So.-

I’m ALMOST done with The Definitive Guide to Getting Off Your Butt, Finding Some Focus, and Jump-Starting Your Biz (So You Can Stop Feeling Like a Procrastinating Asshole, and Start Making Some Cashola), the free resource I’m developing because, sometimes, you just want someone to tell you what the fuck to do.

And sometimes, a foul-mouthed entrepreneur comes along and delivers just that.

Development has taken me longer than I expected because I decided to go all out and make it a print + multimedia experience–you’ll see me deliver hard-hitting advice, dance around like a crazy person, show my softer side, get my teacher on, and sometimes even fly off the handle a little bit…all on video. (Here goes ever getting elected into public office!)

So, the resource is coming!

(Enter your email address here to have it delivered straight to your inbox once released. Again, it’s free.)

In the meantime, however, I thought I’d share one of the videos that I put together, talking about WHAT’S STOPPING YOU FROM TAKING ACTION, followed by a double whammy of Ash uncut, where I may or may not deliver my toughest ass-kick to date. There’s strong language, finger pointing, head swirling, a diss to the 4-hour work week, and bananas flying around in the background.

Okay, so there are no bananas.

But the rest is legit.

You definitely want to stick around to the end where things get a little wild. No, not like that, perv.

Here’s just a taste of what’s to come.

Buckle up.

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1. You fantasize about ripping that freaking fish right off of the back of your neighbor’s Prius, and replacing it with a bumper sticker that reads Satan is my homeboy. And then videotaping their reaction from your bedroom window, and posting it on one of your several blogs. Evil laugh optional.

2. It baffles you that there is no World Cultures for Dummies book, yet the following titles are somehow in print: Canadian Wine for Dummies, IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) for Dummies, Rabbits for Dummies, MySpace for Dummies & Raising Smart Kids for Dummies (Step one: If you’re currently pregnant, put down the Scotch.)  Obama, where you at, bro?

3. You secretly always wanted to see Tony Micelli throw down his oven mitt & realize his potential as more than a glorified bitch. But not before he took Angela on the kitchen table.  Just once. Hopefully Mrs. Rossini doesn’t happen to be nosing around.

4. You have a love/hate relationship with suits; on one hand, James Bond wears one, and you like this. On the other, well…James Bond doesn’t really exist, and you despise everything that a suit represents. Unless, of course, Angelina Jolie is wearing a blazer with no pants on.  Then all bets are off.

5. You’ve engaged in sexual intercourse simply on the grounds that you couldn’t resist the accent. This may or may not have evolved into a long-term personal challenge to see how many “countries” you can add as a notch on your belt.

6. You’ve been known to bust into spontaneous dance parties while driving with your left knee, and bobbing your head from side to side while simultaneously doing the wave and making faces at the person next to you at the stoplight. Mostly because this makes them extremely uncomfortable. This is funny to you.

7. People fall wildly in love with you because of your sarcasm. Then, 6 months into the relationship, that same person complains that you never take anything seriously and you’re “insensitive.”

8. You’ve been voted most likely to fake your own death and escape everyone and everything.

9. You always thought you were smarter than your teacher, professor and/or boss. The day you called them out to correct their misuse of “immigrate” instead of “emigrate,” they silently admitted defeat and began covertly plotting your demise.

10. At one point in your life, you contemplated becoming an airline pilot so you could see the world while working.

11. You think a lot of things are stupid.

12. You refuse to do stupid things.

13. You’re routinely referred to as stubborn, pig-headed and/or an ungrateful for refusing to do aforementioned stupid things. Meanwhile, you can’t help but think the same about those people, but for opposite reasons.

14. The idea of not having a cell phone is appealing.

15. For you, I, Robot isn’t just a movie.

16. You know what I meant by that.

17. You don’t mind sitting in traffic, because you don’t really give a damn if you’re there “on time” or not. The concept of keeping time is a social construct in the first place.

18. Speaking of time, you disagree with the statement “Time is money.” Silly buffoons, those mind renters.

19. You laugh every time at Achmed.  (This really has nothing to do with lifestyle design, but whether or not you have a sense of humor.)

