Choose Life
Steemizens.
3 Years ago, my wife and I took our 4 kids out of school, sold everything we owned and left a country we had lived in and called home for 15 years.
Here is a free chapter from my book "Choose Life, The Tools, Tricks And Hacks Of Long-Term Family Travellers, Worldschoolers And Digital Nomads. 
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076DCS2Z2
The book was launched in October and has had some great response and incredible feedback.
I hope it inspires, validates or helps you make a life changing decision.
Have an awesome day
Dan.
P.s find me at www.princesoffthegrid.weebly.com or tweet at me @princey1976
Introduction
“It's almost impossible for a piece of writing to change someone. It's definitely impossible for it to change everyone. So... who is this designed to reach?”
- Seth Godin
I know what you’re thinking: Is this book for me?
This powerful question from Seth is one I took the time to fully digest. In fact, go back and read it again for yourself right now.
I considered that question long and hard, before, during and after I wrote this book. I pictured you in my mind’s eye and wondered about who you are, what you believe and why you are here with my book in your hands, contemplating whether or not it’s worth your time to read what I have worked so hard to put into words.
You’re at a point in your life where something simply feels ‘off’ with your life balance. You may even be contemplating the possibility of escaping your 9-to-5 routine (more like 8-to-8) and taking back the reigns to your own life.
But you don’t know where to start.
You’ve got responsibilities, including a spouse and kids to care for. You’re wrestling with what seem to be two opposing forces: the duty to bring home the bacon and your desire for greater freedom from a soul-sucking job. You want to provide for your family, but you’ve realised that your current path to achieve that goal has made you nothing more than a weekend lodger in your own home.
And so you’ve begun searching for a different path. Maybe you’ve talked to friends about your frustrations at work, found a blog article or two about family travel, or even joined a forum online to discuss establishing a source of location independent income. But you’re still not sure how to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. And now you’re here, with my book in your hand, and you’re wondering, “Is this book for me?”
Well, let’s get to the crux of it right now.
This book is for you, the life-balance-seeker, the 9-to-5 escapist, and the family provider who actually wants to spend time with your family instead of working your life away for somebody else.
You just need that social proof, the validation of knowing that somebody else has already taken that huge leap of faith into the unknown before you and kindly trodden a slightly beaten path for you to explore.
Now, take a deep breath and get ready for what you never thought you would find: a book that does just that.
In fact, by picking up this book you are further down the path to your freedom than you ever thought possible. This likely isn’t the first stage of your search for a proper escape route. You have already done much of the work over countless conversations about saying goodbye to the 9-to-5 life and taking off to travel the world with your family. Your subconscious has already run wild with the endless hurdles, outcomes and possibilities to make it all happen, probably keeping you awake at night and daydreaming in the office!
You’ve realised what 95% of the population has yet to discover: there could be a different path, another choice. That’s a phenomenal first step, but if you’re anything like I was, you’re probably thinking, “Okay, now what? How do I go from wanting something different to actually achieving it?”
When my wife and I made the big realization that we needed to change our lives, we didn’t have much else to go on to guide us toward that lifestyle. In an effort to make the process a little easier for those who are following in our footsteps, I have written the book that I wish my wife and I had at our disposal when we were making the biggest decision of our lives.
This book is the final piece of your puzzle.
Come the end of it, you won’t be daydreaming anymore. There will be no more time for procrastination. You will clear your head by killing the inner demons and will silence your doubters by knowing the answers to all their “what ifs” and “how-to’s” for every step of the journey. Your plans will be put into massive action mode, propelling you and your family headfirst into the life you want to lead!
If that sounds like exactly what you need, then this book is for you.
“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”
- Morpheus
From the Well of Experience
Now, if you’ve read this far, you are most likely starting to wonder Who the hell is Daniel Prince?
In a nutshell, I am a husband and father of four young children who quit his career and what is commonly conceived to be ‘life’ to travel the world with my young family.
