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Title: Escape , live anywhere, and join the new rich. F 65O. I love you both and owe you everything. Chances are good that it is. Here are some of the most common doubts and fears that people have before taking the leap and joining the New Rich: Do I have to quit my job? Do I have to be a risk-taker? No on both counts. From using Jedi mind tricks to disappear from the office to designing businesses that finance your lifestyle, there are paths for every comfort level.

How does a Fortune employee explore the hidden jewels of China for a month and use technology to cover his tracks? It's all here.

Do I have to be a single twenty-something? Not at all. This book is for anyone who is sick of the deferred-life plan and wants to live life large instead of postpone it.

Case studies range from a Lamborghini-driving year-old to a single mother who traveled the world for five months with her two children. If you're sick of the standard menu of options and prepared to enter a world of infinite options, this book is for you. Do I have to travel? I just want more time.

It's just one option. The objective is to create freedom of time and place and use both however you want. I'm no Rockefeller and you needn't be either. Do I need to be an Ivy League graduate? Most of the role models in this book didn't go to the Har- vards of the world, and some are dropouts. Top academic institutions are wonderful, but there are unrecognized benefits to not coming out of one. Grads from top schools are funneled into high-income hour-per-week jobs, and years of soul-crushing work has been accepted as the default path.

How do I know? I've been there and seen the destruction. This book reverses it. Staring down at the floor to avoid the blinding ceiling lights, I was supposedly one of the best in the world, but it just didn't register. My partner Alicia shifted from foot to foot as we stood in line with nine other couples, all chosen from over 1, competitors from 29 countries and four continents.

It was the last day of the Tango World Championship semifinals, and this was our final run in front of the judges, television cameras, and cheering crowds. The other couples had an average of 15 years together.

For us, it was the culmination of 5 months of nonstop 6-hour practices, and finally, it was showtime. Let's just enjoy the music. Forget the crowd— they're not even here.

It was hard to even fathom 50, spectators and coordinators in El Rural, even if it was the biggest exhibition hall in Buenos Aires. I adjusted my pin-striped suit and fussed with my blue silk handkerchief until it was obvious that I was just fidgeting.

I'm excited. I'm just going to have fun and let the rest follow. I whispered an inside joke to Alicia as we stepped on the hardwood platform: "Tranquilo"—Take it easy. She laughed, and at just that moment, I thought to myself, "What on earth would I be doing right now, if I hadn't left my job and the United States over a year ago?

If it weren't, you wouldn't be holding this book in your hands. The beauty is, I'm not a multimillionaire, nor do I particularly care to be. I never enjoyed answering this cocktail question because it reflects an epidemic I was long part of: job descriptions as self-descriptions.

If someone asks me now and is anything but absolutely sincere, I explain my lifestyle of mysterious means simply. It's only half true, besides. The whole truth would take too long. How can I possibly explain that what I do with my time and what I do for money are completely different things?

That I work less than four hours per week and make more per month than I used to make in a year? For the first time, I'm going to tell you the real story. It involves a quiet subculture of people called the "New Rich.

Follow an uncommon set of rules. How does a lifelong blue-chip employee escape to travel the world for a month without his boss even noticing? He uses tech- nology to hide the fact. Gold is getting old. The New Rich NR are those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility.

This is an art and a science we will refer to as Lifestyle Design LD. I've spent the last three years traveling among those who live in worlds currently beyond your imagination. Rather than hating reality, I'll show you how to bend it to your will. It's easier than it sounds. My journey from grossly overworked and severely underpaid office worker to member of the NR is at once stranger than fiction and— now that I've deciphered the code—simple to duplicate.

There is a recipe. Life doesn't have to be so damn hard. It really doesn't. Most peo- ple, my past self included, have spent too much time convincing themselves that life has to be hard, a resignation to drudgery in exchange for sometimes relaxing weekends and the occasional keep -it-short-or-get-fired vacation.

The truth, at least the truth I live and will share in this book, is quite different. From leveraging currency differences to outsourcing your life and disappearing, I'll show you how a small underground uses economic sleight-of-hand to do what most consider impossible.

Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, real-life fantasy travel, long-term wandering, setting world records, or simply a dramatic career change, this book will give you all the tools you need to make it a reality in the here-and- now instead of in the often elusive "retirement.

It begins with a simple distinction most people miss—one I missed for 25 years. People don't want to be millionaires—they want to experience what they believe only millions can buy.

Ski chalets, butlers, and ex- otic travel often enter the picture. Perhaps rubbing cocoa butter on your belly in a hammock while you listen to waves rhythmically lap- ping against the deck of your thatched-roof bungalow? Sounds nice. The fantasy is the life- style of complete freedom it supposedly allows. In the last five years, I have answered this question for myself, and this book will answer it for you. I will show you exactly how I have separated income from time and created my ideal lifestyle in the process, traveling the world and enjoying the best this planet has to offer.

It helps to know where it all started. Strangely enough, it was in a class of soon-to-be investment bankers. In ,1 was asked by Ed Zschau, ubermentor and my former professor of High-tech Entrepreneurship at Princeton University, to come back and speak to the same class about my business adventures in the real world.

I was stuck. There were already decamillion-aires speaking to the same class, and even though I had built a highly profitable sports supplement company, I marched to a distinctly dif- ferent drummer. My Story and Why You Need This Book 9 Over the ensuing days, however, I realized that everyone seemed to be discussing how to build large and successful companies, sell out, and live the good life.

Fair enough. The question no one really seemed to be asking or answering was, Why do it all in the first place? What is the pot of gold that justifies spending the best years of your life hoping for happiness in the last?

The lectures I ultimately developed, titled "Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit," began with a simple premise: Test the most basic assumptions of the work-life equation. Little did I know where questions like these would take me. The uncommon conclusion? The commonsense rules of the "real world" are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions. This book will teach you how to see and seize the options others do not. What makes this book different? First, I'm not going to spend much time on the problem.

I'm going to assume you are suffering from time famine, creeping dread, or— worst case—a tolerable and comfortable existence doing something unfulfilling. The last is most common and most insidious. Second, this book is not about saving and will not recommend you abandon your daily glass of red wine for a million dollars 50 years from now.

I'd rather have the wine. I won't ask you to choose between enjoyment today or money later. I believe you can have both now. The goal is fun and profit. Third, this book is not about finding your "dream job. Outside of science and law, all rules can be bent or broken, and it doesn't require being unethical.

The steps and strategies can be used with incredible results— whether you are an employee or an entrepreneur. Can you do every- thing I've done with a boss? Can you use the same principles to double your income, cut your hours in half, or at least double the usual vacation time? Most definitely. Here is the step-by-step process you'll use to reinvent yourself: D for Definition turns misguided common sense upside down and introduces the rules and objectives of the new game.

It replaces self-defeating assumptions and explains concepts such as relative wealth and eustress. This section explains the overall lifestyle design recipe—the fundamentals—before we add the three ingredients. E for Elimination kills the obsolete notion of time management once and for all.

It shows exactly how I used the words of an often- forgotten Italian economist to turn hour days into two-hour days Increase your per-hour results ten times or more with counterintuitive NR techniques for cultivating selective ignorance, developing a low-information diet, 1. Uncommon terms are defined throughout this book as concepts are introduced.

If something is unclear or you need a quick reference, please visit www. This section provides the first of the three luxury lifestyle design ingredients: time.

A for Automation puts cash flow on autopilot using geographic arbitrage, outsourcing, and rules of nondecision. From bracketing to the routines of ultrasuccessful NR, it's all here. This section provides the second ingredient of luxury lifestyle design: income. L for Liberation is the mobile manifesto for the globally inclined. The concept of mini-retirements is introduced, as are the means for flawless remote control and escaping the boss. Liberation is not about cheap travel; it is about forever breaking the bonds that confine you to a single location.

This section delivers the third and final ingredient for luxury lifestyle design: mobility. I should note that most bosses are less than pleased if you spend one hour in the office each day, and employees should therefore read the steps in the entrepreneurially minded DEAL order but implement them as DEL A. Say in —one who shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher yield. Re- solve now to test the concepts as an exercise in lateral thinking.

