The slideshow is haunted, so I'm going to just put this here -
(Laughter)
and just go with this.
Hello, thank you so much!
So, my name is Colin Wright.
I am very, very fortunate to live a very unusual lifestyle.
I move to a new country every four months
and do my best to live like a local,
and that country is decided on by my blog readers,
they vote on what country I move to.
(Laughter)
And while there, I write books -
I write books for a living, I'm an author -
and I write books about travel, and about business, and philosophy,
relationships, science-fiction novels -
kind of whatever is interesting to me at the moment.
And I feel very, very fortunate to be able to pursue these interests,
these many interests of mine that I geek out about all the time,
and to be able to do this for a living, to share with other people for a living.
And the reason that I'm able to do this is not happenstance,
it was a very intentionally cultivated lifestyle.
I'd like to talk to you about that idea of intentionality,
but first, I want to talk to you about a shirt.
And it's a shirt that we all have,
probably, I'm guessing most of us have this shirt.
It's the shirt that, when you wake up in the morning,
and you go into your dresser, you know, and you open up the shirt drawer,
you take it out and you look at it, maybe try it on,
it doesn't quite go with everything else that you're wearing,
it's shaped a little weird, maybe it's a little boxy, a little short,
like the sleeve is a blousy, weird shape, it doesn't quite fit you,
it's not a good fit for you
and what you're trying to get out of a shirt.
So you fold it back up, and you put it back in the drawer,
maybe put some other shirts on top of it,
so you don't have to deal it again for a while.
(Laughter)
It sucks, because it's a really nice shirt,
you spent a little bit of money on it, but it doesn't quite fit you,
and so maybe someday, maybe someday you will wear this shirt, but not today.
(Laughter)
And about seven years ago,
I found myself going through that shirt routine
where I go in, take out the shirt and look at it.
But on that day, I didn't follow through with the rest of the routine.
On that day, I crushed it in my hand, said, "Not today, shirt!"
(Laughter)
And I threw it on the floor.
What had changed?
Well, I realized, on that day, seven years ago,
that I was ostensibly successful,
I was doing really well professionally,
I was running a branding studio out of Los Angeles,
and I was a young person making a great deal of money
and experiencing professional success.
And like a lot of young people
who make a great deal of money for the first time in their lives,
I bought a lot of stuff.
And I filled my townhouse with stuff, and I filled my drawers with stuff,
so I had all this excess clothing.
And holding up that shirt
really made apparent something that I was thinking for a while.
Because I was thinking of re-calibrating my life,
to try to move away
from the "work hard all the time to make as much money as possible" lifestyle
that I was enjoying in some ways, but was not truly fulfilling,
it wasn't allowing me to do the things I wanted to do.
I was thinking, maybe I can figure out a lifestyle,
a way that I could travel,
a way that I could go out and see the world,
all these places I was hearing about.
But I don't know if you know anything about the American education system,
we don't learn much about other countries.
(Laughter)
I was really hoping to get out, see some of these other countries,
and see the real people there rather than what you hear on "Fox News."
(Laughter)
And so, I was looking at all this stuff, and suddenly, these things that I saw
as a representation of how well I had done,
seems like anchors.
They were a bunch of anchors, holding me back,
because I had to do something with them,
and they made sense in this space while I was living there,
but if I wanted to travel,
I would have to do something with all of this stuff.
And so I was thinking, well maybe I'll get a smaller apartment,
just for the stuff.
You know, my shirts and things can have their own place,
and I'll just pay for that while I'm traveling,
so there will be this weird common stuff apartment,
somewhere in the United States,
as I travel.
Or maybe just a storage space, somewhere that I can keep my stuff.
But looking at that shirt -
this valuable shirt, it was nice, it was a really somewhat expensive shirt -
and in that moment, I felt like Pharaoh,
I felt like I was burying myself with my riches.
I had all of this valuable stuff, sitting there in my home,
that I wasn't doing anything with.
I wasn't using the shirt.
I wasn't using most of the stuff that I had,
it was sitting there, collecting dust, as I hoarded it
so that nobody else could have it.
And it only hit me just then.
And so I crumpled the shirt, thew it on the floor,
shouted at it for some reason, I'm not sure why -
(Laughter)
I was more upset with myself than the shirt.
