Dr. Matthew Horkey and Charine Tan were both on extremely successful career paths. Matt was working for a seven-figure chiropractic business and Charine was offered a lucrative management position at her company. On the outside, everything looked great. But internally, they both felt they were living a life of complacency.
The tipping point came when they took a sabbatical to wine regions around the world. That’s when something struck Charine. She believed they could build a business around wine and travel. So they built up enough run way to quit their jobs and started their journey as the Exotic Wine Travelers.
In this episode, learn why experiences are better than having things, why you should invest in yourself, and why communication is the most important skill you can learn.
Here are three things you can learn from Matt and Charine:
One of the things people learn over time is accumulating possessions is not as fulfilling as having great experiences. While many of us start off wanting to buy fancy things to keep up with the Joneses, few of us realize that buying stuff is a never ending cycle. It is experiences that truly light us up. “When we started to step away and travel, when we started to focus on experiences, we realized stuff is all on the periphery. It’s nice, but it’s a want, not a need. Life is all about defining what you need, number one, and then what you want.”
While many of us begin to internalize that idea, we can still get stuck in the trap because we want to fit in. “It’s funny because both of us pride ourselves, we really value experience over possession all along, for the past couple of years that we’re together. But, as much as we know that intellectually, and we can relate to that thinking, we still fell into the trap of possession or consumerism. And looking at things broadly, I don’t think it’s just consumerism. It’s just that human beings, we are wired to belong. And when we’re in a group, community, or society, you want to fit in, and… all of us will be influenced by our environment and people around us.”
Charine believes you can truly discover this for yourself once you have the power to possess things. “It’s only after you have the power to possess things or when you have the power to achieve all those things, and that’s when you start asking yourself whether you really want it or not. We are lucky we got to step out of the environment that we’re in and we get a clear choice of whether we really enjoy those experiences or not.”
Charine and Matt both believe the best investment you can make is in yourself. While most people believe investing in high value stocks is the best way to become wealthy, they believe investing in yourself is far more valuable. “When you invest in yourself, it will always pay itself back and a lot of the times, it can be the best investment that you can make.”
What they found is that most people are afraid of growth. People are afraid of both the success and failure of personal growth, so they choose to do nothing instead. “It’s not that people don’t want to invest money in growing. Most people don’t want to grow. Growing is scary, it’s hard, and it’s difficult, and that’s the reason most people don’t want to do it.”
While they understand people’s aversion to growth, it’s still baffling that people choose to invest in everything but themselves. “It baffles me when people pick all sorts of investments to do, yet they don’t invest in themselves because you are the safest investment. Is there any risk at all? There’s no risk. There’s only growth.”
That’s why they are on this journey of traveling and tasting wines. They see it as an investment in personal growth.
People often wonder what skills set them apart from everyone else. Matt believes the most valuable skill you can learn is communication. “When you can communicate and articulate your ideas, you move into the top 1% of humanity. When you can actually get up and speak in front of a large group of people, you move into another top 1%. If you can speak and inspire somebody to move, you move into another top 1%. So I think that’s a skill that everybody should learn to do.”
While most creatives try to improve skills within their craft, top performing artists are ones that know how to communicate with their audience. That’s why Matt recommends improving your communication skills. “I would recommend that skill (communication) to anybody because if you can communicate and articulate your ideas, that’s when you can really get things done.”
Read more shownotes from episode 64 with Dr. Matthew Horkey and Charine Tan
Ginger Kern knew she wanted to leave her childhood home in the Midwest even when she was a young. She grew up reading books on adventure and mythology, which fueled her desire to get away.
So, when she had the opportunity to visit her family in Germany, she jumped on it. Even though she didn’t speak German and her family didn’t speak English, she was hooked on travel and living abroad. This was the beginning of her life fueled by travel, adventure, and a desire to help other people do the same.
In this episode, Ginger talks about embracing your playful side, taking rites of passage, and transforming herself and others.
Here are three things you can learn from Ginger:
Once we become adults, most of use lose our sense of playfulness. While this may be good in some situations, it absolutely prevents us from being our most creative selves.
Being playful allows us to experiment without worrying about ridicule. It allows us to be curious as we explore the world. That’s why Ginger likes to put herself in playful environments. “It is a question of how can I surround myself with the external environment that pulls from me to be playful, to be creative, to be in a space of wonderment and curiosity and experimentation. ”
She also believes we need to intentionally set aside time to be playful. “It’s the structure of ‘Okay, I’m going to actually to block out a chunk of time in my week or in my day that is for whatever comes out of my creative forays.’ It could just be two hours and you don’t have a set plan for those hours but you do something.”
When we set aside that time, we can’t judge ourselves so much. we just have to see what comes out. “And just letting it come out and allowing it to just be what it is, and not judging it until maybe later… but during the process, just let it come out.”
This minor shift in playfulness can have a massive impact on our creativity. Creativity requires an open mind, exploration, and curiosity, and play makes those things possible.
Ginger deals a lot with transformation. She has helped people overcome their doubts and has helped push them past their comfort zones. One example she gave was helping a woman who was feeling stuck creatively. Before her call with Ginger, the woman wasn’t drawing at all. But within 48 hours, she was able to reconnect with her creative expression.
But one thing Ginger emphasized was, she wouldn’t be able to be a source of strength for others if she wasn’t a source of strength for herself first. “I can only take my clients as big as I have gone myself… but really being a powerful stand for someone, that is sometimes tricky if you’re not being a stand for yourself… because it’s hypocritical. And so, helping others, if you want to use the word help… my goal is to really be a powerful stand for their power… in order to be able to do that, I have to be able to do that for myself.”
One thing Ginger noticed about her clients is, they are so eager to jump to the next level, but you can’t rush the process. “It’s always a process, right. So, there’s always expansion. There’s always that next level. And I think where some entrepreneurs might get caught up, is trying to force that next level… and what I found at least is that there’s so much to be learned just through the process of that.”
That’s why, before she can help others reach the next level, she has to reach the next level herself, and the only way she could do that was by getting support herself. “In order to effectively help, or effectively support, or effectively coach any of those things, I also have to have people pulling for me and so that does really bring me into that next level.”
One interesting observation Ginger has made about the world is, we no longer go through rites of passage. Before modern civilization took it’s hold on the world, previous generations had traditions that were passed down the line. People had to go through symbolic journeys, or rites of passage, in order to transition from one part of life to the next.
The concepts behind these stories and journeys all come up in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The archetypes found in the book spanned across all cultures and helped convey different messages and morals.
Ginger is now using travel as a rite of passage to help people deal with their own versions of these journeys from isolation to discomfort. “The rite of passage is a real tool and the way that I see it being a really effective tool… is going into a slightly scary situation of travel, where everything is unknown. You have to figure stuff out on the go. You have to deal with feelings of isolation, aloneness, uncomfortableness, discomfort… It’s such incredible work to see how someone can transform so thoroughly through travel.”
And when people come back from their trips, their hero’s journey, many come away completely transformed. “It’s beautiful, and inevitably, they come out on the other side and they’re so thrilled. They’re psyched about life because they see that they can handle it and they can take on a new challenge. They might even start seeking out new challenges and being more epic in their everyday life. That mentality, once you have it, it doesn’t leave you. It doesn’t just disappear.”
Stephen Pirie is the director of many companies including Nurture Change, Unleash Travel, and Spirit of Sharing. Through these companies, Stephen is creating retreats for business leaders, building a safe travel experience for youths from New Zealand and Australia, and giving back to the youths of Fiji.