If you try it, you'll see just how deep the rabbit hole goes, and you won't ever go back. And remem- ber—tranquilo. It's time to have fun and let the rest follow. I survive instead and grow so fat that I can't roll onto my stomach. A muscular imbalance of the eyes makes me look in opposite directions, and my mother refers to me affectionately as "tuna fish. My teacher refuses to explain why I should learn it, opting instead for "I'm the teacher—that's why. She sends me to the "bad table" instead and makes me eat a bar of soap.

Disdain for authority begins. Ah, the memories. I'm hired for minimum wage as the cleaner at an ice cream parlor and quickly realize that the big boss's methods duplicate effort.

I do it my way, finish in one hour instead of eight, and spend the rest of the time reading kung-fu magazines and practicing karate kicks outside. I am fired in a record three days, left with the parting comment, "Maybe someday you'll understand the value of hard work. I conclude that most people are really confused about life. One evening, intending to ask my host mother to wake me the next morning okosu , I ask her to violently rape me okasu.

She is very confused. I major in neuroscience and then switch to East Asian studies to avoid putting printer jacks on cat heads. I create an audiobook called How I Beat the Ivy League, use all my money from three summer jobs to manu- facture tapes, and proceed to sell exactly none.

Such is the joy of baseless overconfidence. Two months later, I'm bored to tears of speed-reading and close up shop. I hate services and need a product to ship. Fall A huge thesis dispute and the acute fear of becoming an investment banker drive me to commit academic suicide and inform the registrar that I am quitting school until further notice.

My dad is convinced that I'll never go back, and I'm convinced that my life is over. My mom thinks it's no big deal and that there is no need to be a drama queen. Spring In three months, I accept and quit jobs as a cur- riculum designer at Berlitz, the world's largest publisher of foreign- language materials, and as an analyst at a three-person political asylum research firm.

Naturally, I then fly to Taiwan to create a gym chain out of thin air and get shut down by Triads, Chinese mafia. I return to the United States defeated and decide to learn kickboxing, winning the national championship four weeks later with the ugliest and most unorthodox style ever witnessed. Fall Confidence restored and thesis completely undone, I return to Princeton. My life does not end, and it seems the yearlong delay has worked out in my favor.

Twenty-somethings now have David Koresh-like abilities. He finally gives in and puts me in sales. Spring TrueSAN Networks has gone from a person nobody to the "number one privately held data storage company" how is that measured?

I am ordered by a newly appointed sales director to "start with A" in the phone book and dial for dollars. I ask him in the most tactful way possible why we are doing it like retards.

He says, "Be- cause I say so. Fall After a year of hour days, I find out that I'm the second-lowest-paid person in the company aside from the recep- tionist. I resort to aggressively surfing the Web full-time. One after- noon, having run out of obscene video clips to forward, I investigate how hard it would be to start a dietary supplement company.

Turns out that you can outsource everything from manufacturing to ad design. Good thing, too, as I'm fired exactly one week later. The only problem is that I hate life and now work hour-plus days 7 days a week. Kinda painted myself into a corner. I take a one-week "vacation" to Florence, Italy, with my family and spend 10 hours a day in an Internet cafe freaking out. I begin teaching Princeton students how to build "successful" i. Winter The impossible happens and I'm approached by an infomercial production company and an Israeli conglomerate huh?

I simplify, eliminate, and otherwise clean house to make myself expendable. Miraculously, BQ doesn't fall apart, but both deals do. Back to Groundhog Day. Soon thereafter, both companies attempt to replicate my product and lose millions of dollars. I land in London and intend to continue on to Spain for four weeks of recharging my batteries before returning to the salt mines.

I start my relaxation by promptly having a nervous breakdown the first morning. July Four weeks turn into eight, and I decide to stay overseas indefinitely for a final exam in automation and experi- mental living, limiting e-mail to one hour each Monday morning. What on earth do you do when you no longer have work as an excuse to be hyperactive and avoid the big questions? Be terrified and hold on to your ass with both hands, apparently.

