Today we are going to talk about ownership and what it means for different people. Tell me What You Own, I'll Tell You Who You are. It's fascinating how, your personal philosophy can impact your estate and material possessions. Oh also you might hear some birds in the background guys 🙂
So I started talking with this guy, while we were both getting physiotherapy.
He's from the Netherlands and I don't know how we ended up talking about this. I think the first thing we talked about was the concept of ownership. You know like owning a house and stuff like that.
Because he was asking me “oh dude how long have you been here and stuff and I've been here for two years and a half. I kind of like it and stuff”. And he was like “Oh so are you planning on living here? Like you know all your life or something? How long are you staying?” And I was like “dude I have absolutely no idea.
So you know for now I absolutely love this place. But you know it could be that one day I can decide to move. Right now I have zero plans of doing that. But you know you never know”.
And so I explained the reason why I'm just renting here. You know I didn't buy a house or anything. I'm just renting, so that means you know when I'm ready to leave I pack my stuff, half an hour, bam I'm out the door. And he was like “oh wow that's really interesting” because you know he has a hard time meeting people.
Yeah. It's not that that often that he meets people who have the same philosophy as him where you know in Europe, if you own a property or something then you are someone. If you don't then you failed. Right? Your life is a disgrace. And people live to buy something. Even if it means you know getting in debt for the next 40 years and suffer and stuff, you need to own because if you're a landlord that's it. Then you made it right. And I don't have that in me.
The dude was surprised was like “oh you know what. I don't often meet people prefer renting than buying stuff”. And we talked about this, that when you have this bug that you know that entrepreneurs have. And when you build all your business and your life and stuff around what you want to achieve, then you can have a very different life from other people.
Tell me What You Own, I'll Tell You Who You are.
And this principle is visible in every facets of your existence, of your life. And me for example my concept of having a choice and that freedom that I want is visible even in this specific area, where I don't want to be trapped in a house.
A lot of people tell you that you should buy this, you should buy that. Why are you renting this house? You're just wasting money. I'm like “No I'm not wasting money. I'm transforming that rent into my dream life and I am free as a bird. And the dude was actually surprised. He was he was telling me the same thing. He was like “well you know what. I do the same thing”.
I when I was traveling by myself was like OK well you know this is working well. I'm making enough money to not have to worry about anything. I'm quite happy about it. But that doesn't contribute to the planet. So am I actually making a valuable contribution to our planet and everything around me? And I realized that, well…not necessarily right?
So I wanted to do something for the planet. I didn't know what but I knew I wanted to do something for our planet. And I had this fantastic opportunity to invest in the piece of land on an island here in Indonesia. So it's not too far from Bali where I was able to buy some land. It's on a cliff and under that there is a private beach. I think it's like two hundred meters.
It's awesome. And the only way to get to that beach is to go through my But the reason why I bought it is not just to be able to say that I have a beach. No it's because I absolutely love turtles!
I wanted to be able to do something for turtles because, you know I realized you know what are you doing now, when you use plastic and stuff and it's thrown in the ocean, the turtles would actually eat it and they will die and stuff and there are other problems that we don’t actually consider is that turtles for example the gender of the turtle will be determined by the temperature of the sand.
The higher the temperature, the more females we have. And with global warming and stuff. The problem is that there is so many there. There will be way more females than males and eventually it’s going to be a big problem.
But anyway I absolutely love turtles and when I saw that beach I was like you know what? I would like to be able to create some sort of turtle sanctuary where I'll put some turtle eggs there and they'll just do whatever turtles do. I didn't buy the land to make a profit or anything.
It’s just for that particular dream that I have because I can go out with the smile on my face if I’m able to see baby turtles going to the water.
Yeah. So it was fascinating. So the session was like 45 minutes. It went lightning quick and at the same time it felt like forever because I was having a really interesting chat with someone I shared common ideas with. So that was pretty cool. We talked about how we travel.
So me, I travel less than I used to before. But for example when I was doing my round the world tour I wasn't trying to see everything you know because sometimes, you meet people who have their backpack and are running from one hotel to the other every two days or changing hotel and they want to see everything man. And I'm like “dude like slow down and you won't be able to see everything on this planet”. So you know take the time and enjoy it.
And that’s exactly what the guy told me. He was like “yeah you know what. I will stay there for like maybe six months at a time or stuff. And I try to get really understand the culture, talk to the locals and stuff like”. And I absolutely love this because you know when I was doing my round the world tour, instead of trying to put too many countries there, I decided to have like three big ones.
So I had three months in each place. And you might think that you're not going to see everything, but you can't. Nobody can. So don't try. Don't waste your time. You're going to stress yourself you're not going to enjoy the present moment.
So just stay there for like three months and then you discover the area for three months, get familiar with it and stuff and you can have an in-depth experience and then you move to some other region and then afterwards maybe you know in a few years you can come back if you like some area. You can come back to explore more. And that's what I did and it was really awesome you know.
And it was really cool that the dude told me the same thing.
So that was my day today. It was really interesting and this is something I really like about this place because I think you can do that everywhere on the planet, but in other places, we just forget how enriching it is to talk to people and just we just assume that other people are out to get us or nobody wants to talk to one another. But when you talk to people then you know you uncover some really cool things.
