Ladies and gentlemen.

Some of you who read this post will say one or more of the following:

1. This only applies to you young people. Not those who have families, mortgages, ‘real’ jobs and kids to feed and put through education.

2. Is your inflated head stuck up in the clouds? Stop daydreaming and your wishful thinking. As if.

3. Not everyone can be like you, you know. Some people have serious responsibilities at home. Like being an adult.

4. I don’t have enough money to do that. Goddamn money. Always gives me problems.

5. I’m too dumb / smart / fat / thin / short / tall / poor / rich / black / white / gay / straight / female / male / old / young / unicorn / piranha to just ‘drop’ everything and just go.

My response is this: Get over yourselves, grow a pair and realize YOU are your only limit.

You are your own worst enemy. And you are the only one responsible for your own happiness. This may sound existentialist to you and maybe that’s because it is. Existentialist, that is. And a swift kick to secret areas where excruciating pain is inevitable.

Shall we continue on? Ready for this shit? Even if you aren’t, I am. So let’s go.

**

Action cures fear. And growth equals change.

To do anything worthwhile in life, you actually have to DO something. And not just anything. Like sitting on your ass all day every day wishing, hoping, praying, thinking, dreaming of that ‘big break,’ that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that will just sweep you off your feet in its swooning and romanticized Prince Charming ways.

No.

You must take ACTION. You cannot overcome fear if you shirk from it each and every time it lurks around the corner, teasing you, toying with you.

What you do, instead, is this: Stare at its greasy, pimply, wart-filled, delapidated face, swing your strong arm back and bitch-slap it so hard, fear goes flying into the opposite side of the room as you laugh uproariously, standing proud and beaming with glorious and triumphunt victory.

Sounds good but HOW, you ask? Let me show you the ways.

1. Answer to no one but you.

Does this sound debaucherous? Like a soul-less, lawless heathen filled with the burdened sin and ego-driven, narcissitic ways of the world?

Only if you think it to be. When I say answer to only yourself, that means answer to only yourself.

There are no hidden messages here. Secret tunnels and passages where pretty little treasures of explosive and glittery truth will be found after hours-long digging and searching, leaving you all breathless, sweaty, grimy and dusty.

Say you want to write a controversial post that will divide your readers like an ocean divides continents. Like this one. Write your post in one continuous flow, pause and breathe, go back and edit, then hit publish. Done. Let the controversy and fun begin.

What about quitting that treacherous imprisonment you call your day job whilst in the face of looming opposition from all sides imagineable? Quit that shit and get moving. Life is not something that happens TO you, people. Standing by the sidelines waving hello and goodbye won’t get you anywhere but another bitch-slap from yours truly.

All confused with minimalism and wondering where/how/when/why/who/what to start? Read a couple of important books and blogs on it just to whet your senses and inner motivation, put some hot jams on and start throwing things out. No one will delicately hold your hand and tell you everything will be okay over and over again if you give away your little bumblebee charm bracelet. Stop hoarding; just stop it already. Greediness is one destructive wave after another, all in echoing unison from a thundering ocean’s angry and foamy wrath.

Get my drift?

2. Save just enough to get you going on a solid 4 months into the future. More if you are able to.

Accelerate your creative life juices by infusing it with essential intangible vitamins and minerals your body, mind and soul craves.

I had enough money saved up from corporate jobs and odd jobs in between so that I can get up and move across the world, then travel wherever/whenever I want with zero to minimal hassle. Like right now, as I write this to you from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, sipping on a deliciously bold Vietnamese-style coffee.

But I didn’t save, save, save, thinking that I had to reach a certain threshold where I would feel completely ‘safe’ and ‘secure.’

Safety and security lies within you but is also an unfortunate by-product of today’s societal thinking where safety and security are much appreciated and reveled ideals to have whenever possible (aka all the time by someone or something that gives it to you, therefore, deriving your sense of complete self from an external source). Nuh uh. I don’t work that way. And perhaps you don’t either.

Of course I worry from time to time. Have anxieties or qualms. I’m only human.

So I understand completely if you say you need X amount of dollars in order to get up and go. Just don’t wait around too long saving up. You may wake up one day to realize 13 years have gone by and you’re still saving up. Set a concrete deadline to have X amount, like a nut-happy-winter-hibernation-preparing squirrel, and get it done.

3. When aforementioned money runs out, figure things out then.

The present is far more important and pertinent than the future. The future is not even here and you may already be dead. Long enough timeline, we are all gone anyways.

I don’t have my finances down to an exact science of when specifically my savings will all run out. I am earning some money off of my first ebook The Radical Minimalist. But is this enough, even for a radical minimalist? On a long enough timeline, sooner or later, money WILL run out.

I may have high and bold aspirations but I’m not ignorant and stupid. Nor are you, I’m sure. Of course money plays a part. It always does. But when it runs out, go with it, figure things out, be wildly creative. Nothing’s stopping you, remember?

Become an entrepreneur. Freelance. Pick up a cool gig you don’t mind doing for a while. Whatever it is: You. Will. Survive. Gloria Gaynor-style.

4. Embrace ambiguous continuity.

Rework your mind. It may be warped and disfigured from a lifetime of wide-eyed, media-crazed, trend-happy bewilderment and pseudo-flow.

Realize that nothing is wholly in your control. And nothing is wholly beyond it. Everything in between is a state of flux, a state of constant flow, in and out, upside, downside, around and around, circling indefinitely.

If you want to get up and go do XYZ, DO IT.

5. Evolve by going. Motion invokes more motion. Stagnation beckons more stagnation.

Just like clutter attracts more clutter, good-looking people attracts more good-looking people, a busy restaurant attracts more customers, evolve yourself by getting a move on.

Evolution is necessary, scientific, inevitable. We are all creatures of comfort and habits. You only grow when you decidedly take action to change.

And change involves evolving. Evolving your beliefs. Evolving your body. Shape-shifting into a beautiful and healthy human being that is oh so capable of a variety of astounding things.

I can woo woo you with my poetic ways and if you’d rather read that, there are plenty of haunting posts here at Castles that will surely delight those literary lovers out there.

But this one? Kicking. Your. Ass.

Go.