Relax n Talk | Dad, Your Mobile Empire, Yin Yang

Welcome to the Effortless English Show with the world's number one English teacher, A.J. Hoag, where A.J. 's more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all, without the boring textbooks, classrooms, and grammar drills. Here's A.J.

with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly. Hi, I'm A.J. Hoag, the author of Effortless English, Learn to Speak English Like a Native.

Get my free audiobook. Remember, my audiobook is free. Most audiobooks are $15, $20, $30 even. Mine's free at EffortlessEnglish.com. EffortlessEnglish.com.

My entire audiobook. That's my voice. I narrate it. Just enter your email, like the middle of the page, effortlessenglish.com. No walk and talk today.

Heavy rain in Osaka. So, big dark gray sky and raining, raining, raining all day today. So, I decided not to get wet. And I took the train. I took the train to Namba Station.

So, I don't know, what do we call this? A stand and talk? I'm standing outside the coffee shop right now. Maybe I'll sit down. We could call it a sit and talk.

We could call it coffee and talk. I don't know. Whatever. It's still the same chat. Rainy summer day. I kind of like rainy summer days sometimes. Of course, if it's too much, if it's every day, it gets a little depressing.

Get all wet trying to get out and walk. But yeah, sometimes it's kind of nice, you know. Everything cools off. I just come to the coffee shop. Plan the next Effortless English show.

Do this podcast with you. Look out the window at the rain. Kind of nice. It could be a nice excuse to have a slow and relaxing day. So that's what I'm doing.

Finally talked to my dad. I tried talking to him, calling him for Father's Day, but didn't get him, got his voicemail. Then he tried calling me back the next day. He missed me.

Then I tried calling him back. So back and forth, back and forth. And finally, today, we talked. It's a little difficult because, you know, we're a 13-hour time difference.

So sometimes a little difficult to catch each other on the phone. But we finally did it today and had a very long talk. Talked to him over an hour. Very nice.

My dad is doing well. Some of you know my dad. Some of you know my dad from videos and from... The business lessons I did with him, our great superstar member, Max from Rome, Italy, he started with those business lessons that I did with my dad and loved them.

Unfortunately, those business lessons are not available anymore. Not available because my dad decided to retire. He finally decided to retire. He said he was just tired of

dealing with it, he just wants to relax and play golf. So he retired the business at the end of 2017. But those of you who did those lessons, I think Kaula did it too, did them too. Kaula from Istanbul, Turkey, another great superstar member.

It was fun because of those lessons, I did them with my dad. And what we did is we talked about business and business ideas and, of course, taught some business vocabulary.

But the idea was, the idea of the lessons, the main idea of the lessons, the structure of the lessons, are conversations about business topics. So real conversations between my dad and I talking about some business topic. And I think what made them interesting was that

My dad and I have very different viewpoints and experience in business. So as you know, I'm the entrepreneur, solopreneur, small business owner. So I do a lot of online business.

And my dad, his business experience was with big companies. His main experience was with IBM. The big, huge computer company. Our IT company. So his whole career was spent working in fairly large companies.

And so it's kind of interesting when we would talk about a topic, you know, my viewpoint from the very small business entrepreneur side and his viewpoint from the large business career side was often quite interesting how we viewed different ideas about work and career.

But anyway, some of you ask about my dad sometimes, and he's doing just fine. He's still living in Georgia. Just moved to a new house, actually. Seems like they're having a good time.

They like their new house. We talked about golf a lot. As you know from my earlier podcast, that's one thing my dad and I share now, is that we enjoy golf. So we talked a little bit about the U.S. Open.

The U.S. Open was... Just this last weekend, one of the biggest golf tournaments in the world, professional. One of the four majors, they're called the majors in golf.

Four golf tournaments that are the biggest golf tournaments, the most important golf tournaments for professional players. The U.S. Open, the British Open, the Masters, and the Players' Championships.

So the U.S. Open was this last weekend and kind of an interesting golf tournament because a lot of the players were complaining about the golf course. They said that the golf course was not, they didn't take care of the golf course correctly. And then it was making it very difficult to play and it wasn't fair.