20. You know who Achmed is.

21. You’d have to seriously consider whether having The Donald’s fortune would be worth sacrificing your time and mobility. And hair.

22. You’ve pondered how, exactly, a turban is wrapped. Bath towels don’t count, cheater.

23. You look up to homeless people, in a way, because they are completely, utterly free to do whatever they want.

24. You also look up to Indiana Jones, because, let’s face it: That hat was BAD–ASS.

25. You’ve questioned religious teachings on more than one occasion; especially after they tried to convince you that a stale, moldy little crouton was actually the body of christ.

26. Even though you shudder at the thought of wearing a fanny pack, you tolerate their existence because you have friends in four countries that still wear them.

27. You drink alcohol in excess.  Mostly because you’re always in new social & cultural settings where everyone is inviting you out for a drink.

28. You romanticize the idea of meeting the most intriguing guy/girl in a hip little coffee shop, where you have instant chemistry; within an hour the two of you are on your way to the nearest international airport, where you scan the departures for the next flight out to wherever, and you board on a whim. You have no luggage, and you could care less. Could life be any more exciting?

29. You would actually do number 28.

30.  No Fear is still your favorite brand.  For obvious reasons.

31. You’re more intimate with your laptop than your partner.

32. You laughed at most of these, and can identify.

33. You just read this post to the end and are immediately going to tweet/facebook/stumble it!

You know you wanna add to the list.  Rally!

Beyond my sneaking suspicion that most lifestyle designers are the type of people that would take great pleasure in running full throttle and leaping in a fit of glee right into a sea of seizure-inducing colored balls — and then do it again simply because they’ve now got the time to do so — there’s actually a more sophisticated rationale (albeit not as fun) as to why lifestyle design is comparable to having a job at McDonald’s, and why it’s a positive thing.

As a child, whenever anyone asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up, “Work at McDonald’s” was never the answer, or we’d be at risk for being instantaneously swatted upside the head with the latest edition of the New York Times, while mom and dad’s heads shook in contempt and told us how we wanted a career, not a job.  Scorn, scorn, there-go-my-childhood-dreams-of-bringing-the-hamburgerler-to-justice.

Be versus Do

At a young age, we are implicitly taught that the ubiquitous “What do you want to be when you grow up?” was code for “What kind of career do you want to have?”  There we are, our sweet little 9-year old cheeks a flush,  simply trying to shovel endless amounts of Power Rangers fruit snacks into our mouths in peace, and here come all of these pesky adults, attempting to suffocate us with the one famously fatal American attitude of you are what you do. You are defined by how you produce income.  One of our society’s greatest flaws, in my opinion.

Notice that no one ever answers the question of what do you want to be when you grow up with world traveler, world-renowned salsa dancer, connoisseur of fine bourbon, excellent conversationalist, polar bear enthusiast or, my personal favorite, avid ball point pen collector.

Yet, if all were right in the world, these are exactly the types of responses we would be giving, because the distinction would be made between “be” versus “do,” and “What do you want to be when you grow up?” would transform into a two-part series including “What do you want to do when you grow up?”  Be versus do.  Hell, mental health professionals would be forced to close up shop.

Lifestyle Designers Know Better

Eventually, when we finally do engage ourselves in the requisite career selection process, we are told to pick a career based on our interests, passions and desires. (Do Spanish men count?)  ”You’re going to be doing it everyday for the rest of your life, so you had better love it!” At the time, this seemed like logical, sound advice.  Pick career.  Life gets based around it.  Voilà.  Middle-aged heart attack, coming right up, sir.

Lifestyle designers know better.  They have taken a stand against the career mentality, and instead of seeking a career they love, with their personal lives secondary, they’ve opted to seek a life they love, with a career as secondary. Except there’s one crucial distinction:  A lifestyle designer isn’t interested in a career; s/he is interested in having a McDonald’s-esque job.  I’ll explain.

For those of you who have read The Four-Hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss coins the term “muse” to refer to the type of job, as we’ll call it, that is one or multiple self-supporting businesses.  He states:

“Can a business be used to change the world, like The Body Shop or Patagonia?  Yes, but that isn’t one of our goals here . . . our goal is simple:  To create an automated vehicle for generating cash without consuming time.”