September I return to the United States in an odd, Zenlike state after methodically destroying all of my assumptions about what can and cannot be done. The new message is simple: I've seen the promised land, and there is good news. You can have it all. Step I: D is for Definition Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. It was just the two of us now in first-class.

He extended his hand to introduce himself, and an enormous—Looney Tunes enormous—diamond ring appeared from the ether as his fingers crossed under my reading light. Mark was a legitimate magnate. He had, at different times, run practically all the gas stations, convenience stores, and gambling in South Carolina. He sat up in his seat as the conversation drifted to my travels, but I was more interested in his astounding record of printing money.

Life had become a succession of trophy wives—he was on lucky number three—expensive cars, and other empty bragging rights. Mark was one of the living dead. This is exactly where we don't want to end up. Apples and Oranges: A Comparison S o, what makes the difference?

What separates the New Rich, characterized by options, from the Deferrers D , those who save it all for the end only to find that life has passed them by? It begins at the beginning. The New Rich can be separated from the crowd based on their goals, which reflect very distinct priorities and life philosophies.

Note how subtle differences in wording completely change the necessary actions for fulfilling what at a glance appear to be similar goals.

These are not limited to business owners. Even the first, as I will show later, applies to employees. D: To work for yourself. NR: To have others work for you. D: To work when you want to. NR: To prevent work for work's sake, and to do the minimum necessary for maximum effect "minimum effective load". D: To retire early or young. N R: To distribute recovery periods and adventures mini-retirements throughout life on a regular basis and recognize that inactivity is not the goal.

Doing that which excites you is. Cautions and Comparisons 23 D: To buy all the things you want to have. NR: To do all the things you want to do, and be all the things you want to be. If this includes some tools and gadgets, so be it, but they are either means to an end or bonuses, not the focus. D: To be the boss instead of the employee; to be in charge. NR: To be neither the boss nor the employee, but the owner. To own the trains and have someone else ensure they run on time.

D: To make a ton of money. NR: To make a ton of money with specific reasons and defined dreams to chase, timelines and steps included. What are you working for? D: To have more. NR: To have more quality and less clutter. To have huge financial reserves but recognize that most material wants are justifications for spending time on the things that don't really matter, including buying things and preparing to buy things.

That's great. Does your life have a purpose? Are you contributing anything useful to this world, or just shuffling papers, banging on a keyboard, and coming home to a drunken existence on the weekends? D: To reach the big pay-off, whether IPO, acquisition, retirement, or other pot of gold.

NR: To think big but ensure payday comes every day: cash flow first, big payday second. D: To have freedom from doing that which you dislike. After years of repetitive work, you will often need to dig hard to find your passions, redefine your dreams, and revive hobbies that you let atrophy to near extinction.

The goal is not to simply eliminate the bad, which does nothing more than leave you with a vacuum, but to pursue and experience the best in the world. Getting Off the Wrong Train The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. Lemmings no more. The blind quest for cash is a fool's errand.

I've chartered private planes over the Andes, enjoyed many of the best wines in the world in between world-class ski runs, and lived like a king, lounging by the infinity pool of a private villa. Here's the little secret I rarely tell: It all cost less than rent in the United States. If you can free your time and location, your money is automatically worth times as much. This has nothing to do with currency rates. Being financially rich and having the ability to live like a millionaire are fundamentally two very different things.

Money is multiplied in practical value depending on the number of W's you control in your life: what you do, -when you do it, where you do it, and with whom you do it. I call this the "freedom multiplier.

Options—the ability to choose—is real power. This book is all about how to see and create those options with the least effort and cost. It just so happens, paradoxically, that you can make more money—a lot more money—by doing half of what you are doing now.

So, Who Are the NR? The options are limitless, but each path begins with the same first step: replacing assumptions. To join the movement, you will need to learn a new lexicon and recalibrate direction using a compass for an unusual world. From inverting responsibility to jettisoning the entire concept of "success," we need to change the rules.

Dale Begg-Smith executed the backflip perfectly—skis crossed in an X over his head—and landed in the record books as he slid across the finish.

