning them. Then just now I was sitting in the bathroom reading this week's Entertainment Weekly interview with Angelina Jolie and she had this quote:
"I don't believe in regrets. It's a dangerous habit to get into–it makes you pause in your life if you start thinking back and questioning yourself." -Angelina Jolie
Well, this hit a bit close to home, Angelina, thank you baby! Clearly something I needed to read right then. I've done so many amazing, wonderful, stupid things in my life it's mind-boggling. One day in Fairbanks Alaska I had $225 to my name, bought the cheapest flight I could get to the mainland ($176) landed at Sea-Tac and hitchhiked home to Madison WI (over 2000 miles). How crazy is that? I even had to spend $42 of my remaining $50 to ship most of my gear home because it was too heavy to hitch with. Basically I made it home from Seattle on about $8. And that's just one example... I could give you dozens of those, I've got a lot of stories, lol.
The thing is... I've been feeling an enormous change coming on... hard to put into words... but I can feel my whole perspective in life and what is important to me is about to change radically in the next few months or even weeks or days. My friend Ariel Hyatt sent a killer email newsletter out the other night and it may have been one of the straws that tipped the scales I guess because I committed to going to her next seminar in St. Louis tomorrow as part of the http://www.indiebuzzbootcamp.com with Bob Baker, Derek Sivers, and (perhaps most exciting to me because I've heard such great things about him and never seen him) Tom Jackson, among others.
The humorous or horrible part of this (depending how you look at it) is the cavalcade of events that have erupted since I made this decision 40 hours ago or so. I basically don't have the money to fly down there, so I decided to drive. Recently my long time road warrior 91 Honda Civic who I lovingly named "Henrietta" broke down and I decided instead of fixing her up (about $800 I figured) I'd buy another instead, and proceeded to find "Lola" on eBay for $1000 in Holland MI (about 60 miles away). Lola has some fire in her, some growl, and some other things I didn't know about, lol. I had to get the passenger side window fixed, a rear wheel stabilizer clamp, and an oil change for the trip. That's when I found out I also needed a new front axle. I also decided to pop to fix her muffler.
This morning as they started putting on the axle, they discovered the wheel bearing was shot as well. Another $350. Pot committed at this point to the gamble of driving down to St. Louis rather than flying, I threw in the stringer bet hoping the long shot straight flush will come through on the river.
:-)
What else can I do? Kick myself forever? Yes Lola is pretty high maintenance so far and it looks like maybe fixing up Henrietta instead might have been the more fiscally prudent choice at the time, but I didn't know that then, you know? Leave it to Angelina Jolie to put that into perspective for me.
But back to my thoughts on life-changing. Ariel mentioned in her newsletter that she'd doubled her income in the past 18 months after going to a free three day seminar called Millionaire Mind Intensive (use this code to get 2 free tickets: 404050) and 6 or 7 seminars after that initial one. I've been searching for that life-changing catalyst for quite sometime and my first step towards that same type of change in my life is starting this weekend in St. Louis. Will everything change for me? I committed, I chose to play, I'm in the hand, I'm seeing it out. I'll keep you posted on whether I'm a winner or a bust in my next few installments. Stay tuned.
My beloved Henrietta:
My new Lola:
