Watch Here!
Solocast Pt 1: Before Ayahuasca
It’s easy to notice if you’re playing small. Maybe you feel inadequate, like you’re not contributing to the world at large, or maybe you’re just getting sick of living a comfortable life. Maybe you need adventure. Sometimes it takes half a lifetime to integrate these feelings into your experience. It did for me. Throughout our journeys, we almost always have a sense that something greater is calling. That calling led me to become an expat. This solocast dives deep into the origin of my journey to becoming an expat entrepreneur and outlines in detail the heavy amount of risk taking that came along the way. Welcome to part one of my story: before ayahuasca integration.
Ed Mylett has been one of my most recent mentors and one of my favorite of his teachings is the reminder that the best athletes and performers in the world think in inches, not yards. They win or lose by inches, not yards. They beat their opponents by milliseconds, not hours.
That’s a powerful lesson when deciding how to spend the last day of 2020. Whenever we have an opportunity to gain inches we should take it. The holidays are always one of those opportunities. Mylett likes to refer to this time of year as “separation season,” meaning that it’s a great time to gain ground on your opponents. While they’re eating their second piece of cheesecake, you are doing another lap on the treadmill. When they are going out clubbing on New Year’s Eve, you are working on getting your 2021 business plan off to an early start.
For me, 2021 began on December 26, 2020. I made a choice to say, “Enough is enough” and be grateful for a wonderful few days of Christmas vacations while seeing the huge opportunity to get an early start on my objectives for 2021. In effect, I earned an extra week over my competition. How do I know my competition isn’t getting started early as well? I don’t. But if they are, then they won’t get ahead of me. And if they’re not, then I’m gaining ground on them.
2020 showed us that urgency is paramount and if we’re not constantly bringing our A-game to the party, then the world will leave us behind. That’s the harsh reality (always has been, just that now it’s more obvious) and the pandemic showed us that it’s the rule for personal health care just as much as it is for getting ahead in the professional arena.
Life and nature hold us all accountable in the end. The people who sat around this year waiting for things to get back to normal lost a lot of ground to those finding creative ways to get ahead in the rapidly changing environment of 2020. That will continue into 2021, so I highly recommend getting militant about your personal health and your professional success, real fast.
Another one of my mentors, Patrick Bet-David of Valuetainment has a great video about how to write a one-page business plan that would be of great value for 2021. He’s also got a free one-page business plan document download here that can help you complete it. I highly recommend doing this instead of going out to party tonight on New Year’s Eve. You’ve still got time to gain inches on your competition.
If you’re wondering, I didn’t always have this mindset and this level of discipline that I do today. In fact, I spent my entire 20’s in a state of confusion about what I was going to do with my life. Lost, depressed, broke, out of control, losing the battle of life. It was really hard.
That began to change after I had my first ayahuasca ceremony in 2010 when I finally started to gain some clarity. I think the story might be relevant for you to hear because many people ask me about how I came to be running Soltara Healing Center in Costa Rica. So I sat down the other night and recorded an intimate solo cast about that journey. Perhaps you can identify with some of the things that I went through. Perhaps you’re feeling some of them right now.
Here is Part 1: Before Ayahuasca. In a few weeks, I will record Part 2 of that solo cast: After Ayahuasca.
I hope you use this day to gain some inches, rather than lose some. I will be.
Much love and gratitude, and Happy New Year!
@DanielCCleland
Founding Partner and CEO
Soltara Healing Center, Costa Rica
To discover more about ayahuasca medicine, follow Soltara on Facebook, Twitter and Insta