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How To Find Alternative Solutions To Overcome Challenges With Nick McGowan
“If an obstacle pops up, you can either get really upset, pissed off about it, or you can look around it, get around it, and figure out what else is there.”
In this episode, Nick discusses the importance of patience and overcoming obstacles. He emphasizes the power of storytelling and practical examples in understanding how to overcome challenges and shares a personal story about dealing with the heat in their tiny house and how they found alternative solutions.
What to listen for:
“When you see a situation that comes up and you think ‘I couldn’t,’ I want you to actually ask yourself, ‘How could I?’
“Most times that smaller step, that starting step is just asking ‘How can we?’ instead of ‘I can’t’ or ‘I don’t know how to, and therefore I won’t.’”
About Nick McGowan
I’m Nick McGowan, entrepreneur, podcaster, and mental health advocate, and I’ve been on a 20+ year journey of personal development, learning to master my mindset, emotions, and the art of living with purpose.
As a Mindset and Self-Mastery Mentor, I work with ambitious men and women who want to live their most authentic and joyous life, by helping them master their mindset, emotional awareness, and authentic communication. My mission is to empower people to lead lives that feel aligned, grounded, and truly their own.
Throughout my career, I’ve built teams, streamlined systems, and improved client experiences across SaaS, media, marketing, and personal development spaces. Whether I’m leading cross-functional projects, optimizing SEO, Podcasting, designing strategies, or guiding clients through transformation, I bring a hands-on, solution-focused approach to everything I do.
I’m also the host of The Mindset and Self-Mastery Show, where my guests and I unpack the stories that shape us, challenge us, and ultimately guide us back to who we are at our core. On this show, we uncover the secret gems others have discovered through trial, error, and breakthroughs so you can fast-track your growth, and master your mindset on your pursuit toward self-mastery.
With years of podcasting and two decades of marketing experience, I’ve mastered the storytelling, interview flow, strategy, and technical production that elevate a podcast from “just content” to something truly impactful. Whether you’re a leader looking to amplify your message, or a seasoned speaker and podcast host looking to sharpen your edge or even a beginner who is wondering how to share their message, I mentor thought leaders through every step of having the conversation they’re here to have on this planet.
So, what message are you here to share?!
Resources:
Check out these other episodes about managing and limiting negative thinking
Interested in starting your own podcast or need help with one you already have? Send Nick an email or schedule a time to discuss your podcast today!
Thank you for listening!
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Watch Clips and highlights: www.youtube.com/channel/UCk1tCM7KTe3hrq_-UAa6GHA
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Your Friends at “The Mindset & Self-Mastery Show”
Click To View The Episode Transcript
Nick McGowan (00:03.746)
Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan and today on the show, I’m gonna talk about patience and getting over obstacles. I really thought about what the topic would be that we’re gonna get into, cause it’s much deeper than that. And I wanted to be able to say it that way because I think there are certain times where at least myself, I’ll hear people talk about things and they sound really surfacey. And I’m like, I don’t really wanna hear this surface level bullshit.
I want to hear practical things. And we as humans really love stories. It’s why we watch TV. It’s why we read books. It’s why we listen to true crime and everything else that we listen to that has a story to it. And we’ve been telling stories since we were Neanderthals around a campfire or trying to figure out how to plant or, you know, anything, I guess, in Neanderthal world. But we are really
led by stories because there are little packages that explain how a situation worked out in a certain way and their morals to it. There are just so many things that you can tighten up within a story instead of just saying, Hey, here’s this piece of information. But when I think about when people will say getting over obstacles or being present or just loving what you’re doing or anything like that, they can be nice little quips and little things you can kind of take and put in your pocket and remember down the road or.
recall and say, this makes me feel good. I really want to talk about a practical situation that recently happened. And again, I think the story has some components to it that will help you understand how in your own life you can do things like this as well. And I like to be able to talk about any situation that happens in my life, not as a, look at me. It’s just, I realized this and I want to be able to share it with you.
That’s also why we have the platform here that we do with the mindset and self mastery show. So being present, being able to get past obstacles, being able to see obstacles, being able to be patient at different times can be really easy things to talk about. Like I can say in a moment where somebody would rob me or something of that sort that I could
Nick McGowan (02:26.634)
be patient, could be calm, I could be cool and collected. But as you’ve probably heard me say on the podcast and different episodes, we never know what’s gonna happen in those situations. You might be a superhero, somebody’s trying to rob you, you might get shot and die and that might be the end of it. You might also just piss your pants, shit yourself and just sit in the corner and cry. You don’t know until you’re in that spot. And I do think that your character shows up in those moments, but it’s also what we do within those moments.
that allow us down the road to be able to look back and say, okay, I saw what I did. I see where I can change or adjust or whatever. And I’m gonna make those changes starting today and giving yourself grace. And again, being present and patient and getting past those obstacles. So here’s a story time. There was an obstacle that my partner and I realized last year. So for those of you that don’t know,
We have a renovated fifth wheel camper that is our tiny house that we absolutely love. And we have it parked in the foothills of a mountain. We love the area that we’re in. We love the tiny house. We love the life that we have, but there are certain things where just like any house, things can get messed up or something can break or not be the exact way you want it. So last summer where we live is in the desert.
And last summer, it got really, really hot, you know, like it does in the desert, but it got really, really hot for our tiny house to be able to handle all the heat and all the air and the electricity that we’re using. We run our business from our house. We can really run our business from anywhere with our laptops. So we’ll be at home during the summer, the AC is on, maybe we’ll run the microwave to, you know, heat up some food.
We have our laptops on, maybe there’s music going on. There are just different things that are plugged in and just zapping energy from it. Last year, maybe around July or so, it started to get over 95 degrees just consistently. Our tiny house couldn’t really handle that. And we don’t look at that and say, well, this is trash. We got to get rid of this house. We have looked at, can we change the electrical system? For those of you that have an RV,
Nick McGowan (04:54.013)
or have a camper, you know that that can be kind of a monster. And it doesn’t always fix the problem. If you jump from one amperage to the next, the wiring in there isn’t the same and potentially needs to be changed. If not, it could be a fire and tiny houses like that. Those things can go up really quickly. So we don’t want that at all. So let’s just put that to the side. So here we are last July, August, it’s getting hot.
the AC is going and we’re doing all right. We’re doing work and we’re enjoying life. And then boom, everything just shuts off. At first it was like, well, that kind of sucks. Let me try to fix this thing. What is it? And I just popped the breaker back on and we were good to go for about 10 minutes. And then it popped again. And this happened for a few days. And it got to the point where it was more so frustrating that it was getting hot. And we were worried that something was happening with the house.
So we said, all right, well, we can run our business from anywhere with our laptops. So let’s grab our laptops. Let’s go to a local cafe or a restaurant. Just basically hang out, do some work. We’ll get dinner or late lunch and then we’ll come back and it’ll be cool enough because it’ll be night. That was our thought. So between the hours of maybe two, three o ‘clock in the afternoon until seven, seven 30 in the afternoon or evening at that point for a few weeks.
is what we needed to do. We would try a few times last summer to be able to stick it out, but maybe an hour past when it had happened before, boom, the breaker would pop again. So we were like, we’ll just go out to the restaurant, we’ll go hang out. And at one point we both looked at each other and said, you know what, screw this. There’s gotta be another way to go about it. There’s gotta be a way to be able to either remedy the situation in the house or
we go somewhere else. And that’s where this story per se really comes into play. Because when you think about situations like that, easy things that are happening, if it’s like, you need to take the trash out, there are also trash bags under the sink. Let’s just use that as an example. And you can think, okay, well, I’m gonna take the trash out. Where does the trash go? And how do I replace the bag? it’s under the sink. This takes all of minutes.
