A few weeks ago, I was putting the finishing touches on a new course about customer service. The timing couldn’t have been more ironic.

During the review process, I ran into an unexpected challenge with the platform. It wasn’t the experience I had anticipated while publishing a course about creating better customer experiences. After a few conversations and a fair amount of back and forth, I realized the review itself wasn’t really the problem.

I decided it was time to build the learning experience I actually wanted my students to have. Stop participating in somebody else’s platform, and create my own.

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Frustration Is Just Information

I’ve been teaching online (and offline) for many years, and I’m grateful for what marketplace platforms have made possible. They lower the barrier to entry for instructors, introduce students to new topics, and make online education accessible to people around the world.

But every platform you participate in as a content creator is designed around its own priorities, not necessarily yours. No matter how successful you are, a platform can change overnight and change that success in an instant. They have policies, processes, review systems, and guidelines because they need to support thousands of instructors and millions of students.

What became clear was that, once again, the experience I want to create for my students no longer fits comfortably inside someone else’s framework. I’ve been there before. Sometimes you don’t discover you’ve outgrown a system until you bump into one of its rough edges.

Shaping the Learning Experience

For a long time, I treated course delivery as something that happened after I’d finished creating the content. I would record the lessons, upload the videos, create exercises, write descriptions, and click “publish”. The platform handled the rest for me.

It seemed easy, but over time, I started thinking differently about my setup. The course content itself is only one part of learning. An important part, yes, but students often want to be part of the course community: get updates as topics evolve, recommended next steps, and a clearer path from one course to another. They benefit from seeing how different subjects connect instead of collecting isolated certificates like digital souvenirs.

That student experience is much harder to create when everything is primarily controlled by a marketplace. I always wanted to build an environment where learning could continue long after someone clicked “Join”.

Becoming Platform Agnostic Again

One of the things I value most is freedom: having the ability to make a different choice, if you wish. In travel and business that often translates to flexibility. Platforms, algorithms and marketplaces can be useful, but they also take away some level of control in exchange of the apparent convenience they provide.

Rather than building everything around a single marketplace, I’m moving back toward being platform agnostic. I’m giving up some of the comfort in exchange for getting a bit of control back over my student experience.

For me, that doesn’t mean abandoning marketplaces altogether. Many of my introductory courses will remain there because they’re still an excellent place for people to discover my work. What changes is where the deeper learning happens.

Service is a mindset, not a department

Over the past several months, I’ve been rethinking how I teach and bringing back the delivery under my own control. As a result, you’ll find more comprehensive courses, downloadable resources, updated content, structured learning paths, and an experience designed to help build practical skills rather than simply finish another course and collect a certificate (but yes, we will have certificates too!).

That’s the part I’m genuinely excited about (not the certificates, but the learning experience on the new platform). It gives me the freedom to keep improving the experience long after someone has signed up for a course.

Checkout the new platform

Ironically, my new customer service course ended up reminding me that customer experience doesn’t begin when someone buys something. It begins when you’re designing the product for people you’re trying to help. As I’ve said before: customer service is a mindset, not a department.

Get Into Action

My new customer service course will be the first major course released through this new learning platform, and I’m excited to finally share it.

If you’re interested in building practical customer service skills that go beyond scripts and checklists, you can pre-register now at a special early registration rate before the full course launches. I’m aiming to release it over the next few weeks, with September 1 as the latest launch date.

Preview the new course

Whether or not customer service is your profession, I think it’s one of the most underrated business skills you can develop. It’s about communication, trust, problem-solving, and creating experiences that people actually remember. Fittingly, building this course also reminded me that the same principles apply to the platforms we choose and the businesses we build.

Further reading

A schedule-change email arrived in my inbox this week. If you’ve ever booked a flight several months in advance, you’ve probably seen those. The airline may have adjusted a departure time, changed the aircraft, moved a connection, or made some other change it considers important enough to trigger an email (but never important enough to apologize for).

For most airlines, there is a button asking you to accept the change. The replacement itinerary has already been selected, the airline has done the administrative work, and all you need to do is click. Because they usually can’t just change the contract you signed with them when booking without your consent.

The one-click “accept” is designed to be the most convenient route. But sometimes other options may exist, which may very well improve your overall travel experience.