From this perspective, the aspiring lifestyle designer is not encouraged to pursue his/her passions from an income position, but rather to take an income position that will allow him/her to pursue his/her passions in a separate and unrelated fashion.  Although the two do not have to be mutually exclusive, they often are. Just like when you were in high school and worked at McDonald’s–you did it so you could fund your personal life, not because you were passionate about hot, artery-clogging grease and those killer visors.  A lifestyle designer may or may not be all that passionate, per say, about their particular chosen stream of income;  they are passionate about living life, and enabling themselves to do so through a variety of non-related means.  They are the masters at differentiating their identities as people versus their identities as income producers.

For example, Ferriss’ muse was called BodyQUICK, a vitamin supplement.  Two of the examples he gives in the book include a guy selling French shirts and a woman selling a yoga DVD.  Or take real life lifestyle design superstar David Walsh (@dvdwalsh) of Muselife.com, who has successfully created a muse called Audio Mixology, in which aspiring bartenders can download a combination of audio and print materials designed to teach basic mnemonic devices for memorizing cocktail ingredients, or his business partner, Seth Hosko (@shosko) of www.sethhosko.com, who is in the process of creating a new muse designed as an iPhone app called Language Cheat in which users become versed in how to realistically use a foreign language for practical, real-world applications.

The point here is that I’m willing to bet that Ferriss would not describe himself as being passionate about vitamins.  (Although I would argue that Walsh is, in fact, passionate about mixology; I recently had the pleasure of meeting up with both he & Seth here in Philadelphia, during which time my whiskey consumption skills were put to the test.)  In any event, what we’re seeing is a drastic shift in mind-set, where the notion of a career as the ideal has become an antiquated, almost foolish choice, and the notion of having self-sufficient muses–or “jobs,” as I see it, being defined as something you do for money’s sake, like a job at McDonalds–has taken its place. Except this is a hybrid of jobs that are carefully constructed, smart, intelligent designs implemented with purpose, deliberation and intention, and unlike McDonald’s, you are free to take your time and do with it what you please.  The practice of lifestyle design is an art form in its own right.

What’s Your Message?

That said, there is one other amusing similarity between LD & McDonald’s:  The slogans that have graced the golden arches throughout the years are curiously well-suited to the lifestyle designer.  Check it:

• What You Want Is What You Get (1992 – 1995)
• Do You Believe in Magic?  (1993 – 1997)
• Have You Had Your Break Today?  (1995 – 1997)
• We Love To See You Smile (2000 – 2003)
• I’m lovin’ it  (2003 – Present)

I’m a big fan of the first and last slogans in particular, but all of them carry an underlying message that reflect a carefree, life-is-good-on-this-side-of-the-fence that encourages the consumer to take a time out from the harried, frenzied life of the rat race–and I think that’s something that all lifestyle designers can relate to.

To all of the aspiring lifestyle designers out there, what types of muses are you contemplating?  Have you been able to successfully combine something you’re passionate about with an income stream?  Just want to express your newfound desire to jump into a sea of balls?  Let’s hear your thoughts.

I couldn’t resist.

It’s only my second post, and there I go busting out the your mom jokes in the title already.  But in all seriousness, your mom actually has a lot to do with what I’m about to say, because the odds are good that A) She is one of the reasons I’m writing this, B) She will not like this post, and C) She will not like any ideas that you may take away from it.  (Although, to be fair, when you were 8 and you told her you didn’t like her spinach casserole, both your opinion and any hopes you had for a democratic vote were promptly dismissed. ) Allow me to explain.

Why The Stack of Papers On Your Desk Is Your Mom’s Fault

Growing up, your mom probably told you to respect your elders, avoid talking to strangers, wash your hands before dinner, and stop taking her red lipstick and squishing it between your toes, one at a time.  (Maybe that was just me.) Usually, you listened.  You might have indulged in one last guilty tube of sweet, sweet Maybelline pleasure before all was said and done, but eventually you listened.  Why?  Because mother knows best.

