LegendaryLife Blog

There are two kinds of companies out there, the “me-toos” which see how successful others are and try to replicate it with a few changes in order to enjoy the same amount of success and the “what-the-___” ones who create their own unique niche and take years to get steam. I’ve had a very bad habit of creating “what-the” since I was a kid, always thinking of the world in a very different way than most others.

I use to deliver newspapers and much to my customer’s puzzlement, would only collect money from them on a bi-monthly basis ONCE (if they weren’t home, it would be another 2 weeks before they saw me) after I realized the more customers owed me, the higher the tips were. Giving 10 cents tip out of 3$ is too easy, not having change for a 20$ when they owed me 17$ was more profitable.

I began a 3D animation studio when most companies had no clue what it was (ironic considering how much “3D” type articles you write about now) and in vain tried to acquire 3ds.com but Dassault Systèmes beat me to it – hence i3DS.com which is starting to sound like a lot of the names of 3D systems out there. Convincing the DELL phone sales rep that I was an industrial company needing a 10K workstation for CAD so it was fine selling it to me.

I was given a line of credit while in university which I promptly cashed-out a few months later (giving my parents two weeks notice in the process) to travel abroad alone for two months to Japan, Australia and Malaysia! I even got another line of credit to help fund my business while learning how to fly!

Since September, WoodMarvels.com has really been on a tear… in the most positive sense of the word. Sales keep going UP, people are more and more offering me great opportunities which, based on my past, I don’t say no to. I still remember the time when I first started WoodMarvels.com, there was just me and my computer (that hasn’t changed much) but the pictures of the resources available all showed hand-crafted toys with guys wearing mustaches showing their handywork. There were screws, nails, extensive material lists and MEASUREMENTS (I hate math!). Suffice it to say, I knew there had to be a better way, computers, 3D animation, no measurements… this seemed like the path forward! Back then, I didn’t even know about lasers, on-demand manufacturing… I was designing things using wooden dowels meant for jigsaws but kept looking for a modern equivalent. I had visited industrial companies around North America and they showed me what was possible… so I designed based on what I saw, not on what I knew.

Barriers to entry where steep, I had no way of cutting much less knowing if my designs worked other than what my computer told me but I didn’t let that stop me… I plowed through. I didn’t know how to design toys but that didn’t stop me. I couldn’t draw but I didn’t let that stop me. I didn’t have any money! That didn’t stop me either! Basically, I saw a door and come hell or high water, I was going to open it!

I wanted others to join with my company as well, and to this day, I still actively look for other designers to have their stuff on my site – nothing worse than going to a store that sells only one style of things… and after each of those collaborations, I learn a little something that helps me improve on my designs!

The more I design for WoodMarvels.com, the more it surprises me that there are no equivalent sites to it. Sure, there are a few hobby places here and there but doing things the way I do? Nope! The cost of entry is huge – you need to get a full time 3D artist (not cheap especially now!) or learn yourself (very steep learning curve), build products out of thin air (easy for me now but incredibly difficult for me when I started), build a brand and partnerships (again, very difficult without an extensive portfolio) and even if you have all of this… finding customers to make it a profitable enterprise! If anything the barriers have only increased, not decreased with time.

Suffice it to say, I believe I created my very own niche and for however a short time I dominate it, the ride has and continues to be fun! That being said, I’m always trying new things… I really and truly love what I do here at WoodMarvels.com and anything I can do to grow the audience and customer base – I’ll give it a try.

There is a motto that I feel myself living through quite often, there is nothing to fear but fear itself – when you realize you have nothing to lose – and go for it… the journey might take a few years with challenges along the way, but taking the initiative and jumping off the diving board without knowing how high or even if there is water in the pool… makes life worth living!

I’m constantly reminded at how important it is to be well diversified, financially speaking. If you learn only one skill that provides but one stream of revenue, you are ASKING for trouble should that stream become a trickle or worse, be damned upstream.

Now, more than ever, learning isn’t something just done during your school-age period but over your entire lifetime. Unlike the “old times”, you are never too old to stop learning new things to keep yourself relevant in the global economy we all find ourselves into. Competition isn’t locally but worldwide so people can no longer afford to remain stagnant in the head when it comes to knowledge and expertise.

I’m to the point now in my life where I have money coming from several buckets, any one bucket dries-out I’m still fine financially… this is the way to live in the future. The nice thing about having several buckets is the freedom it affords me in making decisions that are relevant to my aspirations and goals in life. I know what I want, and increasingly, have the financial confidence to pursuit it without worrying about financial “what-ifs”.

