I just had an out of body experience … in Byron Bay no less.
Let me explain.
My yoga-loving, vegetarian wife announced that for the school holidays she’d snagged cheap Jetstar flights and an ‘amazing’ Airbnb that’s usually booked out.
(We avoid staying in hotels. Mostly because we’re a family of six, which means we have to book two hotel rooms, and partly because our five-year-old has learnt that he can pick up the phone, hit the button for in-room dining, and yell “hamburger”).
When we arrived we found it was off a tiny backstreet, and the driveway was like parking on the side of Uluru. It was such a dicey incline that all the kids fell silent for the first time on the trip. I grabbed a brick as a chock against the rental car.
It was a quintessential 80s beach shack: three small bedrooms, a pokey bathroom with salmon tiles, and a dishwasher that was older than my wife. IKEA everything. Yet its one saving grace was that it was directly across the road from the beach, and perched high enough that we had uninterrupted views of the ocean. Koom. Bah. Yah.
After a few days of beach action with the kids, I did what everyone does when they’re on holidays: I started looking at real estate prices. How much would this little shack cost to buy?
A quick google showed the place had sold for a bit over $1 million in the late nineties.
Then it changed hands again a few years ago.
Guess for how much?
Not $5 million …
Not $10 million …
It sold for $23 million.
Holy Hector!
To my finance brain it was like tucking into a bowl of magic mushies. I was left dazed and confused.
Then again, that’s actually the perfect mindset for Byron.
Each day my kids and I would walk into town and get an alkaline-organic-goji-berry-smoothie. On our last visit we had the ultimate Byron experience: an old hippie hit us up while we were waiting in line.
“Do you have a dream?” he asked the kids.
They just stared at him the same way my sheepdog looks at the robot mower – with an equal mix of fascination and confusion.
For the next five minutes he explained to them that thoughts are vibrations, and that if you can visualise a goal with enough emotional intensity then you can achieve it.
My five-year-old was all ears. After all, he’s been trying to manifest a PeeWee 50 motorbike for months.
As we all walked back to our $23 million beach shack, my eldest asked me if the old hippie was on to something. “Can you really bring goals into life just by believing them, Dad?”
“It depends on what you want, mate”, I said. “I’ve achieved many big goals in my life, but truthfully they haven’t made me that much happier. I just tend to move on to the next goal.”
The Stoics worked this out 2,000 years ago. And they had a brutally effective technique to find true happiness … though it would have absolutely horrified the old hippie:
Negative visualisation.
It’s the exact opposite of goal setting – it’s picturing really awful things happening to you – like getting ill, losing your job, or losing a loved one.
Why the hell would you do that?
Because it makes you appreciate what you actually have.
That night, as I tucked my dirt-bike-wanting Hamburglar into bed, for a brief moment I contemplated the horrible thought that he might not wake up the next morning.
And when he ran into our bedroom at the crack of dawn and launched himself on me, I wasn’t on my phone pining over $23 million beach shacks. I gave him a big squeezy cuddle.
Goal achieved.
Tread Your Own Path!