I had a flight booked that I no longer needed. Under the fare rules, I could cancel it, recover the points I had used, and receive a refund of the taxes and fees. I would simply have to pay a cancellation charge.

No surprises there, I was well aware of the ticket conditions I had booked. Recovering my points for a fee can still make sense. But I was hoping for a better option, as I also know airlines regularly adjust flights booked far in advance. So I waited.

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What “Non-Refundable” Usually Means

A non-refundable fare sounds final. You bought the ticket, changed your mind, and now the airline gets to keep the money, or charge you a fee before returning the points or issuing a credit. Sometimes that fee could be up to 100% of the money you paid, so I advise my Travel Revolution students to be aware of what they sign up for when booking anything.

The cancellation fee, as high as it may be, applies when the passenger is the one changing the agreement. Whether you like it or not: it’s your responsibility to know the terms and fine print before accepting them. There’s very few exceptions to this rule.

Things change when the airline changes the itinerary first. A meaningful schedule change may give you the option to accept the replacement, move to another suitable flight, or decline the new proposed itinerary and ask for a refund. The available choices depend on the airline, the route, the fare, the applicable passenger-protection rules, and the size of the change. No matter how small the change, it never hurts to ask for something different or better.

A five-minute schedule change is unlikely to set you free from every condition attached to a ticket. But a cancellation, airport change, unwanted connection, cabin downgrade, or substantial shift in departure or arrival time can change things in your favour.

“Non-refundable” describes the fare you purchased under the original circumstances. When the airline changes those circumstances, you may have new choices.

Don’t Automatically Accept the Replacement

Airline emails tend to make the proposed itinerary feel inevitable: “Here is your new flight. Here is the accept button. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Not so fast. Before doing anything, I always compare the new itinerary with the original confirmation they send me when booking. I look at the flight times, airports, connections, total travel time, cabin, seat assignment, aircraft, and any other detail that mattered when I made the booking.

We tend to evaluate whether the replacement is acceptable without asking whether the airline’s change gives us an opportunity to reconsider the reservation altogether.

Perhaps the trip no longer fits your plans. Perhaps another routing has become available. Perhaps you found a better option after booking. Perhaps the new schedule requires an extra hotel night or turns a comfortable connection into an airport sprint while juggling coffee and carry-on luggage, while questioning every decision that brought you there.

Travel Hacking Beyond Points

Flights booked far in advance often change. Airlines revise seasonal schedules, swap aircraft, adjust departure times, and renumber flights. None of this guarantees that a passenger will receive a free cancellation. Waiting also comes with risks, especially if you still need to secure a replacement flight or make other arrangements.

In my case, when I knew I no longer needed this particular flight, I saw little benefit in cancelling immediately. The flight was still months away. I understood the cancellation fee, and I had accepted that I might eventually need to pay it. Waiting simply preserved the possibility that the airline might change the itinerary first. I had nothing to lose.

Most travel-hacking conversations revolve around points. There is another side to travel hacking that receives less attention: learning how reservation systems actually work. This is part of what I teach in my Travel Revolution course. Understanding your options and knowing where they come from, helps sway the odds in your favour.

Read the Change as an Opportunity

An airline schedule change may allow you to move to a more convenient flight. It may open a routing that was too expensive when you originally booked. It may let you remove an unwanted connection and fly direct instead. In some situations, it may make a ticket refundable when cancelling it yourself would have resulted in a fee, a credit, or a complete loss.

There is no guarantee, and there is no universal trick. The value comes from slowing down long enough to understand what the change means for your particular reservation, and understanding what your options are.

The Flight I Needed to Cancel

My flight was part of a motorcycle trip I had planned for this summer. Below, I’ll share the details of exactly what happened for those that are interested.

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Someone asked me a few weeks ago whether, after 18 years in Canada, I would do it all over again.

The honest answer: I don’t know. Every major life decision creates a shadow life beside it: the version you did not live. In my case: The version of me who stayed in Europe, and maybe moved somewhere else entirely, but much later in life. The version who made one different phone call, booked one different ticket, said yes instead of no, or no instead of yes.

Those unlived lives are easy to romanticize because they never had to deal with dentist appointments, taxes, bad bosses, or the price of wine.

The Life Not Lived

When I left the Netherlands 18 years ago, I remember seeing a cartoon of a couple about to board a plane. The caption was something along the lines of, “Funny how we’ll romanticize this sh*t country again in a few decades.”