My family’s story comes with a personal message for you about how life doesn’t have to be what it has randomly shaped out to be. As you read on, I will tell you how we — a family of six — shaped our lives, bent the rules and hacked ourselves into a different way of living. We decided that we wanted to travel the world and so we did, all via the sharing economy.
And guess what, you can do it too!
You have the power to change your life, and it is so much easier than you ever thought possible.
If you have a nagging doubt in your mind that life should be better than it currently is, read on. If you want to spend more time with your family, read on. If you want to get off the treadmill, travel and experience a totally different lifestyle, then read on dear friend!
Throughout our family’s journey, we have all flourished in more ways than we could have ever imagined. We have disproved many of our own fears (as well as those of other people), and have especially debunked the fears centred around our kid’s education with regards to homeschooling whilst travelling — also known as world schooling.
We have explored temples in Cambodia, watched whales from a private plane in New Zealand, ziplined from the highest peak in Switzerland, privately toured Googleplex in San Francisco, test driven a Tesla, home swapped over 60 times (including a swap with a British rock star) and visited over 15 different countries across four different continents.
And now I’ve turned those experiences into the words on these pages, and I guarantee you that they will open up doors you probably never thought could be opened.
With this book in your hands, you now have an invaluable tool at your disposal to achieve a similar experience for your family. If we did it with four young kids in tow, you can do it too. Don’t for one second doubt that.
If the only result from you reading this book is that a seed is planted in your mind that helps you see that there is another way to live your life, I would have already succeeded in my goal.
However, what excites me the most is the thought that some of you might actually take action and leave what you know behind to find another way. If you do, I am convinced that the action you take will affect you, your loved ones and your children (or future children) in the most incredibly positive way.
Nothing is more important than gifting our children the opportunity to view life in an unbiased and experiential manner. Opening brilliant young minds that can carry hope and fresh ideas into the next 100 years is paramount to our world and human existence! By choosing to read and act on the ideas in this book, you can not only change your own life but also pave the path for the generations that will follow you.
Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it.
- Winston Churchill.
Just imagine that we’re two long lost friends who ran into each other at the bar and I’m telling you about a different way of living that my family has embraced since we said ‘goodbye’ to day-to-day life and ‘hello’ to adventure. We’ll certainly have some laughs and you will undoubtedly question my thinking and some of the actions and decision we have made, but you will also walk away from the conversation questioning certain areas of your own life.
The benefit of having this conversation in a book instead of over drinks, however, is that I will be able to supply you with links to TED talks and other tools that inspired us to look at life differently and helped us along the way to homeschool, travel long-term, home swap around the world, leverage the sharing economy, write articles for travel magazines, appear as guests on podcasts, get featured in newspapers, build a blog, write a book, and much more.
You can read any chapter in any order. This isn’t a novel that has to be read from one chapter to the next. Earmark the book, underline it, follow links, circle paragraphs and quotes, use it, abuse it, and dive into the message head on.
Above all, I hope you have fun reading it and that it helps you in some way.
Your life is your legacy. Choose today to make every moment of that life a reflection of your highest aspirations.
Most importantly, enjoy the ride!
Daniel Prince
The Dordogne Region, France 2017
“Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
- Mark Twain
CHAPTER 1
Screw This
“We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. We develop all those long-winded ideas which just interpret the reality of our lives in different ways, without really extending our body of worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up our lives with shite, things like careers and relationships to delude ourselves that it isn’t all totally pointless.”
- Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting
Deep somewhere in suburbia, a 30-something male sleeps soundly in his bed, the bedside clock radio glows 5:44 am, everything is quiet.
The red devil numbers click to 5:45 am. Instantly, music set on low volume from a radio station tugs the man awake. He sits up, immediately alert with a mix of fear and anxiety in his eyes and clicks the radio silent to minimise the disturbance.
He slowly stands and trudges into the bathroom, turns on the shower and steps inside. Wincing at the coldness of the water that rushes over his body, he tenses and gasps for air.