Nick McGowan (07:15.082)
maybe 10 minutes at most, depending on where your trash can is or whatever. But little situations like that, you can tell how it’s gonna go. In a situation like your house can’t handle the electrical amount that it needs to keep it at a sustainable level for humans to be in there and not just dripping sweat or in a sauna, then you have some questions and some things to consider. Do we get out of the house? Do we get rid of the house?
Do we try to change the amperage out? Again, those are problems that, there are problems that come with that. Or do we go travel? What do we do? And we started to ask ourselves, what are the things that we can do? And I really love to be able to go through situations, then unpack things. It’s sort of a sadist thing within myself where I like to look back and go, how could I have done this differently? But also being able to use those times to not beat myself up.
But to understand that I could beat myself up, like putting myself back into the ring to go, all right, pass Nick, how could you have done this differently? Without judgment, without shame, but still working through what happened. How did you handle this in that situation, in that time? And granted, there were a few times where I got pretty upset and frustrated because you can’t stay in your house. It’s hot. And it was really hot a few times and frustrating because the internet was out or we would go to a cafe and the internet was slow.
And we had to have phone calls and we had to have podcast interviews and client meetings and just stuff. And that flustered me at different times. My partner on the other hand, sees different obstacles that come her way and almost just swiftly moves to the other side or the other direction of where the problem was to be able to look at something else. And I really appreciate that about her.
She does it in life, she does it in business, she does it with us, she does it in many different ways. And I look at that and I think that’s a beautiful thing because then we can be present in that moment. You can also adjust and pivot to be able to figure out where do I go from here? What happens? So last year when we were going through all the situation with the house, let’s say, and the heat and trying to figure out what we do,
Nick McGowan (09:37.021)
We figured, well, we’re not gonna get rid of the house, because the whole plan for the house is to be able to have the house, find land that we want, put that house on the land, build the house that we want, and then use that tiny house as a guest home, a little getaway, a little writing area, a little office, something of that sort. So it’s part of the plan. So we can’t remove that from the plan. And we don’t want to at all. But to think through those things logically is important to go, well, what can change?
couldn’t change, what do we not want to change, et cetera, et So we knew we were gonna keep the house because again, that’s part of the major part of the plan. And we couldn’t change the amperage. That would cost a lot of money if we wanted to do it. And maybe we’ll do that down the road, just keep the shell of the house, but change out all the electrical and all of that. I don’t wanna suspend the 40, 50, 60 grand, whatever that’s gonna be just for that, just for the summer months.
That just doesn’t really make sense to me. I’d rather put that toward a piece of land or something that’s specifically for the business or something else. So we figured we could just travel. How about that? What if we just travel and the thoughts start to come up of how do we do it? How much money do we need? Where are we going to go? What is this going to look like? I always like to see the silver lining in things. And I start to nerd out about stuff where I’m like, my God, if we’re going to travel.
What cool things can we see? What situations can we go through? Like, where can we drive through that’s sort of out of the way, but such a cool spot to go to and just all this different stuff. Also on the other hand, I think, shit, how are we gonna get around? What needs to be done to our vehicle to be able to do that? What else do we need for the trip? What are the things that we need that we’re not gonna have for X amount of time that we’re out? What does it look like for us to make money while we’re out?
How can we consistently make money while we’re out? What does it look like for our team? What does it look like for our clients? What does it look like for our podcasts, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So there can be frustration that comes with all of that. But the point of this whole episode is to be able to talk about being present, being patient, and being able to look at other options and not just obstacles. So in a very black and white way.
Nick McGowan (11:59.217)
When we were thinking about this last year, it was one of those situations like that could be really cool, but it wasn’t tangible yet. It didn’t really become tangible until maybe this past spring. But as we were thinking about it and we were talking about it here and there, at the same time, Stephanie’s still going through health issues and there are still health things that were holding her back from being able to live the life that she wanted.
by going out camping, hiking, and doing all the things that she absolutely loves to do. So we need to be mindful of that too. Therefore, we needed to be mindful of elevation as she heals. And where we live, we’re about, let’s say, 6 ,000 feet in the air above sea level. Anything more than that can really affect a person. Their oxygen intake, neurological issues, there’s just a lot of stuff that can go along with that. You get closer to sea level,
Some of those things can get better. So we were thinking we could travel and we could go do all these things, let’s say. And like, there was nothing in that bucket of things to do yet, but I had thought, well, if we travel, probably gonna have to Airbnb. Maybe we can get hotels every once in a while, but we’re not the hotel type. We’d rather not stay in a hotel if we don’t have to. We’d rather be in a home or an Airbnb or something that.
Feels better than a hotel. I mean, let’s be honest, we’ve all been in hotel rooms or you’re like, eh, it’s a bed, bathroom, whatever. No, there’s that are nice and sweets and all of that. But if you’re going to spend the money on that, we’d rather have a house or we’d have some land that we can stay on for a little bit. So we thought we’d Airbnb. We would travel around. And I thought it’s probably going to cost us conservatively seven to 10 grand over the course of, let’s say, just the summer. If we left in June.
all of July, all of August and came back in September. That was the black and white version of that. It’s like we can spend that money knowing that we have our business and we have money that’s coming in and we have other things that we’re working on and also at the same time we’re building our business and there’s more money that can come in. But we can’t just live on magical thinking of, well if I just go out there and just push and just give all the money away or whatever, it’s all gonna come back to us.
Nick McGowan (14:27.29)
We believe totally in being able to
rely on your energetics and especially rely on your intuition, but to not be stupid about it and not be reckless with it. So the thought was it’s going to cost us, let’s just say 10 grand to be able to do this over the course of a few months. Okay. If that’s the case and we get to travel around, then so be it. I’m sure some of you listened to this episode and think, my God, 10 grand. I spent that on my vacation last year and it was no big deal and it was two weeks.
Others might listen to this and think, my God, 10 grand. I’ve, I’ve needed 10 grand or I’ve wanted 10 grand for so long. The money isn’t really the thing. It’s just the piece of that obstacle that goes along with it. And we looked at that obstacle and thought, well, we can go on this trip, whatever this trip is going to look like, and we can spend this money. And we hadn’t really budgeted for that. It was earlier in the year. So we’re thinking we could budget for it, but at the same time,
What are ways that we can go around that? Now want to pause for a second because there have been a few different times in my life where I’ve done something where I’ve heard people say, I couldn’t, I never could. I couldn’t imagine. I can’t even think about how to begin with that sort of stuff. And for the most part, that looks bigger and scarier than it actually was. I remember back to when I moved to Portland, Oregon.
2016 or 15 or 16, went out for a trip, came back, and within three weeks was on my way to Oregon to live there, then stayed there for a little over a year. But I remember meeting with friends and colleagues and just different people I was networking with and all. And we had kind of a going away, a couple of them. One for the networking group I was with, one for
Nick McGowan (16:26.214)
an old company and just different people, different groups. And I want to say seven out of 10 people I talked to that actually admitted that there was some thought that they had about doing something like this. Most of them said they couldn’t in some, some way or the other. They couldn’t, they couldn’t think about it. They couldn’t imagine. And there was jealousy, admiration in certain ways. Like, man, that’s really cool that you’re doing that.