And so lots of complaints from the top golfers in the world. So you know it was difficult if they were complaining. So my dad and I, we chatted about the U.S. Open a little bit.

And then he told me about the new golf courses he's been playing at. You know, as I said, he just got a new house, so he just moved. Not very far, but I think they moved about, I don't know, 10 or 15 miles. They're still up in North Georgia.

But he moved, and now he's got different golf courses around him. And he was telling me about one that sounds really nice, a very old golf course, a small one.

but it has a long history. It goes back to Bobby Jones. Now, I know most of my audience of Effortless English fans are not golfers and don't know much about golf, maybe. So I'll tell you this little history.

Bobby Jones is one of the earliest famous golfers. Now, I was going to say professional, but I don't think he ever became an official professional. He's one of the great golfers of early golf history, especially American.

They actually made a movie about him. There's a character with him. It's called The Legend of Bagger Vance. Will Smith is in it. Will Smith is in the movie.

It's fiction, but one of the characters in the movie is real, and his name is Bobby Jones. Bobby Jones was kind of back when professional golf was just starting, back when these major tournaments were starting.

Bobby Jones was one of the big greats. And Bobby Jones is from Georgia. Now Bobby Jones had another income, so he didn't need to make money from golf. So he just played because he loved it.

But he still won some of the major tournaments. He was one of the best, perhaps the best, golfer of his time period. And now this golf course my dad's playing at, this new one, was actually created...

owned by and designed by and created by Bobby Jones' dad. So it has a long history, and Bobby Jones used to play on that course. Now Bobby Jones is long dead. This is before World War II.

This goes way back. So it's a small little course, but he said it's very nice that they keep it Very, very, very nice. All the trees, all the grass, the landscaping is very beautiful.

That it's fun to play. It's not too difficult. He's retired now. He's in his 70s, so he doesn't want to play some super difficult golf course. And I'm the same.

Not because of my age, but because I'm not very good. It's just a hobby. I don't get to play very much at all. So my skill level in golf is very, very low.

So I also like to play courses that are a little bit easier. I'm out there mostly for the social enjoyment and the enjoyment of being outdoors. My dad and I also talked about my grandmother.

So his mom... My grandmother, next month, has a birthday. And next month, my grandmother will be 99 years old. 99. Amazing. My other grandmother is also alive.

She's 93, I believe. So, my dad's mom, 99 years old. Wow. And, get this, 99 still lives independently. Has her own little apartment. Not a nursing home.

Still lives independently. Still can cook her own meals. So that's even more amazing. She can't drive anymore. She had to stop driving. But she still gets around.

She still walks around. She has a walker. You know, this... kind of help her when she walks, but she can walk around still on her own and enjoys watching American football, college football also, like my dad, like me.

She also likes college football. She's looking forward to college football season starting in the fall. So pretty amazing. Pretty amazing. And her secret, she says, because I've asked her, it's like, well, wow, how do you stay active?

You know, how have you stay so independent and active. And she says that, you know, it's For her, it's all about exercise. Exercise. She doesn't really eat super healthy, honestly.

She eats a lot of fatty foods and stuff. So, she's not like Jack LaLanne. She's not just, you know, drinking vegetable juice all day. That's definitely not.

She likes to make cookies and things. So, it's not the diet. So, she says it's the exercise. So, she still exercises. She does... kind of dancing it's like it's called line dancing it's like uh with country music and she does a kind of uh like aerobics a very simple aerobics for for for older people so it's very simple but you know basically she says she you got to move your body every single day keep your body moving every day and your mind to keep your mind active so that's how she does it by by staying very active and

So I'm inspired by that. I'm going to follow her advice. I think we all should. It's good advice. Someone lives 99 years old and they're independent and they're still active and they're still enjoying their life.

We should listen to them. They're doing something right. Because it's not just about living a long time. Living a long time and being weak and laying around in a bed in a nursing home, that doesn't sound very good to me.

But being 99 and still, you know, being alive and, you know, independent. Mentally, she's very sharp mentally still. You know, talking to her, no problem. You still talk to her, have clear conversations.

