The Secret To More Meaning & Adventure w/ Chris Guillebeau

Hi everyone, it’s Marie Forleo and you’re watching MarieTV, a very special edition because we decided to do this interview right here with my dear friend Chris Guillebeau because, guess what, he’s got an awesome new book out right now and it’s called “The Happiness of Pursuit.” And I am so excited, I adore Chris, I adore his work. Many of you know him already. We did an interview for his last book “The 100 Dollar Startup,” and he’s just one of the sweetest, kindest, smartest, most brilliant people and I wanted to have him on today because I thought these concepts were awesome. So Chris, thanks for coming back on MarieTV.

Marie, hello and thank you. It’s a huge honor, I’m so happy to be back. Thank you.

Awesome. So tell us about “The Happiness of Pursuit: Finding the Quest that Will Bring Purpose to Your Life.” So what inspired you to write this new book?

Ok. So since we last talked I had been wrapping up a personal project. It was a quest to visit every country in the world. We might have even talked about it a little bit last time. I’ve been working on it for about 8 years or so then. So it was a 10 year quest in total, I just now came to the end of it last year, and it was something that was initially just a personal project, it was something that I believed in for myself and I loved travel and I loved the value of exploration and discovery. And so as I pursued this quest I knew I wanted to write something about it, but fortunately I didn’t just write a book about myself, I didn’t just write, “I Traveled My Mark,” because that would be kind of boring. So all along the way I was meeting lots of interesting, remarkable people who were all pursuing a quest or some kind of adventure of their own and I wanted to know why did they do it and what lessons did they learn along the way and how are they changed through the process, what did they sacrifice or give up in order to pursue it, and why bother? You know? What can the rest of us learn about quests? And then lastly, it’s not really meant to be a sociological study, it’s not just a collection of this person did this and this person did this, blah, blah. The book actually has a clear message and the message is that a quest can improve your life. A quest can actually bring purpose and meaning to your life too.

I love it. So let me ask you this, were you, as a young person or as a young boy, were you always into adventure and did you have quests when you were little?

I don’t know if I had quests per say. I was always a list maker. This is something that I noticed is actually common in all of the people that I talked to. I really liked to write things down and I like to write down my tasks and write down my ideas and outlines even in rough, you know, form. I really like to kind of, you know, break things down into small little, you know, projects or things. So I think it was maybe a value that I had and then I kind of grew into it more and then I started traveling. And it wasn’t like I went to my first country and I was like, “Oh, I’m gonna go to, like, you know, the rest of every single 193 countries in the world.” I kind of gained confidence as I had some experience. That was something else that I saw with a lot of different people is they started with a small vision and they kind of came to a bigger one later on.

Interesting. So if I heard you right, and please correct me if I’m wrong, when you started traveling to different countries it wasn’t necessarily like, well, obviously because you might’ve done some travel… you did some travel earlier on in your life. But then as you got that appetite whet for travel you saw an expanded vision and said, “Hey, why don’t I set this adventure goal for myself to see every country in the world?” So it wasn’t even like you started off like, “This is my quest.” It was something that evolved.

Correct, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. I had no idea that this would become something that would consume my life, you know, for more than 10 years. I just started traveling. I loved traveling. I lived in West Africa for a while and through that I kind of gained some confidence and just really experienced the joy of being in different places. And then I think it was after I’d been to, like, 50 countries or so I was like… but still though, I… it’s not that difficult, you know, after I’d been to, like, 50ish I thought, “Let me set a personal goal,” because I always liked goals, “of trying to go to 100 countries.” Right? So that was the first one. And then I started getting close to that and I thought, “How can I take it up a level? Because if I’m just going to half the countries in the world I could kind of cheat a little bit because I could just pick the easy countries.” So, yeah, it was something that I grew into. Totally. And I really… for me what made a difference was combining travel with goal setting. Combining travel with something specific, with structure, with a little bit of a container to it, and that just kind of changed the whole purpose and focus for me.

And you saw that with the people in the book as well? That they perhaps started something, their appetite got whet, and then all of a sudden a new, bigger world opened up to them that became this quest, this adventure they wanted to go on?

