by Steve Wolf | May 20, 2013 | Business, Lifestyle, Mental
Do you ever think that you were meant for so much more than what you are currently doing?
Throughout my life I have found that most people have a large gap between what they want to be and
A Shit Sandwich
who they are. Most time, these people fall in to one of two categories of why they believe their life isn’t where they want it to be:
1. They make excuses. They are simply unwilling to admit that the reason why they aren’t where they want to be is due to some life circumstance, or some kind of outside force that is preventing them to achieve what they would like to do or accomplish.
2. They have become so ingrained in their daily routine and patterns that they have either forgotten their dreams all together or simply have accepted the fact that they may never come to fruition. Almost as if they missed it, or it wasn’t in the cards for them in this life.
Over the years I have had the opportunity to hang out and learn from some incredible individuals. People whom at one point in my life I thought to be inaccessible by me. I used to be scared when I was in the presence of such greatness and success because I felt so below them, so far away from what they had accomplished in their lives. As time went on and I gained more confidence in myself personally and professionally, interacting with these people became easier. One day it clicked and I realized that no matter how famous or well put together the man or woman standing in front of me was, they, like me were human. They ate, slept, and put clothes on the same way that I did. At times in their careers, they too struggled and failed miserably. They experienced love, loss, sadness, victory and all of the other emotions that I too had felt.
I realized that no one, and I mean no one is untouchable or immune to life. The only difference that I experienced among the haves and have-nots was their reaction to what life threw at them. When life hands you a shit sandwich, some people refuse to eat it, and avoid it at all costs even when it means that by not eating it, they will never realize their dreams. The shit sandwich is a metaphor that I have come to use when trying to explain the hardships of life. Successful people, eat the fucking sandwich, and they eat it quickly because they realize that if you are going to get anywhere in life that has some substantial value, that there is no way to avoid eating some shit sandwiches and the faster you just eat it and get it over with, the closer you are to where your going. Not to mention all the time and energy that is wasted complaining and dreading about doing some hard things one doesn’t like to do. Bottom line is that a shit sandwich already sucks and is disgusting; now imagine waiting days, weeks or months to eat it, and how much more disgusting that sandwich is going to be when you finally come to the inevitable realization that in order to move forward, you must eat it.
Successful people are never victims, they take bad things happening in stride building the muscle of resilience knowing and having faith that no matter how bad things may seem, they will always get better if you are willing to work for it and persevere through bad times.
To win is a choice, to lose is a choice, and the outcome has nothing to do with circumstances, it comes down to who was more willing to set aside their circumstances and excuses to beat the person who chose to be a victim of those things.
To me, I feel like I have gotten so good at dealing with shit happening and tacking it up as just a standard and normal part of life it’s almost as if a shit sandwich doesn’t even phase me. I look at it, I mentally prepare, and then I eat it quickly so I can get back to having fun. I refuse to let it ruin my day or waste any more time than it has too.
Mastering this skill has become one of my greatest strengths, without it, I would not be where I am at today. Anyone can be happy when everything is going well, but the people I respect and want to align myself with are the people who can keep calm and focused with a positive mental attitude when things a falling apart all around them and it’s raining shit sandwiches.
Hope you got something out of this J
-Steve
by Steve Wolf | May 3, 2013 | Lifestyle, Mental, Spiritual & Mental, Travel
Sipping Coconuts under Palm Trees in Thailand
After a little over a month in Bali, I am returning home. The beautiful sunsets, amazing surf, and sipping coconuts under palm trees while meditating about life are going to come to end.
A part of me is toying with the idea of just staying out here. I love it so much and there is everything I need out here to be happy. I know that I will return again and I have been looking in to just buying a place out here so I can just live out here a couple of months out of the year.
The only draw back is that out here is life is so slow and easy-going that I would imagine it would be hard for me to get things done. It is such a quality problem. When you live in paradise and you have everything you need, there is not a lot of motivation to work and strive for new things. It’s like a never-ending vacation for those who live here, and that’s the seduction of this place. Bali has a way of taking you out of your environment, and then slowing you down to the pace and way of life here. It is the only place on the planet that has been able to do that to me. I am an A-Type personality full of passion, motivation and an undying sense of urgency to get things done. After about a week out here, all I am motivated to do is Surf, read, write and meditate. With the occasional outings with friends and hitting a club here and there; a good time to me is sleeping in, surfing, reflecting, and then just enjoying a good conversation with some interesting people, and this place has no shortage of them.