But I could sense jealousy of like, I don’t even know what that would look like or how we’d go about doing that or the bunch of excuses that would come out. But I’ve got a job and I’ve got kids and we’ve got bills and we’ve got this and that and blah, blah. And yes, all those things are true. And granted, I don’t have children and I’m not going to have kids and I’ve got a bit more freedom in that sort of way. And I understand that I’m not just tossing privilege around in that sort of way. I understand that.
There is that. And even at this moment, Stephanie and I do not have pets. So we have a bit more freedom to be able to move around. But there are ingredients to all of this. that, those two pieces are part of the ingredients to what we have is our recipe of what do we do? How do we move around? And how do we get out of this tiny house while it’s hella hot and it’s messing up the breaker and it’s messing with our day? What do we do?
So again, we thought we could Airbnb and we could spend a bunch of money. I’ve already said that a few times. So just keep that locked in. At that point, I remember thinking like, shit, there’s going to be a bunch of money. There’s a lot to do. There’s a lot of stuff to get ready and where are we going to go? What are we going to do? And in the back of my mind, it’s still there. Like we have a bunch of money that we need to spend out for this. Now, no matter how much money you make, 10 grand isn’t something to just, I don’t know, piss away, let’s say.
Even billionaires, that’s still a sizable amount of money in some sort of way. And we’re looking at that and saying like, well, it’s absolutely doable. It’s something we could do, but how do we not do it that specific way? What are the other options? And instead of getting frustrated or being really, concerned about finding another option, cause if we don’t,
Nick McGowan (18:50.338)
Then we’re stuck doing this other thing or stuck not doing anything at all. And being in that spot where we go, I couldn’t even, I have no idea. Therefore I don’t. So when we had talked about spending the money to be able to travel around, we started to think about what are the other options? Are there friends? Are there family members? Are there places that we can hang out? Are there hostels? I just started to go through that next layer.
of trying to figure the thing out and be resourceful and still keeping to what is true to us. We knew that we didn’t want to be deep in a city. We really don’t want to be in the suburbs. We wanted to be somewhere in the country or be near water, be near trees, have wildlife that’s around us. We wanted to experience things. We also don’t want to go 10, 12 ,000 feet in the air. Like there were certain caveats to all of this.
And as we started to work through what some of those could be, Stephanie actually found this incredible site that allows you to pet and house it for different homes. And at first, I remember her telling me or asking me, would you be down to watch some pets and hang out at people’s homes throughout the summer? She had me at pets. We don’t have any pets right now, like I said. So being able to hang out with Fluffs is a major win for us. We really enjoy when we get to a
hang out with pets that some of our family members have. There’s some family that’ll ask us to take care of their dogs while they’re on vacation or whatever. We love going over and hanging out with them, just making sure they’re good. But we don’t have any of our own. So she pretty much had me at a yes at that point because of the animals. Now, there are different things that come along with that. But we had thought if we can travel, we can spend all this money. Or if we can travel.
and we cannot spend all that money, how does that actually work? How does that look? And I think that was one of the key moments where we actually stopped focusing on what the problem was and started to look at what the opportunities were where we could really create the trip that we wanted. So I want to take a little bit of a sidestep because I think this is where it can get a little magical in a sense. And I’ve thought about this before because I’ve seen other people, like I’m no longer
Nick McGowan (21:14.782)
really active on social media. But throughout the years, I’d seen so many people that were like, I ended up in this place and doing this thing. And it’s almost like you expect to see some magical unicorn fly across the back on a rainbow. And all like money just piling down from the sky. That is not how life typically works. It’s just not. So for us to be able to get to the point where we were like, we want to travel, but we want to look at it differently.
It felt like an opportunity for us to be able to see what else is there. What could this look like? Now, if you think about it this way, if you get a hotel, you’re in that hotel room, you’re in the hotel itself. And if it’s a resort or something, it’s a bigger hotel or something that has a lot of amenities to it. That’s cool. There can be restaurants and things of that sort. You’re in your own little environment there, but you’re still in a hotel room that’s still somewhere where a hotel needs to be.
And if not, and you’re in a resort that’s way outside of somewhere, you’re typically just stuck on that land. And that’s how goes. If you get an Airbnb, it could be somebody’s home. could be a rental home that is specifically for Airbnb or something like that. But you’re just locked in for where those things are. Typically, in both of those situations, hotels and Airbnbs, they’re off the beaten path, just barely off the beaten path.
because it’s supposed to be for travelers, people that are moving through. So you’re in a city, you’re somewhere right outside of an airport or something like that. So by us thinking that we wanted to do things differently and Stephanie found this site called trustedhousessitters .com. We don’t get anything from this, but go check them out if you want. Trusted House Sitters allows you to watch pets and houses while people are on vacation or.
on a work trip or what have you. So when we first started talking about the option of being able to stay at other people’s homes, whole other world opened up for us because typically those homes aren’t Airbnb homes. And typically those homes aren’t open to anybody else other than maybe family and friends, but especially not the general public. And those people’s homes really care about their pets.
Nick McGowan (23:36.706)
and about the things that are in their home. So it’s specific to who can be there and who wouldn’t be there. Not just an Airbnb where anybody can say, hey, I want this Airbnb and look, I’ve stayed at other places on Airbnb or Verbo or whatever. Let me give you money and let me sleep there. This is a bit more than that. So there’s some more obstacles that we need to go through. Standing here today, having this recording, I can look back at the things that we’ve done and the decisions that we’ve made, the conversations we’ve had.
and how it’s worked us through it. I’ll jump a little bit of ahead. We’ve done five sits so far, and I think we’ve stayed in 10 different places, and we still have more to go. So when we first started this conversation last summer, July, August of 23, we were thinking we probably shouldn’t stay in this house during the summer because it gets too hot, it’s too taxing on the house, so we need to do something else.
We then thought we could Airbnb or maybe there’s another option. Those two layers being able to get through that is sometimes most often where a lot of people will just stop and they’ll say, this is too much. I can’t, I don’t want to be uncomfortable. And then it’s kind of the fear of the unknown. We kept pushing through that to be able to figure out what do we do? Where do we go? What can happen next? We had our first trip in Colorado and it was actually
2000 maybe 2500 feet higher than where we’re at. It was kind of a rough situation because of the things that health wise that Stephanie was going through. But we were able to make friends with the owner of that place. We were able to get out and we did what we needed to do and we helped them and stayed at their house and watched their pets and all that. But then we were able to make a shift and a pivot and be able to be patient in those moments while we had other interviews with other people while we’re still traveling.
So instead of us sitting at our home and just sweating our asses off, trying to figure out what do we do and really not doing anything with that information or the thought of that, besides just bitching and complaining about it, we started to take action, but meaningful action in the sense where we figured out that there’s gotta be another way where we don’t have to spend money or as much money and we can do things different and we can check off these different boxes.
Nick McGowan (26:02.848)
And I’ve often thought, and I’ve been told, people say it at different times, there’s so many different ways to go about doing something. And it’s absolutely true. When we thought we’re going to spend 10, 15, whatever amount, thousands, to be able to travel around and stay at these different homes, and then to be able to shift that and be able to stay at homes that aren’t typically Airbnb homes or rental homes or anything like that, and beautiful spots, and to be able to save
seven, eight, nine grand. What a beautiful thing that’s been. Now I talk about this and I set up the recording for this because I think that’s a really good example of if an obstacle pops up, you can either get really upset, pissed off about it, or you can look and just look around it, get around it, figure out, okay, well, what else is there? What are the other options?
