“I’ve seen the promised land, and there is good news. You can have it all.”
3 Timothy 5:11
If you’re reading this in anything less than your Sunday-best underwear, you will go to Hell. So roll whoever you dragged home from the club last night out of the way, dig around under the covers until you find them (Hint: check between the mattress and footboard), put them back on, and show some respect… this is a Holy Place.
How do we, as a community cult congregation, deal with non-believers? (Yes, if you’re reading this, you’re one of us… sorry and you’re welcome.) Every time someone asks “What do you do?” from this day forward, you will (was I supposed to hypnotize you first?)… you will think of this post and crack a wry, understanding smile. Sure, this will creep out the person who was previously interested in talking to you to the point of terror. But your own amusement is the reason you do this in the first place. Right? Right.
Did you go to school with Jesus freaks? Were you ever a Jesus freak? Then you’ve felt the awkward moment that arises when someone goes into attempt to convert someone mode. Maybe they invite you to their church for some sort of social event that starts with a snack and a movie and ends with bowed heads and talking to invisible superheroes in hushed tones with great conviction. I mean sure, if the preacher’s daughter who invited you was adorable and you ended up going and making out with her between the seven layer dip and the asking of forgiveness part, I’m not going to judge you. After all, that’s why the asking of forgiveness comes at the very end. Side Note: MacPherson translates to “son of the parson”, so I am allowed to make these jokes as an insider. Steal my material at your own risk.
Have you ever had someone slip you a religious text and apply some subtle persuasion techniques to get you to read it? I’ve been given Bibles, The Book of Mormon, a Jehovah’s Witness book or two, and piles of pamphlets. When I think back about each of these encounters, the feeling that sets in is what I imagine hot baristas experience after being hit on by the five hundredth boring guy in a day.
I feel a lot of weird things when discussing “what I do” or when the urge to share something with a non-believer washes over me. After reading The 4-Hour Workweek, I tried to introduce the teachings of the Apostle Timothy to friends through sharing the written word. Despite these people being friends, I found myself on the wrong side of the “why should I care” facial expressions. Sure, they complied after we’d mixed a cocktail of my insistence and their willingness for me to shut up about it, but I distinctly remember feeling like an evangelist. Yes, I experienced worse persecution after trying to have conversations with some of my overachiever, workaholic friends. But I’m always down for a lively debate, so that was preferable to the feeling of convincing people they should be interested in something that they knew nothing about.
As many of us have experienced, proselytizing lifestyle design is often a thankless business. This probably shouldn’t be surprising. Every time we try to introduce our superior enlightened concepts to someone new, we’re implying that they’re doing something wrong. We are evangelists. There’s really no way to avoid it. Possessing ideas you think can improve the quality of someone’s life leaves us straddling the line between selfish information hoarding and experiocentric (there are only 2 google results for that word. I call dibs.) arrogance. The reluctance to judge, even if completely indirectly, is intertwined with the responsibility to help and the excitement we feel about paths we’ve discovered.
When faced with such dilemmas, it’s easy to let our social conditioning take over and mind our own business keep our knowledge locked in our own minds. If you’re ever in that position, think back to this post. I, Andrew MacPherson, hereby grant you the permission and responsibility to call people out on their mundane lives. I mean sure, you may want to rephrase the message, but you know what I mean.
There’s a lot of hope. I don’t want to sound all… “Tim Ferris is like a god to me”. Sure, his book brought a lot of us out of the closet and that’s rad. And you’re right, I can’t wait to get my hands on the updated and expanded version. But tons of people are taking their own ideas to amazing places and expanding the knowledge base and community. That’s the exciting evolution I’ve seen over the last couple years. I love it when new people get excited about lifestyle design and start blogs and ask questions and spin things in ways that makes me think (and laugh at whichever LCD panel I happen to be gazing into at the time).
For the moment, a Twitter account, “Wordpress” somewhere in the footer of our websites, and a love/hate feeling every time we have to correct someone when they say ‘AdWords’ instead of ‘AdSense’ may be the iconic white shirt, black tie, and bicycle combo that outs us as lifestyle design practitioners… but I’m cool with that.
“Trust in your muse with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge process design, and residual income will make your paths straight.” -Andrew 3:16
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Ashley Ambirge
3 months ago
Straight faced thoughts:
I grew up in a small, rural town in Pennsylvania, and this means two things:
1) I was constantly surrounded by Jesus freaks (not Evangelists as much, but Baptists, so not too far off) and
2) Anytime I so much as brushed my teeth three days in a row, I felt a similar dilemma as that which you described so eloquently: “Every time we try to introduce our superior enlightened concepts to someone new, we’re implying that they’re doing something wrong.” In all seriousness, it was a classic Sweet Home Alabama scenario–especially once I began traveling. I'd return home to a sea of eager questions about my adventures, and, as excited as I was to share my stories of passion, romance & the occasional attempted rape, I would suddenly be silenced by an overwhelming feeling of guilt. I became reluctant to show how truly excited I was about life, and almost felt apologetic for it, in a very odd sense. Many of my former classmates are now mothers of 3, living paycheck to paycheck and absolutely miserable, and gloating about how I spent my holiday zip lining through a rainforest just didn't seem…kind.
While I haven't executed my new Four Hour Work Week life as of yet, it's currently in its R&D phase and I'm already experiencing twangs of a similar feeling. Tonight while on the phone with a friend, proselytizing LD & my goals, I put my foot in my mouth by saying: “We grow up thinking that there's limited options. You can either be a doctor, lawyer, dentist, stock broker or teacher. No one ever stops to think creatively about what options are actually out there. Instead they just settle for those pathetic, mundane existences.” My friend is a teacher. Idiot.