He rushes through the rest of his shower, brushes his teeth and tiptoes back into the bedroom so as not to wake his sleeping wife and young baby.
Silently, he slips into his underwear, shirt and trousers, then fixes his watch. Gently, he kisses his family goodbye as they sleep and walks out of the bedroom, down the stairs, through the front door and into another day of the same old shit as yesterday.
In 2013, I read a book and then promptly resigned from my career. My wife and I gave notice to our landlord, took our four kids out of school, sold almost everything we owned and left a country we had called home and in which we had lived, built a successful career, and raised our family for fifteen years.
But why?
At this stage in our lives, my wife Clair and I were 37 years old and had four children aged seven, five, two and two (yes, we had doubled down on our child quota with a surprise twin pregnancy).
We were a young British family living in Asia. We loved our lives in Singapore, where we had moved as 22-year-old boy and girlfriend to follow my career in the Foreign Exchange Brokerage market.
We worked and socialised alongside people from all over Asia, India, Japan, Hong Kong, China, South Korea and beyond. Everybody had an interesting story to tell about their different business operations all over the world, mixed with many wonderful travel stories and adventures of people overcoming and learning about cultural differences and seeing the most incredible sights.
We built many lifelong friendships with other expats based on the island -- people from Australia, America, Canada, New Zealand and from all over Europe -- and learned from their own cultures, outlooks on life and different businesses.
We were immediately exposed to incredible, new, and fascinating foods to savour and learn to cook. It was an enormous awakening to all of our senses and we quickly embraced the huge learning curve that we found in front of us.
We loved it, every minute of it.
However, like everything, all good things must come to an end.
Fast forward fifteen years and times had changed, the country had changed, my business had changed. Damn it, we had changed. We were fully blinkered and totally trapped on the hamster wheel of a repeated day-to-day, unchallenging, uninspiring, unfulfilling ‘life’.
Something wasn’t right with our lives and it needed fixing, but shit that was scary!
We knew that it needed fixing long before we finally fixed it, we truly did; but like many people in this same predicament, we just kept kicking the can down the road. We harboured some kind of entitled belief that everything would work out fine if we just carried on grinding it out. We believed that there was some pot of gold waiting at the end of a retirement rainbow for us to cash in on in another 20-30 years.
I imagine you might be thinking that way too, but take a minute to stop and consider why we collectively think that way in the first place. The answer is simple: because that is what happened for our parents and grandparents. That is our perceived and socially accepted cycle of life.
Back then, I was of the exact same mindset. It has been hardwired into us, we aren’t to blame, it just happened that way. I was ready to work until 60 or 70 years of age and I was damn well counting down the days to when I could retire and put my feet up. I dreamt every day of being old and free.
Sure, I had pipe dreams of escaping young, but how on earth could that be possible? No way pal. I had too much responsibility now and needed to cling onto my rung in the social order -- forget trying to improve it or climb higher. We had the Joneses pushing us all the way. They kept buying bigger houses, newer cars, nicer clothes, the latest phones, joined country clubs and golf clubs, switched their kids’ schools, ate out more, took better holidays, the list was endless.
Damn those Joneses!
Making a huge lifestyle change at this stage in life seemed like too much work. It carried too much uncertainty and way too much risk, especially after all the effort we had put into our current lifestyle during the previous 20 years. For many years, I had to push dreams aside, give into the man, listen to my inner fears and voices and resign myself to ‘life’.
“Just one more year,” I would tell myself. “That’s not too hard, just do one more year, then you will be in a better position and a safer place financially to go for it.” I can assure you, that ‘one more year’ is the most depressing year you will ever work.
You will slowly spiral into a pit of angry bitterness each time that inevitable meeting gets called, or that same old customer complaint comes in. The usual let down from a colleague’s performance and ever more ridiculous demands from your boss will pile further pressure on top of you.