There’s typically many, many other options. It may be more levels and layers of things to go through, but those options are still there. And we can work through those different layers and levels of confusion or uncertainty or frustration bit by bit by bit. But by us working through that, you’ll end up in a spot that is much different than where you were before.
So I said a little earlier, I’d seen people on social media talk about, I’m in this space, I’m doing this thing and blah, blah. And for the most part, intuitively, I felt like that was a lot of talk because they were pushing this lifestyle that they have. For those of you that are listening to these episodes, you get this information from me. I’m not on social media sharing about it. But to share a little bit right here, right now, with those of you that are listening.
The first spot that we stayed in, we were 8 ,500 feet in the air, literally 200 and feet, 250 feet or so off the ground from the main road overlooking this beautiful mountain range that typically no one would see unless you were family to that, the owner of that house. We stayed in downtown Denver. We were able to move around and enjoy.
Nick McGowan (28:28.583)
and had a great spot that we stayed in. And we were in Oregon overlooking a river with a mountain to the right side of it. It was just tranquil and beautiful. We had a separate guest house that we stayed in the main house, but the guest house is where we could hang out and do work and look over the river.
traveled up to the northwest and we’re literally on an island outside of Seattle in this beautiful log cabin as you can tell with the background and the water is about 100 feet that way.
This wouldn’t have been on an Airbnb. This wouldn’t have been a rental. This wouldn’t have been anything like that. And it’s not costing us any money to be here besides what we would normally spend. Gas, groceries, things of that sort. But really, being able to figure this out took those other decisions to be made to get to this point. And we’ve been able to flex and move around and pivot a bit because we’ve had a couple hiccups.
For August, we were supposed to be in Arizona. There was a hiccup that happened with the owner of the home. And maybe a week before, like the last week of July, we had to call it say, no, we’re not going to be able to do this and make a shift in a pivot. We did that and ended up in Oregon overlooking that river and making connections with the homeowners who have a similar type of business or at least purpose driven.
And it’s been beautiful to be able to have that connection with those people. That also led us to where we’re at now for the next few weeks. Well, basically till the end of August, I’m recording this in August 15th. We’re here until the end of the month. And then we go back to Oregon in a beautiful town that will have a beautiful home that we’re with, not to mention all of the incredible pets that we’ve been able to hang out with.
Nick McGowan (30:42.834)
The first place we stayed at had two dogs and two cats and one dog I think is actually a horse. So I was considering it two, maybe three dogs. It was a lot to go from no pets to that. But then over the next few sits, we’ve had one dog, a dog and a cat, a cat, and like all of these animals have been such amazing loves. And we’ve had such a great time being with these animals and staying at these homes and enjoying these areas. Plus the travel.
being able to travel around the country and stop off at different areas, go check things out. know, something before we get home, we’re gonna pop by Crater Lake in Oregon, pop by it, because we can. We might even pop by the Redwoods and check them out and hug a giant tree. If not, we’ll do it next summer when we do this trip again, because we figured out this is something we want to do. And it allows us to be able to figure out.
What pieces of land, what things do we want? What things do we not want? So do you see how checking off so many different boxes and different situations that we have already thought about that we want to be part of? We want to have land, we want to have a house, we want to have our tiny house on that land. And us being able to travel around and experience with different pets and different areas, which we’re able to figure out what do we like about certain areas? What do we like about certain homes?
and we’ve met some incredible people that have had similar situations. Two of the sits that we’ve had, had lived in a camper for a couple of years and then had a house built. Literally the first one we went to, lady was like, yep, there’s my fifth wheel camper down there. And here’s the house that was built for me five years ago. And it was beautiful. Literally just a few years ahead of where we’re at. And what an awesome thing for us to be able to have that.
understanding that other people have gone through these different things and they have made these things work. And we can too. We wouldn’t have experienced that if we just stayed upset, hot and frustrated and just stayed home this summer. And again, I understand that there are freedoms that I have that we have, we don’t have children and we don’t have pets and we don’t have a job that we have to go to and be in an office or anything like that. But all those were decisions that were made.
Nick McGowan (33:05.147)
The pets, her two cats, she actually, they both passed a little while ago, about a year and a half, maybe two years ago at this point. That wasn’t a decision she made, but the decision to not just go out and get another pet, that was a decision that was made. That then we can give our love to these animals that we’re with, and we can give our love to the animals we’ll have in the future. So when you…
See a situation that comes up and you think I couldn’t I want you to actually ask yourself how could I Instead of just saying I couldn’t or I don’t know or I have no idea Those can be fine But then actually dig in a little deeper and figure out How could it look what could we do? What could this look like are there other ways to go about this? I can pretty much guarantee you that there are other things that are out there that are
ready and waiting for you. But it’s for you to be able to grab those things and start to take those smaller steps. Most times that smaller step, that starting step is just asking how can we instead of I can’t or I don’t know how to and therefore I won’t. So my challenge to you is to be able to look at situations you’ve thought about. Maybe it’s a career change. Maybe it’s a relationship change. Maybe it’s the home that you’re in.
We love the home that we’re in, but we’ve to make some changes or we love the home, but we don’t love the area. Are there other places that you want to go? Are there things that you want to do? Start asking yourself, how could I, what could that look like?
and having the conversations either with your significant other or with friends or people that are also open to thinking about different ways to go about it. This can really help you step into different situations that you couldn’t have stepped into before hadn’t you made those other calls. Now I think all the different things that have happened to get to this point, those were all micro decisions. Some were major decisions that needed to happen.
Nick McGowan (35:16.293)
Like there are often times where I think I would not be where I’m at right now hadn’t I said a number of years ago, this isn’t working, it’s time to get a divorce. I wouldn’t be there. I wouldn’t be where I’m at right now if I didn’t say, I don’t think the coaching is exactly what I need to do. I think podcasting is what I need to do. That would have led into the relationship and the business that I have where I now get to do both of those things while traveling around.
I’m not saying this would be braggy or boastful. I’ve put in the fucking work and I’m still putting in more and more and more work. But I’m also taking the time to be able to look at it and say, what’s the wisdom here? And the wisdom, I think, is really looking at an obstacle and saying, well, that’s just one way to go about it. There are many other ways to go about it. And if there are things that you’re working through, you’re trying to figure out, what do I do? How do I create the life that I want?
And my challenge to you is to ask yourself those questions, but to also start looking at different things that can help you with that. There ways that we can help is choose your calling. We have several different programs that can help you either actualize or map out your journey and be able to figure out how to get to those things. Part of the work that we do on the life purpose development side of the business is help people figure out what their calling is and how to actually go about doing that work. That can be through mentoring or the programs that we have or a mixture of both.
And being able to ask yourself those questions and being able to start to look at things without the hesitation or the fear that in itself can be a bit of an activity and a workout. And the more that you can do that, the more that these other opportunities and situations will open up for you. So if you have any questions or if you have any thoughts or if you’re in a similar spot where you’re trying to figure out how do I make a life change?
but I’m not sure what to do and I feel like I keep getting held back, I’d love to hear from you. I’d to hear what you’re going through right now and what you’re trying to do. And if there’s any way that we can help, we’d love to be able to do so. If not, know that you have people that are in your corner right here with you. So thank you so much for being on with me today. I appreciate you listening and hope this has been helpful for you.