I laughed at it then, but by now it’s become uncomfortably accurate. Nostalgia edits out the reasons you left, softens the things that annoyed you, and adds a silver lining to everyday habits you couldn’t wait to escape. The things that once made you restless become part of a homeland reel on Instagram. Even the rain becomes charming (hello, Vancouver), and the smallness becomes cozy, or better yet, gezellig1.

But nostalgia isn’t entirely wrong. There is a real loss in leaving. There are birthdays, funerals, ordinary Sundays, friendships changing shape, and places that continue without you. There are versions of home you miss not because they were perfect, but because they belonged to a version of you that no longer exists.

I sometimes miss a version of the Netherlands that remained frozen in my mind while the actual country kept moving, renovating, arguing, building, pricing people out, changing governments, changing menus, changing moods. Meanwhile, I changed too. So when I go back, I am not returning as the person who left. I am visiting with 18 years of Canada in my luggage, whether I checked it in or not.

Home Gets Complicated

Whenever I’m back in the Netherlands, I enjoy being home. There is something easy about understanding the small codes of a place without having to think about them. The dry humour, the blunt directness, and even the way people complain about everything. Everyone has an opinion about everything and they’re not afraid to let you know.

And then, after a few days of homey comforts, I start missing Canada.

That is when immigration becomes inconveniently honest. Home is not as simple as a passport, a postal code, or the place where your childhood photos were taken. Home is a feeling, and sometimes that feeling exists between multiple places.

There are days when Canada feels really like home. There are also days when it feels like a country I am still figuring out after nearly two decades. Then I go somewhere else entirely and, within about 36 hours, I start fantasizing about moving there too (hello Santiago, Tulum, Lima, Buenos Aires, …). My brain sees a nice café, a walkable neighbourhood, and a decent view, and immediately starts browsing real estate listings. Very reasonable behaviour.

Maybe that is part of the immigrant condition, or maybe it is just my particular kind of restlessness. Either way, “home” has become less of a final destination and more a recurring question.

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Canadian Pride And The Loud Neighbour

The “proudly Canadian” vibe comes out a lot more recently, especially when Canada is being compared to the United States. It’s unfortunate two great countries are pitched against each other in a trade war that doesn’t benefit most people living on either side of the border.

I wish Canadian pride did not need that contrast to become visible. I would like us to be proud of Canada for the sake of Canada, not by comparison “against” the neighbour.

Why does it take outside pressure to make us talk seriously about fixing things inside the country? Why does interprovincial trade suddenly become more of a priority only when our southern neighbour has another tantrum? Canada has enough internal absurdities to keep us busy without needing a third party to remind us to care.

That is not anti-American, by the way. It is more anti-comparison. We can like the quiet, the space, the imperfect healthcare, the landscapes, the relative politeness, and the deeply Canadian habit of measuring hail by coin size without needing to wave a flag in someone’s face.2

The Outsider’s Verdict

I overheard a Dutch tourist on the phone the other day, saying (in Dutch) that Canada is like Australia: just a piece of the world nobody else wants anything to do with.

In true Dutch-opinionated fashion, it sounded like the kind of conclusion a person reaches after spending a lot of money on a two-week vacation to Western Canada and deciding they have now understood this entire country, and Australia. Impressive efficiency.

There may be some truth in it. Canada is geographically inconvenient in many ways. It is huge, spread out, expensive to cross, and often weirdly disconnected from itself. Flying across Canada can feel like you accidentally booked an expensive international itinerary without the benefit of arriving somewhere warm. The country is vast enough to create distance not only between provinces, but between realities.

But the “nobody wants anything to do with it” misses something important. People do want something to do with Canada. Many of us built lives here, from scratch, with no guarantee that any of it would work. Many stayed not because the country was perfect, but because it offered enough room to become more fully ourselves.

Canada is not an easy country to summarize, which is inconvenient for people who like tidy opinions. It is both generous and frustrating, open and bureaucratic, beautiful and expensive, calm and occasionally ridiculous. It offers space, but in that space you can also find loneliness. It offers a neutral kind of peace, but not always peace of mind.

Summarizing these contradictions is probably why I have no real clear cut answer to “Would I do it again?”.

Knowing What You Know Now

“If you knew then what you know now, would you do it all over again?”