Yeah, yes. Very often. And the specificity helped a lot. There’s one story, Robyn Devine in Omaha, Nebraska, and she’s a knitter and she’s, like, super excited about knitting and she’s an artist and she makes stuff. And she had this project to make hats for people and that’s how it was at first. She was like, “I’m just gonna make hats.” So she made hats for her friends and her family just like a lot of knitters do. But then she had the idea of creating some specific structure to it. And at first she thought, “I wanna knit a thousand hats.” Like, what would that look like, you know, etcetera. So she started working toward that and figuring out how much time and how much money and are there any other costs, you know, all that. And then she decided to increase the goal and go to 10 thousand hats. So now it’s like her life quest, which I forget how many years it’s gonna take. You can actually go to her website and request a hat. There may be a waiting period, but eventually she’s gonna make 10 thousand hats. So, yeah, a lot of people, they’ve found that their vision expanded but then also as they work towards something they made it more specific.

So let’s talk now about the link between quests or adventures that we can go on, if we wanna call it that, and happiness. What did you discover not only for yourself but what did you discover from the stories of everyone that you interviewed for the book?

So for myself, you know, when I started traveling and then pursuing the goal I think it kind of came out of a sense of discontent or dissatisfaction, which doesn’t mean that I was miserable. It’s not like I was terribly unhappy, like, I had a good life, you know? I had become an entrepreneur, I was working for myself. But yet I guess I felt like I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted more. And a lot of the people that we talk to who are in the book, they have the same kind of discontent. It was a yearning for something, it was a yearning to connect something broader in their life. You know, they often were happy. They had good families, they had good jobs or good businesses or something. But yet, you know, they had this desire to go further. And so that’s where I saw really a link between the happiness and the pursuit of a goal. The pursuit of a goal, you know, bigger than ourselves. I mean, something that is really significant, something that is really challenging, because there’s also a link between the quest and the challenge I think. I think, you know, if your quest is to go down the street and get coffee and come back, it’s not really a quest. Right? But when you combine it with something that’s challenging, it may be hard but also rewarding. That’s where I think a lot of us can find happiness.

Have you seen that people are working on multiple quests at once? Or do most people kind of choose something that feels challenging, meaty, maybe a little bit scary, totally exciting or…?

Sure. And I think there’s more than one way, you know, to do it. I’m always the kind of person that I like to work on a bunch of stuff at once. It’s just my personality, you know, for better or worse, right?

Yeah.

But I also think, you know, a true quest, a true adventure, does involve some kind of sacrifice. You know, it does involve some kind of tradeoff. I mean, if sacrifice is too heavy a word let’s say tradeoff. You know? To go to every country in the world, like, it was a pretty big thing. There were a lot of things I had to say no to in order to say yes to that.

Like what? Like what?

Like what? Like… like building my career. You know? Like… I was on the road and in central Africa and central Asia and Bangladesh and all of these places 100 days a year often and I couldn’t really work on my business very much during that time. And that was ok. I had to say no to a lot of… lots of opportunities, you know, that are coming through. But I guess I really believed in this project, I really believed in doing it, and every time I would start to think, “Oh, maybe I, you know, shouldn’t get on that plane and go to Chad,” or whatever. Like, “No, I have to… like, this is the root of everything. This is the foundation that everything else is built on.” So, yes, I think you can do a lot of stuff, but I guess also if you really believe in something, like, it’s going to take something from you as well.

Yeah. No, I love this discussion because especially, Chris, I love that you shared the self doubt that can creep up. I think for anyone who’s creative, if you call it a quest or if it’s a project, you know, to write a book or if it’s something to build a business or create something that’s never… that’s never been created before and part of that adventure is you bringing it out into the world, I think that self doubt is so… it’s a topic that many of us, we don’t like to talk about. You know? I love hearing that you are like, “Ok, should I get on this plane to Chad? And I have all of these different opportunities coming in?” I mean, I’m working on another writing project right now and I feel like daily the self doubt voices are like, “God, are you… do you even know enough to write this? Does anyone even care?” It’s amazing. Did you notice that the other folks that you interviewed as well had those wrestlings with self doubt in… in pursuit of their adventure or their quest?

Absolutely. Like, almost all of them.

Yeah.

Almost all of them in different ways and they spoke about it in different ways, you know, people use different language. But everyone experiences that I think. I think the bigger the challenge, maybe the more the self doubt or the more the fear. But also maybe the more the stirring that you have to do it. You know, it’s this idea that’s not gonna leave you alone and I think a lot of them maybe were focused on the long term and they were focused on the outcome and they thought about that book they wanted to write or whatever it was and they imagined having that out and they thought about the people who would be helped by it. And that’s kind of what got them through, you know, the focus on the other side. And I think a lot of them also, the other interesting thing I noticed they had in common was a lot of them had what I called an emotional awareness of mortality. This also sounds kind of heavy, but it doesn’t need to.