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By Nick McGowan“If an obstacle pops up, you can either get really upset, pissed off about it, or you can look around it, get around it, and figure out what else is there.”
In this episode, Nick discusses the importance of patience and overcoming obstacles. He emphasizes the power of storytelling and practical examples in understanding how to overcome challenges and shares a personal story about dealing with the heat in their tiny house and how they found alternative solutions.
What to listen for:
“When you see a situation that comes up and you think ‘I couldn’t,’ I want you to actually ask yourself, ‘How could I?’
“Most times that smaller step, that starting step is just asking ‘How can we?’ instead of ‘I can’t’ or ‘I don’t know how to, and therefore I won’t.’”
About Nick McGowan
I’m Nick McGowan, entrepreneur, podcaster, and mental health advocate, and I’ve been on a 20+ year journey of personal development, learning to master my mindset, emotions, and the art of living with purpose.
As a Mindset and Self-Mastery Mentor, I work with ambitious men and women who want to live their most authentic and joyous life, by helping them master their mindset, emotional awareness, and authentic communication. My mission is to empower people to lead lives that feel aligned, grounded, and truly their own.
Throughout my career, I’ve built teams, streamlined systems, and improved client experiences across SaaS, media, marketing, and personal development spaces. Whether I’m leading cross-functional projects, optimizing SEO, Podcasting, designing strategies, or guiding clients through transformation, I bring a hands-on, solution-focused approach to everything I do.
I’m also the host of The Mindset and Self-Mastery Show, where my guests and I unpack the stories that shape us, challenge us, and ultimately guide us back to who we are at our core. On this show, we uncover the secret gems others have discovered through trial, error, and breakthroughs so you can fast-track your growth, and master your mindset on your pursuit toward self-mastery.
With years of podcasting and two decades of marketing experience, I’ve mastered the storytelling, interview flow, strategy, and technical production that elevate a podcast from “just content” to something truly impactful. Whether you’re a leader looking to amplify your message, or a seasoned speaker and podcast host looking to sharpen your edge or even a beginner who is wondering how to share their message, I mentor thought leaders through every step of having the conversation they’re here to have on this planet.
So, what message are you here to share?!
Resources:
Check out these other episodes about managing and limiting negative thinking
Interested in starting your own podcast or need help with one you already have? Send Nick an email or schedule a time to discuss your podcast today!
Thank you for listening!
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Click To View The Episode Transcript
Nick McGowan (00:03.746)
Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan and today on the show, I’m gonna talk about patience and getting over obstacles. I really thought about what the topic would be that we’re gonna get into, cause it’s much deeper than that. And I wanted to be able to say it that way because I think there are certain times where at least myself, I’ll hear people talk about things and they sound really surfacey. And I’m like, I don’t really wanna hear this surface level bullshit.
I want to hear practical things. And we as humans really love stories. It’s why we watch TV. It’s why we read books. It’s why we listen to true crime and everything else that we listen to that has a story to it. And we’ve been telling stories since we were Neanderthals around a campfire or trying to figure out how to plant or, you know, anything, I guess, in Neanderthal world. But we are really
led by stories because there are little packages that explain how a situation worked out in a certain way and their morals to it. There are just so many things that you can tighten up within a story instead of just saying, Hey, here’s this piece of information. But when I think about when people will say getting over obstacles or being present or just loving what you’re doing or anything like that, they can be nice little quips and little things you can kind of take and put in your pocket and remember down the road or.
recall and say, this makes me feel good. I really want to talk about a practical situation that recently happened. And again, I think the story has some components to it that will help you understand how in your own life you can do things like this as well. And I like to be able to talk about any situation that happens in my life, not as a, look at me. It’s just, I realized this and I want to be able to share it with you.
That’s also why we have the platform here that we do with the mindset and self mastery show. So being present, being able to get past obstacles, being able to see obstacles, being able to be patient at different times can be really easy things to talk about. Like I can say in a moment where somebody would rob me or something of that sort that I could
Nick McGowan (02:26.634)
be patient, could be calm, I could be cool and collected. But as you’ve probably heard me say on the podcast and different episodes, we never know what’s gonna happen in those situations. You might be a superhero, somebody’s trying to rob you, you might get shot and die and that might be the end of it. You might also just piss your pants, shit yourself and just sit in the corner and cry. You don’t know until you’re in that spot. And I do think that your character shows up in those moments, but it’s also what we do within those moments.
that allow us down the road to be able to look back and say, okay, I saw what I did. I see where I can change or adjust or whatever. And I’m gonna make those changes starting today and giving yourself grace. And again, being present and patient and getting past those obstacles. So here’s a story time. There was an obstacle that my partner and I realized last year. So for those of you that don’t know,
We have a renovated fifth wheel camper that is our tiny house that we absolutely love. And we have it parked in the foothills of a mountain. We love the area that we’re in. We love the tiny house. We love the life that we have, but there are certain things where just like any house, things can get messed up or something can break or not be the exact way you want it. So last summer where we live is in the desert.
And last summer, it got really, really hot, you know, like it does in the desert, but it got really, really hot for our tiny house to be able to handle all the heat and all the air and the electricity that we’re using. We run our business from our house. We can really run our business from anywhere with our laptops. So we’ll be at home during the summer, the AC is on, maybe we’ll run the microwave to, you know, heat up some food.
We have our laptops on, maybe there’s music going on. There are just different things that are plugged in and just zapping energy from it. Last year, maybe around July or so, it started to get over 95 degrees just consistently. Our tiny house couldn’t really handle that. And we don’t look at that and say, well, this is trash. We got to get rid of this house. We have looked at, can we change the electrical system? For those of you that have an RV,
Nick McGowan (04:54.013)
or have a camper, you know that that can be kind of a monster. And it doesn’t always fix the problem. If you jump from one amperage to the next, the wiring in there isn’t the same and potentially needs to be changed. If not, it could be a fire and tiny houses like that. Those things can go up really quickly. So we don’t want that at all. So let’s just put that to the side. So here we are last July, August, it’s getting hot.
the AC is going and we’re doing all right. We’re doing work and we’re enjoying life. And then boom, everything just shuts off. At first it was like, well, that kind of sucks. Let me try to fix this thing. What is it? And I just popped the breaker back on and we were good to go for about 10 minutes. And then it popped again. And this happened for a few days. And it got to the point where it was more so frustrating that it was getting hot. And we were worried that something was happening with the house.
So we said, all right, well, we can run our business from anywhere with our laptops. So let’s grab our laptops. Let’s go to a local cafe or a restaurant. Just basically hang out, do some work. We’ll get dinner or late lunch and then we’ll come back and it’ll be cool enough because it’ll be night. That was our thought. So between the hours of maybe two, three o ‘clock in the afternoon until seven, seven 30 in the afternoon or evening at that point for a few weeks.
is what we needed to do. We would try a few times last summer to be able to stick it out, but maybe an hour past when it had happened before, boom, the breaker would pop again. So we were like, we’ll just go out to the restaurant, we’ll go hang out. And at one point we both looked at each other and said, you know what, screw this. There’s gotta be another way to go about it. There’s gotta be a way to be able to either remedy the situation in the house or
we go somewhere else. And that’s where this story per se really comes into play. Because when you think about situations like that, easy things that are happening, if it’s like, you need to take the trash out, there are also trash bags under the sink. Let’s just use that as an example. And you can think, okay, well, I’m gonna take the trash out. Where does the trash go? And how do I replace the bag? it’s under the sink. This takes all of minutes.
