John: Hey, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com.
I decided to rerecord this video.
I’m here in Amsterdam, but it got a little noisy on the bridge I was standing at.
If you’re watching the video you could see behind some canals here.
There’s quite a few canals.
It’s a pretty interesting city so far.
I haven’t seen that much of it yet because it’s been raining quite a bit, so I haven’t
really been able to walk around.
They had some kind of crazy storm with all these trees falling out just before I got
here.
That’s pretty fun.
It’s been a pretty interesting trip so far.
I’m not quite sure how I feel about Amsterdam quite yet.
I’ll have definitely some more opinions the next couple of weeks.
I’m going to be upping the number of episodes that I’m going to be recording while I’m
traveling here because I don’t enough queued up that I’ve recorded ahead of time so expect
to hear more of these updates.
Today I thought I would do a video on a topic that I’ve been thinking about lately as
I’ve been traveling which is basically how you live your life and essentially—it relates
a little bit to travel.
Let me put it this way.
I’ve noticed, talking to a lot of people who have been traveling a lot and just traveling
myself, this tendency for people to basically make a list of things that they want to do
or places that they want to go and check them off the list.
They don’t really care about being at the place or experiencing the thing, it’s more
of just, “Look at me, look what I did.
I checked this off my list.”
“Oh, I took a selfie here.
Look at the selfie I took in front of this famous place.”
Now, I mean I’m susceptible to that to some degree—whoa!
Quite a bit of wind here.
I’m going to get blown into the canal here.
Anyway, I’m susceptible to that to some degree, right?
Everyone kind of is but I’m trying to avoid doing that.
I’m trying to actually—that’s why I’m staying in locations for 3 weeks mostly instead
of just going for a place like a day or 2 days, something like that where you can’t
actually experience the place.
I’m getting to feel what it’s like to live there.
Even still I’m still making a list of things and checking them off and I’m catching myself
saying, “Well, am I really enjoying this experience?
Am I really being here in the moment in this experience?
Or am I just going to this place or doing this thing to say I’ve done this thing?”
That brings me back to my life in general.
You’ve got to think about it.
You should think about this as well.
Are you living your life in that way?
In your vacation it’s easy to see when you’re just going to places just to go to the places.
In life it’s really easy to do the same thing, to be sort of checked out, to be just
doing things to be doing things without understanding why you’re doing it anymore, what the purpose
is or even experiencing the thing.
I mean how many days of your life do you waste because you go through the day and you’re
just looking to get to the end, looking to get to the destination, waiting for lunch
time, waiting for the 5:00 bell to ring so that you can go home and then going through
the motions.
I find myself doing that and I have to remind myself that everything is a joy, everything
is a pleasure, everything is great, have an opportunity to do anything.
Life is good.
Life itself is a wonderful thing and that’s—when I take that mindset, even the work, even the
things I don’t want to do it’s—I’m thankful for them.
I think it comes back to this attitude of gratefulness.
You got to have an attitude of gratitude in order to really get the most out of life.
Anyway, just a couple of thoughts for today.
It’s just something you might want to examine in your own life and say, “Am I actually
living my life, living the experience?
Or am I going through the motions?
Am I making a list of things and checking them off or am I experiencing things?
Am I experiencing life?”
I recognize in the moment am I being?
Am I being instead of doing?
That’s a good way to put it, am I being instead of doing.
Anyway, hopefully you’ve enjoyed this video.
Like I said, I’m going to be doing a lot more of these here while I’m traveling.
I’ll have some thoughts on Amsterdam.
Be ready for a video on drugs and sex.
I’ll be talking about that.
I’ve got some thoughts about that as I’m here in Amsterdam what it’s known for which
is actually not really—it’s a little exaggerated, I think so.
Anyway, subscribe to the channel.
If you like to hear about drugs and sex in Amsterdam, there you go, how’s that for
a hook?
I’ll talk to you next time.