Work Life Play with Aaron McHugh

My guest today, Brian David Crane decodes for us the challenges of living and working anywhere in the world like loneliness, developing community and being productive when on Tuesday at 2 pm there is always another waterfall to explore.

The best locations to be a Digital Nomad according to BDC:

• Bali
• Poland
• Colombia
• Mexico
• Canary Islands
• Cape Town

Explore your muse on Nomadlist.com for the best places on the globe to Work, Life and Play.

Since 2014, he's lived on four continents, and traveled to over 40 countries. He's currently based in Asia on the island of Bali.

You can find Brian's work here.

I find asking for help to be difficult. The truth is I don't like to ask for help. I'd prefer to do things on my own, to grit it out, use endurance and perseverance to push through.

In this episode, I share a compelling story of how I learned why we should ask for help. I found myself in a maze that I was unable to escape and asking for HELP turned out to be the secret for escape. I could use your help in a couple of specific ways.

My website and email list for Work Life Play have both been hacked over this past year. You probably didn't even know that case in point. As an exercise in humility and as a practitioner of this idea, I would like to ask for your help in helping me regain some of what was lost.

1) Would you consider sharing this podcast with 5 of your friends? aaronmchugh.com/PodcastSubscribe

2) Would you consider signing up on my website to hear from me over email? aaronmchugh.com/lemonade

3) Would you consider visiting my Work Life Play store as part of your Christmas gift shopping? aaronmchugh.com/WLPStore

Thanks for your support. Keep going- Aaron McHugh

My guest today is Joanna Penn, New York Times bestselling thriller writer. She writes inspirational non-fiction for aspiring authors. We talk about the business of being a writer, her habits, and routines, how she shapes her environment to fuel her creative work and shortcutting the process to get into the flow.

I learned a lot from Joanna and appreciated her insights derived from her experience of leaving her day job to build a successful creative empire. She has excellent advice for self-publishing and marketing authors and compelling ideas, mindset shifts to make the work happen.

You can find her work at TheCreativePenn.com

Last month, I quit my job. I decided I needed to clear my head before starting a new gig. I just returned from a 3,000-mile road trip out west in our 1974 VW Bus. I put together a Best Of list from my experience. My Instagram @aarondmchugh feed has all of the photos I posted from five National Parks, the best hikes, the kindest human I met, quirky roadside Route 66 Wigwam Motel, impromptu unplugged acoustic guitar set in Sante Fe, to our favorite camp spots and sunrise.

Full post details here: aaronmchugh.com/3000miles

Last month, I quit my job. I decided I needed to clear my head before starting a new gig. I just returned from a 3,000-mile road trip out west in our 1974 VW Bus. I […]

In this episode, I recorded a dispatch update from my VW bus road trip from Colorado to California. I'm chasing wild as I visit National Parks and enjoy the drone of the highway. Thus far, I've visited Capitol Reef NP, Bryce Canyon NP and Zion NP.

I laid down a few thoughts on the benefits of pausing to reflect during a change in season.

Check out my road trip photos on Instagram @aarondmchugh

I met John Montgomery at an Explorer's dinner in Manhattan hosted by Stefan Loble (Bluff Works founder). Everyone invited had some new bent of curiosity that drove their exploration. John's is world travel. It all started when his dad used to load them in the family truckster as kids and go searching for anything new. John's spirit of adventure embodies the Work Life Play mantra.

Hear John's heckle "Charlie Boorman and Ewan McGregor you guys might ride motorcycles across the world, but have you ever taken a trip with all four of your kids?"

"Should we buy a new car or take a trip?"

The Montgomery tribe ops for experiences over more stuff.

Mosaico Travel Services delivers the finest in custom travel to Central America, South America, and Antarctica. These regions are our passion—our exclusive focus. We have a deep understanding of our destinations—knowledge built on the first-hand experience over decades of travel. Because we know these locations by heart, no other team is better prepared to plan and deliver your journeys to Central America, South America, and the Antarctic.

Check out MOSAICOTRAVEL.COM and tropicofcandycorn.com

Morgan Snyder, host of Become Good Soil podcast, and my close friend interviews me on Work Life Play in celebration of this podcast reaching 100,000 downloads.

We titled it "Then and Now" as we retrace through our friendship over the last thirteen years. We talk through the original seeds of Work Life Play starting back when I'd run at lunch and shower with baby wipes before putting my suit back on.

How we handle disappointment reveals what we really believe about life. Everyone experiences some level of disappointment in life, but not everyone moves forward from the imprint of disappointment. Moving forward in a positive way is challenging.

In this episode, I tell a story about a disappointment I experienced in 2014. I trained to race an IRONMAN triathlon in Lake Tahoe, CA. Unfortunately, it was canceled two minutes prior to the event start due to a raging forest fire nearby.

Disappointments can cause us to make conclusions and agreements that last a lifetime. Maybe you can relate to these

"Next time I'm not going to get my hopes up".

"Why dream".

"I'm not going to try again".

"Why try so hard".

The problem is that we get stuck. We stay in that same emotionally frozen state and are unable to fully move forward with our life, our relationships, our dreams. The way to go forward is to allow disappointment and loss to have a place for a time. It is good to be sad and experience the grief associated with the loss. We obviously don't want to stay there in loss and grief forever either.

How we handle disappointment reveals what we really believe about life. Everyone experiences some level of disappointment in life, but not everyone moves forward from the imprint of disappointment. Moving forward in a positive way is […]