In November 2016, I founded the Me.Now. Movement to encourage people to pursue their passions and build a community of achievers. For many in the Movement, lives have already changed in incredible ways: jobs, finances, relationships, mental health. It appears that my own Me.Now. journey must now change also.

I was approached this week by a literary agency interested in converting my blog content into a book for publication. They have requested I provide an outline and a summary proposal to establish a target market segment and genre.  Also this week, a social media agency approached me to create a new brand – ‘Andrew Bustamante’ – as the foundation for multiple media content channels including podcasts, vlogs, ebooks and professional speaking engagements. They have tentatively booked me to be a guest on a national podcast that commands an audience exceeding 100,000 subscribers. To say I was overwhelmed with new opportunities would be an understatement.

In April 2017 I did a series on achieving our goals called the April Challenge. In that series I highlighted that goals have to evolve, to be given space to grow and change. I originally set a goal to blog for 52 weeks, and publish a new post every Friday. It appears that the time has come to let this goal evolve into something new – something bigger than it was intended to be. And as my goals change and I succeed alongside others in the Movement, I am awestruck by the power of this community.

I will continue to contribute to this blog regularly, but now on a monthly basis. I would also like to open the door for guest contributors from the Movement! If you want to inspire others by sharing your journey to live out your passion, please reach out to me directly. My success is not my own. My success is owed to all of you reading this.

The time is now for all of us.

See you next month!

One Life – No Compromises

 – Andrew Bustamante

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An article for Pen-Chant Magazine and the Malayalee Association of Tampa.

Where did daring go? Whether a childhood game (‘I double dog dare you!’) or the character trait of an adventurous spirit, daring used to be something that people valued.

Today, daring is something many of us avoid in the hope that someone else will take the risk. Instead of one child daring another to climb a tree outside, both children sit indoors entertained by their parent’s tablet. Instead of one adolescent daring to stand up to a bully, that same adolescent bottles their frustration and seeks comfort in a virtual gaming world. Instead of daring to seek fulfilling work, career professionals drown dissatisfying work-lives in reality TV, social media memes and even substance abuse. It is important to remember that risk, rather than compliance, is what brings reward.

Our history and our future are written by those who dare to dare; the daring few who challenge the status quo with new ideas that carry the power to change paradigms. Civil rights, women’s suffrage, child labor laws and international human rights are incredible achievements owed to those who dared to challenge the norm at a time when no one else would. Personal computers, cellular phones, mobile internet and virtual reality exist today because of those who dared to believe science fiction could be made real.

I am a parent. And like many parents, I feel the pressure to protect and support my children. I feel a responsibility to mold them into contributing members of society. But the truth is that my understanding of society is limited to the present, and getting older by the minute. If I form my child to fit the world of today, then they will never be able to shape the world of tomorrow. If I am an example of compliance and conformity, then my children will learn to value compromise over courage. Like all parents, I have infinite faith in my children’s future. But the only way to give them confidence in their own future is to demonstrate for them the confidence I have in my own. I must dare to dare.

We no longer live in a time where information is limited. Media is unrestricted and takes advantage of freedoms that often harm as much as they help. While much of the curiosity and cause for daring can seem lost in today’s interconnected world, I would argue that the hostility, fear and anger present in our world demonstrates a unique need for daring. The world needs those who dare to dare for good; who dare to dare for knowledge; who dare to dare for freedom and courage and community. And the best way to inspire a generation of daring heroes is to be a daring example.

Our lives have been graced by those who dared to dare. If we hope to leave a better world for those who follow us, we must follow in daring footsteps. There is incredible potential for justice, innovation, community and technology still ahead of us. What we consider to be fiction and fantasy can become real if the right people dare to make it so. And it falls to each of us to inspire and cultivate brave, new generations that dare to dare.

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A woman stood in front of me yesterday and said, “I want to quit school. What can you say to keep me in school?”

I told her that quitting is always an option, and it is a popular option. And when things get difficult and we get tired, the option to quit becomes even more appealing. But those who persevere through doubt become the hope for others. And hope can stand out.

I told her that something once inspired her to go to school, and that the ambition to finish is still inside her. When we quit, ambition does not go away. Instead, we leave it in darkness and look away. But ambition is like a light. And light can stand out.

The oceans are full of boats that travel near and far. And when night falls or storm clouds darken the sky, sailors seek a light on the shore to guide them home; to bring them hope. Each of us has the option to be the lighthouse that guides others or be the boat lost at sea. We all have the option to quit. We also have the option to stand out.

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“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I recently came across a statement by author and performance coach Jack Canfield where he expanded on Dr.King’s quote:

“Think of a car driving through the night. The headlights only go a hundred to two hundred feet forward, and you can make it all the way from California to New York driving through the dark, because all you have to see is the next two hundred feet. And that’s how life tends to unfold before us.”