Come the end of that ‘one more year’, you will still feel the same way about making a break. But a family dynamic might have changed, or your career might have edged a little further down the gilded path to that next big title on your business card. Thus the cycle begins again: “Just one more year.”
Well, that cycle worked well, too well, and played out just as expected for me, right up until I read that damned book! It finally gave me the push I needed to quit my career, sell everything, and go!
“‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.”
- Timothy Ferriss - The Four Hour Work Week.
The book’s message smacked me in the face. It made everything crystal clear. It bulldozed the forest of doubt and darkness that stood between my family and me and a life we could truly call our own — one we could enjoy to the max and be proud to live. It made me realise that all of that doubt and fear was in my head and the way to overcome it was to face it head on and just go for it.
I was sold. The book had given me the guts to go for it and I was ready for the challenge of whatever came next. The proposition of living our own lives seemed far more exciting and challenging than anything else that lay ahead of us.
But...
My wife hadn’t read the same book, nor had my kids or my extended family, nor had 99.9% of my friends or colleagues.
How was I going to paint this picture for them of quitting my career, leaving a country we loved, saying goodbye to our friends, not having an income, traveling long term, taking the kids out of school and living life on our own terms for a year?
It all summed up to be quite a pitch on paper. Actually, in hindsight, it summed up to be a huge pitch! A pitch that I possibly — ok, definitely — should have worked on a little longer, finessing the finer details into... a powerpoint presentation, maybe?
Some financial graphs might have been a nice addition and, to be fair, perhaps even expected. At the very least, I should have made a detailed timeline with action points and deadlines to meet. Including some solid research that carried a little more weight than a dog eared copy of a ‘self help book’.
However, always keen to get straight to the point, I shunned the aforementioned pitch ideas, it seemed too time consuming!
Instead, I returned home late one night, after another laboriously boring day and dreadful client dinner, ready and psyched up to have ‘the conversation’ with my wife about how I believed we should change our lives forever.
I walked through the front door and kicked off my shoes.
“Seriously babe, screw this.”
“Eh?”
I pressed on…..
“This is bullshit, we just aren’t living life! What’s the point of us having four kids if I don’t ever get to see them and you tire yourself out running around after them all day long? I get home, peck the kids on the head as they go up to bed and then flop on the sofa next to you to watch mindless TV.”
“Yes, I know,” Clair admitted. “I want to make a change too. I have been trying to think of a way to do this for some time. I am not at all happy with the kids’ schooling. It’s too suffocating, too black and white, there is no lateral thinking at all. They are just being taught to tick boxes, it’s awful, there is no creativity, play or fun. But what can we do? We seem to be stuck. And each time I try to rationalise this in my head or talk to you about it, you just shut me down and say, ‘That’s life’.
That was not the answer I was expecting.
Then it sunk in that I had been the one anchoring us into a life of rinse and repeat. I was the one who had blindly accepted the social norm for me to ‘have a career’. I felt that I needed to be in the office, providing as best as I could for my family. I had closed my eyes to the fact that the family was suffering because I couldn’t face to listen to the complaints of their daily lives. I felt that if I had to be working my ass off all day, then everybody should just be thankful and not be coming to me with problems or complaints.
“I’m starting with the man in the mirror, I’m asking him to change his ways”
- Michael Jackson
But it was true. 100% true. I had been the guy pushing all of the problems aside and rationalising these issues away with the easy and cowardly way out of shrugging my shoulders and saying ‘That’s Life’.
But wasn’t the situation we found ourselves in actually the complete opposite of life?
Think about it.
“That’s life.”
Let that sink in for a second.
Three words.
THAT IS LIFE.
LIFE.
How is it that somehow we all end up painting ourselves into this shitty corner of get up, go to work, deal with ungrateful customers, psychopath colleagues, unrealistic goals, meetings, phone calls, KPI’s, budgets, pay cuts, humiliation, elation, and deflation?
And for what?
A pay cheque.
That is it.
A pay cheque we spend on useless crap that makes us feel better for an instant, but realistically buys us nothing.