Diversification, especially in the area of financials, is essential. The more buckets you have to pull from, the more water you can devote to any one idea… increasing the chance of any one planted idea growing into a money tree!

From the moment we are born, our brains are given programs that decide our future, whether we realize this or not… they are incredibly deep within our unconscious and changing them is like walking through a mental minefield.

Brain = Computer. Culture = Software.

I struggle with getting over the software put into me growing-up on a continual basis, questioning it’s value to my life and whether it still remains relevant. For instance, during our formative years in school… I was NEVER taught that I could become my own boss. I was instead taught to become a teacher, a fireman, office worker (yuck!) and the list goes on. Striking things on your own was never part of my programming until much later in life when my parents, who are both teachers by trade, started their own business on the site. Then… the possibilities opened. New software was given to me about other ways of achieving success outside of the corporate/governmental world.

Rewriting our brains software

If you always grew-up thinking of one reality, it’s incredibly difficult for the brain to adapt at a later age, that another reality is possible. I saw a documentary about “child” suicide bombers in Afghanistan who grew-up in abject poverty, told to memorize the Koran and their whole lives that blowing yourself up is the best way to live your life. The result? They look forward to dying! You might say, that’s crazy… but the reality is that they have been programmed by people around them who think and behave int he same way. Trying to convince them that no, this is not the path you wish to take in your future and that these are all lies is like convincing an Evangelical Christian that the Bible is but a book of fairy tales. The mind just cannot believe or accept that this is even remotely possible and hence, regardless of the new information given… simply is unable to change or adapt to the new software given.

We are our software

Whether you wish to accept the fact that your life is closely governed, not by your thoughts, but by the software put into your brain by others, this is sadly a reality. Overcoming this should be a challenge taken up by everybody. Why? Well, innovation and free thinking can only be realized once you learn to question EVERYTHING! I was brought-up thinking like most people, you go to school, university, get married, have kids, work 9-5 at a job then retire. That’s easy enough to follow, it’s within my comfort zone. What is left out through is experiencing life, it’s been brought-up several times in studies that fully half of the adult population HATE THEIR JOBS. The quick answer is, quit your job, find something you love and move on with life… but if you have children, a mortgage, co-workers who are close friends. Well, you can see how challenging a hole our culture has dug for you.

Steps to rewriting yourself

1. Don’t take what you have for granted, ask yourself this very powerful question. If I were to die tomorrow, have I achieved everything I wanted out of life? If the answer is yes, then question if your goals have been too easy (you stayed within your comfort zone), if the answer is no… you have some equally harsh decisions to make.
2. Looking back on life, try to find instances where you “bucked the trend” set by others. If your life consists of being a lemming to marketing and fashion trends… ask yourself why you allow yourself to be so easily molded in the vision of others. It’s when you do something that others around you are not doing that you are truly an innovator, this needs to be cultured. It’s the only true time that your brain is overcoming your internal software. Nurture it!
3. Do something very out of the ordinary for yourself and those around you spontaneously on a very regular basis. Instead of celebrating Christmas on the 25th of December like everybody else… do it two weeks later when the bargains at stores can be had. This will not only save you a lot of money but also exercise your ability to think and act independently.

Don’t forget the reason for a strong culture and belief structure driven into us from a young age isn’t to make YOU happy, it’s to make OTHERS happy… possibly at your expense. Imagine corporations unable to find workers because they prefer to explore the world outside of an office setting, imagine governments having citizens refusing to pay taxes due to wasteful spending… imagine a world where the only limitation placed upon you was your ability to innovate from within regardless of who you were, beliefs, your position within society, economic or geographical location.

The Bottom Line

When life ceases to become a challenge, it cheapens in value.

As my plan is to live well over a hundred years by following a very healthy lifestyle full of whole foods, vigorous exercise and lots of mental activities, I found this Ted talk by Dan Buettner rather interesting. Here is the embeded video followed by a summary of the talk’s key points. If you wish, you can read more about Dan here.