Years later, mother also knew best when it was time for you to start applying to college (Do you want to work at McDonald’s for the rest of your life?  I didn’t think so.  Now, dear, which campuses do you want to visit first?), she knew best when you were up against the wall to finally declare your major (What are you going to do with a degree in Anthropology?  Better to pick something more practical, and travel to all those “foreign places” once you’re established and settled and are financially comfortable), she knew best when the job offers started rolling in (Everyone’s the low man on the totem pole at some point.  All of your hard work will pay off in the end, if you just put in the time), and she knew best last week when you felt your first pangs of job dissatisfaction, the all-too-familiar manifestation of the mundane, soul-sucking routine affectionately referred to as the daily grind (Welcome to the real world, honey.)

Well, I’ve got news.

Your mom didn’t know best.  As a matter of fact, your mom’s advice sucked.

Social Conditioning, A Toothless Neighbor, Long Walks On The Beach, and How The Three Relate

Calm down, calm down.  No one’s saying that your mom is some evil force of nature.  (Although, I wouldn’t rule it out completely.) Your mom is simply an unsuspecting victim of the phenomenon called social conditioning.  Or, as I like to call it, The Unconscious Removal of Your Every Brain Cell Process.  Social conditioning works in tricky ways.  Defined by one of modern day’s most reliable sources, Wikipedia, social conditioning is “something that homogenizes a large amount of people into a certain distinctive mold and if you don’t know what homogenizes means, go look it up at dictionary.com.”  Okay, so I may have added that last part.  In simple terms, it basically means letting others boss you around, without you even knowing it.

Let’s take the following example to illustrate.  Imagine your real-life neighbor to the right of you, whoever s/he may be.  Preferably, s/he wears flannel shirts, is missing several incisors, swears at the lawnmower with a lit cigarette dangling from the right side of his/her mouth, has a pitbull named Spike and enjoys long walks on the beach.  If you don’t have this incredible fortune, do not fret.  Any old neighbor will work just fine.  Now, imagine that your neighbor comes over one day, knocks on your door, interrupts you in the middle of a steamy sweat session with your other neighbor’s spouse (damn, caught red-handed), and thrusts a checklist of demands to be met in your flushed little face.  On it are the following:

1) Trade-in your Honda for a new Acura.  Acuras are better and, by extension, you will be better.

2) Have a kid already.  I’m tired of looking at your vacant lawn.  It needs a swingset.

3) Don’t start coming home from work everyday until at least 7 or 8pm, you lazy underachiever.  You only get to relax at home are two days a week, Saturday and Sunday, after you’ve finished any take home work that you have.  Idiot.

4) Buy me a dog.  Because I say so.

5) Stop being such a tool.  You suck.

What would you say to your neighbor?  Probably something along the lines of “Go to hell, you (insert expletive!) You’d slam the door, be in a state of utter shock for a moment, laugh hysterically for hours, and then be the proud new owner of a long-standing, inside joke with your other neighbor’s spouse that you have now affectionately nicknamed “underachiever.”  (And maybe ponder moving to another neighborhood.)

While that might seem ridiculous, in reality, this is nearly identical to what happens to you on a daily basis, but on a much larger scale. Instead of it just being your neighbor, making ludicrous demands, it’s actually millions of people all at the same time.  But instead of telling you directly, they tell you indirectly through setting example, forming judgments, showing approval and disapproval, and instituting a plethora of social consequences.  And for the icing on the cake, instead of instantaneously performing high-powered ninja moves on the offenders at hand–as we might likely do to our neighbor–we actually listen to them.  We turn around and say, Sure, skippy, I’ll get right on it!  I might have to put myself in debt, never quite feel satisfied with myself and let a piece of my soul die each and every pain-filled day in order to fulfill your requests, but hey, if that’s what I’m suppose to do, then I guess I’ll just do it. . . what other choice do I have?

Getting Respect Without Getting your Ph.D.

We’re all guilty of it.  For years, I thought that the only way I could command more respect from the world was to pursue higher degrees of education.  Titles = authority.  Authority = power.  Power = respect.  Respect = Affirmation that society is pleased with the decisions you’ve made.  In turn, you’re now pleased with the decisions you’ve made.  You can feel good about yourself now.  Good job.  *Pat on the back followed by sigh of relief*

That was all good and nice, until I more recently discovered something else.

