Do What You Love

I spent an hour yesterday (New Years Day) watching Adam Baker's TED Talk from TEDx Asheville.  Highly recommended!  Here is the video (click through to watch on You Tube) with my thoughts below:

Direct link to YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XRPbFIN4lk

This talk is titled "Sell Your Crap, Pay Your Debt, Do What You Love."

The Lede is a question - "What Does Freedom Mean to You?"  He tells the story of deep reflection at the birth of his daughter and a resulting decision to decrappify (my word, not his).  In 12 months he went from $18,000 in debt and an apartment full of "stuff" to zero debt and two backpacks worth of stuff.

"If there was one thing that was lacking in our life, it was clarity."   Amen!  Personal Life, Professional Life, Project Life, who can't understand that statement.

After the interesting story - another great insight - "We were the ones writing the script."

Then a description of the process.  "It starts right here, with your crap."  Very funny comments about the whole storage unit industry, with a great photo of a garage that looks like mine :(.

A great point that he hammers over and over is "What happens when you need to adapt?"   I think what happens when I lose my job; what happens when I get sick; what happens when Jennifer gets sick?  All damn good questions.

Per his experience - "As we sold layers of our crap, we realized, and we felt the weight being lifted off of us."

I WANT THAT!

Here is Adams prescription and my plan:

1.  Commit to start collecting experiences instead of crap.
2.  Sell you crap.
3.  Pay off your dept.
4.  Do what you love.

I'll let you know how it goes . . .

Alan

PS  Thanks to Jennifer and the family, we have a good start on number three, but even debt-free I think the other three prescriptions are on the money.