In 2011 my wife and I decided we were going to adventure our way through northern Thailand to find and attend one of the most elusive cultural festivals in the world: Yi Peng. If you’ve ever seen a travel guide or sales brochure with the picture of a night sky full of floating lanterns, that is Yi Peng. Like all great cultural festivals, Yi Peng has suffered commercialism and cheap tourist knock-offs of the celebration can be found all over Southeast Asia. But there is still only one authentic Lanna Yi Peng festival and it can be found in Chiang Mai, Thailand on the night of the first full moon of the second month (‘Yi Peng’) in the Lanna calendar (November in the western calendar). And for anyone with the patience and willingness to roam through a city that doesn’t speak English, following strangers who look at your guide book photo and point toward a barren dirt mound on the outskirts of town, Yi Peng is waiting for you.

Jack Canfield’s visual of a car driving in the dark is powerful because we’ve all had that experience. We were all afraid of night driving when we first started driving, and we all see it as second nature over time. That journey in 2011 was one of the most rewarding drives in the dark I’ve ever taken. Like Dr. King notes, no great achievement is easily visible from the starting point. Sometimes we have to trust that the next step will become visible only after we take the first step. That first step into the unknown, that blackness just beyond the headlights, is always the hardest.

When you get to Yi Peng, you will see hundreds of strangers gather on the mount with you. The sun sets and darkness collapses around you. Then one by one, small candles ignite and large paper lanterns are handed through the crowd. Families gather together to unfold their lanterns and light the candles that hang at the bottom. They speak their prayers and wishes for a good year out loud and believe they are filling the lantern with the same. And as the candle glows brighter and the hot air fills the lantern, everyone releases their hopes into the sky. And for a while, there is no more darkness. The lights of a thousand dreams blanket the hill and fend off the darkness. As the lanterns float higher and get caught in strong breezes, they are swiftly carried away together to higher altitudes and faraway places. The light fades away and the darkness returns.

What Yi Peng taught me was that we do not need to find lights in the dark before we move forward. Instead, we need to be the lights in the dark that carry our dreams higher.

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In the eight months that I’ve been posting this blog, this is the first week I fear that I will fail to meet my Friday afternoon deadline. As I write, it still isn’t a guarantee. I have multiple work issues demanding my attention, a proctored mid-term for my master’s degree looming, and a beautifully pregnant wife that expects to go into labor any day. This is life in its naked glory – and everyone reading right now knows what life looks like when you strip it down.

Today my message is simple; we must give ourselves permission to try. We only stop trying if we permit ourselves to stop trying, so it stands to reason that we must also permit ourselves to keep trying. Today I am allowing myself to keep trying.

Instead of giving up and saying that my goal to post every Friday afternoon is too difficult this week, I’m going to try anyway. Instead of looking at the numerous obstacles ahead, I’m going to dare to try and navigate through them in time to reach the finish line. I don’t expect it will be pretty – I expect readers will find poor grammar, typos, and may even hate this week’s post. And if that is the case, I am genuinely sorry to disappoint. At the same time, if I can inspire even one person on the reading end of this page to give themselves permission to try, than the risks are worth it to me.

I am tired. My wife hasn’t slept well in weeks and the unborn baby she is carrying is measuring just under 9lbs. You can guess how tolerant she is of my work or school complaints right now. My 4 year old son is wonderful and equally a ray of sunshine and raging tornado every morning and every evening. Life is full of excuses and we can grab any one of them at any time. So my excuse for whatever outcome results from this post is that I… chose to try.  

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Some say spying is a gentleman’s game; it’s not. Leading news sources in the US and China confirmed this week that nearly two dozen CIA informants have been killed or imprisoned by Chinese authorities. When the only thing we can agree on is the body count, it may be time to re-evaluate our values.

The New York Times, BBC, Asia Times and more filled the newswire this week with reports that CIA informants in China were killed or captured as far back as 2010. Nobody seems to know how Chinese authorities were able to quickly and quietly identify, terminate and detain CIA’s most sensitive sources over the course of two years. The Agency claims they were investigating two possible moles – Chinese penetrations working inside CIA itself – but both suspects successfully fled to Asia before a case could leveled against them in the US. A second theory was that the operations were discovered due to human error; sloppy, repetitive tradecraft by CIA that the Chinese reverse engineered and used as virtual tracking beacons. While the ongoing discussion is interesting and compelling, the focus is on the wrong question. Rather than ask, “What happened?” I challenge that we ask, “Why did it happen?”

