World Travel

While traveling around the world I’ve had many occasions to observe human behavior. One of the interesting places to observe strange behaviors is during the buffet-style hotel breakfasts.

Over the last year I’ve sat down with my wife at hotel breakfasts in dozens and dozens of hotels around the world.

Here’s the concept of social proof in action:

Usually at these hotel buffets, people go for eggs, toast, pastries, coffee, orange juice, and as much bacon, sausage and meat as they can pile on their plate.

Because my wife and I usually only eat fruit for breakfast, we typically head to the fruit table and grab as much fruit as we can. Usually, it’s not as much fruit as we’d even eat for one meal, but for most people it probably looks like a big amount.

Then here’s the strange thing: as soon as people see us walking around with these “big” plates of fruit, then suddenly everyone wants one too. That’s the power of social proof: people generally tend to do what they see other people do.

Another competing principle is that of “scarcity.” Now because everybody is taking the fruit for breakfast, there’s a shortage of it, so it makes hotel guests want it even more, even if they normally don’t eat that much fruit for breakfast!

That’s when people start giving us dirty looks when they see us going for a second plate of fruit. They look at us with evil eyes that say “How dare you take so much fruit when there’s not enough to go around!”

They probably don’t realize that we’re the ones causing this frenzy in the first place.

Now this kind of behavior is only visible at a small hotel with a limited number of guests. At a very giant breakfast room at a big hotel, people don’t see what everybody else is eating so there’s less reason for social proof to occur.

Another weird thing I’ve noticed:

Whenever I drive somewhere and see a road stand selling fruit or something else, it’s usually deserted. I might drive on the same road many times and don’t see anyone shopping there.

If I decide to stop and shop around, especially if I’m with a group of people, then suddenly everyone on the road is stopping too and the place becomes packed!

People don’t stop at deserted road stands because there’s no social proof: no indication that this place is worth stopping for. But if they see a lot of cars and people shopping, then they think that it must be worth stopping for.

That’s why nobody wants to go inside an empty restaurant: because it’s bad social proof. If there’s nobody there, then the food must be terrible.

But if the restaurant is full and there’s even a line to get in, then people are willing to wait for an hour or more to get a seat!

The principles of social proof and scarcity are literally hard-wired in the human brain. We literally CANNOT avoid reacting to these incentives.

That means that if you have a business of any kind, you need to learn to use these principles. That doesn’t mean cheap tactics, but genuine incentives to generate interest around your business.

In a future email, I’ll tell you some ways to use these principles.

Until then, make sure you show up early to grab all the fruit at the hotel breakfasts!

I’m sometimes puzzled at how cheap things are in Thailand, and how much value you get in return.

In Chiang Mai, a one-hour Thai massage costs $4.

In Bangkok, you can buy fruit salads on the street for about 30 cents. A full meal is only 70 cents.

My food costs in Thailand are about $5-10 a day, and that’s eating very healthy foods all the time, which costs more. Someone eating noodles at street vendors three times a day would only spend about $2!

In Chiang Mai, our hotel cost $25 a night. But that’s to rent a pretty large one-bedroom apartment with a little kitchen, in a hotel where they come clean your room three times a week (included in the price). There’s also a little gym in the hotel, and it’s right next to a big food market.

In Bangkok, you can stay in a four star hotel, with a full one bedroom executive luxury suite for about $100 a night. The same room in New York City would be around $500, or more.

Taxi rides are so cheap that you can go anywhere I want, all day, for around one or two dollars a ride.

My wife and I can live in Thailand, get massages every day, eat delicious and healthy foods, and do everything we want for about $50 a day, for both of us, and that’s while spending quite liberally and tipping.

If someone wanted to live cheaper, it certainly is possible. One expat I met told me he only spends $45 a month on rent!

The bottom line is: once you start viewing the world as a giant playground, the possibilities are limitless.

The first step is to earn a living on the Internet doing what you love. Get your complete training and monthly coaching immediately by going to:

http://www.dowhatyouloveuniversity.com/new.html

Recently I was talking to a family member that’s very close to me. We were talking about my trip around the world that

I am starting in just two weeks with my wife. I was telling them how next year I’m going to be spending over 9 months traveling the world, spending time in over 25 countries, and going to places I’ve always dreamed of going.

That includes places whose mention alone are enough to make you dream, such as Fiji, Egypt, New Zealand, Tahiti, Thailand, Bali, and many more.