And then I went through the rest of my drawer.
And I held up each object and said, "Is this valuable to me?"
Not "Is it just valuable?",
because almost everything is valuable to someone,
"Is it valuable to me?"
And in the case of my clothing, it was really easy.
I could say, "Have I worn this in the last month?"
And if not, it went on the floor.
I went through the entire drawer, pulled out all the shirts I hadn't worn,
went through the next drawer, all of my pants,
went through the closets, all of my jackets and my shoes,
went through the office, all of the computers -
I had a bunch of spare computers, for some reason.
(Laughter)
All the extra tools, and notebooks, and art supplies,
all of these things I went through to see what I was actually getting value from.
Very little of it.
Like 95 percent of everything I owned was there on the floor.
And the pile was so big,
I had to take an entire room in my flat to store it all.
I had a room full of stuff I wasn't using that I was hoarding like Pharaoh.
There is a word for this -
not for hoarding, not for that, there's many words for that,
none of them good -
but there's a word for what I was doing,
iteratively going through my life
and questioning the things I took for granted.
It's called intentionality.
And intentionality, it's not a scary word,
it's something that we build up, I think, very often,
but all it means is doing things on purpose.
And that does require that you have a purpose,
that you have some kind of goal, off on the horizon.
Once you have that, once you understand
what you want to achieve, where you want to go,
acting intentionality just means
looking at all the different aspects of your life and saying,
"Does this help me get there?"
So, getting rid of those things
was a step that helped me get to where I wanted to be.
And intentionality is something that applies to all aspects of your life.
When we apply it to the things, the possessions in our lives,
we tend to call this minimalism, very often -
that's kind of the common moniker for it these days, which is great -
and all minimalism is,
is focusing on the core, what's important -
whatever that happens to mean to you -
and getting rid of the excess,
getting rid of all the stuff that doesn't matter
so that you free up more time, energy, and resources
to spend on the things that do matter.
So it's a reallocation of your efforts, and attention, and your money, basically.
So if I spend less on the things that don't matter,
I have more to spend on the things that do matter.
It's an incredibly simple thing,
and yet it's something that we tend to forget
because there's a lot of messages telling us that to be someone,
we have to own this thing, we have to own this brand,
we have to stand with this group and be represented by this tribe.
And it's obviously not true,
we're never more ourselves
than when we're buying and surrounding ourselves
with exactly the things that serve us,
that give us value and nothing more than that.
But that's not very lucrative
for these companies that have things that they want to sell a lot of.
So you have to pay a lot of attention and really focus on intentionality
in order to remember this as you're making purchases.
Now, the same thing applies to relationships.
And this is something that a lot of us don't think of, like ever,
because it's not polite, frankly.
(Laughter)
Because, just as intentionality with your stuff
means going through your things and saying,
"Which of these is valuable, and which of them is dead-weight?",
going through your relationships and doing the same
means looking at them and saying,
"Which of these is the most vitally important relationships in my life?
Which of these is just good?"
You know, friendships and relationships of convenience,
the person you sit next to at work,
that you happen to go to school with,
who happens to live next door -
valuable relationships,
maybe not the things that should have all of your time,
they're great in context, but these are not your best friends,
these are not your significant others, these are not your family.
And then there is those relationships that drain us,
that are actually net-negatives on our lives,
and we tend to invest a lot in these
because it's not polite to step out of a friendship,
to step away from a family member, to give them less of your time
if they are actively harmful to you and your life,
if they are a toxic relationship.
Being intentional with your relationships, though,
it means really being truthful with yourself and saying,
"Is this a person who deserves more of my time, and intention, and energy?"
Do they?
And if not, if the answer is no,
free up that time, take it and give it to the people who truly do,
the people who really add to your life, who really make you feel better,
who help you get to where you want to be.
That's the root of intentionality, it's doing it on purpose,
forming relationships and maintaining relationships on purpose,
and making sure those really, really truly valuable people in your life
get the attention from you that they deserve.
Now, the same applies to work.
This is also a very unpopular thing to say.
Because we judge our work and our success within work
based on usually just one metric: how much money are you making?
That's what shows if you're successful, the family's proud of you,
but really, at the end of the day, that's just one metric.
Money is great!
I mean, I'm not anti-money.
