Keeping a healthy attitude of gratitude and a can-do hands-on practice, you can practice Airstreaming at home, long before you move into the mobile lifestyle full-time. There are insights and unexpected pitfalls in this episode.
Welcome to the Pacific Northwest. Our plan is to be here for a few months of building memories with family and playing on the river and enjoying the cooler temperatures. I want to welcome you back to the next Episode of Scotomaville. We came to the Central Gorge and Hood River, and the Mosier area, which is our home base, to spend some time playing, but the weather isn't cooperating with our plans.
The weather came in with a cold front blowing like crazy and dropped the temperature by nearly 30 degrees. you know the great thing about having a strategy is that you can shift your plans and still have the outcome that you want. I think in this episode it's going to be a really good idea for us to dive in a little on strategy versus planning because you can make all kinds of plans and have them postponed and set back and have triggers and emotional tizzy fits because things are always shifting, but if you have a really good strategy it doesn't really matter how often things get shifted and how much you're interrupted. That's one of the things you've watched me actually mature in since the early filming of Scotomaville at Lake Pleasant with the constant interruptions. I'm far less upended or triggered by interruptions now than before.
■ Incremental Change is the foundation of personal transformation ■ Small Things Matter - becoming aware and responding to subtleties counts ■ Onus Probandi - we're demonstrating change with personal examples
Angelina: What are you doing?
Daniel: What am I doing? I'm putting the...
[Emergency Warning System] ATTENTION! this is only a test. This is a test of the warning system. This is only a test. There's no emergency...
Angelina: You were saying?
Daniel: (covering his ears) Oh that is so loud. You can hear it echoing from everywhere around the lake.
What I was going to say is whenever you try to work on something, you dive deeply into awareness. And, because 'life is what happens between your plans', this is what I was going to show you. Look closely. What do you see?
Angelina: Oh no.
Daniel: I have two left hand gloves - both gloves are the same (left handed) glove.
You've heard me say numerous times that you should segment grapefruit or cut your egg cartons or work out your pancake ratios. The reason for that is to practice and refine your strategy.
You can go about doing your thing in the morning - a routine that you have for a very well balanced diet for your biome and then come the intrusions - like the noise of the cook-top fan or your RV neighbor firing up their huge and noisy diesel before they leave. I've been able to start embracing the noises and intrusions because I realized that strategy trumps plans.
Strategy Trumps Plans - what does that mean?
"Strategy is bigger than a plan. Strategy tackles the question of why. It has a large scope and looks at the end results as well as the many paths to the desired outcome. A strategy looks at every possible influencing factor, both seen and unforeseen, and comes to terms with the whole situation - not just one end result."
"A plan says; here are the steps, while a strategy says; here are the best steps. Strategy speaks to the reasons WHY while the plan is focused on HOW."
■ WHY outweighs HOW ■ Strategy is BIGGER than a plan ■ Strategy comes to terms with the situation
"Strategy is about understanding your environment and making choices about what you will do. Think, if you like, of where and how to play. Planning is about making choices - about how to use the resources you have and the actions you will take to achieve the choices made inside your strategy.
"Let me try to emphasize the difference between strategy and planning suggesting something absurd - like how do you eat an elephant?
"When eating an elephant take one bite at a time. clearly no one is encouraging dining on these animals but it's good advice about how to tackle a huge overwhelming project - like the climb to success.
"Desmond Tutu said there was only one way to eat an elephant - a bite at a time. What he meant by this is that everything in life that seems daunting, overwhelming, and even impossible can be accomplished gradually by taking on just a little at a time.
"Francis of Assisi on how to eat an elephant: "start by doing what's necessary, then do what's possible and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
Angelina: [crawling under table and stuck between the seating and the table]
Daniel: I think you need a better strategy. You're trying to crawl underneath the table.
Angelina: I am.
Daniel: How's that working out for you?
Angelina: My boobs are getting stuck. Okay. I had this idea that I would move my desk.
Daniel: If you break the table what good is that. Now you're stuck halfway.
Angelina: I am. Now if I can turn myself around.
Daniel: I think that is the question. Is this why you play hoppers? So that you can wing-it in the physical world?
Angelina: I wanted to have a better setup for my desk so I didn't have to go around.
Daniel: Hang on hang on you're gonna break something... Let me...
Angelina: Ta-dah. See.
Daniel: You gotta be kidding me. Resilience. Stubbornness.
Angelina: But it worked.
Daniel: Ladies can you practice this at home. Crawl under the table rather than walk around to your chair!
Angelina: I didn't want you to have to move out of the way. I needed to figure it out on my own.
To raise the bar of what's possible beyond anything you'd imagine, even for your own life, let's look at this Guinness world record holder who ate an entire airplane bite-by-bite. He ate two pounds per day. His name was Michael Lotito and he was nicknamed Monsieur Mangetout. That means 'eat it all'. Mr 'eat it all' ate about 900 grams of whatever it was a day. Over his lifetime his diet (since 1969) included 18 bicycles, 15 supermarket trolleys, 7 TV sets, 6 chandeliers, two beds, a pair of skis, a low-calorie Cessna light aircraft, and a computer. He also ate a coffin. By 1997, he had eaten nearly nine tons of metal, but he said funny enough, that bananas and hard-boiled eggs made him sick.
I'm not going to recommend that you go about eating an Airstream but I am gonna make my point that if you wanted to you could do it incrementally. Think about whatever it is that's challenging your Personal Everest. If you're trying to live a healthier life, trying to lose weight or trying to gain weight, make progress on your finances or your financial score, or maybe getting a new job... whatever that might be in your life, think about incremental progress.
