Hiking in Paradise

Last weekend I hiked the Na’Pali coast by myself.  I’ve never camped alone before and it just seemed like a great way to meditate and center myself.  The Na’Pali Coast is on the north side of Kauai and the 11 mile hike to the beach at the end of the trail, Kalalau, is considered one of the most beautiful in the world.  It’s also a really hard trek to do in one day, with thousand foot drop offs on a one foot wide path and over 5000 feet of elevation change.  I didn’t have a lot of time, so I hiked in all 11 miles last Friday, stayed the day Saturday, and hiked back all Sunday.

When I got back I was exhausted.  It’s taken me three days just to recover.  In the meantime, although I’ve been roughly sticking to my diet, I haven’t been religiously tracking like I usually do.  I don’t think I realized how much effort all this tracking takes till now.  I totally felt burnt out these last three days.  My take away: when you try to do too much, even of the things you love, you’ll likely overwhelm yourself and get less done in the long run.  I lost three days of productivity because I crammed a five day hike into three days.

That being said, the hike was amazing.  Kalalau is the most beautiful place on the planet.  Check out the amazing photos from the Na’Pali Coast and, of course, a video of the hike…

If it was easy, everyone would do it

Yesterday I hung out with Henk Rogers who controls the Tetris video game. We took a ride in his brand new Tesla. It was AWESOME.

Henk was the co-founder and lead investor of my last company, iLovePhotos. He’s been a major inspiration in my life and truly embodies the rags to riches story (at one time he worked as a cabbie).

Growing up in a poor family with eight siblings, Henk got into computers and video games early in the 80s. He went to the University of Hawaii just so that he could take the computer related courses and have access to all the equipment. Once he took all the classes, he dropped out.

At the time he hunkered down and wrote the first role playing game in Japan called The Black Onyx. After a brief stumble, the game turned out to be a massive hit. As his company grew, he travelled the world looking for games to publish and came across Tetris. The Tetris licensing story is, itself, worthy of a James Bond movie. Lots of Soviet agencies and multi-national companies vied to prevent Henk from obtaining rights to the game. Henk become good friends with the actual creator of Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov, and struck a deal with Nintendo. Through sheer perseverance and audacity he was able to gradually secure all the rights to the game over a span of 20 years.

Now, of course, Tetris is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and is the most popular casual game in the world (even Google recently celebrated it’s 25th Anniversary). It’s easy to write it off as luck. But consider how many games are created each year and just how simple Tetris is – colorful falling blocks that form lines. The funny thing about luck is just how much work it takes. Henk has spent the last 25 years making Tetris into a “lucky” global phenomenon.

A couple years ago, I was really struggling with some issues at the company. I asked Henk for some advice and he said, “if it was easy, everyone would do it.” I remember that line every time I encounter a challenge.

Daily Diet 06/23/09

It’s pretty challenging eating 6 – 8 times a day.  I think the hardest part is staying creative about what to eat.  When I get lazy, I just stick to sandwiches.  Lots and lots of sandwiches and wraps.  Today I was lazy, but I came up with an awesome wrap: whole wheat tortilla bread, sliced chicken strips, hummus, chopped tomatoes and onion.  About 250 cals total and super healthy and filling.  By the way, I generally don’t record low calorie vegetables unless I eat a large amount.  They’re usually just 10 – 20 cals.

Body bugg says I burned 2727 calories today.  I’m going to have to disagree.  I didn’t wear it for about 7 hours today between 5 and 12 pm.  I would expect that the BB would take my historical daily average to compute what I most likely burned when I don’t wear it.  Instead it flat lines my caloric output to pretty much sleep level.  Not very user friendly.

Calories out: 2727, Calories in: 3188, Protein: 352g, Carbs: 304g, Fat: 69g

Continue reading Daily Diet 06/23/09

Daily Stats 06/23/09

Eddie and I had an awesome workout today.  We went with Trevor’s workout plan, focusing on light weight to get the movements right.  It’s humbling, but my body is thanking me for it every step of the way.

If you look at the heart rate chart, even though it’s light weight I’m still pushing my body really hard.  My heart almost hit 170 BPM on the one legged lunges.

Here’s the workout we did:

Where there’s a will, there’s a way!

Tonight I had dinner with my good friends Djuan and Brandon – two very awesome people.  Djuan is on a quest to climb seven peaks on seven continents.  He was one of the first people to go skydiving over Everest.  It’s called HALO jumping – high altitude, low opening.  Crazy.

The real story is that of his nephew Brandon.  A year ago Brandon was seriously overweight at 375 lbs.  Djuan staged an intervention and brought Brandon to Hawaii to get him back in shape.  They made a commitment to each other (they actually signed a document!): Brandon was going to get his weight back to normal, Djuan would take care of everything Brandon needed to get that done.  6 months later, Brandon has lost over 100 lbs.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Brandon’s also an awesome cook.  He made chicken breast with lightly sauteed tomatos, mushroom, and spinach for a total of 350 calories.

Fear of Failure

I’m sitting here, struggling with writers block. It’s so easy to come up with excuses why not to do something – even when you really want to do it. The more daunting a goal is, the easier it becomes to push it off indefinitely. I’ve been thinking about actively blogging for years. Every time I actually sit down to write my mind goes blank. Yet when I’m not behind a computer, I think of all the awesome things I want to write about.

Leaving Blue Lava, I knew I wanted to figure out a way to inspire people to follow their heart and live their dreams. That’s my dream – to make a difference in other people’s lives. I’m amazed at how many people aren’t doing exactly what they want to be doing. I’m amazed that I have so much trouble doing exactly what I want to be doing – even something as simple as blogging regularly. I think it’s easier to do things you don’t really care about. You’re not afraid of failing.

Fear is a powerful emotion. Fear of failure stops you from even trying. If you try, you might fail. If it’s not that important to you, who cares?

But consider this – what will hurt more: living an entire life you’re not entirely happy with or failing a few times in the short term only to live your dreams? It doesn’t matter if you want to be a writer, a fortune 500 executive, a small business entrepreneur, a musician, or an engineer. If you want to reach your full potential – if you’re going to truly do what you want to do – you’ll most likely fail a few times along the way. And that’s okay. Your ability to digest failure and learn from it is what makes you powerful. In fact, it’s not failure at all. It’s learning.

Change your perspective. Fight fear with fear. What are you more afraid of than failing at your current goals (your _real_ goals)? For me, it’s waking up when I’m fifty to realize that I haven’t accomplished anything meaningful. Man, that keeps me up at night. Think about what will happen in the long term if you don’t follow your heart. That should keep you up at night too.