By pure and utter accident, I suddenly discovered a new way to command the respect of others, without jumping through all those hoops.  This new type of respect doesn’t come from conforming to what the flannel-wearing neighbors of the world want you do do.  Au contraire, sir and madamoiselle, this type of respect is garnered from, ironically, doing the exact opposite. That’s right.  The exact opposite.  Middle of the road?  Nope, loserville.  But exact opposite?  Rockstar.

Let me give you an example.

I used to sell advertising for an international, multi-billion dollar magazine.  I won’t be modest; I was awesome at it.  My natural ability to talk to anyone and make that anyone feel like someone within a span of 4.5 to 6.7 seconds served me, and my sales numbers, rather well.  My clients loved me, and I was getting contracts signed like a little banshee.  So what was the problem?  I got bored.  Not only did I get bored, I was dreadfully bored. I started feeling like every day I spent making someone else a bunch of money (and me only seeing a small percentage of it), I was another day dumber.  By that, I mean I was giving up yet another day of learning or experiencing something new in exchange.  I started to feel stagnant.  I wasn’t improving upon myself (my BS skills, maybe), and I felt the lack.  There was a real opportunity cost at stake.

So what did I do?  Just as any sane person would do, I quit.  Immediately.

In an effort to put myself back on the learning/growing/self-improvement track, I decided to go back to school, but in order to do so, I’d not only have to give up my income, but I’d have to take out a sizable amount of student loans.  And I was all for it.

Everyone thought I was crazy.  Why don’t you at least keep your job part-time, they’d say?

My response?  No.  I don’t enjoy it anymore. And that was that.  Instead, I did a little research, and finagled my way into a graduate assistant position on campus.  I reasoned that this would not only pay for my schooling and provide me with a nice little stipend, but it would also allow me to segue back into the world of academia quite nicely.  And that’s exactly what I did.

A few weeks later, I had an even better idea.  Why not take out some additional student loans, save what I can, and spend the summer in Chile?  Travel is, in my opinion, the best form of education available, so taking a little extra in a loan for the explicit purpose of facilitating my travel seemed perfectly logical.  And that’s exactly what I did.

Meanwhile, everyone else wasn’t sure if they thought I was crazy, or if I was genius.  You shouldn’t take more student loans, Ashley!  You have to pay this stuff back, you know.

My response to that: What are you doing this summer?

Usually, the answer involved part-time work at a restaurant, and one or two weekends at Ocean City, New Jersey.  This was all of the knowledge I needed to justify my decision.  By the time I returned home from my summer in Chile, I had hiked the Andes Mountains, sipped whiskey off of floating glaciers in Patagonia, frolicked in wine vineyards, hung out at Pablo Neruda’s house, taught English in a Chilean university, taught English in a Chilean high school, sampled new varieties of alcoholic beverages, improved my Spanish, met people from Brazil, England, Uruguay, Switzerland, Germany, Russia, Australia, Argentina, Colombia, Sweden, Holland, Canada and people from all over the United States, lived in a hostel, made out with the front desk guy at the hostel, lived with a host family, did NOT make out with anyone in the host family, learned to dance Cueca, became a pro at using public transportation, ate lots and lots of animal intestines, discovered I liked eating lots and lots of animal intestines, acquired a Chilean boyfriend (separate from the front desk guy), later acquired a different Chilean boyfriend thus forcing me to learn to break up with the first one in Spanish (interesting), made a ton of lifelong friends and memories, learned about another culture, and, oh, did I mention being able to put “worked for United Nations & Chilean Ministry of Education” on my resume?  After all was said and done, all of those experiences plus the added bonus at no extra charge of world view and intercultural competence cost me approximately $3,000, with $1,000 of it being my plane ticket.  It could have been done much cheaper, as well.  Would you say that those things were worth it?  I certainly would. Perhaps the most common statement that I hear from others is, “I’d love to travel, but I don’t have the money.”  While that may seem to be the case, it actually isn’t.  Rather, it’s a case of spending the money that you do have on other priorities.  To put this in perspective, if you were to give up your daily Starbucks habit at an average of $4/day, for just a year, you’d already have more than 1/3 of the money for that trip, for a total of $1040.  Ask yourself where else can you easily cut back for the remaining 2/3, and then implement it immediately.