Very, very nice. So my grandmother, 99 years old next month. Impressive. Impressive. Impressive. The final topic my dad and I talked about was small towns.

Just talking about how we miss the benefits of living in a small town and how both of us are getting a little tired of living in busy places, more crowded places.

My mom, my sister, my whole side of my mom's family, they all live in a small town in Indiana, which is in the middle of the country. The nearest big city is Chicago.

But they live in a small town in Indiana. My dad also used to live there. That's where he met my mom. They're not together anymore. They're divorced, but...

But anyway, my dad used to live in that same small town in Indiana, and we were talking about it and how it's very nice and how he misses... The thing that he misses about the small town is being able to walk to a little downtown area and see the same people every day and just sit down and just chat with people every day, just chat about sports or... the weather, the news or whatever.

And kind of, you know, everybody knows everybody else and life is more relaxed. Everything moves a little more slowly, right? Whereas in the cities or the big towns, you know, there's traffic and it seems like everybody's busy. Everybody's too busy to stop and chat.

Everybody's too busy to sit down and just relax for a little while and just enjoy the rain or enjoy the sun. Say hi to your neighbors. All those kind of things that small towns have or traditionally had where the cities and the big busy suburbs don't have it.

And see, I like that too. I like, maybe because I was raised in the South, in the United States. The South, the Southern culture is all about that. That's sort of the traditional Southern culture.

Now, of course, it's changing. You know, my dad lives on the edge of... the Atlanta suburbs, and Atlanta is a big, growing city, busy, busy, busy. It's in the south, in Georgia, but, you know, it's a city.

And even the suburbs where he lives, which are like the outer parts of the city, they're still very busy, lots of traffic. This is what he was sort of complaining about, that he just misses that slow, relaxed, small town.

And I agree. I agree. This is maybe something where I'm quite different than a lot of the entrepreneurs, the entrepreneur coaches, the motivational people that you find on social media, for example. I follow a lot of them.

Tony Robbins is one, Gary Vee. There's several, and I like them because they keep me motivated, they keep me inspired, and They energize me, all those good things. But even Robert Kiyosaki also, I love all those guys.

They're great. They're great. But I do, I think, have one difference from those guys, at least one difference, and one major difference. And maybe it is because I grew up in the South, whereas a lot of these guys are either from California, kind of a city, suburb culture, or they're from the Northeast, like New York.

And so those guys, it's all about fast. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Fast, fast, fast. Speed, speed, speed.

All the time. Work, work, work, work, work. Never stop. Tony Robbins is that way. Gary Vee, he's a New Yorker. He's a typical New Yorker. I don't mean that as an insult, but it's just, it is so different from the South, the traditional Southern culture.

And so I suppose I have a very southern attitude and mindset about all of this. I absolutely agree that in certain areas of your life, starting your own business for sure, if you're freelancing...

Anything that's really important to you, yes, you want to pour all your energy into it, pour all your enthusiasm into it. Work, work hard, work hard, work hard, yes. But, but, the rest of the time in your life, most of your day, in fact, can be slowed down. You balance all of that.

with having a lot of time in your life that's slow, relaxed. We say taking it easy, taking it easy. Taking it easy means just relaxing and looking around and enjoying the small things, the simple things. Talking to your friends and your family.

Watching the rain. Going for a nice long walk. reading a book. I love those things. So when I'm working, when I'm creating the show for you, when I'm doing public speaking, when I'm working on my business or businesses, yeah, sure, I'm pouring lots of energy, excitement, go, go, go, go, go.

But... For me, I want the balance. I'm doing that so then the rest of the time I can do the opposite and really enjoy all the little things in life and not rush past them and miss them all.

So for me, that New York City lifestyle of always in a hurry For me, it's stressful and unhappy. And for me, I think it misses a lot of really great things in life, which are free, which only happen when you slow down and appreciate them.

You know, like another great example, playing with my nephew or playing with my niece. Just sitting around looking at leaves, trying to find caterpillars. That's fantastic.