It was February 16, , and he was now a mogul-skiing gold medalist at the Turin Winter Olympics. Unlike other full-time athletes, he will never have to return to a dead-end job after his moment of glory, nor will he look back at this day as the climax of his only passion. After all, he was only 21 years old and drove a black Lamborghini. Born a Canadian and something of a late bloomer, Dale found his calling, an Internet-based IT company, at the age of Fortunately, he had a more- experienced mentor and partner to guide him: his year-old brother, Jason.

Created to fund their dreams of standing atop the Olympic podium, it would, only two years later, become the third-largest company of its kind in the world. While Dale's teammates were hitting the slopes for extra sessions, he was often buying sake for clients in Tokyo. In a world of "work harder, not smarter," it came to pass that his coaches felt he was spending too much time on his business and not enough time in training, despite his results.

He wasn't spending too much time on his business; he and his brother were spending too much time with Canucks. In , they moved to the ski capital of the world, Australia, where the team was smaller, more flexible, and coached by a legend.

In the land of wallabies and big surf, Dale has since gone postal. Right next to the Elvis Presley commemorative edition, you can buy stamps with his face on them. Fame has its perks, as does looking outside the choices presented to you.

There are always lateral options. Julie's goal made intrinsic sense: come back with the same number of children she had left with. She reclined in her seat and glanced across the aisle past her sleeping husband, Marc, counting as she had done thousands of times—one, two, three.

So far so good. In 12 hours, they would all be back in Paris, safe and sound. That was assuming the plane from New Caledonia held together, of course. New Caledonia? Nestled in the tropics of the Coral Sea, New Caledonia was a French territory and where Julie and Marc had just sold the sailboat that took them 15, miles around the world.

Of course, recouping their initial investment had been part of the plan. Less than rent and baguettes in Paris. Most people would consider this impossible.

Then again,,most people don't know that more than families set sail from France each year to do the same. The trip had been a dream for almost two decades, relegated to the back of the line behind an ever-growing list of responsibilities. Each passing moment brought a new list of reasons for putting it off. The rationalizations, legitimate or not, would just continue to add up and make it harder to convince herself that escape was possible. One year of preparation and one day trial run with her husband later, they set sail on the trip of a lifetime.

Julie realized almost as soon as the anchor lifted that, far from being a reason not to travel and seek adventure, children are perhaps the best reason of all to do both. Pre-trip, her three little boys had fought like banshees at the drop of a hat. In the process of learning to coexist in a floating bedroom, they learned patience, as much for themselves as for the sanity of their parents.

Pre-trip, books were about as appealing as eating sand. Given the alternative of staring at a wall on the open sea, all three learned to love books.

Pulling them out of school for one academic year and exposing them to new environments had proven to be the best investment in their education to date. Now sitting in the plane, Julie looked out at the clouds as the wing cut past them, already thinking of their next plans: to find a place in the mountains and ski all year long, using income from a sail-rigging workshop to fund the slopes and more travel. Now that she had done it once, she had the itch. It wasn't because I was good at punching and kicking.

God forbid. That seemed a bit dangerous, considering I did it on a dare and had four weeks of preparation. Besides, I have a watermelon head— it's a big target. I won by reading the rules and looking for loopholes, of which there were two: 1. Poor little guys. There was a technicality in the fine print: If one combatant fell off the elevated platform three times in a single round, his opponent won by default.

I decided to use this technicality as my single technique and just push people off. As you might imagine, this did not make the judges the happiest Chinese I've ever seen.

The result? Challenging the Status Quo vs. Being Stupid M ost people walk down the street on their legs. Does that mean I walk down the street on my hands? Do I wear my underwear outside of my pants in the name of being different? Not usually, no. Then again, walking on my legs and keeping my thong on the inside have worked just fine thus far. I don't fix it if it isn't broken. Different is better when it is more effective or more fun. If everyone is defining a problem or solving it one way and the results are subpar, this is the time to ask, What if I did the opposite?