Nick McGowan (07:15.082)
maybe 10 minutes at most, depending on where your trash can is or whatever. But little situations like that, you can tell how it’s gonna go. In a situation like your house can’t handle the electrical amount that it needs to keep it at a sustainable level for humans to be in there and not just dripping sweat or in a sauna, then you have some questions and some things to consider. Do we get out of the house? Do we get rid of the house?
Do we try to change the amperage out? Again, those are problems that, there are problems that come with that. Or do we go travel? What do we do? And we started to ask ourselves, what are the things that we can do? And I really love to be able to go through situations, then unpack things. It’s sort of a sadist thing within myself where I like to look back and go, how could I have done this differently? But also being able to use those times to not beat myself up.
But to understand that I could beat myself up, like putting myself back into the ring to go, all right, pass Nick, how could you have done this differently? Without judgment, without shame, but still working through what happened. How did you handle this in that situation, in that time? And granted, there were a few times where I got pretty upset and frustrated because you can’t stay in your house. It’s hot. And it was really hot a few times and frustrating because the internet was out or we would go to a cafe and the internet was slow.
And we had to have phone calls and we had to have podcast interviews and client meetings and just stuff. And that flustered me at different times. My partner on the other hand, sees different obstacles that come her way and almost just swiftly moves to the other side or the other direction of where the problem was to be able to look at something else. And I really appreciate that about her.
She does it in life, she does it in business, she does it with us, she does it in many different ways. And I look at that and I think that’s a beautiful thing because then we can be present in that moment. You can also adjust and pivot to be able to figure out where do I go from here? What happens? So last year when we were going through all the situation with the house, let’s say, and the heat and trying to figure out what we do,
Nick McGowan (09:37.021)
We figured, well, we’re not gonna get rid of the house, because the whole plan for the house is to be able to have the house, find land that we want, put that house on the land, build the house that we want, and then use that tiny house as a guest home, a little getaway, a little writing area, a little office, something of that sort. So it’s part of the plan. So we can’t remove that from the plan. And we don’t want to at all. But to think through those things logically is important to go, well, what can change?
couldn’t change, what do we not want to change, et cetera, et So we knew we were gonna keep the house because again, that’s part of the major part of the plan. And we couldn’t change the amperage. That would cost a lot of money if we wanted to do it. And maybe we’ll do that down the road, just keep the shell of the house, but change out all the electrical and all of that. I don’t wanna suspend the 40, 50, 60 grand, whatever that’s gonna be just for that, just for the summer months.
That just doesn’t really make sense to me. I’d rather put that toward a piece of land or something that’s specifically for the business or something else. So we figured we could just travel. How about that? What if we just travel and the thoughts start to come up of how do we do it? How much money do we need? Where are we going to go? What is this going to look like? I always like to see the silver lining in things. And I start to nerd out about stuff where I’m like, my God, if we’re going to travel.
What cool things can we see? What situations can we go through? Like, where can we drive through that’s sort of out of the way, but such a cool spot to go to and just all this different stuff. Also on the other hand, I think, shit, how are we gonna get around? What needs to be done to our vehicle to be able to do that? What else do we need for the trip? What are the things that we need that we’re not gonna have for X amount of time that we’re out? What does it look like for us to make money while we’re out?
How can we consistently make money while we’re out? What does it look like for our team? What does it look like for our clients? What does it look like for our podcasts, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So there can be frustration that comes with all of that. But the point of this whole episode is to be able to talk about being present, being patient, and being able to look at other options and not just obstacles. So in a very black and white way.
Nick McGowan (11:59.217)
When we were thinking about this last year, it was one of those situations like that could be really cool, but it wasn’t tangible yet. It didn’t really become tangible until maybe this past spring. But as we were thinking about it and we were talking about it here and there, at the same time, Stephanie’s still going through health issues and there are still health things that were holding her back from being able to live the life that she wanted.
by going out camping, hiking, and doing all the things that she absolutely loves to do. So we need to be mindful of that too. Therefore, we needed to be mindful of elevation as she heals. And where we live, we’re about, let’s say, 6 ,000 feet in the air above sea level. Anything more than that can really affect a person. Their oxygen intake, neurological issues, there’s just a lot of stuff that can go along with that. You get closer to sea level,
Some of those things can get better. So we were thinking we could travel and we could go do all these things, let’s say. And like, there was nothing in that bucket of things to do yet, but I had thought, well, if we travel, probably gonna have to Airbnb. Maybe we can get hotels every once in a while, but we’re not the hotel type. We’d rather not stay in a hotel if we don’t have to. We’d rather be in a home or an Airbnb or something that.
Feels better than a hotel. I mean, let’s be honest, we’ve all been in hotel rooms or you’re like, eh, it’s a bed, bathroom, whatever. No, there’s that are nice and sweets and all of that. But if you’re going to spend the money on that, we’d rather have a house or we’d have some land that we can stay on for a little bit. So we thought we’d Airbnb. We would travel around. And I thought it’s probably going to cost us conservatively seven to 10 grand over the course of, let’s say, just the summer. If we left in June.
all of July, all of August and came back in September. That was the black and white version of that. It’s like we can spend that money knowing that we have our business and we have money that’s coming in and we have other things that we’re working on and also at the same time we’re building our business and there’s more money that can come in. But we can’t just live on magical thinking of, well if I just go out there and just push and just give all the money away or whatever, it’s all gonna come back to us.
Nick McGowan (14:27.29)
We believe totally in being able to
rely on your energetics and especially rely on your intuition, but to not be stupid about it and not be reckless with it. So the thought was it’s going to cost us, let’s just say 10 grand to be able to do this over the course of a few months. Okay. If that’s the case and we get to travel around, then so be it. I’m sure some of you listened to this episode and think, my God, 10 grand. I spent that on my vacation last year and it was no big deal and it was two weeks.
Others might listen to this and think, my God, 10 grand. I’ve, I’ve needed 10 grand or I’ve wanted 10 grand for so long. The money isn’t really the thing. It’s just the piece of that obstacle that goes along with it. And we looked at that obstacle and thought, well, we can go on this trip, whatever this trip is going to look like, and we can spend this money. And we hadn’t really budgeted for that. It was earlier in the year. So we’re thinking we could budget for it, but at the same time,
What are ways that we can go around that? Now want to pause for a second because there have been a few different times in my life where I’ve done something where I’ve heard people say, I couldn’t, I never could. I couldn’t imagine. I can’t even think about how to begin with that sort of stuff. And for the most part, that looks bigger and scarier than it actually was. I remember back to when I moved to Portland, Oregon.
2016 or 15 or 16, went out for a trip, came back, and within three weeks was on my way to Oregon to live there, then stayed there for a little over a year. But I remember meeting with friends and colleagues and just different people I was networking with and all. And we had kind of a going away, a couple of them. One for the networking group I was with, one for
Nick McGowan (16:26.214)
an old company and just different people, different groups. And I want to say seven out of 10 people I talked to that actually admitted that there was some thought that they had about doing something like this. Most of them said they couldn’t in some, some way or the other. They couldn’t, they couldn’t think about it. They couldn’t imagine. And there was jealousy, admiration in certain ways. Like, man, that’s really cool that you’re doing that.