I love it. It's really, it's just so much fun. It's so much fun to see his excitement. That can only happen if you have the time to just stop. Put the work aside and just focus on that little, small, simple thing.

and enjoy it, and not be in a hurry, and not be looking at your watch about the time, oh, I've got a meeting in ten minutes. I guess my other influence, besides southern influence, and growing up in the southern culture, would be Taoism, yin-yang, right?

This yin-yang is essentially about the blending of, the balancing of, the skillful understanding and use of opposites. So that, for example... this go, go, go, go, go, go, work, work, work, hustle, hustle, go, go, hurry, hurry.

That's one extreme. And then the other extreme would be, you know, just sit and do nothing. Notice, be mindful, relax, enjoy. We get stuck in this world, so many people,

by the word or. Which is the best? Working hard, being busy, being energized, or relaxing, going slowly, enjoying the little things? It's a bad question.

It's an unskillful question because of the word or. Or. because when you ask the question using the word or you have an assumption you're assuming that you must choose that you can only have one that one's good and one's less good but it's not or it's and it's knowing when

to be super energized and work and go go go go and take action move move move go go go be decisive when and where do you do that and when and where do you slow down no hurry no goal just relax appreciate enjoy be grateful

Both. Both. And. So, to be very skillful in life is to be able to do both. Right? Harmonize, we might say, harmonize the opposites. Or, you know, there's the... Oh, I can't remember the quote of it.

There's a time for every purpose, every season from the Bible. Same idea. I don't think we need to go, go, go, work, work, work all day long, every day. I don't think it's necessary.

The reason I think it's not necessary is because most people waste a ton of time They waste a huge amount of time. I've found, and me too, I can do it too, but I've found if I focus, if I just say, okay, I have two hours, and I'm going to work, and no distractions, all the phones turn off, all the social media is off, everything's off, and I just go, work, work, work, 100% concentration, two hours fully working, fully concentrated, go, go, go, go, go, I can get a huge amount finished.

Super productive. Super productive. I can finish in two hours what most people need eight hours to do. Because most people, when they work, they're not working eight hours.

Most people that go to full-time job, they're not 100% focused and working and go, go, go. They're kind of sitting around. They get distracted. They chat with somebody in the office.

And then they got to go to a meeting. And then they waste a bunch of time at the meeting. And then they go. And then they read something. And they wander off to get a snack.

And now they go to the bathroom. And there's a huge amount of time wasted. It's just like school. It reminds me of school. It's the same idea. This is why homeschooling is much more effective in much less time.

For homeschooling, a child needs only maybe three hours a day. Four at the most. Four at the most. Some only do two. Two to four hours of organized, really focused work for the child.

I mean, focus. No distractions. No nonsense. No wasted time. Sit down, focus, and go. And you're learning, learning, learning, going, going, going. No distractions.

No distractions. No busy work, just to keep them busy while the teacher does something else. None of that. Doing that, homeschooling your own kids, and plus, it's just you, one parent or two parents, with just your own children, so just what, one to whatever, one to five kids, depending on how many you have.

Most people have, what, one, two, or three, I guess. So again, there's a huge advantage of attention as well, and individual tutoring and teaching. And so because of that, the homeschooled child learns much more in much shorter amount of time and then has a huge amount of time the rest of the day just to play for that other side of the yin yang.

The slowing down, the play, the creativity, the relaxation, the time with family, Whereas in school, it's a huge amount of wasted time. Wasted, wasted time. Even if the teacher's good, it doesn't matter.

Because the teacher has 20 kids, possibly 30 kids, maybe more. And there's no way the teacher can focus completely on just one of those kids during the whole day.

or just two or three of those kids. The teacher's always having to run around dividing his or her attention among 20 or 30 kids. And because of this, because the teacher has to manage this huge number of children,

It changes the way they teach, so they have to design activities and lessons that will fit with a huge group of kids and that will keep those kids occupied, sitting in their chairs, not going crazy. And this is why there's this thing called busy work, and this is why there are all these ridiculous worksheets and activities from textbooks, mostly just to keep the kids busy so the teacher can do other stuff.