I love it. We talk about death on MarieTV all the time because I think… I just think it’s one of the most sobering and it wakes you up. It wakes you up to value each moment. So not to interrupt, but let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about that reality of mortality.

Oh, that’s great. Right. So the emotional awareness of it as opposed to the intellectual awareness. So I think everyone has an intellectual awareness of mortality, which I defined in the book as just the fact that everybody dies. Right? It’s just a fact. Right? But the emotional awareness of mortality is what I noticed a lot of these people talked about as I interviewed them, and they brought it up. I didn’t even ask like, “Hey, what do you think about death?” You know? It’s not really the best interview question. But a lot of them talked about different experiences they’d had either with an accident that they’d had or a close call that they had or someone that they loved and lost, something that just brought them closer to the awareness that not only everyone else in the world is gonna die one day but I too, you know, will die. And just the… the focus on the fact that life is short, we should live with urgency, you know, that also kind of helps to overcome some of the self doubt, I think. I think you think, “Ok, what really matters? Yeah, I’ve got my own stuff, I’ve got my own anxiety,” or whatever that thing is that most of us struggle with, but I also have this dream and I also want more. I want to improve my life. You know? I’m taking time to watch MarieTV because not just I want to be entertained, but I want to improve my life. I want to take steps toward that. So that’s something else that people had in common that I think is actually helpful.

Yeah, and that’s one of the values of this, it’s one of the values of your book and why I’m so happy that you wrote it and that we’re sharing it today. So many of us can find ourselves at different parts of the journey struggling with, you know, is there more? Is there more meaning? I think one of the most touching stories for me was about the young man who lost his wife. Can you tell us a little bit about that story?

Mm, yes. This is a beautiful story. It is a sad story, as you alluded to, but it’s also a beautiful story. This is a story of a young couple who met in South Korea and he was American, she was Canadian, and they were both teaching English there. They met when they were really young, say young 20s or so, and they fell in love and they were beginning to plan a life together but unfortunately she received a diagnosis of breast cancer. So they returned to North America and she got treatment, but unfortunately the treatment was not successful and so she did end up going into hospice. And before she died she had been writing a blog, she had her own bucket list of all these things that she wanted to do in her life and she’d begun, you know, working toward them. And after she died, which, of course, was very sad, Adam, the young man, decided to take on her quest for himself. And he decided to take over writing her blog and pursuing all of those items on the list. So she wanted to learn how to knit, and so now he learned how to knit. She wanted to run a marathon, so he began training for that. She wanted to volunteer in India, so he made a commitment to go and do that. And it is a beautiful story of how he adopted the legacy that she was preparing. So it’s sad, but he also talked about how… how he found purpose in that. He found purpose in that through his own grief but then, you know, also through his own foundation for the future. And he said that he’d always been inspired by Megan, been inspired by this list that she had so he hoped to follow it out.

It was so touching and it brings tears to my eyes right now because this… life is so short and it’s so fleeting and it’s just incredible. Anyway. Really, really great, great story. So the other thing, I know travel obviously huge passion of yours. It’s a passion of mine. Many, many folks in our audience. But if someone, you know, let’s say they don’t have the means to travel or perhaps some kind of huge, big adventure is just not in their cards right now. Let’s talk about some of the smaller quests and the smaller adventures that people took that were equally as fulfilling and exciting and also really creative.

Oh, absolutely. And I don’t even necessarily think that they’re smaller. You know?

Yeah.

Some way. I think that they’re just different. And, you know, each of us has our own abilities, our own desires and capacities, blah, blah. So one of the stories I really, really liked is from Sasha Martin, who’s in Oklahoma City. And Sasha had grown up overseas, I think her dad was working for some European company or something. So she had this international perspective but then she met a guy and kind of settled down and she had a daughter and wasn’t able to travel much, but she also had a culinary arts degree. And she wanted to raise her family with an international perspective, you know, she thought Oklahoma is cool but, like, I want, you know, to have a broader world view than just that. So because she wasn’t able to visit every country in the world, she decided to make a meal from every country in the world. And this wasn’t just like a half assed kinda thing, this was like a once a week she would devote, like, lots of time to researching all these different recipes and she would play the music from the country, and she would get the flag and she turned it into a community thing and people are starting to visit. Right? And so her daughter, her daughter’s first solid food is Afghan chicken and her daughter is like 3 years old now and is equally proficient with chopsticks or silverware or her fingers, you know, depending on the food. And she’s just talked about how it’s made such a huge difference in her family. And also connecting it to people all over the world because she’s been posting her recipes online and sharing this whole journey with other people. So it’s something that started also as a personal project, just like mine, but it became, you know, much more impactful over time.