Really?
What I had read had awakened a giant. It lit a burning desire within me to prove to myself (and, seemingly, the world at large) that I could live my life on my terms. I could spend every minute of the day with my family by my side, if not forever, for at least one year.
It was time for us to be selfish with our own lives.
Our story -- this book you are now reading -- is proof that we did it. We pulled it off. In fact, we absolutely nailed it and travelled non-stop around the world for two and half years via the sharing economy. At the time of writing, we are renting a house in The Dordogne region of France for nine months so that we can immerse ourselves in the culture and learn the language.
Why?
Because that’s what we want to do.
That’s why.
But don’t think for one second we found it easy. We had demons to face and barriers to cross. I will share them with you in the pages ahead so you can learn from our experience. We had many doubters to contend with; we were, after all, going against the grain of social acceptance and the general order of things.
Before we jump in deeper, however, let me share a personal journal entry from the hectic and anxious days when we were making the biggest decision of our lives. It will give you a small glimpse into the mindset that finally pushed us out the door and into the life of our dreams.
I remember clearly where I was when I wrote this entry. It was the first day back in the office after a five day family break over the New Year’s holiday. I was miserable, I didn’t want to be there and the thought of another year of the same old crap was digging into me.
I switched on the PC, opened my online journal and started thrashing at the keys. I needed to get my thoughts out and onto paper. I needed to vent and it was great therapy. Once I read it back to myself, I knew my mindset had changed forever, and so would my life.
Online Journal - Jan 6th 2014
It is not the fear of the unknown we should be afraid of.
No, it is the fear of repeating the same day-to-day rituals of blinkered, expected and guided life that should truly terrify us all.
Take action, nobody will hand you the life you want, nobody will say…
‘Hey Dan, go watch a movie with your kids on your lap, go travel with the family, go play in the swimming pool, spend real, REAL time with your wife, not time dictated by calendars and commitments.’
You need to bend the rules yourself, just slightly. Don’t fear change, fear the norm!
How terrifying is waking up every morning to an alarm clock to drag yourself into a repeat of the day before, a total groundhog day, the same meetings, talking to the same customers, dealing with the same crap for the next 20 years and missing your kids grow up? That dread is what is truly terrifying, not change!
Think about that first day "back to life" after a holiday. It’s so depressing. Stay strong, stay focused, take a deep breath and step off the treadmill.
Stepping off the treadmill was the hardest part of our whole journey, but I’m so glad that we took the leap. Freedom and adventure are on the other side, my friend. I know it’s scary, but you’ve got my story as evidence that it’s possible.
“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”
- Dalai Lama.
As you read on, it will become clearer how we had to think deeply about our actions and their consequences at each point. I hope the answers we found will help you gain a clearer perspective.
Enjoy the read, for this book is the courage and the validation for which you seek.
Thoughts From Clair
To give you an ampler perspective of what choosing this life was and is truly like, my wife Clair has added some of her own thoughts to each chapter. This will give you a greater understanding and insight into what we were going through at the time, and how we overcame such situations.
Enter Clair -
In general, I loved my life.
I had a caring and loving husband who worked hard to keep our life comfortable. I had four beautiful children that, whilst required hard work, kept me happy and put a smile on my face daily. I had many great friends that I had made in the 15 years that I had lived in Singapore; and I also loved my surroundings.
Singapore was a great place to live and bring up children. I loved the diverse culture that my family was exposed to, I loved the safety and that most things were accessible and relatively easy. The only thing that nagged at me constantly was the schooling that my children were receiving. It drove me crazy with it’s highly stressful, old-fashioned, black and white ways of feeding information to children.
Due to the sudden arrival of the twins, our whole life changed and we made the decision to move away from private schooling into the public school system. It was very different from the education that I had envisaged for my children. It was strict, blinkered, rote-based learning. The teachers fed information to bored children that sat in rows, the classrooms didn’t have pictures on the walls and it was a very black and white, test-based, and high-pressure environment.