While most of the kids stay busy. It's not designed for maximum learning. Definitely not. Tons of wasted time. I guess it sort of makes sense, actually.

I mean, modern industrial schools are basically factories that are training kids to become modern industrial workers. So it's not too surprising that in most jobs and in most companies, especially larger ones, that there's a similar wasting of time.

But it's not necessary. If you just sit down and really focus and just go, go, go, you only need to do that for a few hours per day. That's what people don't understand.

I got this question during the show. I did my show last night live and I had a bunch of people asking me this same question. I was talking about enthusiasm and energy and all this kind of stuff.

So I started getting these questions about, well, how do you do that all the time? How do you wake up? Like, in the mornings, I don't have that energy.

How do you stay energized and enthusiastic and super motivated every waking minute of every single day? Well, I don't know. You have to ask Tony Robbins or Gary Vee or one of those guys because I don't, I don't,

What I do is I stay and I get energized and enthusiastic and focused for a few hours a day. Just a few hours a day. And I focus on, for me, it's my business.

Sometimes it's also exercise, but especially my business. Effortless English. And I focus and I go, go, go. A couple hours a day. Three hours a day maybe.

And boom, that work is done. And the rest of the day, it's shift gears, we say. It means I change my mindset. I change my pace. And the rest of the day, very relaxed, slow, southern style of life for me for the rest of the day.

My mornings are slow. I don't use an alarm clock. You know, another advantage of being a solopreneur. It's only me. So I wake up whenever I wake up. Sometimes I wake up early and sometimes I wake up later.

I just wake up when I wake up. I don't set an alarm. And again, I like a nice slow ritual in the mornings. I just get up. I take my time getting up. You know, I usually drink a big water in the morning and then I'll have a little breakfast and I'll

hang out with Tomoe my wife and there's a couple blogs that I usually read in the morning so I'll read the blogs and then I'll get dressed and just take my time it's very slow and relaxed and then I'll grab my recorder in my backpack

And then I walk to the coffee shop and that's when I do the walk and talk. That's when I start my work. But even that's pretty relaxed. I'm just chatting with you while I'm outdoors walking.

When I get to the coffee shop, I usually focus for about an hour. Plan out the next show. Plan out some business ideas. Maybe catch up on some business ideas.

email and other communications. And then again, I relax. I'll look at social media. I answer comments on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. Might read a book, go for another walk or something.

Another relaxing walk home. And then I'll record my show or do my show live. which is in the evenings for me. And so that's about another hour where I'm really focused and energized.

So total time, focused, energized, you know, full enthusiasm is maybe three hours per day for me. That's a full work day. And there might be a couple more hours in there where I'm working in a more relaxed way, but three hours a day of full intense energy and focus.

very, very productive in that short time. So I suggest to you that that's all you need. Instead of spreading it out all over the day, choose three hours of your day. You can split them up, even, you know, one in the morning, one in the afternoon, one in the evening, whatever.

Three hours a day where you're going to be intensely energized, focused, productive, focused, Choose whatever the activity is that's important to you. Learning English.

Getting started on your business or freelancing career. Whatever. And then during that time, do not get distracted. Get yourself in the highest possible level of energy and enthusiasm and motivation.

And work. Work intensely with complete concentration and focus during those three hours. Don't answer emails. Turn off your phone. No social media. Nothing.

Just work on what's important to you. 100%. Full energy. Full effort. 100%. And then when you finish that third hour, when it's done, turn it off and just take a deep breath.

Slow down and relax. Look around. Enjoy your life. Pick up the phone. Call your close friend or your family. Go for a long walk. Do a little yoga. Do some meditation.

I don't know. Anything you want. Anything you want. play with your kids. So that's my approach. That's my approach. We'll call it the Taoist approach to being an entrepreneur.

One of the cool things about this time we're living in, this great explosion of information technology in the internet is that you can build your own mobile empire your own mobile business empire you can build and run your own business well the most basic level you could do it with just your phone

just your smartphone you could do it it would be a little inconvenient with the phone but you could do it if you also have a laptop a nice webcam and a good microphone you have pretty much everything you need for your mobile business empire

You could run it from anywhere. That's what's so cool. This is what I have. I'm a solopreneur, right? Just me. I have no employees. I have a few freelancers I work with who help me.