I was getting all excited telling them about my trip, where I’d be going, and more interestingly, how I was going to make this trip actually pay for itself and at no cost to me.

Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve shared something very personal to you with someone, like a lifelong dream or ambition, only to realize that you should have just kept your mouth shut about it?

Sometimes people can’t do any better than try to discourage you from living your life to the fullest. This is exactly what happened to me when I was talking to that person.

My supposedly very supportive family member kept arguing with me how that trip might not be such a good idea, that instead I should “settle down”, buy a condo and play it safe.

Why travel to exotic tropical islands, share your passion with the world and earn a living in the process when instead you could buy a condo and stay at home somewhere that truly doesn’t inspire you?

The funny thing is that I bet if you had a big dream like that, and you were to ask a few friends and family members what they thought about it, more than one would do the exact same thing: try to discourage you from doing it.

Yet if you ask anyone on the street what they would love to do if they won the lottery, or something they absolutely need to do before they die, many of them would probably answer: travel around the world.

But there are many reasons why others will try to discourage you from living your dreams.

First of all, they themselves are not doing it. They feel pretty bad about someone else being able to do what they’d love to do when they can’t. So they prefer to stay in their comfort zone and not have to deal with jealousy and other negative emotions, rather than admiring what you do and trying to learn from you.

Secondly, most people don’t believe it’s possible to make a living doing what they love and get to travel the world. They think that this kind of life only belongs to the rich and famous.

In fact, the thought that something like that would even be possible is very disturbing to their view of reality. It would lead them to question too many things about their lives, so they’d rather not have to deal with it and again, keep you in their comfort zone.

Years ago, I heard someone say something very true: “Only share your dreams and ambitions with people who can support you and encourage you.”

Don’t ever share your dreams with someone who will discourage you from realizing them. Instead, make your dreams a reality and then let them know about it!

*How to Travel the World and Do What You Love*

Going back to my trip around the world, this is something I’ve always wanted to do. Now I can’t believe it’s happening for real!

I know exactly when were going, and where we’re going.

But most importantly, I have business systems in place to allow me to do something like that.

I can work from anywhere in the world.

I have automated many aspects of my business, so my involvement is limited to the few things that are absolutely necessary, and the things that I love doing like writing.

Is it easy to do something like that?

I would say that it’s not as difficult as most people imagine, but it does require some focused attention.

Overall, it’s much easier than spending 40 hours a week working at a job you don’t enjoy for the rest of your life.

In the few weeks, I’ll be sending you emails with some of the most important ideas I’ve discovered along the way on how to make a living doing what you love.

Maybe traveling to tropical islands several months a year is not exactly your thing. But maybe you have some kind of other dream, or you would like to have more time for yourself and your family, and do something you really enjoy for a living.

Stay tuned for these next emails!

In the meantime, remember that the most important things are to define what you want. What are your dreams? What do you want from your life?

Keep these dreams for yourself, or only share them with positive people who can support you. Otherwise, you’ll get quickly discouraged by the resistance you get from the rest of society.

If you can’t wait to get started, why not join my Do What You Love Success Group? This is a coaching and training program I run where you can discover, step-by-step, everything you need to know to make a living doing what you love on the Internet.

… check it out and take it for a test drive. Go to: http://www.dowhatyouloveuniversity.com/new.html

The countdown for my trip around the world has already started. We’re now in December 2009 and the trip officially starts as early as June 2010!

In case you don’t know, I recently announced that next year I’ll be going on a one-year trip around the world with my fiancée, and together we’ll discover many beautiful places around the world, but also use this opportunity to prove that it’s really possible to live the “Do What You Love Lifestyle”, as I like to call it.

As I started preparing for this trip, I realized that all of my initial ideas of how I was going to travel had to change.

One thing that became very clear is that I needed to find a way to bring a lot less stuff with me than I initially envisioned.

Have you ever traveled and been burdened by your luggage? This happened to me several times and in spite of my best efforts, I always brought too much stuff on most of my trips.

I remember the first time I went to Costa Rica in 2002. I brought approximately 10 books along (and big ones), along with way too many clothes, and I even brought a guitar! I was carrying big suitcases everywhere, and this dramatically lessened my enjoyment of my trip. The guitar thing was a bit too much, so in 2005, when I travelled to Bali, I decided to bring a Soloette folding guitar. It only weights a few pounds in a fairly compact case, and impressed a lot of Balinese people who enjoyed watching me play. But again, that’s another piece of luggage to bring along.

