Home is where the… Prosecco is?

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Michael

Bellissima Italia.

I’ve been back in the mothercountry since June 1st and so far, so amazing.

I was expecting nothing more from this trip than a couple of dinners with my family members and maybe a day trip to Venice to show my girlfriend one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but over the last 5 days  I’ve discovered much more.

I think in all of my  European travels over the past 8 years I have found that the place I have been visiting since I was 2 years old is very possibly the paradise I’ve been looking for.  And I’ve only realized that through the eyes of my girlfriend Kate, the English-Canadian who knows maybe 3 words in Italian but has endured an onslaught of Italian conversations and house-to-house visits like a pro.

Castelfranco, Veneto is a decently sized city that inhabits dozens of small towns and a reasonably busy downtown area.  It’s the only place I’ve seen, noted by Kate, where you can live completely in the country but still only live 5 minutes away from a full service mall, grocery store, and enough restaurants and pubs to always have a destination for dates and social gatherings.

On top of this Castelfranco is within a reasonable driving distance of all sorts of places:

  • Asiago -the home of the cheese and nestled into a ski-village type of town in the Dolomites (90min drive)
  • Verona- the home of Romeo and Juliet (75min drive)
  • Venice – the city on water (60min drive)
  • Bassano Del Grappa – at the base of Mount Grappa (30min)
  • Caorla – the Adriatic  sea resort town famous for their restaurants and family getaway apartments
  • Jesolo- the “daytona beach”  party town on the Adriatic for those fun hot summer nights
  • Lake Garda (2-3hr drive)

And MANY MANY More…

Castelfranco is also a 3hr train from from Florence and Milan (in opposite directions) and a 4-5hr train ride from Rome.

All of this wrapped into a city that in and of itself is rather perfect to live in.

I’ve spent the last few days traveling to most of the above places in between having some of the best meals while gathering with some of the most important people in my life.

Each trip back to Italy (and Europe in general I suppose) has brought another touch of knowledge and experience into my life that has continued to make me a better and more inspired person.   Spending so much time walking around a continent that is a living window into the past easily puts life’s (see: north american) trivialities into perspective.

I think the more time I spend in Europe the less taste I have for any beach centric (caribbean) vacations in excess of 1-2 weeks. I really just don’t know what I would do with myself there for longer.  I’ve always been an “on the go” type of traveller; new places, new people, new cultures, and new discoveries.

I can’t describe to you how much fun I have had improving my Italian and stoically hacking my way through Spanish while living in Barcelona.

And my all-time best days during my time in Italy has been when we’ve spent a full day of walking through the streets of some historical city, and arrived back home close to midnight with enough energy left to slide in and out of the shower and collapse on the bed in full surrender to a self-induced coma for the next 8 hours.

Staying in Castelfranco has been such an adventure. I FINALLY drove a car in Italy and I couldn’t have loved it anymore.  I rented a Fiat 500 for 5 days and drove to and from Venice, all over Castelfranco visiting relatives, and then 2 hours into the mountain for an amazing day in Asiago. What an adventure.

I really didn’t have anything meaningful nor poetic to say in this post, but all I can say, is that anyone planning an extended trip abroad must seriously think twice about highly considering Europe as their destination.

Italy in particular has enough incredibly fun and meaningful destinations to keep your experience meter running off the charts for years if you’ve got the time. And if you have someone fun and meaningful to share it with…. well, then there’s even more reason to get yourself here.

Its hard to spend an extended period of time in a place like Italy and not have their passion for food, love, and living rub off on you in a most positive way.  I have been to Veneto (a region in Italy) well over a dozen times, and each time I’ve found a new place to visit, new things to learn and a feeling of belonging that is hard to match anywhere else.

Viva Il Veneto!

Categories: What I'm doing... | Leave a comment

Better Today than Yesterday

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Michael

Lately I’ve been consuming a lot of articles and information on personal motivation, entrepreneurial drive, and just gathering as many perspectives as I can on how successful business owners continue to strive in both their personal and professional lives.  Basically, how do they get up every morning and keep on task and focus when in business there are so many avenues you can take every day.