The main one's Peter. But that's it. I run my business. It's a mobile empire. I mean, for the fact that I'm just one person... You know, it's a pretty large business to be run by only one person.

And I can run the whole thing from a laptop with a webcam and a microphone. And it's mobile. As long as I can find a half-decent internet connection. I can be anywhere.

And I have been. So I have run Effortless English from Hawaii. I have run it from San Francisco. I have run it while visiting Indiana and Georgia. I'm running it from Japan.

At times I've traveled in Vietnam and Thailand and Europe. It's fantastic. It's really great. What's kind of cool about it, too, is it opens up a different kind of travel.

Instead of just one to two weeks of vacation, sometimes what we do is we will go somewhere and Not fully live somewhere, but we'll go and stay somewhere for six to nine months where we get an apartment, just short term.

And we'll just stay in a place six months, eight months, nine months, and really get a feeling for the place and the life there. It's a much different experience than a quick tourism trip.

We did that in Hawaii. It was fantastic. I loved it. Loved it. We did that in Kyoto, Japan. Fantastic. A lot of people do this. A lot of people do this now as freelancers.

I met a guy in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It's in North Thailand in the hills. American guy. And what he was doing is... Writing books. He wrote books about mushrooms, of all things.

He wrote a book about mushrooms. An e-book. Sold it online. Was writing more books. Had social media, of course, to connect with his readers and to promote his book.

And he was making enough money to live in Thailand. He was living in Thailand. I think it was... He had been there about six months when I met him in Chiang Mai.

And we went out to coffee. He interviewed me. He had a podcast also. Cool guy. Really cool guy. Young guy. Like in his 20s, I think kind of late 20s. And after Chiang Mai, he went to Taiwan and he stayed in Taiwan for a few months.

And then he was going to Europe after that. his own mobile empire. Same idea. All he had was a laptop, and I think he had a laptop, a camera, and a mic.

Another group that does this now are programmers, also called coders, people who do some sort of computer programming or web programming, whatever, you know, IT kind of work, the more technical software work.

A lot of these people now are doing this mobile, in a mobile way. They are mobile. It means, again, all they need is a good Internet connection and their laptop.

And so they'll go and, you know, live on a beach for a while and, you know, they get jobs. Some of them work in actual companies as employees and some are freelancers.

I've known both. I'll give you an example. A friend of my... You guys know my friend Joe from LearnRealEnglish.com. He has a friend who does... I think he specializes in security, like...

Security software, that kind of stuff. And this guy works for a major company, a fairly big company. But the company lets him work from home a lot. And he can also be mobile, so he doesn't have to go to the office.

As long as he does a good job, they don't care where he is, really. And so he and his whole family moved down to Ecuador in South America... And they bought land there and built a house.

And he worked from Ecuador. And, of course, Ecuador is much cheaper than California. California is where the company is. So he was making a really good salary from the California company, but living in Ecuador, where it's very, very inexpensive.

And they still have that house. And they're there part of the year. But then they also got another house... where they're living in Nevada, which is a state in America, next to California, where they're up in the mountains.

They like skiing, and there's an area on the Nevada-California border called Tahoe. Tahoe is a famous ski area, so they have a house in Tahoe now. So he's an employee, he's working for a company, but he's still mobile. He's got his own kind of little mobile empire, even as an employee.

IT is a really good area for doing this kind of thing. A lot of the IT people, the coders, are freelancers, so they're not employees of one company. Instead, they take jobs from lots of different companies, small businesses, anybody really.

And again, some of these people decide to move to Thailand or they might live somewhere in East Europe or a lot of them will just move around or maybe sometimes they'll live part of the year in one place and part of the year in another. So in the winter they go somewhere warm and in the summer they go somewhere cool.

There are lots of possibilities. Lots of possibilities. You've got to think like a hunter again. You start looking for these opportunities and you just give it a try.