Don't follow a model that doesn't work. If the recipe sucks, it doesn't matter how good a cook you are. When I was in data storage sales, my first gig out of college, I realized that most cold calls didn't get to the intended person for one reason: gatekeepers. If I simply made all my calls from A. Most people will assume this type of weight manipulation is impossible, so I've provided sample photographs at www. Do NOT try this at home.

I did it all under medical supervision. Rules That Change the Rules 31 senior sales executives who called from From Japan to Monaco, from globetrotting single mothers to multimillionaire racecar drivers, the basic rules of successful NR are surprisingly uniform and predictably divergent from what the rest of the world is doing.

The following rules are the fundamental differentiators to keep in mind throughout this book. Retirement planning is like life insurance. It should be viewed as nothing more than a hedge against the absolute worst-case sce- nario: in this case, becoming physically incapable of working and needing a reservoir of capital to survive.

Retirement as a goal or final redemption is flawed for at least three solid reasons: a. It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life.

This is a nonstarter—nothing can justify that sacrifice. Most people will never be able to retire and maintain even a hotdogs-for-dinner standard of living. The math doesn't work. That's a bittersweet ending. If the math does work, it means that you are one ambitious, hardworking machine. If that's the case, guess what? One week into retirement, you'll be so damn bored that you'll want to stick bicycle spokes in your eyes.

You'll probably opt to look for a new job or start another company. Kinda defeats the purpose of waiting, doesn't it? Interest and Energy Are Cyclical. Of course not—you couldn't. How else can my year-old friends all look like a cross between Donald Trump and Joan Rivers? It's horrendous— premature aging fueled by triple bypass frappuccinos and im- possible workloads. Alternating periods of activity and rest is necessary to survive, let alone thrive.

Capacity, interest, and mental endurance all wax and wane. Plan accordingly. The NR aims to distribute "mini-retirements" throughout life instead of hoarding the recovery and enjoyment for the fool's gold of retirement.

By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It's the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.

Personally, I now aim for one month of overseas relocation or high-intensity learning tango, fighting, whatever for every two months of work projects. Less Is Not Laziness. Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is NOT laziness. This is hard for most to accept, because our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity.

More time equals more self-worth and more reinforcement from those above and around them. The NR, despite fewer hours in the office, produce more meaningful results than the next dozen non- NR combined.

Let's define "laziness" anew—to endure a non-ideal existence to let circumstance or others decide life for you, or to amass a fortune while passing through life like a spectator from an office window.

The size of your bank account doesn't change this, nor does the number of hours you log in handling unimportant e-mail or minutiae. Focus on being productive instead of busy. The Timing Is Never Right. I once asked my mom how she decided when to have her first child, little oP me. The answer was simple: "It was something we wanted, and we decided there was no point in putting it off.

The timing is never right to have a baby. For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn't conspire against you, but it doesn't go out of its way to line up all the pins either.

Conditions are never perfect. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it's important to you and you want to do it "eventually," just do it and correct course along the way. Ask for Forgiveness, Not Permission. If it isn't going to devastate those around you, try it and then justify it. If the potential damage is moderate or in any way reversible, don't give people the chance to say no. Most people are fast to stop you before you get started but hesitant to get in the way if you're moving.

Get good at being a troublemaker and saying sorry when you really screw up. Emphasize Strengths, Don't Fix Weaknesses. Most people are good at a handful of things and utterly miserable at most.

I am great at product creation and marketing but terrible at most of the things that follow. My body is designed to lift heavy objects and throw them, and that's it. I ignored this for a long time. I tried swimming and looked like a drowning monkey.

I tried basketball and looked like a caveman. Then I became a fighter and took off. It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths in- stead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor.

The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvement fixing weaknesses that will, at best, become mediocre.

Focus on better use of your best weapons instead of constant repair. Things in Excess Become Their Opposite. It is possible to have too much of a good thing. In excess, most endeavors and possessions take on the characteristics of their opposite. Thus: Pacifists become militants.

Freedom fighters become tyrants. Blessings become curses. Help becomes hindrance. More becomes less. From Less Is More. Goldian VandenBroeck. Rules That Change the Rules 35 Too much, too many, and too often of what you want becomes what you don't want.