If you want to change the way you think try affirmations day after day after day put some motivational quotes into your lifestyle consume something that will make a small change each day so you can gain ground on your Personal Everest.
Another thought on strategy is you want to work toward longevity. It doesn't make much sense to sprint to the finish and die too soon. You might as well mature over a good period of time.
(closeup of Viome packaging) This is Viome precision supplements - including two billion probiotics. Every day this becomes a ritual and therefore a habit that incrementally adds value by extending our biological age. I think that's worth picking up that habit... by practicing longevity from home long before you put yourself in an Airstream.
Angelina: What just happened?
Daniel: I'm simply trying to do a close-up shot of the Viome supplements and when I pour them out they roll away into the dirty sink. Then I reach in to grab them and the cutting board has sausage defrosting so it smashes my finger.
Angelina: Oh thank you for splashing the blood. Let's coat the wound with ointment.
Daniel: Oh you see the blood. So I go from trying to be helpful... let me show people how cool this is... to a bleeding thumb. Put that in your strategy consideration.
"Another strategy that you've seen me use is to assign myself to-do items on a list in order to direct my actions from a time when I'm thinking clearly. That way I don't have to spend all my time wondering what it is I'm supposed to be doing, instead of focusing.
"I just finished the previous video clip. I'm now editing this clip. These get crossed off. That provides satisfaction because my time was spent well. I thought about it in advance and gave myself the discipline to work through the list even though the list will always be full of the things like gluing the knob back on."
A second strategy to embrace is that 'little things matter'. They really do. You've heard of the phrase; "a stitch in time saves nine"? What the heck does that mean? In the days of large sailing ships if you didn't fix the small stitching that was coming out of a mainsail, the next time you had a decent blow, it would tear the whole sail open and you'd have much more work to do.
So, paying attention to little things can save you a great amount of grief, anguish, effort, loss, and disappointment over time. So a great strategy to embrace is to pay attention to the little things, by considering that little things matter.
I thought this was really humorous... the definition reads: "small action taken on right time may prevents difficulty to be bigger later". I think that's funny.
One of the things you can practice at home to become familiar with Airstreaming is to find some pieces of glass and metal shavings and throw them on the floor and then walk around on your bare feet. (closeup on the floor) That is an aluminum shaving from one of the rivets - probably. When they replace a rivet in the factory (close up of rivet) you see how they'd sort of over-drill it. Well, that creates a piece of metal like this (closeup of aluminum shaving) that then ends up on the floor. And then you step on it - and that really feels terrific.
While you're vacuuming you're gonna find tiny, tiny little pieces like this on the floor (closeup of tiny nut). Then you'll start looking around asking where the heck did it come from? Don't just throw it away with the vacuum dust. You have to have a place to put all those little pieces. (dropping the nut in a drawer tray) That's going to be important.
About a week later I found a screw laying inside of my solar briefcase, and because I have a strategy of putting it in the drawer - it went in.
While I'm editing this episode (nearly a week after finding the nut) I see my video of the nut and my brain goes; hello... connect two and two.. one screw and one nut. Sure enough, there's the solution to the missing nut inside the solar briefcase. So that is quite literally 'case closed' on the missing nut.
Did you know you can Airstream at home?
Here's the deal. You don't want to coat the inside of your gray tank with oil salad dressing. So what you do, and obviously you could use paper plates and solve all of this, but at some point, you don't want to just keep using paper plates forever. Take your napkin and wipe all of the food residues off the plate. This then (showing a cleanly wiped plate) becomes all you have to clean with minimal water.
Once again, using nice china, instead of paper plates - wipe it all off with one napkin at the end. The oil is cleaned off. The plate goes in the sink, and that is how you can practice Airstreaming without leaving your home.
Little things matter to me like getting all of the extra factory a trimmings extra stuff you don't need yeah little things matter.
Angelina: What are you doing Daniel?
Daniel: Arnie has a tummy ache. He's a COVID baby. He's got irritable bowel syndrome. They forgot to glue the plumbing so the drain line... it's obviously not glued... see this? That's supposed to be connected. It's not glued. I have to reach back in there and glue it.
(2 hours later) not a single drop of water!
Yeah little things matter... like getting all the bug splatters off of your rock guard.
And little things matter probably because sometimes birds just have it in for you.
"Start by doing what's necessary then do what's possible and suddenly you are doing the impossible".
I hope that what you're catching about my strategy is that I'm using the popular interest in Airstreams to build a communication bridge to convey what I believe are deeply important principles on success that you can apply right now on your Personal Everest.
To demonstrate this: I'm in the Ford Studios now because Angelina is working in her office... but also because I'm going to need to break Strategy up into two episodes. What's coming in the next episode is a discussion about having an abundance mindset and not being locked into scarcity, as well as learning to speak the truth. In other words, seeing it the way it really is.
Thanks for joining me in getting out of Scotomaville. I'll see you next episode.
(closing scene)
We lose the Airstream in Scottsdale and then we find one in Albuquerque New Mexico. We drive all the way there and that doesn't work out. Then we finally found one in Oklahoma City. We stayed there for a month in a hotel waiting for things to come together. Meanwhile Daniel had his kidney stone... a lot of stuff happened that month in Oklahoma City...
[Music] okay that doesn't look right [music]
It's always better to take action - even if poorly executed - than to freeze and not act.