That's all you do. You just try. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. And if it doesn't work, you just learn what you can and you move on and you look for another opportunity and you try again.

And eventually, you're going to get something that works. It's just like baseball, right? In baseball, they throw the ball and you swing to try to hit the ball. And most of the time you miss.

But if you keep swinging, eventually you hit. You keep swinging, eventually you're going to get a hit. And luckily, as an entrepreneur, as a solopreneur, as a freelancer, you just need one hit. You only need one hit, one success, and then you have freedom.

That's what you have to remember. You don't need huge success. You just need one decent success and then you're good. Then you just keep going. So don't get too upset if you have some misses.

That's normal. That's normal. It's normal to have misses. Finally... Speaking of Max, one of our superstar members, Max from Rome, Italy. We are connected on Twitter.

Max likes motorcycles. He's going to buy a new motorcycle soon. Planning to. He's sharing pictures of the motorcycle he's interested in. And Max mentioned doing a motorcycle trip sometime to tour around Europe, for example, or tour around the United States.

And He invited me to do it, and it's like, oh, that got me thinking. I was like, that's something I've, well, several years ago I had a motorcycle, and that's what I thought about doing.

That was kind of my dream or idea was, oh, someday I'd like to, you know, tour around, go on a long motorcycle tour, maybe camp out, you know, like just do it with a tent, or not, just stay in guest houses, either way. And just tour around maybe Europe, maybe the United States, Canada, wherever.

I think I was really inspired by a documentary called Long Way Round. Long Way Round. Long Way Round is about two actors who take a round-the-world motorcycle trip.

Obviously, they take a boat. For the water parts. But otherwise, they go around the world on motorcycles. So they start in England. They're two British actors.

You probably know one of them, Ewan McGregor. Ewan McGregor's pretty famous. He's Scottish, actually. The other one, what was his name? Charlie... Can't remember his last name.

Not as famous as an actor, but he's become really big. in motorcycles, especially because of this documentary. So anyway, Ewan and Charlie, they were kind of enthusiastic motorcycle riders, and they decided, let's do a trip around the world on motorcycles.

And then the documentary name, Long Way Round, just shows them planning the trip and then doing it. So they start in England, they go, of course, over to

continental Europe, and they cut across, and they go through Eastern Europe, and then across Russia, Mongolia. It's very interesting. And then they have to take a short boat ride over to Alaska, and then from Alaska they go through North America.

And when I was watching that, I was thinking, oh, this is so cool, especially the part where they're kind of Really, you know, out more in the big open countryside of Russia and Mongolia.

And they have some challenges. They have some difficulties for sure, but very, very interesting. And when I saw that, I thought, oh man, I want to do that. That would be fun.

Not necessarily go all the way around the world, but to do some, you know, long motorcycle touring would be kind of fun. We'll see, though. The problem is I haven't ridden a motorcycle in many years, so... And I was never a great rider. I just didn't get enough experience doing it.

I have a bit of experience, but... Probably now my... My riding skills are probably terrible, so I'd be pretty scared to do anything at high speed or anything difficult. I'd have to really probably...

take some training courses or get a lot more time. But it would be fun. It would be fun. It's another one of those cool things. I think overall, you know, with traveling, I've changed how I like to travel now.

When I was younger, I was a backpacker, so I would, you know, get a backpack, fly someplace, follow a guidebook, like Lonely Planet or something, and...

You know, take trains and buses from one town to the next. See the famous places. That's okay, but I find now what I like doing is going more slowly. So my favorite way to travel is walking.

When you walk, it changes everything. Because now you're not so much a tourist anymore. Now you are going very slowly and walking through the landscape, walking through the country.

And so you meet so many different kinds of people, especially like pilgrimages, because then not only are you walking, but you're participating in something that is part of the culture that has such a long history. So you're not just a tourist anymore there to watch and to look.

You're a guest, a visitor, a pilgrim. Visiting and participating in the culture and history that goes back, you know, a thousand years or more. The two most famous examples of this I know, the two that I have done, are number one, the Camino de Santiago in Spain, and number two, the Shikoku 88 Temple Pilgrimage in Japan.