I had the opportunity to meet and have dinner with a very successful online marketer who happened to be in Barcelona a couple weeks ago. He was in the middle of a 2 month European trip with his wife, four kids, and his parents… all of which, he was paying for.  Pretty amazing!

The common theme that came from this marketer as well as those various articles I’ve been reading is that exercising your personal will power
is one of the most important things we can do in life to be more successful and to me, even from a cognitive standpoint, this makes complete sense.

Unless we train ourselves otherwise, each of us will involuntarily move into the path of least resistance. None of us want to acknowledge critisicm and most people don’t have a lot of real interest in making themselves into a better person than they were yesterday.

There is an overwhelming feeling to take the easy road (sleep in, avoid the gym, blame someone else, do less work, etc.)

Well its time for me (and all of us for that matter) to close that road to future traffic.

Not everything we do in life should be difficult, we need balance, but life shouldn’t be a breeze either. What a boring existence.   Imagine waking up everyday and it was just merely a slight alteration to the day before.  Yaaaaaaaawn!  Where’s the excitement? Where’s the celebration?

Most people seem to get their only excitement through the achievements of others (like their kids, favourite sports team, political party), its easier.
This apathy, I think, is also why gambling is such a profitable business throughout the world. People are just looking for a little excitement, a way to spice up their life with a chance at something more… without having to actually try anything challenging.

Gamblers aren’t placing their bets because they really want to have $50,000 more of savings in their account.  They want the feeling that money brings and the opportunities for fun and stress reduction the windfall would mean to their lives.  Something different from the past 1465 days of real-life reruns.

So to avoid sending my biographical series into reruns as well I’ve decided that doing something everyday that I would prefer not to do is in my best interest for a more productive future.  That’s my hypothesis, so I’ma test it out.

I’ve decided I am going to be blogging a lot more (not everyday, but at least once a week) because writing/blogging, somewhere along the lines started to scare me. Still does for some reason.  Putting myself out there as brashly as I once had, at some point,  became a lot more scary and I began overthinking the consequences to the point of turning myself into all of those naysayers out there that I can’t stand to listen to.  All the negative nancys that have 101 reasons why every idea anyone ever has won’t work .   And I can tell you that I have personally met dozens and dozens of people that are making millions of dollars and living incredible lives proving people like that wrong. The best ideas are always met with a steady stream of people telling you, “nah, that’ll never work.”

To start on this quest of challenging myself, a few months ago I also decided to start going to the gym a lot more and I have successfully been going at least 3x a week for a while now, even while Barcelona, so that’s been amazing.

But my main struggle is waking up at the same time everyday and getting more “business work” done, so these challenges are certainly a work in progress.

There are 3-4 projects that I have open right now that have serious TO-DO lists with up side potential of hundreds of thousands of dollars for me if I see them through to completion, and I flat out just haven’t been as focused and dedicated as I should be and that has to stop…. today.

I can make excuses, and I can cry bloody murder to everyone I see, but it doesn’t change the fact that I am the one ultimately responsible. If I have known distractions in my life keeping me from being more successful, I can get rid of them. If I think being in Spain is an issue, I can fly home.  If I think the chair I am sitting in sucks (which it does), I can buy another one.

All of the factors keeping me from successful escaping the 9-5 lifestyle forever are easily at my grasp and avoiding that reality is challenge #1.

When we take the path of least resistance,  we not only avoid doing things in life that would make us better people, but I think inadvertently we also avoid taking responsibility, I mean full accountability, of who we are and  in what ways we are not living up to the people we should be.

So with that being said….  my blog is written for today, the gym I will be hitting today at 6pm, and I have spanish class at 4pm (new language within the next couple years is a big goal that is proving difficut).

I wish  anyone else that wants to make themselves better, strong, smarter, faster, and more resilient, all the luck in the world, and if there is anyway I can help you, just let me know.

Good luck!

Categories: Improve your life | Leave a comment

Dear “Doctors”: McDonald’s makes me happy, not fat.