The question sounds smart until you realize it is built on an impossible premise. The only reason I know what I know now is because of the choice I made 18 years ago. Hindsight 20/20 says you cannot remove the experience and keep the wisdom.

The younger version of me who left the Netherlands did not have all the information I have now. He had restlessness, ambition, curiosity, probably a little impatience, and a plane ticket. He did not know which parts of Canada would become familiar. He did not know which friendships would last, which ones would fade, which places would matter, which winters would test his sense of humour, or how often he would end up explaining the Dutch concept of gezellig to people who were mostly just being polite.

He also did not know what staying would have cost.

That is the part we forget when we imagine the alternative. We compare the difficulties of the life we lived with the highlights of the life we did not. We imagine the other path as smoother because we never had to walk it. But even the life not lived would have had its own disappointments, compromises, bills, illnesses, missed chances, and weather alerts. Maybe the hail would have been smaller. Maybe not.

I Would Not Trade The Question

Canada changed the shape of my life. It gave me distance from where I came from, which helped me see it more clearly. It gave me room to build, explore, work, travel, run, write, photograph, and become a person I might not have become otherwise. From time to time, it also gave me homesickness, for more places than one.

Belonging is not always a settled feeling. Sometimes it is just a rhythm where you carry pieces of one place into another. You become fluent in more than one kind of normal.

That kind of reflection is exactly why I wrote The Freedom Project: Happiness. Freedom often starts with understanding the life you actually built, not the imaginary one that keeps looking better from a safe distance.

After 18 years in Canada, I still don’t have a perfect answer. But I do have a better question: what kind of home am I still looking to create from here?

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Further reading

For me, a trip starts when I am on my way to the airport. Cats are taken care of, and my final list of pre-departure checks are done. I’m on my way.

That may sound too early to start enjoying the “vacation”, especially if you are the kind of person who treats the airport commute as a necessary punishment before the “real” travel begins. But how you move through those first few hours carries over into the rest of the trip.

The trip is not only the beach, the city, the conference, the race, the hotel balcony, the glass of wine, or the first walk through an unfamiliar neighbourhood. It is also the leaving, and the transition into something new. The slightly awkward in-between state where you are no longer fully at home, but not quite there yet.1

Small Victories

Travel, despite what Instagram posts suggest, is rarely one smooth reel from front door to destination. It is a sequence of small tests. Can I get out of the house on time? Did I remember my passport? Is downtown traffic behaving? Will security line ups be reasonable, or will I end up behind someone unpacking their entire life into six grey bins?

This is where the idea of Small Victories comes in, something I talk about in my book The Freedom Project: Travel. The trek from home to airport to final destination can be hectic and stressful, but it becomes easier to handle when I stop treating it as one giant, exhausting event. Instead, I break it into smaller steps. Each one completed is a small victory. Get out the door. Victory. Arrive at the airport. Victory. Check the bag (or better, avoid checking one). Victory. Clear security. Big victory.

Small Victories give me a better way to move through the uncertainty of a long travel day. I do not need the entire day to go perfectly. I just need to complete the next step.

The Lounge Is Just One Small Victory

This is where the airport lounge enters my story. With any luck, depending on the airport, I may have a few lounges to pick from.2 I like lounges that offer a quieter place to sit, and enjoy a drink with a light meal that does not require a second mortgage. Most importantly: I may find a little breathing room away from the terminal chaos.

A good lounge represents a little bit reduced friction, however the lounge does not make the trip meaningful. No social media bragging required about your pre-departure cheap sparkling wine. But, with a little luck, it can create one small victory in the middle of a long travel day, and provide a quick reset before the next step.3

The Better Travel Day Is The Achievement

On social media, there is a strange humble-brag subculture in my newsfeed around premium travel perks. Somewhere along the way, lounges, elite status, premium cards, and travel memberships became wrapped in a little too much self-importance. As if access to a bowl of mixed nuts and a slightly better chair proves one has achieved enlightenment. It does not. And sometimes the food isn’t even that great.4

A comfortable, calm space that feels a little like you have arrived, is useful. I don’t care my trip looks impressive to anonymous people online. I care whether it makes my trip easier. The true value of travel rewards and premium memberships is in preserving energy: you arrive at your final destination feeling just a little better. You arrive with enough attention left to actually experience where you are going.