People usually ask me what I miss about my country when I travel, I always have to stop and think about it because I have conditioned myself to live in the moment for so long I usually don’t find myself ever missing a place, instead, I always end missing the people who I have met over the years throughout my adventures. California is my home though. I was born and raised there and it is a part of me. It’s not a bad place to end up and compared to a lot of the places I’ve been to in the world, and I am extremely grateful to come home to San Diego where I reside currently.
The world is getting smaller. Technology allows me to stay connected with all of the people I have met all over the world and when you break it down, I can get anywhere I want to on this planet in about 2 days (unless your going to the middle of Siberia). Everything is a plane flight away. This makes me extremely grateful, because the ability for common people to travel to far corners of the earth has only been around for about 70 years. 100 years ago, if you wanted to go to Europe from America, you were going to have to take a carriage or car to a boat and then embark on a 1-2 month voyage just to get to some place. Only people who were rich were able to afford such a voyage. To be able to scale that amount of time down to just a couple of days and couple thousand bucks to leave for months at a time is fucking amazing to me. I mean I hop on a plane in LA, and 6 movies and 10 cranberry juices later, I am half way around the world immersed in a foreign land where everything is different, and to me that experience alone is one of the most exhilarating and fulfilling things I have ever experienced in this life. If you are a traveler, you know exactly what I am talking about, and if not, maybe it’s high time you spin a globe, pick a destination and get out of your comfort zone.
Paradise is defined as “a place or state of bliss, felicity or delight.” It is not necessarily attached to a location and although it can be, I believe that Paradise is found within ones soul. Buddhists call it Nirvana, Christians call it heaven, Jews call it Shamayim, but to me, it all means the same thing. Like I had mentioned before about living in the moment, I am not terribly concerned with what will happen to me in the after-life or even the future really. I have subscribed to the concept of living as if I were going to die tomorrow and planning as if I am going to live forever. Spending a massive amount of time pontificating about the unknown afterlife and future can be fun an enlightening at times, but the idea of dedicating a continual amount of time to this is both boring and unfulfilling to me.
The truth is that I am alive now. Time is made up, safety is an illusion, and although some humans claim it, I have never been 100% convinced that were going anywhere but 6-Feet under when we die, and we will die, the day will absolutely come so no need to fear that either. The hypothetical clock is ticking and has been for a long time. So, instead of worrying about all that noise, I just live every single day to the fullest seeking to find truth and experiencing every single person, place, thing or idea I can immerse myself in while my soul occupies this body.
My beliefs and principles are negotiable, and as a result of that I have been able to experience and do things that I don’t think most people get to in their lifetime. I studied world religions for years, went to Israel, read the Koran, hung with Pastors and Spiritual Guru’s, traveled throughout South East Asia and was open to the idea of adopting any belief system that got me closer to my understanding of God. The funny thing is that after all that, my underlying spiritual belief remained the same. It was the simple belief in a Higher Power of my own understanding, a principal introduced to me at the age of 16 years old through a 12-Step program I came in to while getting sober from Alcohol and Drugs.
My path to spirituality has been long, vast and downright tedious at times, but I have approached it with the same enthusiasm and tenacity that I have with everything else in my life never getting to caught up on any one thing and being open to it all believing that all religions and people for that matter are basically good and mean well. To deny or discount anyone’s beliefs would make me just like the people who are shut off, or unwilling to be open to a new understanding, and ultimately will not allow their belief system to be questioned or negotiated no matter how much sense logic makes in spite of what they believe. To me, those are some of the scariest people on Earth; they are the type of people who start wars over that kind of shit.
What this all means is that Paradise, to me at least; is being completely ok with everything exactly that way it is in this very moment. The more I realize that I cannot change anyone and the only real control I have over anything is how I react, and the example I set as a human being, the more easier my life gets. I do want to effect change and help those who want it to reach this kind of spiritual enlightenment, but you cannot force those who don’t want it and to judge those people for not wanting it would be hypocritical, because I spent a large part of my life in that same place.
What ever you believe is totally cool. You don’t have to conform to anyone or any religion’s or societies’ belief system if you don’t want to. You are free to do what you want; after all it is your life. If you are an atheist, agnostic, spiritually conflicted Catholic, or you simply don’t know where you stand, I would urge to seek truth in places you never thought to look before. That’s where I found my faith, and my faith is in no way shape or form affiliated to any one religion, if anything I have taken the teachings and traditions from many religions and use what I like leaving the rest behind. This is how I have found my paradise, my state of Nirvana. I don’t need to be in Bali, or some incredibly beautiful place to reach it either, it is in my soul. Besides, it has been my experience that in the darkest of times when I really needed to tap in to this place and ask my higher power for direction, I’m usually not on vacation or in a place like Bali, I’m in life, dealing with real shit, real problems that need solution. That’s when my faith has counted the most.