But I could sense jealousy of like, I don’t even know what that would look like or how we’d go about doing that or the bunch of excuses that would come out. But I’ve got a job and I’ve got kids and we’ve got bills and we’ve got this and that and blah, blah. And yes, all those things are true. And granted, I don’t have children and I’m not going to have kids and I’ve got a bit more freedom in that sort of way. And I understand that I’m not just tossing privilege around in that sort of way. I understand that.
There is that. And even at this moment, Stephanie and I do not have pets. So we have a bit more freedom to be able to move around. But there are ingredients to all of this. that, those two pieces are part of the ingredients to what we have is our recipe of what do we do? How do we move around? And how do we get out of this tiny house while it’s hella hot and it’s messing up the breaker and it’s messing with our day? What do we do?
So again, we thought we could Airbnb and we could spend a bunch of money. I’ve already said that a few times. So just keep that locked in. At that point, I remember thinking like, shit, there’s going to be a bunch of money. There’s a lot to do. There’s a lot of stuff to get ready and where are we going to go? What are we going to do? And in the back of my mind, it’s still there. Like we have a bunch of money that we need to spend out for this. Now, no matter how much money you make, 10 grand isn’t something to just, I don’t know, piss away, let’s say.
Even billionaires, that’s still a sizable amount of money in some sort of way. And we’re looking at that and saying like, well, it’s absolutely doable. It’s something we could do, but how do we not do it that specific way? What are the other options? And instead of getting frustrated or being really, concerned about finding another option, cause if we don’t,
Nick McGowan (18:50.338)
Then we’re stuck doing this other thing or stuck not doing anything at all. And being in that spot where we go, I couldn’t even, I have no idea. Therefore I don’t. So when we had talked about spending the money to be able to travel around, we started to think about what are the other options? Are there friends? Are there family members? Are there places that we can hang out? Are there hostels? I just started to go through that next layer.
of trying to figure the thing out and be resourceful and still keeping to what is true to us. We knew that we didn’t want to be deep in a city. We really don’t want to be in the suburbs. We wanted to be somewhere in the country or be near water, be near trees, have wildlife that’s around us. We wanted to experience things. We also don’t want to go 10, 12 ,000 feet in the air. Like there were certain caveats to all of this.
And as we started to work through what some of those could be, Stephanie actually found this incredible site that allows you to pet and house it for different homes. And at first, I remember her telling me or asking me, would you be down to watch some pets and hang out at people’s homes throughout the summer? She had me at pets. We don’t have any pets right now, like I said. So being able to hang out with Fluffs is a major win for us. We really enjoy when we get to a
hang out with pets that some of our family members have. There’s some family that’ll ask us to take care of their dogs while they’re on vacation or whatever. We love going over and hanging out with them, just making sure they’re good. But we don’t have any of our own. So she pretty much had me at a yes at that point because of the animals. Now, there are different things that come along with that. But we had thought if we can travel, we can spend all this money. Or if we can travel.
and we cannot spend all that money, how does that actually work? How does that look? And I think that was one of the key moments where we actually stopped focusing on what the problem was and started to look at what the opportunities were where we could really create the trip that we wanted. So I want to take a little bit of a sidestep because I think this is where it can get a little magical in a sense. And I’ve thought about this before because I’ve seen other people, like I’m no longer
Nick McGowan (21:14.782)
really active on social media. But throughout the years, I’d seen so many people that were like, I ended up in this place and doing this thing. And it’s almost like you expect to see some magical unicorn fly across the back on a rainbow. And all like money just piling down from the sky. That is not how life typically works. It’s just not. So for us to be able to get to the point where we were like, we want to travel, but we want to look at it differently.
It felt like an opportunity for us to be able to see what else is there. What could this look like? Now, if you think about it this way, if you get a hotel, you’re in that hotel room, you’re in the hotel itself. And if it’s a resort or something, it’s a bigger hotel or something that has a lot of amenities to it. That’s cool. There can be restaurants and things of that sort. You’re in your own little environment there, but you’re still in a hotel room that’s still somewhere where a hotel needs to be.
And if not, and you’re in a resort that’s way outside of somewhere, you’re typically just stuck on that land. And that’s how goes. If you get an Airbnb, it could be somebody’s home. could be a rental home that is specifically for Airbnb or something like that. But you’re just locked in for where those things are. Typically, in both of those situations, hotels and Airbnbs, they’re off the beaten path, just barely off the beaten path.
because it’s supposed to be for travelers, people that are moving through. So you’re in a city, you’re somewhere right outside of an airport or something like that. So by us thinking that we wanted to do things differently and Stephanie found this site called trustedhousessitters .com. We don’t get anything from this, but go check them out if you want. Trusted House Sitters allows you to watch pets and houses while people are on vacation or.
on a work trip or what have you. So when we first started talking about the option of being able to stay at other people’s homes, whole other world opened up for us because typically those homes aren’t Airbnb homes. And typically those homes aren’t open to anybody else other than maybe family and friends, but especially not the general public. And those people’s homes really care about their pets.
Nick McGowan (23:36.706)
and about the things that are in their home. So it’s specific to who can be there and who wouldn’t be there. Not just an Airbnb where anybody can say, hey, I want this Airbnb and look, I’ve stayed at other places on Airbnb or Verbo or whatever. Let me give you money and let me sleep there. This is a bit more than that. So there’s some more obstacles that we need to go through. Standing here today, having this recording, I can look back at the things that we’ve done and the decisions that we’ve made, the conversations we’ve had.
and how it’s worked us through it. I’ll jump a little bit of ahead. We’ve done five sits so far, and I think we’ve stayed in 10 different places, and we still have more to go. So when we first started this conversation last summer, July, August of 23, we were thinking we probably shouldn’t stay in this house during the summer because it gets too hot, it’s too taxing on the house, so we need to do something else.
We then thought we could Airbnb or maybe there’s another option. Those two layers being able to get through that is sometimes most often where a lot of people will just stop and they’ll say, this is too much. I can’t, I don’t want to be uncomfortable. And then it’s kind of the fear of the unknown. We kept pushing through that to be able to figure out what do we do? Where do we go? What can happen next? We had our first trip in Colorado and it was actually
2000 maybe 2500 feet higher than where we’re at. It was kind of a rough situation because of the things that health wise that Stephanie was going through. But we were able to make friends with the owner of that place. We were able to get out and we did what we needed to do and we helped them and stayed at their house and watched their pets and all that. But then we were able to make a shift and a pivot and be able to be patient in those moments while we had other interviews with other people while we’re still traveling.
So instead of us sitting at our home and just sweating our asses off, trying to figure out what do we do and really not doing anything with that information or the thought of that, besides just bitching and complaining about it, we started to take action, but meaningful action in the sense where we figured out that there’s gotta be another way where we don’t have to spend money or as much money and we can do things different and we can check off these different boxes.
Nick McGowan (26:02.848)
And I’ve often thought, and I’ve been told, people say it at different times, there’s so many different ways to go about doing something. And it’s absolutely true. When we thought we’re going to spend 10, 15, whatever amount, thousands, to be able to travel around and stay at these different homes, and then to be able to shift that and be able to stay at homes that aren’t typically Airbnb homes or rental homes or anything like that, and beautiful spots, and to be able to save
seven, eight, nine grand. What a beautiful thing that’s been. Now I talk about this and I set up the recording for this because I think that’s a really good example of if an obstacle pops up, you can either get really upset, pissed off about it, or you can look and just look around it, get around it, figure out, okay, well, what else is there? What are the other options?