Just because thoughts:
1) Your first paragraph had me laughing hysterically.
2) I was once stalked by a Jehovah's Witness in Costa Rica. Screw terrorists, airport security needs to refocus their efforts.
3) Ambirge means “daughter of the barber down the street who stole the parson's lunch money when they were kids.” Weird.
Andrew Caldwell
3 months ago
haha, Brother Andrew, thanks for the welcome.
I've dished out 4 copies of the 4HWW to friends, didn't actually think of it like I was passing them a bible! True though. More recently, my g/f (recent convert to the free world) were invited to a jewish dinner. First I was asked 'what I do' for a crust, when i said I was working on 'my own things', then asking her, to which she replied, 'oh, I threw in my job too!', we were looked at as if we were part of some religious cult!
The masses will convert eventually…. I really enjoyed read this!
We should probably develop a secret handshake though…. or a day of remembrance.
P.S. 4 Copies! Where's my affiliate $ Pastor Ferriss?
Andrew Caldwell
3 months ago
If Ferriss if the god, I'd probably throw pavlina in there as one of the first prophets….
Andrew MacPherson
3 months ago
Weird… I hadn't heard of Steve Pavlina until I read Ashey's (from the comment above) Blog earlier today. I'm still on the lookout in case this is one of those “happens in threes” things.
Andrew MacPherson
3 months ago
When you were experiencing the guilt in #2, did you find the people you were talking to had lost interest in listening to your tales? In other words… How much was their reaction influencing your guilt versus your internal self-awareness of the implications of the situational differences? Also, did you find that people try to qualify their situation or choices to you in a way that borders on rationalization?
Haha… You're just as much a bully as I am the son of a parson.
Andrew MacPherson
3 months ago
Have you noticed any difference in reactions when you have the conversation about your lifestyle when you're not outnumbered? I find that most people are on paths that social interaction provided them and when that social reinforcement isn't present, they tend to open up a bit.
You and I may have a hard time of convincing everyone else to adopt this as an official lifestyle design holiday, but… November 30th is St. Andrew's Day.
James NomadRip
3 months ago
You sure are on a writing tear this week. Like Ashley's teacher friend, not everyone is ever going to be open to anything other than what they were raised to believe. Snake-oil dreams and a life for “other people” is what most people see.
Whether you go the Ferriss way, the passion plan or some other variation of something other than the norm, preaching to or at people is a good way to tune them out. If they want to ask questions, I'm happy to answer them. I am too busy enjoying life to need to convert anyone they can live another way. They already think I'm a nutjob because I don't want a McMansion and a Mercedes.
My last name means boat captain. You knew more about sailing the day you first considered living aboard than I do now. I'm not sure that's relevant in any way, but there you go
Brandon W.
3 months ago
My biggest difficulty has been evangelizing my wife. This isn't someone a guy can just ignore. She grew up with a father who held the same job for over 30 years, in a pretentious town where being a doctor, a lawyer, or an architect is simply what people do. Unfortunately, we currently live in that town. Nice town, horrible mindset. She is finally understanding, but only after I started connecting it to someone she idolizes: her aunt, who lived with her husband on a sailboat for over 30 years and ran a sail/canvas shop in the San Juan Islands. Maybe the moral of the story, there, is that we need to help others understand that there are other ways of living, that this isn't new, and they may just know someone happily living that alternative kind of life? What might be new is that technology has given the option to more people in more locations than ever before.
Andrew MacPherson
3 months ago
I posted this in my personal Facebook account at the same time and haven't received so much as a hint that anyone even read it. I imagine that a lot of us have similar rifts in experience. There's a lot to be (and already has been) said about the difference between the way people align themselves socially online and in person.
“preaching to or at people is a good way to tune them out”
I bet the more… hmm… outgoing(?)… religions have internal documentation and even systemized processes for converting people. You know… with a guide to overcoming common objections like sales organizations put together. Documents like those might be utterly fascinating.
Andrew MacPherson
3 months ago
“we need to help others understand that there are other ways of living, that this isn't new, and they may just know someone happily living that alternative kind of life”
That's a good point and I think about it a lot. I hesitated in referring to myself as being involved in “lifestyle design” for months. At first it just seemed like re-branding being an entrepreneur, freelancer, or small business owner. Now that I write it down, I guess I still think that way. There's a degree of mutually exclusive value to framing something as new versus framing something as proven. Traditional brands have to make a lot of the same schizophrenic decisions. Grounding these concepts in a familiar reality is definitely a better way to go with some people.
Ashley Ambirge
3 months ago
Actually, any guilt I experienced was almost always 100% self-imposed as the result of being, quite possibly, too self-aware. I've been cursed/gifted with an overactive intrapersonal communication system that does an extremely thorough job of raising my consciousness and subsequent behavior in a manner that will best facilitate another person's comfort levels. This served me well professionally when I was involved in PR, Advertising & Sales, but oftentimes has the undesirable side effect of unnecessarily rendering me overly sensitive. *tear*
In general terms, most people respond positively to hearing such tales, and usually express their desire to be able to follow a similar path, at which point they continue on to justify why they cannot possibly do so. It's usually a financial justification, but you know as well as I do that this is more often than not simply fear cloaked in Andrew Jackson-print camouflague.
As an aside, don't think I wouldn't take your lunch.
Also, get on Pavlina. Guy is rad.
@genericus666
2 weeks ago
Hm, I wouldn't call Tim Ferris a god, but eventually, the 4HWW is my bible. Also, I think Steve Pavlina writes to much blablabla.
Andrew
2 weeks ago
I read this comment at roughly the same time I found out UPS delivered my updated version of 4HWW to the wrong address today. That doesn't make for a happy Andrew.