One final note, when I do die, which could be tomorrow or in 100 years, I have no fear going to where it is I will go next. To me, that is the ultimate adventure, the one true great unknown besides space. I have lived each and every day to the fullest, I have no beef with my fellow-men, there is no wreckage from my past that has not been cleaned up, there is nothing that I haven’t done that I have wanted to do to this point. Everything I dream up I attempt it no matter how crazy it sounds, I never live with regret or say some bullshit like: “someday I will” or “Ill try,” I only dream and them get to turning that shit in to a reality for me as quickly as possible. This has allowed me to see and experience things I never could have imagined to be possible, and for that I am extremely grateful.
Never let fear dictate your life, if you can dream it, than it’s possible, so never give up hope and continue seeking truth.
See you back on the other side of the World ☺
-Steve
Me at Angkor Wat in Cambodia
by Steve Wolf | Apr 25, 2013 | Giving Back
Little Leo. A Little guy in Cambodia who we found. I fixed his toe after its was smashed by a rock. He’s a tough little kid!!
I have always believed that a crucial part of my success was always having a willingness to give back. Not just in business or teaching life lessons, but charity. When I say charity, I don’t mean putting the left over change in the can at the crockery store with the starving kids on it, I mean “real” charitable acts above and beyond pocket change. For me, experiencing how it feels to help someone in need first hand, I couldn’t walk away from it and it has become a very important part of my life. On my last trip to South Eat Asia while visiting Siam Riep to go see the ancient city of Angkor Watt, My friend Natalie and I visited a school north of the city. We had to travel through the Jungle on a muddy dirt road for about an hour before we reached the shelter. I realized along the journey that after we had left the city limits, all of the villages that we were traveling through had no electricity, plumbing or any running water. We came to find out that the only clean water filtration system was at the orphanage and people from the village would come take the water from their when there was no fresh water so they were always running out. Earlier that day we had gone to the market to pick up all kinds of things like rice, school supplies, and sports stuff (these kids really like soccer). Our tour guide “Bob,” knew of the school and had gotten in contact with the person who ran the organization. After the market on the way out of town we stopped by the children’s hospital to tour the facility and give blood. We watched a very sad documentary about the children in Cambodia. They are a poverty stricken country that is largely uneducated due to the fact that the “Khmer Rouge” had wiped out more than 90% of the elder generation in Cambodia after the Viet Nam war in the late 70’s.
Natalie, Me, and Bob giving blood at the Siam Reap Children’s hospital in Cambodia
I was shocked to learn that the hospital struggled to get blood donations because the people in the community were so afraid of needles and believed folklore that it would make them sick. Most of the blood donations came from foreigners traveling through the country. Our tour guide “Bob” gave blood for the first time, he was a good sport about it, but we could tell that he was a little scared. I have to admit that I was nervous to because the hospitals in Cambodia are nothing like the hospitals in the U.S. and have to get by on older equipment the best they can. Natalie on the other hand was a trooper, she seemed to deal with it better than both of us. After the hospital we started our journey to the orphanage. When we arrived there, we were greeted by the director. He was a really nice guy and had a western education but had come back to start this School that was in his home village he grew up in. He explained that most of the children there were either abandoned at birth or parents just gave them up because they simply lacked the means to raise them. The school taught the kids hygiene, English and vocational skills. All of the children were extremely happy to see us. After all, not a lot of white people came through there. Especially not white people with tattoos or who were as young as Natalie and I were. When we finished touring the school and learning about the programs they were using, we gave the kids all of the gifts. Seeing how happy something as simple as a pack of colored pencils or a soccer ball made me very emotional. It made me think of how spoiled I was growing up as a kid, and how ungrateful I was to have all of the incredible things my parents gave me. Out of site, out of mind right? I think this is the reason most people don’t want to visit places like this. It’s not that people don’t want to help, it’s that when you surround yourself with people like this you realize that your perfect little world isn’t so perfect anymore. In fact, it goes deeper, it makes you start thinking back to all of the things in your life that you had taken for gradate. Personally it made me feel helpless to know that I as one person couldn’t even begin to ease the pain of these kids right in front of me let alone begin to tackle the same kind of poverty and hunger all over the world. I could give them some gifts and money, spend some time with them, but then I would have to leave. Just as fast as I came in to their lives, I was gone. Going back to the comfort of my reality, and leaving them to struggle in theirs. On the way back home I couldn’t help but think about this. I
wanted to do more. I vowed that I was going to start some kind of giving organization that would help kids out like this directly. No more giving money blindly to bullshit non-profit organizations. No more donating money to charities where I didn’t get to directly see where the money actually ended up. My friend Natalie has been working with NGO (Non-Government organizations). She has dedicated a good part of her life working with these types of non-profits all over the world. I wanted to get her opinion and some information about some of the places and organizations she has worked with. Here is what she wrote. To some extent, I have always been aware of human trafficking. When you travel to countries like Thailand and Amsterdam, it is hard to miss the red light districts filled with young girls. Even in my own country, I have been exposed to seeing strip clubs and women being prostituted on street corners. I was always bothered in the moment to see the objectification, but it never stuck with me. It was just another injustice in the world that I was powerless to change. It wasn’t until I read the book “Not for Sale” that I would fully realize the severity of the issue and be moved into action.