There’s typically many, many other options. It may be more levels and layers of things to go through, but those options are still there. And we can work through those different layers and levels of confusion or uncertainty or frustration bit by bit by bit. But by us working through that, you’ll end up in a spot that is much different than where you were before.
So I said a little earlier, I’d seen people on social media talk about, I’m in this space, I’m doing this thing and blah, blah. And for the most part, intuitively, I felt like that was a lot of talk because they were pushing this lifestyle that they have. For those of you that are listening to these episodes, you get this information from me. I’m not on social media sharing about it. But to share a little bit right here, right now, with those of you that are listening.
The first spot that we stayed in, we were 8 ,500 feet in the air, literally 200 and feet, 250 feet or so off the ground from the main road overlooking this beautiful mountain range that typically no one would see unless you were family to that, the owner of that house. We stayed in downtown Denver. We were able to move around and enjoy.
Nick McGowan (28:28.583)
and had a great spot that we stayed in. And we were in Oregon overlooking a river with a mountain to the right side of it. It was just tranquil and beautiful. We had a separate guest house that we stayed in the main house, but the guest house is where we could hang out and do work and look over the river.
traveled up to the northwest and we’re literally on an island outside of Seattle in this beautiful log cabin as you can tell with the background and the water is about 100 feet that way.
This wouldn’t have been on an Airbnb. This wouldn’t have been a rental. This wouldn’t have been anything like that. And it’s not costing us any money to be here besides what we would normally spend. Gas, groceries, things of that sort. But really, being able to figure this out took those other decisions to be made to get to this point. And we’ve been able to flex and move around and pivot a bit because we’ve had a couple hiccups.
For August, we were supposed to be in Arizona. There was a hiccup that happened with the owner of the home. And maybe a week before, like the last week of July, we had to call it say, no, we’re not going to be able to do this and make a shift in a pivot. We did that and ended up in Oregon overlooking that river and making connections with the homeowners who have a similar type of business or at least purpose driven.
And it’s been beautiful to be able to have that connection with those people. That also led us to where we’re at now for the next few weeks. Well, basically till the end of August, I’m recording this in August 15th. We’re here until the end of the month. And then we go back to Oregon in a beautiful town that will have a beautiful home that we’re with, not to mention all of the incredible pets that we’ve been able to hang out with.
Nick McGowan (30:42.834)
The first place we stayed at had two dogs and two cats and one dog I think is actually a horse. So I was considering it two, maybe three dogs. It was a lot to go from no pets to that. But then over the next few sits, we’ve had one dog, a dog and a cat, a cat, and like all of these animals have been such amazing loves. And we’ve had such a great time being with these animals and staying at these homes and enjoying these areas. Plus the travel.
being able to travel around the country and stop off at different areas, go check things out. know, something before we get home, we’re gonna pop by Crater Lake in Oregon, pop by it, because we can. We might even pop by the Redwoods and check them out and hug a giant tree. If not, we’ll do it next summer when we do this trip again, because we figured out this is something we want to do. And it allows us to be able to figure out.
What pieces of land, what things do we want? What things do we not want? So do you see how checking off so many different boxes and different situations that we have already thought about that we want to be part of? We want to have land, we want to have a house, we want to have our tiny house on that land. And us being able to travel around and experience with different pets and different areas, which we’re able to figure out what do we like about certain areas? What do we like about certain homes?
and we’ve met some incredible people that have had similar situations. Two of the sits that we’ve had, had lived in a camper for a couple of years and then had a house built. Literally the first one we went to, lady was like, yep, there’s my fifth wheel camper down there. And here’s the house that was built for me five years ago. And it was beautiful. Literally just a few years ahead of where we’re at. And what an awesome thing for us to be able to have that.
understanding that other people have gone through these different things and they have made these things work. And we can too. We wouldn’t have experienced that if we just stayed upset, hot and frustrated and just stayed home this summer. And again, I understand that there are freedoms that I have that we have, we don’t have children and we don’t have pets and we don’t have a job that we have to go to and be in an office or anything like that. But all those were decisions that were made.
Nick McGowan (33:05.147)
The pets, her two cats, she actually, they both passed a little while ago, about a year and a half, maybe two years ago at this point. That wasn’t a decision she made, but the decision to not just go out and get another pet, that was a decision that was made. That then we can give our love to these animals that we’re with, and we can give our love to the animals we’ll have in the future. So when you…
See a situation that comes up and you think I couldn’t I want you to actually ask yourself how could I Instead of just saying I couldn’t or I don’t know or I have no idea Those can be fine But then actually dig in a little deeper and figure out How could it look what could we do? What could this look like are there other ways to go about this? I can pretty much guarantee you that there are other things that are out there that are
ready and waiting for you. But it’s for you to be able to grab those things and start to take those smaller steps. Most times that smaller step, that starting step is just asking how can we instead of I can’t or I don’t know how to and therefore I won’t. So my challenge to you is to be able to look at situations you’ve thought about. Maybe it’s a career change. Maybe it’s a relationship change. Maybe it’s the home that you’re in.
We love the home that we’re in, but we’ve to make some changes or we love the home, but we don’t love the area. Are there other places that you want to go? Are there things that you want to do? Start asking yourself, how could I, what could that look like?
and having the conversations either with your significant other or with friends or people that are also open to thinking about different ways to go about it. This can really help you step into different situations that you couldn’t have stepped into before hadn’t you made those other calls. Now I think all the different things that have happened to get to this point, those were all micro decisions. Some were major decisions that needed to happen.
Nick McGowan (35:16.293)
Like there are often times where I think I would not be where I’m at right now hadn’t I said a number of years ago, this isn’t working, it’s time to get a divorce. I wouldn’t be there. I wouldn’t be where I’m at right now if I didn’t say, I don’t think the coaching is exactly what I need to do. I think podcasting is what I need to do. That would have led into the relationship and the business that I have where I now get to do both of those things while traveling around.
I’m not saying this would be braggy or boastful. I’ve put in the fucking work and I’m still putting in more and more and more work. But I’m also taking the time to be able to look at it and say, what’s the wisdom here? And the wisdom, I think, is really looking at an obstacle and saying, well, that’s just one way to go about it. There are many other ways to go about it. And if there are things that you’re working through, you’re trying to figure out, what do I do? How do I create the life that I want?
And my challenge to you is to ask yourself those questions, but to also start looking at different things that can help you with that. There ways that we can help is choose your calling. We have several different programs that can help you either actualize or map out your journey and be able to figure out how to get to those things. Part of the work that we do on the life purpose development side of the business is help people figure out what their calling is and how to actually go about doing that work. That can be through mentoring or the programs that we have or a mixture of both.
And being able to ask yourself those questions and being able to start to look at things without the hesitation or the fear that in itself can be a bit of an activity and a workout. And the more that you can do that, the more that these other opportunities and situations will open up for you. So if you have any questions or if you have any thoughts or if you’re in a similar spot where you’re trying to figure out how do I make a life change?
but I’m not sure what to do and I feel like I keep getting held back, I’d love to hear from you. I’d to hear what you’re going through right now and what you’re trying to do. And if there’s any way that we can help, we’d love to be able to do so. If not, know that you have people that are in your corner right here with you. So thank you so much for being on with me today. I appreciate you listening and hope this has been helpful for you.
https://youtu.be/0C8qAsx2_-c