Preparing For My Sunset Years:
Part 5 of 5.b - The Lasso Way
✅ Put Health 1st
✅ Go out on top as an Entrepreneur
✅ Experience the 2028 LA Olympics from the inside
✅ Live in Italy for two years
Most people believe that happiness and joy are the same thing. I do not! I believe that happiness is a pleasurable or satisfying experience that is temporary. Joy is something different. Let’s take a deeper look.
One of the most popular sayings is that “money cannot buy happiness”. While it is very true that you do not need money to experience happiness, it is equally not true that happiness cannot be bought. I am quite certain that pleasurable and satisfying experiences can be purchased. Now, if you added the word “sustained” before the word “happiness” to the saying, I would be more on board conceptually. However, nobody ever does, so I don’t believe it to be a true statement. I believe that the key ingredient to happiness is doing stuff you find pleasurable or satisfying. Period, whether it costs you some money or not.
**Joy on the other hand, cannot be bought. It must be earned. And how does one earn it?**
Becoming an entrepreneur twenty-eight years ago, and sticking to its path, has brought me more moments of happiness from pleasurable and satisfying experiences than I dare remember. The journey was immensely rewarding, despite its many challenges. I am glad that I chose it for myself as a young man.
I estimate that the number of companies I have started is somewhere near thirty, but I have honestly lost count. The company’s that were the most memorable though is fresh in my mind. Business Camp, University of Dreams, Bliss Champions, Fox Theater and Bliss Island, and now, Hamakua Hotel, are definitely my most memorable businesses. What makes me say this? Because when I reflect, it is easy to remember that these are the businesses that brought me the most joy.
But why?
These businesses all had elements within them that brought me joy, because they required me to give my greatest gifts with all my heart. People often confuse joy with happiness because one of the benefits of joy are feelings of great pleasure and satisfaction in the moment. But this is just a biproduct of our emotions. Joy is about so much more. Joy gives me goosebumps on my soul. It cannot be bought, it must be earned by fully tapping into your heart. Your heart is the access point, whether you are doing something worthwhile or just being.
Why am I so certain that joy cannot be bought? On a couple of occasions in my career, I received very large checks from successfully selling assets. I am talking checks with more zeroes than I ever thought I would experience. I even remember taking photos of a couple of them.
I have exactly 8,158 photos in my phone. I don’t know if that’s a lot or not, but I am obviously a fan of documenting moments and holding on to them for as long as possible. During my inspiration to write this post, I went through all my photos to see if I could find one of the photos I took of really big checks. To my surprise, I discovered that they had all been deleted. I don’t remember making a conscious decision to delete them.
Adversely, if I want to revisit a magical goosebump moment of joy that I shared with one of you fine folks, I could find it under 30 seconds. Why? Because I have visited it so often. I know just where it is in the timeline of my life because I cherished the moment and my memory of it is pure joy.
Joy is when your heart is in another. Despite being momentary, it lasts forever in our hearts. Whether we were lucky enough to get a photo of each moment or not, joy never gets deleted in our hearts, or in my case, my phone.
In this 5.b part of my story, I was going to announce my very big plans for my Sunset Years after living in Italy for two years and all the doing to get there. I was actually going to go into great detail. My secret sauce after all, has always been my ability to manifest my dreams. The level of detail would actually exhaust you guys. I would need another very long 5-part series to convey it all!
However, the last two weeks in Hawaii with my elderly parents changed me. What I witnessed and experienced woke me up to the fact that I have an unknown amount of precious time left on this Earth. It didn’t hurt that my life-long joy whisperer Patrick Combs noticed that I was feeling un-inspired and wrote me the perfect prescription. He told me to watch a show called ‘Ted Lasso’, which I proceeded to binge watch in its entirety in just three days. After this lifted me out of my doldrums, inspiration came on my flight home and I began to write this post.
Instead, I have decided to announce what I am going to **BE **after Italy, not what I am specifically going to **DO**. For the first time in my life, I hit the pause button on my proven formula for success – dream it, manifest it, commit to it, find momentum, never give up, make it happen. Rinse and repeat!
I have decided that after all the DOING I wrote about in the first five parts of this story, I am going to** **BE** **something specific as I embark on my Sunset Years.
**I am going to BE an OG Dreamer!**
A few years ago, the very first person I ever coached to become a Dreamer, wrote a very nice comment after someone posted about my company University of Dreams. She complimented me by calling me an OG Dreamer. It came from her heart. It made me tear up when I read it because I remembered how much of my heart I gave to her as her coach 20+ years ago. I gave my greatest gift, to the best of my ability at the time, with all my heart, and all these years later she still had gratitude in her heart for receiving it. I re-experienced joy in that moment, and it has not left my heart.
Over time, I grew more and more fond of the nickname. And more importantly, I began to see it as an invitation. The Entrepreneur in me actually bought the domain OGDreamers.com the day I read that beautiful comment. The new version of me that returns from Italy won’t need it. Why? Cause after twenty-eight years of being an Entrepreneur, I have learned one thing for sure. I don’t need to start a company to experience joy.
My Soul knows that this is my path. It is my core purpose. I will be grateful for any happiness I get to experience from pleasurable and satisfying experiences along the way. I doubt I will ever run out of things to do. However, in the end, joy is the reward I seek. I was put on this earth to be inspired and to inspire. To focus on other things with the precious time I have left from my life would be foolhardy.
So, in my Sunset Years, I will BE an OG Dreamer! I will be far less focused on what I do than how I do it. Whatever I choose to do, I will do it with all my heart – cause that is where joy resides.