Water filtration system at the School in Cambodia
(You can find the book “Not For Sale” Here http://amzn.to/17loW7H) The book affected me so much that I decided to attend the Not For Sale Backyard Academy (notforsalecampaign.org), a three day seminar offering practical ways on how to get involved in the fight against human trafficking. It was there that I met Alezandra Russell, the founder of Urban Light (urban-light.org). Urban light is a for-purpose organization dedicated to supporting boys who are victims of sex-trafficking and child prostitution in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Alex and her staff serve to rebuild, restore and empower the lives of boys who work in the red light district by providing education, health services, housing and emergency care. The Urban Light center is an open shelter that boys can come to escape the harsh realities of the streets. I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a little over a month working in Chiang Mai at the Urban Light Center. Like most people, when I thought of prostitution, I pictured young women and girls being exploited. It had never crossed my mind that boys made up a significant portion of the victims of sex trafficking. That is why Urban Light and the work they do are so important. Many people in the Thai community have labeled these boys as “dirty” or “unworthy” of acceptance. Many organizations choose to focus on female victims, leaving this overlooked population without assistance or love. From the moment I met the boys I knew they were going to change my life. It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life and I am so fortunate to be apart of the Urban Light family. It is funny how some of the most poor and disadvantaged people you meet are also the happiest. It was no different with these boys. Every morning they would welcome me into their center, with the biggest smiles on their faces. They were so eager to learn, make friends, and find respectable and fulfilling jobs that they so deserved. I have volunteered with other organizations before but usually left feeling frustrated with where my money was going or with the effectiveness of the organization. It was such an enlightening experience to finally find an organization that I could trust and fully support. Alezandra and the entire Urban Light staff have dedicated their lives to providing an opportunity for these boys to live happy and successful lives. If you would like to help please visit urban-light.org and see how you can be apart of the solution for these amazing boys. There are opportunities to donate, volunteer, collect school supplies, purchase items (backpacks, clothing, jewelry) or simply just raise awareness and make noise for the boys. Please don’t hesitate to contact me for any questions about Urban Light. Urban Light Website: http://www.urban-light.org/ To support and
get involved in a lot of ways. The worst thing that you can do is nothing. So please stop living your life pretending that everything is ok. If everyone pitches in a little bit, we can begin to solve these problems. Contact Natalie or I if you want to know more about the organizations written about in this post.
To purchase customized bracelets made from the boys please “Like” Akhaya on Facebook www.facebook.com/akhayabracelets or contact me at [email protected] with any questions!Ok here is the link for Urban light http://www.urban-light.org/ And http://www.freedompaks.com/ supports the prevention of children in the village for Urban light before they get into sex work.
For more education and community prevention efforts
Please Visit: Http://www.Freedompaks.com (partner of Urban Light You ca
You can get involved in a lot of ways. The worst thing that you can do is nothing. So please stop living your life pretending that everything is ok. If everyone pitches in a little bit, we can begin to solve these problems. Contact Natalie or I if you want to know more about the organizations written about in this post.
To purchase customized bracelets made from the boys please “Like” Akhaya on Facebook www.facebook.com/akhayabracelets or contact me at [email protected] with any questions!