You need it, you need to have a roof over your head, food on your table,
to provide a basic level of security for yourself and the people around you,
but if you're acting intentionaly, if you're doing work on purpose,
that means that you're looking at that bigger goal,
that place that you want to be,
and questionning every choice that you make within your profession,
saying, "Does this help me get to that place where I want to be?
That place where I am more myself than I have ever been before,
where I'm incredibly happy, where I'm fulfilled on a deeper level,
and I feel like I'm doing work that is valuable,
not just to me in the paychecks' sense, but to somebody beyond me,
I feel like I'm contributing in some way."
And once you're able to question that,
you've looked at the three core components of a healthy lifestyle -
and each and everyone of us
has a different idea of what the ideal lifestyle is,
a different idea of the people that we want in our lives,
the things that we want to have surrounding us,
because if you buy the right things, things actually can earn you happiness,
money can buy happiness if you buy the right things -
the people in our lives and the work that we do day-to-day.
These are all things that, when in aggregate,
allow us to live a lifestyle that when you look at it, it's you;
this is something that represents me.
The lifestyle that I live, the incredibly bizarre lifestyle
where I travel around and write all kinds of books,
my readers vote on where I go, what's that about?
It's strange, but it looks just like me!
And the people who know me well look at it and say,
"Oh yeah, that's totally Colin! That makes perfect sense."
And ideally, each and everyone of us
can look at our lives and say the same thing.
These people I surround myself with, this stuff that I own,
this work that I'm doing,
this is an accurate representation of who I am.
That's the ideal.
And each and everyone of us should be proud
to have our own individual path toward that greater goal,
toward that purpose.
When you start to live your life intentionaly,
it can look a little weird to people.
You're getting rid of your stuff, maybe.
It looks very strange to some people.
You may be buying more intentionaly, buying fewer things,
hanging out with fewer people -
that can be a little bit awkward to have that discussion -
and maybe taking on work that isn't just lucrative,
it's not earning you as much,
it doesn't have the same prestigious job title.
At the end of the day, you may experience some push-back,
people may try to dissuade you
from moving in the direction that you want to move in.
And that's okay, you know.
These are not people who are horrible people,
these are people that are actually very well-meaning people,
because if you look at the standard path that we're offered,
pretty much from birth up until we die,
this is the path, this is where you start, and then you do this, this, and this,
and then victory, you end up at that finish line, at some point.
That path is like a great big highway, it's an autobahn, okay?
It's well paved, it's well-lit, there's a lot of signs everywhere
telling you exactly how to get there, to this goal.
And if you start moving toward a different goal,
you've moved off that well-lit path, maybe there's potholes,
maybe it's not paved, maybe it's like a little goat road,
like, you're just swerving off to the side,
very few people are taking this, so they don't even bother to put up signs.
Maybe your lifestyle choice is so obscure, nobody's done it before,
and so you're like carving your way through the woods
to try to get to some unknown path.
And so the people in your life will look at that and say,
"What the actual hell are they doing?
(Laughter)
I'm concerned for them! Where will they end up?
There's so many risks associated with this."
And they're totally right!
Because people who care about you,
they want more than anything else for you to be happy and secure.
And when you start acting intentionaly,
when you start questioning everything in your life
and living on purpose, your purpose,
it can look very unsecure, it can be less structurally stable,
so it makes sense that they would question that,
and that they should question what you're doing
and give you that valuable feedback.
But at the end of the day, all you can do to convince them,
to show them that this is something that's important to you,
that you're not going to take ridiculous risks,
you're just trying to be happy, you're trying to be more you,
is to show them the benefits,
tell them what you're up to, certainly,
but then show them with the way that you live,
that you are happy, that you're making smart decisions,
that this is something that allows you to feel fulfilled
in a way that that highway never could.
And if they don't get it, that's okay.
Everybody has a different path, they have theirs and you have yours.
And try to forgive, don't hold it against them.
Not everybody has the opportunity to take that step back,
and look at their life, and then question everything.
It's not a luxury that all of us are afforded.
But whichever direction you start heading, whichever life choice you make,
do your best to be happy, do your best to be fulfilled,
do your best to lay signs for other people who might follow behind you
so that they can do the same.
And ultimately, however you live, do your best to live on purpose.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)