On my last trip to Thailand, I decided to bring along my Brompton folding bike. It’s a neat little bike that I enjoyed using to visit some of the country. But even though it’s the most compact folding bike in the world, it still weighed almost 20 pounds with the case.

On some trips, I even brought my big Vita-Mix blender along!

But every time I travel somewhere, I’m always torn between the desire to travel light and the “need” for some items I feel I can’t live without. Now that I’m preparing for a one-year trip around the world, I realized that traveling light won’t be a luxury. It will be a necessity.

On many places in the South Pacific, the best way to get around is to take small charter planes between islands.  On these planes, you’re limited to 25 pounds of luggage — per person!

Also, traveling light brings an extra level of freedom. When you’re traveling with pounds of extra luggage, you’re tied up to your “stuff” all the time, and it limits what you can do.

In preparation for this trip, I started reading some books and eBooks by rugged travelers. Every single one of these travel experts said the same: “travel light!”

One book that made a particular impact on me is “Life Nomadic”, by fellow vegan traveler Tynan (http://tynan.net/lifenomadic). Here’s the clothing packing list that he recommended:

• Two pairs of underwear

• One pair of convertible pants (converts to shorts)

• One bathing suit

• Three shirts

• One bra (if you’re a woman)

I must say I was shocked when I saw this, because I always brought WAY more clothes than this.

In fact, clothes have always been problematic on a trip, because even if you bring one-week worth of clothes, you always have to figure out where you’re going to do laundry, and that’s not always easy.

The logic behind Tynan’s minimalistic wardrobe is that you don’t need more than that if you buy high-quality clothes. He criticized cotton as being the worst fabric for travelers, and instead recommended the company Icebreaker who makes shirts and other clothes from merino wool — a fabric that is ideal for almost all uses.

If you’re wearing one pair of underwear, you’re also washing the other pair. You’re wearing a shirt, but you’re also washing another one.

And when your wardroom is very simple, it’s very easy to wash clothes by hand.

I did an experiment by wearing only two shirts for a week. I simply wore my shirt every day. Then when I took my shower in the evening, I took advantage of the running water to also wash my shirt with a little shampoo. I let it dry, and the next day wore a new shirt, and repeated the process every day. I found that way I never ran out of clean clothes, and my shirt was just as clean as if I had washed it in a machine.

With that little experiment done, I can see how easy it will be to travel with a very limited wardrobe. But beyond clothes, I’m starting to evaluate what else I will bring on this trip.

Tynan recommended a small 28 liter backpack to put *everything*. 28 Liters is quite small. By comparison, the average school backpack is 32 liters. I had a backpack about that size, and tried to pack an entire list of things I would bring on my trip, and surprisingly, everything fit in!

At the moment, I’m refining my packing list.

One of my big burden when traveling was books. But this time around, I don’t plan to bring any books. I’ll only bring an eBook reader (probably the Kindle, unless something better comes out first), and my laptop.

For a laptop, I’m due to replace mine, so I will be watching what gets released in the next 6 months. I might go for a MacBook Air, but I’m even considering a PC laptop. My problem is that I’m so used to the Mac operating system that I don’t function very well on a PC. However, my fiancée is more used to Windows, so we might bring a PC and a Mac.

In any case, I’m starting to see the value of traveling light, and I’m quite excited about it!

Less is often more.

Every day, I’m looking at my packing list and reconsidering what I might be bringing on this trip.

Right now, I have a small travel blender by Tribest that I’m considering bringing on this trip, but I might even skip that and learn to live without smoothies for a year (sadness!).

Pretty soon, I’ll be posting my packing list so you can get an idea what are some of the best items to bring on any trip.

Yours for health and success,

Frederic

http://www.dowhatyoulove.com
http://www.fredericpatenaude.com

PS: The best way to have the freedom to travel anywhere is selling digital products online like I know. If you’d like to know the process of selling your own eBooks in a weekend or less, make sure you sign up for my course “How to Write and Sell Your Own eBooks in 24 Hours or Less”. There’s about 10 spaces left and I’d love for you to be one of the students to take part in this course — and I know that you can accomplish miracles too. Sign up at: http://www.fredericpatenaude.com/writeyourebook.html