Access to a lounge, priority check-in, and/or a business class seat can all support the experience. The better travel day is the achievement.

Premium Perks Should Support the Experience

An American Express Platinum card can be valuable for the right traveller. FounderCard can be useful for the right business owner, creator, or frequent traveller who will actually use the benefits. But neither of them are magic keys. If your flight is cancelled, it still sucks. If they lose your bag, you may not get it back.

These tools can become expensive distractions, if you’re not careful. The real question is whether they reduce friction in a life you are already building, or whether they tempt you to build a lifestyle around benefits you did not need yesterday. Don’t mistake access for freedom, what these programs really offer is options: the ability to choose a different path than most, if you choose.

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The Real Luxury Is Arriving With Something Left

Long-haul flights, red-eyes, delays, weather, and airport logistics can humble anyone. Travel has a way of reminding us that control is something we didn’t really have to begin with. Still, we can design parts of the experience to be better.

The point goal is arriving with a little more patience, a little more energy, and a little more capacity to enjoy the place I came to see. If a lounge helps with that, excellent. If a quieter route, a better departure time, or a less frantic layover schedule helps more, start there.

Get Into Action

In my book The Freedom Project: Travel, I talk more about Small Victories and the idea that travel begins long before arrival. The book is a good place to start if you want travel to feel less like escape and more like a deliberate way of seeing the world.

Get the book

For VIP readers, I also keep a private VIP Lounge of my own with travel invites that are not publicly advertised. Right now that includes elevated invites for the personal American Express Platinum, with roughly $300 in additional points value, and FounderCard, where VIP readers can access Elite for less than the regular first-year membership price. Those are not general-public links, and they are not a reason to apply for any card or program that does not fit. They are simply available for readers who already know these tools would make their travel life smoother.

Access the VIP lounge benefits

Further reading

There’s a point most people hit when running an online business: things start to feel heavier than they should. The number one reason for a business to fail isn’t running out of money: it’s running out of energy. The business owner simply burns themselves out to the point of not being able to continue. Yes, you can burn yourself out doing what you love.1

It’s not because you’re doing something wrong, but because you’re doing too many things at once. You’re writing content, thinking about funnels, trying to stay visible on social media, setting up email sequences, tweaking offers, and somewhere in all of that, the actual business starts to feel fragmented.

I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit, and for a long time I assumed the solution was to find a better strategy. Hire a coach. Attend an expensive conference or (better yet) retreat. If I’d only design a better funnel, use a better tool, find a better way to optimize whatever piece felt like it wasn’t working. Instead, the real issue was focus on all those moving pieces instead of a dedication to the structure underneath what I was trying to do.2

The problem: lack of passionate focus

When things feel messy, it’s tempting to add something new to fix it. Another tool, another approach, another idea that promises to bring everything together. In practice, that usually just adds another layer of complexity on top of something that already lacks cohesion. With every step you lose focus, and get a little further away from what made you start in the first place: passion. Success sometimes has more to do with what you have to stop doing.

“Successful people are not only willing to do what unsuccessful people are unwilling to do, they’re also willing to stop doing what doesn’t work.” ~Jack Canfield

What helped was stepping back and simplifying the whole picture. Every business should run on a fairly straightforward progression: Someone finds you, spends some time around your content, starts to trust you, and eventually decides to buy your products or services. Everything else we create that doesn’t support that progression, is just noise.

Where things start to break

Things get even worse when your online presence isn’t interconnected and each piece just exists in isolation. Businesses struggle because systems fall apart: when nothing is really integrated, follow-up happens inconsistently, and the business owner becomes the glue who holds everything together. Until it doesn’t anymore. You may end up with bursts of activity followed by silence, good ideas that never quite get implemented, and systems that almost work but never quite run on their own.

That’s not a motivation problem. It’s a systems problem. The goal is to build a business that runs while you’re not there.

This is usually the point where people get excited about tools. It feels like the logical next step. But automation doesn’t fix a broken system, it just makes it run faster. The same applies to AI. When you automate or outsource a broken system, it just drives you into the ground faster.

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What actually changed things for me

The tools I had struggled with before didn’t suddenly work better because I got better at using them. First, I had to stop using the ones that weren’t working for me. I had to get rid of most of the apps I used. Next, the remaining ones became easier because they finally had a role to play.

