I wanted to share with you more information on my event after the NomadCruise reunion. Yes, some nomads asked me to host a multi-day event in 2020 to dive deeper into some of the heavier topics we’ve discussed on the cruises. In this message I’ll tell you who I am (outside of the cruise), who is attending, and what we’ll get up to during our time together in paradise.
NomadCruise has meant so much to me. It pulled me out of my pattern of living for others, sabotaging my own plans, and not expecting much from myself. But after NC3, NC7, and NCX I’ve realized that we all have something valuable to share. I’m putting effort into helping others the best way I know how.
WHO AM I?
Many of you have seen me on stage, in a party setting or leading a conversation down a strange path at 2am. I’m very proud to have overcome my shy tendencies but this isn’t all that I am. If we are to share four days together in Mallorca, we’re going to need to be open with each other. I’ll get to know you as well in the process. This is a summary of the background that allows me to host an event like this:
*I cut myself off from my known world and took a job at Greenscie Chemical in a remote Chinese city. Working in agrochemicals and visiting farmers all in Mandarin was quite intimidating and isolating.
*I taught Wing Chun Kung Fu in Shanghai and Singapore. I’d never learned the value of training the body before.
*I was a “Love Doctor” on television and a relationship advisor to a few close people where I broke down typical human behavior and gave the distressed much needed perspective on the people who broke their hearts.
*Dancing for money when I had quit university helped to pay the rent. This was something people might assume I’d do but it was honestly horrifying. It made me empathize with vulnerable people in many different situations.
*I was a lounge singer on weekends at a jazz club. I pretended I was Frank Sinatra and lived a double life for a year as my day job was quite tame. Learning to release the beast inside you like this helped me understand work/life balance.
*I was a Bloomberg financial analyst back in my days when I was making my family proud.
*My team put together a metallurgy supply chain between Asia, Europe and North America. I drove a Mitsubishi around Europe for three months sleeping in the car to save the company hotel costs. I learned that sometimes we put in more effort than it’s worth. We need to respect ourselves or else no one else will.
*The Pili Pili racing team competed in the Africa Rally Car circuit. They hired me to run operations and work with a team from seven countries across four continents. We were stopped at national borders and our fuel and parts were stolen by guards who didn’t want our team to win. Corruption ran deep and solutions were never obvious.
*I gave two TEDx talks in China when I was working in the tech industry. I found myself as a bridge between the two largest economies in the world. I was an ambassador of culture while still exploring my own self worth. A hot mix of feeling superior and feeling like trash taught me about patience.
*Winning a rugby national title validated all the years of hard work where I’d prioritized rugby over a career, relationship, and stability. I knew as my body aged I wouldn’t receive high praise for my athletic skills so I cherished this moment.
*My transportation job in Uganda had me dealing with crying widows whose husbands had died while driving trucks for us. Usually rebel groups in Kenya or the DRC would murder them and steal their cargo. I had never been stuck between a boss who focused on the bottom line and a family that had been shattered. The terrible pressure of the weight of the world’s problems felt more than one person should be able to bear.
*I gave tours of Chicago on speed boats and kayaks to very ignorant tourists. A terrible feeling in my gut… seeing Americans so ignorant about the world they are trying to run. I was both ashamed to be labeled in the same category as these people but at the same time glad that I was able to share with them stories about foreigners and foreign places that were positive.
*Being tired of reading Medium articles alone in my room, I hosted Big Debates in Shenzhen, China allowing the public to come and speak on a number of controversial topics. AI, education, politics, family order, and social responsibility were discussed between Asians, Africans, Europeans, Australians and more. Finally having a forum for various people to raise their voices flew in the face of the commonly held belief that people living in China need to be silent and not speak their minds.
WHO ARE YOU?
You’re a pretty decent human if you ask me. You are a heck of a lot better off now than you were before. That’s because you’ve spent some effort improving yourself, understanding your personality, and growing. You’ve read Medium articles and watched TEDx talks. You try to eat healthier now than you did as a teenager. You read. You are excited about the potential you can smell but haven’t yet tasted.
But you are also frustrated. There is too much information out there. Too many good books you’ll never read. There are opportunities you are missing out on every day. You know yourself better now than you ever have before but some things still feel stuck. Or at least they don’t seem fresh any more. You are attracted to the nomad gatherings because you observe a variety of lifestyles similar but not the same as yours.
The reason you are still reading this message is because you think my background, personality and perspective can show you something still hidden inside you. To break into the strongest vault, you’ll need new tools. My job is not to change who you are. I’m not going to make you a better person. What I do promise is that you’ll learn how to better identify who you actually are (it’s not always what you’d like to think) and build a relationship between that person and the path you’re walking. You’re going to learn how to enjoy the life you already have.
WHAT WILL WE DO TOGETHER?
The event will start on Monday, May 18 and conclude on Thursday the 21st. We’ve got a lovely place just outside of Palma. We’ll be a small group. Thanks to our nomad friends at Retreaters.com I am able to bring our Mallorca event to life. Early bird tickets are $366. Johannes has welcomed efforts like mine to make the entire Mallorca experience so much fuller.
Together we’ll work through issues of Awareness. You should have a few issues you’d like to work on from Day 1. We’ll dive right in by doing a reality check. You’ll work in smaller groups and start to build a map of our time together.
Next we’ll jump to the magic of perspective. We’ll work through some methods used by people with fancy degrees on the wall that make a lot more money than any of us. These will be the building blocks of other tools you’ll learn to handle.
We have some surprises in store for our species. Yes, most of your worst problems you can simply blame on the fact that you are a Homo Sapiens. I’ll introduce Spiral Dynamics, the personal narrative, and the origin of thought.
I offer both regular and hot mastermind sessions. We’ll try hot masterminds… but they aren’t for everyone. Hopefully, some of you will continue your masterminds well after we finish in Spain. We’ll have some free time where you guys can run your own show inspired by some of the structured material presented.
Improv workshops for personal understanding, for business growth, and for creativity and confidence will be offered every day. This won’t be a two-hour long comedy fest. Rather, I’ll show you how to microdose improv in many different situations. We’ll practice together. This should be something you carry with you immediately afterwards as well. My past coaching clients told me they found themselves playing the games on their own while battling procrastination or with colleagues at work.
To help lay out potential plans for the future, we’ll dive into the codes we live by. As an extension of the Awareness material, we’ll figure out how to give meaning to your actions and how that meaning can offer structure to our future decisions. This will include schools of philosophy and some lively late night discussions.
I’ll introduce findings and therapy techniques shown to me by professional psychiatrists, family counselors, and social workers. We’ll see how the observations from my travels and the experiences you share with the group all fit into scientifically defined patterns. This will give us a launch pad for the next steps to take after Mallorca.
Contact curtin@americarex.com for questions, ticket purchase or to say hi.
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