That was one of my other favorite stories from the book because I really saw how fun that could be and how this idea of having a quest that we can do it right from our own house just using our imagination and our hearts and our desire to connect with something bigger than ourselves and to stretch ourselves, which I think is.. is really… it’s something that I love doing in my own life but I’ve never quite seen it put in the framework and the context of what you wrote, which is, again, why I’m so excited to have you on. So let’s talk about something else that I thought was really interesting. We have a lot of multipassionate entrepreneurs and a lot of creative folks in our audience who, again, we talked about, do lots of different things. And one of the things that struck me about this idea of a quest or an adventure and having a set container, a beginning, middle, and an end was the power of finishing something. So many of us, I know certainly myself, we get these great ideas and you’re kind of like, “Ok, I’m gonna do yoga all the time,” or, “I’m gonna meditate every day,” or, “I’m gonna completely change my diet,” and people take on so much or they start a new project, they start a new business, they start a new product or program that they wanna put out into the world and it’s kind of half finished. How strong is the connection between having, you know, a quest and the power of finishing. What can that teach us?

Well, one of the things I had to decide in the very beginning was what is a quest? Right? Because for the previous book, you know, I’m writing about small businesses who started without spending a lot of money, that’s really straightforward. You know? And I found a lot of people who fit that category When I thought about quests I kinda had to go back like, “Ok, let’s go way back.” Right? Like what is a quest in ancient days? There’s someone who’s going out to find the Holy Grail or defend his village or something or find this magic ring or something. And there’s always a destination in mind. There’s always an end goal. Right? It might take a long time, there might be many different, you know, trails and sidetracks and things that happen along the way. Lots of challenge and transformation, etcetera, etcetera, but there is a goal. Right? There is a destination, something that you’re working toward. And so that’s the framework that I used for my quest and that’s what most of the people that I talked to as well. You know, it is very much about the process and the journey, but we are working towards something. You know, we are hoping to… to reach that destination at a certain point. And I too work on lots of different stuff and often get sidetracked, but I think one reason the quest was successful and why it kept me focused is I knew where I was going and I had 193 countries and I could check them off as I went along and put them in my Evernotes. I put a little “x” next to them and I watched it grow. And I got tired at different points, but I could see the progress I had made and it became like a cost benefit analysis after a certain point. I’m like, “Well, I’ve got 100 countries already. Am I gonna stop? I’ve got 150 countries. There’s only, you know, 43 to go,” or whatever. And so it helped a lot. Again, like with the other example of making a meal for every country, she could’ve just said, “Oh, I’m going to make a bunch of foreign food.” Right? But not really that specific. And Robyn’s quest as well to make 10 thousand hats, you know, she always liked knitting and she could just keep doing that and that’s fine. But she talked about how having the number gave her purpose. The other thing is I like deadlines. I think deadlines are our friends. You know? If somebody ever gives me something without a deadline I always tell them that’s dangerous because, you know, it’s just gonna get pushed probably. Right?

Yeah. I mean, it’s Parkinson’s law too, if I’m accurate on that one. I mean, work expands to fill the time allotted and it will just expand forever and ever and ever unless we put some kind of container around it.

Right. So deadlines are great. That’s why I like doing live events, because there’s a deadline. I can’t, you know, if I’ve got thousands of people coming into town for something I can’t just be like, “Oh, I need 2 more days. Come back.” Or with a book launch or something. But for me I chose my 35th birthday as the deadline, you know, for the quest and I chose that 7 years prior to finishing. Right? And so as I got closer and there were different opportunities and I felt pressured in different ways, it kind of helped me to keep that in mind. I was like, “No, I know I need to do at least 20 countries a year to achieve this goal. And if it gets hard I just have to figure it out. Right?” So deadlines are our friends. Structure is our friend. Right? Structure, deadlines, parameters, you know. There’s another quote that I liked in the book, this is from Elise Blaha Cripe, she talked about how everybody’s always saying, like, entrepreneurs and creatives should get out of the box. Right? But for me, I want to get in the box. I wanted to find my own box, I don’t want someone to be like, “Here’s your box.” Right? I want to make my own box, but once I’ve made it I want to actually have clear parameters and rules and that’s the scope of what I operate in and I’m actually gonna be more productive, I’m probably gonna help the world a lot better if I’m in my box then if I’m just anywhere.