My time with CIA taught me that a country’s chief intelligence service is a reflection of its culture. That explains why the people serving in CIA Headquarters and executing covert operations are more like the cast of ‘The Office’ than ‘Burn Notice.’ They complain about their commute, compare predictions for ‘The Voice,’ and doze off daily in their cubicles around 2:30pm. This routine is not a sign of incompetence, but rather an indicator that CIA is more common than Hollywood would have us believe. This commonality is important because it is the key to understanding why CIA lost decades worth of work in less than 24 months.

The men and women serving at CIA are just like you and me: they love their families, take pride in their country, look forward to summer vacation and hate paying taxes. When they were first hired by CIA they accepted their job offers with excitement and optimism. But over time, like many of us, they discovered that their talents, ambition and creativity were not priorities for the company. Too often conformity, obedience and quiet restraint paved the road to promotion.

When the grind of a long commute, disinterested leadership, conflicting priorities and a fixed salary wear us down, compromise takes the driver’s seat. We compromise on goals, ambitions and even personal health. Is it a surprise, then, that we would see a compromise in professional performance as well?

Consider again the headlines from above. The New York Times credits, “current and former American officials…on condition of anonymity” as news sources. Each of these individuals signed a secrecy agreement to protect this type of information but chose to compromise themselves by leaking this story. The mole hunt was focused on disgruntled employees who were compromised even though they were once full of enthusiasm and commitment as new recruits. Lastly, Chinese intelligence services have countered our recent losses with their own operational victories like the cyber attack on the Office of Personnel Management in 2015, placing Chinese agents inside FBI in 2016, and penetrating the US State Department via American citizen Candace Marie Claiborne earlier this year.

The espionage problem is not about leaks or tradecraft, it is about compromise – the fatal flaw. Espionage is about selling lies to traitors who want to be patriots. Compromise begets compromise in a destructive cycle that devours our energy and convinces us that the only escape is to compromise further. Do not be fooled! Take heart – there is another way. We can reject compromise, embrace courage, and strike out in pursuit of the life we have always believed in. Those trapped in the vacuum of compromise will try to convince us that all is lost, but we must stand resolute. Live the example, recognize your potential, and fear no horizon. The horizon is the only place where we can meet the sun.

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Everyone is seeking the recipe for success. During an unexpected trip to Uruguay this week, a small-time chef with a five star smile shared his recipe with me.

Chef Luis didn’t teach me his secret in English or Spanish. He used the universal language of Paella. Paella is an ancient food, estimated to have originated circa 1000 years ago. Found in the Middle East, Europe, Africa and South America, Paella is made with a multitude of different ingredients unique to each region but with one common component – an over-sized frying pan known as the ‘patella’. When I crossed paths with Chef Luis at 10am in the riverside city of Colonia, he was pouring a 5 gallon bucket of seafood and vegetables into his patella. He smiled at me and my travel mate and told us, ‘Come back at 12:30pm – it will be ready.’

This post marks my last for the April Challenge series. Those participating in the challenge have shared trials, victories and frustrations along the way. Through it all, however, we find ourselves together now at the finish line! For some of us, we are excited that we met our original goal on time. For others, we discovered that there is power in allowing ourselves to adjust objectives midway without shame or embarrassment. And still more of us may choose to continue our April goal into May to see it to completion. Herein lies our ‘patella,’ the key universal component: growth happens during the journey, not at the destination.

Chef Luis was true to his word and at 12:30pm he handed us two small plates to sample his freshly made Paella. Gorgeous saffron-colored rice bursting with mussels, clams, squid, shrimp and fish commanded my full attention. The taste was exquisite; complex and hearty with flavors that sang of coastal waters and local farms. But the most amazing thing was that my tutor/chef had done it all without a recipe. The day’s catch, a few South American staples (corn, peppers, rice) and the steady hand of a committed cook were his script for success.

A goal, like a recipe, can be simultaneously comforting and intimidating. But like the best meals often come without a recipe, so too are the most impactful goals often borne from the heart. It is unheard of to discard a partially cooked meal because of a missing ingredient or an unexpected delay, yet we often justify abandoning our goals for exactly those reasons. Wherever you stand today with the April Challenge, know that you are the chef and the world will be inspired by your passion. Never stop cooking.

My sincerest thanks to Chef Luis of Restaurante Rio De La Plata!

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We must accept a universal truth: Kids don’t like to eat the crust. An endless battle for parents, this truth is a powerful tool for meeting goals.

Be it toast, peanut butter and jelly, grilled cheese or otherwise, kids have always preferred the core over the crust. It is not hard to understand why. Experience has proven to all of us that the soft part of the bread has the best texture, the freshest taste and is the easiest to chew. Even as adults, many of us still pick the soft core out of fresh bread served in high-end restaurants. We’ll never admit it to our kids, but we all know it’s true!