This is true of possessions and even time. Lifestyle Design is thus not interested in creating an excess of idle time, which is poisonous, but the positive use of free time, defined simply as doing what you want as opposed to what you feel obligated to do.

Money Alone Is Not the Solution. There is much to be said for the power of money as currency I'm a fan myself , but adding more of it just isn't the answer as often as we'd like to think.

In part, it's laziness. By using money as the scapegoat and work as our all-consuming routine, we are able to conveniently disallow ourselves the time to do otherwise: "John, I'd love to talk about the gaping void I feel in my life, the hopelessness that hits me like a punch in the eye every time I start my computer in the morning, but I have so much work to do! I've got at least three hours of unimportant e-mail to reply to before calling the prospects who said 'no' yesterday.

Gotta run! Deep down, you know it's all an illusion, but with everyone participating in the same game of make-believe, it's easy to forget. The problem is more than money.

Among dietitians and nutritionists, there is some debate over the value of a calorie. Is a calorie a calorie, much like a rose is a rose? Based on work with top athletes, I know the answer to be the latter. What about income? Is a dollar is a dollar is a dollar? The New Rich don't think so.

Let's look at this like a fifth-grade math problem. Two hard- working chaps are headed toward each other. Chap A moving at 80 hours per week and Chap B moving at 10 hours per week. Who will be richer when they pass in the middle of the night? If you said B, you would be cor- rect, and this is the difference between absolute and relative income.

Absolute income is measured using one holy and inalterable variable: the raw and almighty dollar. Relative income uses two variables: the dollar and time, usu- ally hours. The whole "per year" concept is arbitrary and makes it easy to trick yourself. Let's look at the real trade. In relative income, John is four times richer. Of course, relative income has to add up to the minimum amount necessary to actualize your goals.

Assuming that the total absolute income is where it needs to be to live my dreams not an arbitrary point of comparison with the Joneses , relative income is the real measurement of wealth for the New Rich. I'll get you closer to the former. Rules That Change the Rules 37 Unbeknownst to most fun-loving bipeds, not all stress is bad.

In- deed, the New Rich don't aim to eliminate all stress. Not in the least. There are two separate types of stress, each as different as euphoria and its seldom-mentioned opposite, dysphoria. Distress refers to harmful stimuli that make you weaker, less confident, and less able. Destructive criticism, abusive bosses, and smashing your face on a curb are examples of this. These are things we want to avoid. Eustress, on the other hand, is a word most of you have probably never heard.

Eu-, a Greek prefix for "healthy," is used in the same sense in the word "euphoria. People who avoid all criticism fail. It's destructive criticism we need to avoid, not criticism in all forms. Similarly, there is no progress without eustress, and the more eustress we can create or apply to our lives, the sooner we can actualize our dreams. The trick is telling the two apart. The New Rich are equally aggressive in removing distress and finding eustress. How has being "realistic" or "responsible" kept you from the life you want?

How has doing what you "should" resulted in subpar experiences or regret for not having done something else? Look at what you're currently doing and ask yourself, "What would happen if I did the opposite of the people around me? What will I sacrifice if I continue on this track for 5,10, or 20 years? His sneakers gripped firmly on the jagged rock, and he drove his chest forward toward 3, feet of nothing. He held his breath on the final step, and the panic drove him to near unconsciousness.

His vision blurred at the edges, closing to a single pinpoint of light, and then The all-consuming celestial blue of the horizon hit his visual field an instant after he realized that the thermal updraft had caught him and the wings of the paraglider.

Fear was behind him on the mountaintop, and thousands of feet above the resplendent green rain forest and pristine white beaches of Copacabana, Hans Keeling had seen the light. That was Sunday. On Monday, Hans returned to his law office in Century City, Los Angeles's posh corporate haven, and promptly handed in his three-week notice.

He had once slept under his desk at the office after a punishing half- done project, only to wake up and continue on it the next morning. That same morning, he had made himself a promise: two more times and I'm out of here. Strike number three came the day before he left for his Brazilian vacation.