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Michael

It never gets boring for me to see people that have spent over ten years of their life in school studying  human anatomy, biology,
and health totally miss the ball when it comes to the simplest things regarding weight loss, health, and accountability.

If you read this link — > HERE

Its an article about how McDonald’s recently received a letter from 550 health experts (and that term should be used loosely at best), trying to “order” McDonald’s to stop marketing to kids, stop offering Happy Meals with toys and basically blaming McDonad’s for the obesity epidemic around the world.

Now, I’m no “Doctor” per se, but in my entire life, I can’t recall seeing anyone under 15 buy something from McDonald’s on their own. And if they did, they were ordering an ice cream, or maybe a hamburger, but certainly not an extra large combo twice a day.

Is it maybe possible that this is the parents fault? Of course not, because that might mean people have to assume a role of personal responsibility instead of just passing the blame onto a giant corporation and letting their ignorant children run their lives.

And by the way, a cheeseburger Happy Meal only has 550 calories in it, hardly a recipe for childhood obesity on its own.

Martin Katahn, Ph.D., mentioned in his very succesful 1982 book, The 200 Calorie Solution, a daily menu based on standard servings by McDonald’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken that would amount to not more than 1984 calories. His comment: healthy – no, but fattening also no.

I’m sure it’s these same group of “experts” that forced Weight Watchers to change their scoring system so that now WW clients can eat as many fruits and vegetables as they want, ignoring the calorie count because these are “healthy foods”. (sorry for all the qutoations, but its gotta be done.)

So now, surprise surprise, Weight Watchers has a lot less people losing weight than they have in the past.  If you’re a 5’4 woman and you think you can eat all of the vegetables and fruits, you run the risk of overeating on this policy.

For example, usually health “experts” tell you how amazing Avocados are for fat burning,  this is bullshit, but that’s besides the point.    An calories in a cup of avocado slides is 234 calories.  If you eat two cups, which is easy, you’ve just put pack almost 500 calories that you are not accounting for (double this for figure for guacamole).  And a miscalculation like this over a period of months in a 5’4 woman, and that is easily the difference between a bikini body and the big girl’s store.

The entire planet, (yes, planet), would be better off if we all accepted the fact that calories matter. No matter how much we wish they didn’t.  And that a clown in funny hair, or a new Shrek toy  has never, and will never swing more influence over a kid than his/her lazy, apathetic parents.

Not to mention we are somehow now to a point in society where now even Doctors don’t understand simple economics.

If McDonald’s customers started buying less of their incredibly delicious food, they would be FORCED to change their menu and company in a different direction.  McDonald’s has already done this in Europe as many locations have closed in Italy due to…. wait for it…. a lack of customers.   If McDonald’s customers were all like me, for example, McDonald’s would be in trouble. Because I seriously LOVE McDonald’s,.  I love their Double Cheeseburgers, and their milkshakes, and their gloriously delicious baked pies, the list goes on and on: BUT I rarely eat there.  At most I eat there twice a month, and its at most two items on the menu and typically their cheap menu.

But clearly, Mickey D’s typical customer is not me…

Take a look at this for example:

“McDonald’s food has been under fire for years, to no apparent effect on its bottom line. McDonald’s shares have risen by more than 120% in the last five years, which is well above the Dow’s improvement of less than 20%. During the same period, its earnings and sales have moved higher, and McDonald’s has returned billions of dollars to investors via share buybacks and dividends. The stock currently has a yield of 3%. Same-store sales at the chain were up 6% in April, which beat Wall Street’s estimates.”

Maybe if these 550 health “experts” would spend more time with their own children and teaching them about personal responsibility and the importance of energy (caloric intake) balance and exercise as it relates to a healthy life, the next generation would be the one influencing McDonald’s future menus.

Instead, these doctors think its a more noble use of their time to spend their days writing nonsensical letters to arguable the world’s most successful restaurant franchise of all-time by trying to turn it into a non-profit salad bar.

I wonder how long until these experts get together and try to get gelato banned from Italy.

Categories: News, Weight Loss | Leave a comment