Probably my two favorite trips, traveling. Traveling. Another way to go slowly through a country or an area is bicycling. That would be fun, I think, to bicycle.

People do this in America a lot, where they'll take long bike trips. A good number of people I've seen have bicycled all the way across America, which is quite a long trip.

And then next would be motorcycling. The thing about motorcycling is fast, but you're kind of, you know, you're not inside of a car. You're more open and exposed.

This is why people like motorcycling, I think, because you still feel like you're part of the land, the air. You're not separated from it. It's a different kind of feeling.

Another great one, I think, which I would like to do someday, would be the Appalachian Trail. I mentioned this in a previous podcast, the Appalachian Trail. So there are people who through hike it. It's called through hiking.

And they will walk it all the way from Georgia up to Maine. And that is a four or more month trip for most people. There are some crazy people who do it faster.

But I'd say for most people, it's at least four months to do that. You can start in Maine and go south, or you can start in Georgia and go north. Most people start in Georgia and go north.

So, you know, you've got to carry everything. Carry your water, carry your food, carry your tent, carry your cooking stove, all of it. that would be great to through hike the Appalachian Trail it's still on my list of things to do there are actually three big trails in the United States that are all very long the Appalachian Trail is the oldest most famous number two would be the Pacific Crest Trail that's out west goes through California the Sierra Mountains in California goes up into Washington State

Higher altitude than the Appalachian Trail. And fewer towns, you know, because you have to carry your own food. Obviously, you can't carry four months of food. It's too much.

You can usually carry about four to seven days of food normally. And so, every four to seven days, you need to go by a town or go somewhere and get more food. On the Appalachian Trail, that's easier because... It's in the east.

The east has more population. So the Appalachian Trail crosses highways more often. When you get to the highway, then you can walk into the closest town.

Some people do laundry. Some people shop at the grocery, get more food for the next week, and then back on the trail again. You can do that also on the Pacific Crest Trail, but it's a little more difficult. You might have to carry more than just four to seven days sometimes.

Or you might have to go farther to get to a town. So it can be more challenging to plan that trip. But another cool trip. And then there's one called the Continental Divide Trail.

All these trails go north-south. So they start... They'll start in the south part of the United States, and then they go north. And they all three go through mountains.

The Appalachian Trail goes through the Appalachian Mountains, which are the main mountains in the east. The Pacific Crest Trail goes through the Sierra Mountains, the main mountains in the far west.

And the Continental Divide Trail goes through the Rocky Mountains, the biggest mountains, in the sort of beginning of the West. Colorado, for example.

Now that one is the most difficult to do, to plan, because it's the least well-known, it's the least popular, so fewer people doing it. It's the most wilderness, fewer towns.

I don't know a lot about it. I think it would be quite challenging to do. It's the highest elevation area. I don't know if I'll ever do that one. I probably won't do the Pacific Crest Trail either.

Not the whole thing, but I've been on the Pacific Crest Trail little sections, just like I've done sections of the Appalachian Trail. And that's another way you can do these things. A lot of people do them in sections where they'll take one month and they'll just do a one-month section.

And then maybe the next year they'll come back and they'll start where they finished before and they'll do the next month and then the next month. So they'll eventually do the whole thing, but they just do it in sections over many years.

I might do that too. We'll see. Okay, well, time for me to go back in the coffee shop. I hope you've enjoyed this little chat. Tonight's show, which I'll be doing live on Facebook, my Facebook is Effortless English.

Effortless English on Facebook. I'll do my show tonight live on Facebook, Effortless English. I'll be talking more about starting your own business or being a freelancer, giving you more thoughts on how to overcome that fear, how to be more financially free so that you can try these things without fear.

So follow me on Facebook, Effortless English. And remember, my audio book is free. Free, the entire audio book for you at EffortlessEnglish.com. Just enter your email in the middle of the page, EffortlessEnglish.com, my free audio book.

Get it. Listen to it. Enjoy it. EffortlessEnglish.com. Lots of love to you. See you later.