We all make these promises to ourselves, and Hans had done it before as well, but things were now somehow different. He was dif- ferent. He had realized something while arcing in slow circles toward the earth—risks weren't that scary once you took them. His colleagues told him what he expected to hear: He was throwing it all away.

He was an attorney on his way to the top—what the hell did he want? Hans didn't know exactly what he wanted, but he had tasted it. On the other hand, he did know what bored him to tears, and he was done with it. No more passing days as the living dead, no more din- ners where his colleagues compared cars, riding on the sugar high of a new BMW purchase until someone bought a more expensive Mercedes. It was over. Immediately, a strange shift began—Hans felt, for the first time in a long time, at peace with himself and what he was doing.

He had always been terrified of plane turbulence, as if he might die with the best inside of him, but now he could fly through a violent storm sleeping like a baby. Strange indeed. More than a year later, he was still getting unsolicited job offers from law firms, but by then had started Nexus Surf, a premier surf- adventure company based in the tropical paradise of Florianopolis, Brazil.

He had met his dream girl, a Carioca with caramel-colored skin named Tatiana, and spent most of his time relaxing under palm trees or treating clients to the best times of their lives. Is this what he had been so afraid of? These days, he often sees his former self in the underjoyed and overworked professionals he takes out on the waves. He could pick up his law career exactly where he left off if he wanted to, but that is the fur- thest thing from his mind. As they paddle back to shore after an awesome session, his clients get ahold of themselves and regain their composure.

They set foot on shore, and reality sinks its fangs in: "I would, but I can't really throw it all away. The Power of Pessimism: Defining the Nightmare Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. To try or not to try? Most people will vote no, whether they consider themselves brave or not.

Uncertainty and the prospect of failure can be very scary noises in the shadows. Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty. For years, I set goals, made resolutions to change direction, and nothing came of either. I was just as insecure and scared as the rest of the world. The simple solution came to me accidentally four years ago. I had no time and was working myself to death.

I had started my own company, only to realize it would be nearly impossible to sell. I felt trapped and stupid at the same time. Dodging Bullets 41 I should be able to figure this out, I thought. Why am I such an idiot? Why can't I make this work?! Buckle up and stop being such a insert expletive! What's wrong with me? The truth was, nothing was wrong with me. I hadn't reached my limit; I'd reached the limit of my business model at the time.

It wasn't the driver, it was the vehicle. Critical mistakes in its infancy would never let me sell it. I could hire magic elves and connect my brain to a supercomputer—it didn't matter. My little baby had some serious birth defects. The question then became, How do I free myself from this Frankenstein while making it self-sustaining? How do I pry myself from the tentacles of workaholism and the fear that it would fall to pieces without my hour days?

How do I escape this self-made prison? A trip, I decided. A sabbatical year around the world. So I took the trip, right?

Well, I'll get to that. First, I felt it prudent to dance around with my shame, embarrassment, and anger for six months, all the while playing an endless loop of reasons why my cop-out fantasy trip could never work.

One of my more productive periods, for sure. Then, one day, in my bliss of envisioning how bad my future suf- fering would be, I hit upon a gem of an idea. It was surely a highlight of my "don't happy, be worry" phase: Why don't I decide exactly what my nightmare would be—the worst thing that could possibly happen as a result of my trip?

Well, my business could fail while I'm overseas, for sure. Proba- bly would. A legal warning letter would accidentally not get for- warded and I would get sued. My business would be shut down, and inventory would spoil on the shelves while I'm picking my toes in solitary misery on some cold shore in Ireland. Crying in the rain, I imagine. God, life is a cruel, hard bitch. In my undying quest to make myself miserable, I accidentally began to backpedal.

As soon as I cut through the vague unease and ambiguous anxiety by defining my nightmare, the worst-case scenario, I wasn't as worried about taking a trip. Suddenly, I started thinking of simple steps I could take to salvage my remaining resources and get back on track if all hell struck at once. I could always take a temporary bartending job to pay the rent if I had to.

I could sell some furniture and cut back on eating out. I could steal lunch money from the kindergarteners who passed by my apartment every morning. The options were many. I realized it wouldn't be that hard to get back to where I was, let alone survive.

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