Then Dan started reading “the book” and I heard him say things that I had never heard him say before.
I spent all day with the kids, but I wasn’t doing fun things. I was waking up sleepy twins from their naps to do school pick ups and walk home with sweaty little girls in 37 degree heat. Then I was rushing to get the kids out of the pool from swimming lessons, get them into their ballet tights (have you ever tried getting a wet child into ballet tights?), before bombing down the highway to get them to their class, whilst thinking that I should be cooking dinner if I want to get the kids into bed at a reasonable time.
I’m not complaining -- this is not an unusual family routine. Many people do this and worse, in much worse circumstances! This was my life and I didn’t even think about changing it and believed that as the kids got older, it would get easier. Wouldn’t it?
However, as Dan started talking to me more and more about his new ideas and of what he was learning, I started thinking too. I didn’t read the book, to be honest. I didn’t have time and I probably didn’t need to. Dan was paraphrasing all that I needed to know and wouldn’t stop talking about it!
But I did start thinking more deeply about our life. I wasn’t having fun any more. I started questioning what this life was all about.
I have always been of the view that if you don’t change something, then you can’t complain about it. Plus, we were dipping into savings. Surely, if we were spending our savings to live, then we should be doing something more fun, perhaps even reckless!
TOOLS AND TRICKS
A great tool for defining your future path is to write down where you envisage yourself being in the future. Whether it is in one year, three years or ten years, it doesn’t matter. Write it down, envisage where you will be, what your house, car, yacht, or whatever it is you want looks like, who you have met, where you have travelled, the things you have achieved and the lives you have touched. Make it as fantastical as you like, it really doesn’t matter, nobody will read it but you. Go for it. Make it as detailed as you can, then simply sit back and see what happens. It’s unreal. Believe me, it has worked for me countless times already!
www.Princesoffthegrid.weebly.com is our family website and travel blog, which has followed our journey every step of the way. Feel free to visit the site anytime to connect and say hi.
Huge shout out to www.weebly.com who makes it so easy for first timers to build their own websites. I can highly recommend their service, and believe me, I came from zero knowledge of building a website!
Or, as Weebly state;
Founded in 2007, Weebly is a complete platform that allows anyone to start and grow an online business with curated website templates, powerful ecommerce and integrated marketing. More than 40 million entrepreneurs around the world use Weebly to grow their customer base, fuel sales and market their idea. Designed for any entrepreneur who wants to reach a global audience, Weebly gives everyone the freedom to create a high quality site and store that works brilliantly across any device.
This blog post from Mark Manson is, in my opinion, the best thing ever posted on the interwebs, or probably the best thing ever written in the history of ever. It will help you get your mindset into the swing of things!
https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck
Mike Lewis is an inspiration to many looking to make the jump! He made the jump himself and has an incredible story to tell. I hope to work closely with Mike over the next few years as he has invited me to work as an ambassador for his when to jump programme. I wish Mike well with his own book, which is to be released in January 2018 through a large publishing company in the US, which you can pre-order via the site. He will even have the foreword written by Sheryl Sandberg. This highlights the work that we are doing is clearly making waves and changing people’s lives. Hopefully, together we will be able to reach a much wider audience!
Find Mike and his team at www.whentojump.com where you can learn about many more individuals and families who have taken life into their own hands as well.
Andrew Henderson is the creator of www.nomadcapitalist.com where he explains, ‘“My mission is to show you that geography is no longer a limiting factor and that you can exponentially improve your living situation.”
Andrew’s blog provides a wealth of information on living, doing business and investing abroad. He also has a fantastic podcast on the same subjects. Look for my interview there as well! Andrew is also hard at work writing and getting ready to release a book of his own soon, so make sure to look out for that!
Lastly, watch Groundhog’s Day again, or for the first time if you have never seen it! Not only is it the legend Bill Murray at his absolute best but the message is clear and funny at the same time!
Find the best clips here