The point here is not to brag.  The point is to illustrate how being creative–and doing things a bit unconventionally–can pay off exponentially. This, in sum, is the principle of the increasingly popular concept of lifestyle design.  Lifestyle design is a new art form, in a sense, that has hit the ground running.  As the name implies, it means to design your life, but more accurately it means questioning and challenging the standard work-life template of nine-to-five misery–and all the rest of the goodies that come with it–that the effects of social conditioning (AKA your mom) have imposed upon us all.  Lifestyle design begs the question: Isn’t there a better way? (There is.)

Lifestyle Design & Why This Should Matter to You

I predict that with principles of lifestyle design in conjunction with Gen Y putting these principles to use, the land of nine-to-five will soon have seen its hey-day, business suits will become as antiquated as top hats and men’s wigs, and many a dry cleaner will be forced to close their doors.

Already, we’re seeing a whole new breed of entrepreneur spring up among us.  These are people who are thinking intelligently, and with deliberation, about how it is they wish to spend their time each day.  For these new entrepreneurs, money no longer becomes the number one end goal, but time and mobility become two equally important decision-basing factors.  What this points to is a drastic shift in the line of thinking: Quality of life versus quantity of life.  When adding in the components of free time and mobility to the compensation package, we see how new entrepreneurs consistently come out ahead.  In the legendary book by Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week, Ferriss discusses this concept and breaks it down into a distinction between absolute versus relative income:

“Absolute income is measured using one holy and inalterable variable: the raw and almighty dollar.  Jane Doe makes $100,000 per year and is thus twice as rich as John Doe, who makes $50,000 per year.  Relative income uses two variables: the dollar and time, usually hours. The whole “per year” concept is arbitrary and makes it easy to trick yourself. Let’s look at the real trade. Jane Doe makes $100,000 per year, $2,000 for each of 50 weeks per year, and works 80 hours per week. Jane Doe thus makes $25 per hour. John Doe makes $50,000 per year, $1,000 for each of 50 weeks per year, but works 10 hours per week and hence makes $100 per hour. In relative income, John is four times richer.”

This is a very valid point worth some serious consideration.  It’s about building a business around your life, instead of the reverse.  It’s about living in the present, instead of planning to enjoy the future 45 years down the road once you retire.  It’s about examining your life and your goals, and figuring out a way to make them possible now, not later. It’s about living a life that’s truly aligned with your values, opposed to spending the majority of your time doing things that are important to other people, instead of important to you, and it’s about looking for something you’re passionate about, and then looking for a way to make a living out of it.

Are you living your dream life, or are you barely surviving your daily routine?

If the answer points to the latter, I’d encourage you to do the following:

1) Sit down.  Make a list of the top three things you do with the majority of your time.  Is it sitting in an office?  Dealing with customer complaints?  Suffering through useless meetings?  Daydreaming out the window?  Kissing other people’s butts?  Making some pompous idiot coffee?

2) Stay seated, you antsy little future entrepreneur, you.  Now make a list of the top three things you wish you were doing with your time.  Be realistic.  For me, this includes travel, reading and writing.

3) Compare and contrast the two lists.  Is there any overlap?  If so, great.  Capitalize on it, and see how you can create even more overlap.  If not, think critically about what you’d need to do to transition from spending your time doing list number one, to spending your time doing list number two.  A lot of times, it’s not as complicated as people make it, but it’s an issue of fear of the unknown.  And if fear is an paralyzing factor, ask yourself what’s the worst that could happen?  The majority of the time, if something doesn’t turn out the way you planned, you can always go back to what you were doing before, content in knowing that, at the very least, you didn’t sell yourself short by not giving something a chance.

You don’t have to do anything drastic, but it’s about taking small, deliberate steps toward living a life you want to live, versus living a life you think you should live.  So, no offense mom, but when it comes to that, you’re the one who knows best.

Are there any of you out there who took the leap, and couldn’t be happier you did?  Share your story!  Did the opposite happen to you?  Share that too!

Disclaimer: Under no circumstances should the name Skippy, as used within the context of this article, ever be uttered from your lips in real life, or risk getting punched in the face immediately by any and all bystanders.

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