Lecture’s key points:

• based off the studies of twin lifespans, it’s been calculated that less than 10% of our longevity is based directly off our genes with 90% being dictated by our lifestyle.
• there is a lot of confusion regarding optimal health and lifestyle choices
• a team of experts visited and studied extensively the lifestyle of populations known to live a long, healthy life with few health complications. These four areas are known as blue zones and include Costa Rica, Okinawa, Sardinia and California
• longevity myth #1: you can’t wish yourself to live longer, no matter how hard you try because we are built to multiply, not live long. Your chances of living to 100 are 1 in 5 000 currently within America.
• longevity myth #2: treatments exist that can slow aging. Our bodies have 35 trillion cells… there is simply too much we don’t understand and that can go wrong to possibly know what works and what doesn’t. These cells are completely replaced every 8 years and each time, genetic and cellular damage occurs which builds up exponentially.
• a 65 year old senior ages 125x faster than a 12 year old child
• the capacity of the human body to sustain your life is about 90 years, slightly longer for woman

• in the highlands of Sardinia, there is a place where old age is a given, with 10x more centenarians than in America! They are also healthy, working and enjoying a vigorous lifestyle. Here, men live older than woman.
• diet consists mostly of plant based and whole foods made and found locally using naturally sourced products high in Omega-3 fatty acids
• they are mostly shepards, so they enjoy an active lifestyle throughout their lives
• they enjoy wine which has 3x the amount of polyphenols than any other type in the world (this is a strong anti-oxidant)
• the older you get, the more wisdom and acceptance you get within the social structure of the Sardinian society
• on the island of Okinawa, in the northern part of the island, the oldest female population can be found
• here they live a long time, die quickly with little health problems in between
• 5x the number of centenarians with a fifth of the cancer compared to America
• they have a mostly plant based diet that consists of smaller calorie dense foods – they stop eating once their stomach is 80% full
• isolation is known to shorten lifespan, so the Okinawans have a system in which they develop lifelong friendships
• American’s have adopted a lifestyle that can be divided into two categories, work and retirement but in Okinawa, there is no word for retirement. They simply live by a motto which means “the reason you wake-up in the morning is ___”
• in America, it’s the 7th Day Adventists found in California which live the longest, the study that the numbers come from tracked 70 000 people for 30 years
• they don’t eat a lot of meat, for 24 hours a week they stop everything and focus onto their social being and doing nature walks

• things that all these “high longevity cultures” have in common
• they all do daily physical activity that isn’t overly strenuous on their body or joints
• they have the right outlook on life and a purpose that drives them on a daily basis, they purposefully slow their lives down to deal with built-up stress
• they all take some “time off” to reflect or to relax on a very regular basis
• they eat food based on what is found around them and it forms the majority of their diet
• they eat mostly plant based foods, a little wine and rarely till they are absolutely full
• they put their families and relatives first in their lives and have strong social contacts
• longevity has no short term fix

The Bottom Line

A long, healthy life is a choice that involves incremental and small proactive steps through ones life.

Ask anybody who has accomplished a goal or vision they once had and the very first step they will say is that they STARTED. You can’t finish what you didn’t start… and each small step you take is that much closer towards the end of said goal or vision.

Starting is easy… follow-through isn’t

After you decided to take the first step and turn a dream into a reality… the next largest step is consistent steps forward, whether they happen daily or weekly… continual progress is a must because it create momentum that makes any distractions easier to deal with. Just like the body of a bodybuilder takes years of hard work, if he or she stops going to the gym… it’s always harder to start back up after a prolonged rest period than it is to continue through an injury.

Distractions are what you make them

It’s all too easy to get distracted from a goal, especially when it’s a difficult one or requires more effort than is ordinary. The mind is great at creating “outs” for you so that it can continue along the path of least resistance… the hard part is learning to scope and get back on track ASAP regardless of the distraction being present. You have to consciously decide each time you get distracted if it’s worth your attention or you are better off ignoring it.

What publishing has taught me… patience!

I’ve just published my forth book yesterday (WoodMarvels.com Volume 2) and the evolution in every respect is rather astonishing. I started this blog to improve my English skills and if you go back to the first article… it took me hours and it’s barely a paragraph and now, I’m editing my most ambitious effort… a science fiction book of over 240 pages! One thing that publishing has taught me is that no matter how much you have done in the past, there is always a better way of doing things, of telling a story, of laying the text out, of delivering key concepts and ideas to the reader. Patience is needed because just when you think you are done… you are NOT! I now fully appreciate why it sometimes takes a year or so between published books by the same author… and the pressure there must be when you have a publisher breathing down your neck to get things done ASAP! Luckily, I’m my own publisher so the pressure to get things done isn’t anything I put onto myself… things are done when they are done

The Bottom Line

First steps always require the momentum of a second!