Everybody get in your box! You heard it from Chris Guillebeau and, of course, my mind is going places you don’t wanna go, but just get in your box, people because it’s good in there.

Sorry, that was a long thing.

No, are you kidding me? I liked it and I can probably see the tweetable of this episode. Marie and Chris are telling you to get in your box. Which is…

Hashtag.

…brilliant. Hashtag get in your box. So I have to comment on something else though, because I think you and I are a little similar and probably lots of folks that are listening right now. The absolute joy that comes from crossing something off your list? Immense. In our team we have these priorities docs that have very clear structure and guidelines for the things that we’re working on and so we can all see what we’re doing. And the team, including myself, we get so friggin’ excited when we cross things off and I was thinking about this in the framework of quests and how much fun that is when you’ve defined that container and you have something you’re excited about working on and just putting those lines through. It’s like really acknowledging the journey and the joy and looking forward to the destination, which is great. Really, really great. Let me see here. So that’s a lot of what I wanted to talk about with you. I just think this is such an exciting concept and I’m really, really thrilled. If you are interested in the idea of having your own quest, please go out and get Chris’s book. It is fantastic. You’ll not only learn about his but you’ll learn about so many other people’s as well and hopefully it will inspire you to discover your own quest. So, Chris, is there anything else that we haven’t talked about? Any main points or things that you find in writing this book that you’re like, “God, I really wish people would either get this or know this or consider this for their own lives.”

You know, what I hope that they’ll consider is I hope that they’ll think about what the value of adventure means to them. I hope that they will think, like, “Hey, maybe I can’t go to every country in the world. Right? But, you know, there’s something that I can do and I also feel that stirring of wanting something different. Maybe I’m discontented in a way,” which, again, is not a terrible word. It doesn’t mean you’re miserable. It does mean that you long for something more and you want to improve your life and, you know, you do find joy in doing things that are fun and meaningful and connects with other people. I hope that you’ll think about that. I think maybe we have a challenge for them in some fashion.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. With MarieTV you know we always love to challenge you in the comments below.

Of course.

So this is what Chris and I thought of for today. What does “adventure” mean to you? That word. If it does mean anything like travel, if it means like pursuing the spiritual goal or perhaps it’s athletic or perhaps it’s artistic, what does adventure mean to you? And then the second part that we’d love to hear is how can you create a container, a quest, something specific that kind of hones in that beautiful adventure, that calling that you feel within your heart, and make it something that not only is achievable for you, that has a specific deadline, but of course that you could share and connect with other people. So we would love to hear all about it in the comments below, so make sure that you tell us. Chris, thank you so much for taking the time to share with us about your quest and this brilliant new book that you’re sharing with the world. We absolutely adore you and just want to thank you for being here today.

Oh, thank you so much. I adore you. I adore MarieTV viewers. I wanna say one more thing if I could jump in.

Of course.

If that’s alright. Last time I did a book and we did this show and I went on tour and at every stop along the way I think, I heard from MarieTV viewers.

Yay!

And so this time I’m doing 40 cities again, people can sign up for free tickets on my website or they can just show up. They don’t even have to sign up. And I would love to see you, so please come out and say hi, I’ll take a picture of you, I’ll text it to Marie, and then she’ll probably block me because she’ll be like, “You’re sending me all these messages.”

No. Absolutely not.

But it was just a… it was a big joy and it made a huge difference for me last time, so I want to thank you publicly but also all your viewers and great community.

Awesome, thank you Chris. And, by the way, we will put links not only for Chris’s book but we’ll put links back to his website so that if you wanna go see him on tour and you wanna meet this incredible man in person that you’ll know exactly where you can do it. Chris is amazing. So, as always, thank you so much for watching MarieTV. If you liked this episode, like it and subscribe and share it with all your friends. And if you want even more awesome resources to create a business and life that you love plus some updates from me that I only get to talk about in email, come on over to MarieForleo.com and sign up for email updates. Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams because the world needs that special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for watching and we’ll catch you next time on MarieTV. Bye everybody.