I find that a child’s approach to eating a sandwich is the roadmap to success in achieving goals. To the child, there is no sorrow for what they didn’t eat. Instead, they celebrate every bite of what they wanted to eat! They eat in perfect contentment until they are full, and then they leave the rest behind. Usually, the remains are not pretty; picked over and mangled like a wild animal came and plucked all the best parts out.

The same should be true of our goals. Goals are meant to be enjoyed. They should feed the body, mind and spirit and help us grow over time. While it is easy to build a goal that looks wonderful (like a good sandwich), finishing that goal is not always uniformly enjoyable. There are parts that we really like and parts that we don’t like that much. As adults, we try to force ourselves through what we don’t like by using discipline, logic and will power. Parents use the same tactics when trying to get their kids to eat the crust. And often, like parents, we find ourselves frustrated and defeated when our tactics don’t work. Even worse, we look back on the whole experience as a failure. Rather than approach our goals like the parent, I advocate that we approach them like the child.

Our April Challenge is entering its final week. Some of us may feel proud of our progress while others may feel discouraged. If challenges or doubts tempt you to quit or feel ashamed, remember what generations of children have taught us about bread: it is better to enjoy what we eat than it is to finish it all.

We all set goals that we knew we would enjoy. We spent three weeks overcoming distractions and making progress together. We must not let shame spoil the taste now! Keep working, keep growing, and enjoy every bite. After all, the best part of any sandwich is the core – not the crust!

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History is written by those committed to the struggle, the fight – ‘La Lucha.’ While most goals do not make it into history books, there is comfort in knowing that nobody finds achievement to be easy. Meaningful goals always involve a struggle. It is in that struggle that we find courage, learn to trust our community, and expand the limits of our own capabilities.

Our April Challenge has entered its second week. For those participating, you may be feeling some of the struggle I am talking about. With nearly half the month past, progress can sometimes be less easy to quantify. My goal for April is to write 5 consecutive blog posts before April 30, 2017 that give practical guidance on how to set, maintain and achieve goals. While this post completes the third in my series of five, it has been harder for me to author this series than any other individual post on the Me.Now. blog. Organizing, researching and crafting my posts – knowing that they must all work together while also offering incremental encouragement – has taken me firmly out of my comfort zone. But despite the challenge, I remain confident that the goal was properly set (P-I-R-A-T-E) and that victory only comes after the fight!

Every goal has a midway point; the peak where the struggle is greatest and fear and doubt try to press in. As you approach your peak, know that you are not alone. I am trudging through my struggle now; hoping that this post resonates with readers, questioning if this series is making a difference, and fearful that I will fail to encourage those who trusted me with their own April goals. I am choosing to embrace the struggle; to recognize that I will learn from it only if I let it teach me. The fear and doubt that I feel are distractions. They bring no benefit and instead try to rob me of the fulfillment that the struggle promises.

Take heart during your struggle. You can achieve what you have set out to do! There are others struggling to climb the peak with you, even if you do not yet know their names. ‘La Lucha’ is hard. It is a road paved in doubt and fear. But roads are built to be traveled, not to be destinations. The place where the road ends is the goal.

Good luck, and keep fighting!

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Distractions are innumerable, ever-present and fully unavoidable. Anyone who says we should ‘avoid distractions’ is clearly not living in the same world as the rest of us. Reaching goals is about managing and prioritizing distractions without losing sight of the original objective.

Success is not found by avoiding distractions, but rather by acknowledging them for what they are – options. And like all options, distractions can be acted upon or ignored. While distractions may masquerade as obligations or demands, the fundamental difference is that distractions lose power over time.

As an example, an electric bill is an obligation. If you ignore it, it does not go away – your lights do. In contrast, an incoming call on your cell phone is NOT an obligation. If you ignore it, it will likely go to voicemail or come back as a text message. While I am not advocating that we ignore every call or jump up to immediately pay our electric bill, the comparison is sound.

When we work toward a goal we must give ourselves permission to prioritize the goal first. By doing so, we take power away from distractions before they even present themselves. Commitment to the goal gives us the space we need to see distractions as options rather than obligations. This is especially important when you encounter a distraction that could benefit your goal. For example, while cooking your grandma’s soup recipe you see an incoming call from grandma! Eureka! Answer the call and talk to the source directly – this distraction benefits your goal.

 Last week I invited anyone reading this blog to pick a goal for April. Many did, and I invite those participants to give us updates using the comment box below. For those that did not set a goal last week, I wonder how many thought, ‘I should pick a goal,’ only then to have a distraction divert their attention elsewhere. If that happened to you, that is totally okay! Share your goal now and commit to it – there are still plenty of days left to complete the April challenge.

Distractions can be overwhelming; we all know it. Rather than let ourselves feel obligated to them, let us instead see them for what they are – optional. We are obligated to our goals; the distractions are just jealous. Let them be.            

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