678 Happiness Through Hardship with Chris Guillebeau

WHAT IS YOUR UNDERLYING MOTIVATION? We’ve all been through a lot in life. I know there’s been a lot of times you’ve felt tested, and even just beat down. As you’ve gone through these challenges you’ve acquired sets of skills to help you get through them. Those are important skills that have helped you along your journey, whether you realize it or not. Unfortunately, though, your skills may not help you with what’s next. Life is about continually growing your tool box and being adaptive and not giving up on what you were meant to do. Even though it may be hard to know what that is, you just have to follow your heart. Live for yourself, not for others. That doesn’t mean be malicious. You still need compassion and companionship. Just know you can do good for yourself and others at the same time. On this episode of 5 Minute Friday, I wanted to bring you back and episode from Chris Guillebeau. Chris is a NY TImes Best Selling Author, a modern day explorer, and has been to nearly every country in the world. He’s certainly faced an overwhelming amount of challenges, some we can only imagine. That’s why I felt he was the best person to dive even deeper into this lesson. Learn all about compassion and building your skill sets through your personal trials, on Episode 678. In This Episode You Will Learn: What makes a true quest (00:42) How to know when to continue the quest and when to stop (1:39) Why you need to keep building skill sets (2:24) Something you should give that’s better than advice (3:49) If Chris feels he’s been getting enough companionship (4:16) Chris’ definition of happiness (5:18) Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:10Lewis Howes?

  I'm very excited to be on with you guys in this episode and thank you guys for being here. We've got my good friend, Chris Guillebeau. For those who don't know who Chris is, he is a New York Times bestselling author and a modern day explorer. He's traveled to every country in the world and every summer in Portland, he hosts the World Domination Summit. He's also the founder of Pioneer Nation, Unconventional Guides, The Travel Hacking Cartel, and numerous other creative projects.

• 0:43Chris Guillebeau?

  I think though, sometimes something unpredictable happens.

• 0:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 0:47Chris Guillebeau?

  In these situations, like everything you just expressed, like it's gonna be terrible, then it's gonna be okay. But just like in a quest, you know, any good quest, there's this progress toward a goal, there is an endpoint, etc. But if it's a true quest, something happens along the way that changes things and you don't, you know, you don't necessarily know what that is. And despite all the skills that you have, despite all the life experience that you have, it's gonna be put to the test, actually. Because whatever this unpredictable thing is, by its nature, you didn't know it was going to happen and you didn't necessarily say, okay, here's, you know, here's where I was going to be sad or here's where I was gonna struggle and then I'm gonna be okay. Like you might think you're okay at a certain point and then something else.

• 1:26Lewis Howes?

  Which brings me back to the point of born for this and giving up. If you're on a quest for something you're born to do and you believe in your heart, I'm born to do this thing.

• 1:36Chris Guillebeau?

  Yeah.

• 1:36Lewis Howes?

  And then something comes at you and stops you or makes you go off track. How do you know when to continue the quest? And when, as it's part of the quest, as every quest has this, and when you're actually just supposed to give up?

• 1:49Chris Guillebeau?

  Sure. Well, I think it's important in these kind of situations to look at, what is the, what is the underlying motivation? What is the goal? Maybe what is the value? And like if we talk about different things, like becoming a professional athlete, you know, what was the, the real goal? Wasn't the real goal greatness?

• 2:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 2:08Chris Guillebeau?

  Essentially, which is exactly what you have, I don't wanna just say parlayed it into, because that's kind of like a career thing, but I mean, your life, you know? Greatness was, was the goal.

• 2:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 2:17Chris Guillebeau?

  Writing books and hosting these events, I mean, ultimately, the goal is community and serving humanity in some way.

• 2:23Lewis Howes?

  Connection.

• 2:24Chris Guillebeau?

  Connection, right? So I think sometimes... You're working toward this thing. You feel like you're born to do it, but then you can't. There's still some direction there as you go deeper, which is exactly what I'm learning to do. The tools and the skills and the resources that I have that have helped me, you know, throughout my life, that have helped me like get into college without going to high school, you know, get out of being a juvenile delinquent, make something in my life, travel, be an entrepreneur, all these different skills. They are not sufficient for what I need to do right now. That's what I know.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 2:56Chris Guillebeau?

  So that kind of thinking, let me schedule it, let me do this. Yeah, I like it. I want to do that. But what I'm saying is it hasn't, it hasn't quite worked. I've kind of run into this wall or this ceiling or whatever you call it, that barricade that I can't apply the same reasoning to.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:11Chris Guillebeau?

  My philosophy, which is, which is true in, in life and career is you don't have to live your life the way others expect.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:18Chris Guillebeau?

  You can do good things for yourself and for others at the same time. It's not a false choice. It's not a dichotomy. You know, this is, this has been my message for a long time. I still very much believe in it. Now it's just a question of adding to that and applying that in a different way. And realizing that the goals that I have now are not necessarily related to deliverables. Because just as I like to schedule things on my calendar, you know, I also like to have a deliverable.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:44Chris Guillebeau?

  Here's the next book. Here's the next thing. Here's the next whatever. But I don't see quite what the deliverable is here. I don't think I would give you advice. I would give you companionship and I would give you empathy. And I would say, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:00Chris Guillebeau?

  And this is not okay. And yes, you should hang in there, let us know what you need, et cetera. But that's going to sound very hollow to you.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:09Chris Guillebeau?

  So the biggest thing I could say is I'm so sorry.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Have you been getting enough of that?

• 4:15Chris Guillebeau?

  Sure, I think so.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  You've been getting companionship and?

• 4:17Chris Guillebeau?

  Yeah, I think, I mean, a lot of people don't know what to do with this kind of, and I totally get that. Yeah, I get it.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  What do you?

• 4:24Chris Guillebeau?

  Yeah.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  How do you do where you don't sound?

• 4:27Chris Guillebeau?

  Sure.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Like you said, like hollow.

• 4:28Chris Guillebeau?

  Right, right.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Just like everyone says the same thing.

• 4:30Chris Guillebeau?

  Right, right.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  How do you truly? Because I think it's, it goes against both walls. It goes against. The person's walls of not knowing how to deal with it, of all the mis-emotions of understanding it to someone who's not going through with it, well, this is uncomfortable for me too, because now I have to face things that I have to really go somewhere to be able to connect with someone at a level so that they feel loved and accepted and...

• 4:55Chris Guillebeau?

  Yeah, but that's compassion.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  It is compassion.

• 4:57Chris Guillebeau?

  That is compassion.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  A lot of people aren't good at that, though.

• 4:59Chris Guillebeau?

  Yeah, well compassion is a skill probably that you acquire as well. And maybe you can acquire it through your own life trauma, or you can also acquire it through caring and understanding that being there or being available or reaching out is good, not expecting reply or something.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  What's your definition of happiness?

• 5:19Chris Guillebeau?

  Forward motion, continuously improving, improving, you know, my circumstances, my life, as well as improving others' lives. I like the word impact that you used. I like that. I think of influence, same thing. Not influence in like a celebrity way, influencers, but true influence. And probably a lot of the people who are listening, like if they don't have blogs or podcasts or books, they still have a lot of influence.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, with the community, their friends, their family.

• 5:48Chris Guillebeau?

  And that influence is actually much stronger. You know, we're impacted much, much more by the people who are around us than by, you know, somebody who's out there doing something. So I'm interested in influence.