When there’s a clear structure underneath, tools can help you execute what you already know how to do. You have to know the steps first that work for your business. Once you do, the right tools can help make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Without that clear purpose, any tool tends to add more noise rather than reduce it.

A simple way to look at your own setup

Most of the progress I’ve made hasn’t come from big changes. It’s come from smaller things that actually run. A message that gets sent every time, a follow-up that consistently happens, a piece of content that connects to something else rather than standing on its own.

None of that is particularly exciting on the surface, but it compounds in a way that random effort never does. Once there’s consistency, everything else becomes easier to improve. The difference isn’t the tool. It’s whether there’s a process in place for the tool to support.

Get Into Action

If this resonates and you want to see how this looks in a more structured, practical way, I’ve put together a free preview of my Business AutoPilot course. It walks through how to build a system like this step by step, along with where automation and AI can support it without turning it into a technical project.

You can watch the preview and decide from there if it’s something you want to explore further.

Further reading

Eight years is a long time for a book to exist in the world. Long enough for the cover on the shelf in my office to feel familiar and slightly foreign at the same time. Long enough for readers to have found it, ignored it, underlined it, forgotten it, or possibly used it as a coaster under a glass of wine by now. Cheers to you, I try not to take that last option personally.

When The Freedom Project: Love 2.0 first came out, I knew it was going to be a different kind of book for me. Travel is easy to talk about, we all do it, all the time. You can complain about airports, wrong turns, bad hotel rooms, missed connections, and the weirdly emotional relief of finding decent coffee somewhere unfamiliar. But Love is messier.

Not the Instagram version of love, where everyone looks suspiciously well-lit and nobody has ever argued about logistics, money, family, exhaustion, or whose brilliant idea it was to leave the house late. I mean the everyday version of love: the part where belonging, expectations, disappointment, loyalty, compromise, and personal growth all get stuffed into the same carry-on bag. Until the zipper breaks.

That was the uncomfortable territory of Love 2.0. Eight years later, it still is.

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This Book Was Never Just About Romance

The funny thing about a book with “Love” in the title is that people assume it’s about romance. Yes, relationships are in there, but I wasn’t interested in (or capable of) writing a manual for candlelit perfection. The world has enough unsolicited advice about date nights and communication hacks already.

Love 2.0 is about the question underneath: how do we live with other people without losing ourselves?

That question shows up everywhere. In friendships that slowly become obligations. In families where love and history are tangled together so tightly you can barely tell one from the other. In relationships where peace becomes more important than truth, until that “peace” starts feeling uncomfortably expensive. It’s finding an answer in the search for belonging, especially when the places or people that once felt like home no longer fit the same way.

Love 2.0 was never about creating or finding a perfect relationship, but about learning to pay attention to the patterns that shape how we connect, what we tolerate, and what we keep calling “love” long after it has turned into something else.

Eight Years Is Enough Time to Notice What Holds Up

Relationship lessons age differently. Yes, people change, but we also keep being people with impressive consistency. We still want to be seen. We still confuse attention with connection. We still avoid difficult conversations and then act surprised when the bill arrives later, with interest. We still want freedom, but we also want belonging, and we are often not honest about how much both of those things cost.

Looking back at Love 2.0 after eight years, I don’t see a book that solved anything, but a book that tried to name a few tensions honestly. I don’t think the reader wants a tidy answer. Sometimes it’s just about giving language to something they already felt but had not yet admitted out loud.

Love Is Not an Escape From Personal Responsibility

Love does not excuse us from doing our own inner work. It, unfortunately, does not always rescue us from self-awareness. It also does not make poor boundaries noble just because they are wrapped in good intentions.

We expect relationships to provide certainty, identity, comfort, validation, and sometimes a full-time emotional support department with no lunch breaks. Love can carry a lot, but it should not be asked to carry everything. At some point, the romantic idea of “you complete me” starts to sound less like devotion and more like a staffing problem.

Relationships require a certain kind of accountability for our own patterns. Our human tendency to repeat what is familiar, even when familiar is not the same as healthy. That kind of ownership is not very Instagrammable as it rarely photographs well. But it changes everything.

Belonging Should Not Require Disappearing

A major theme in Love 2.0 is belonging in the different circles of life, and I think that theme has only become more important. We live in a world where connection is everywhere while loneliness spreads like a disease. We can message anyone instantly and still feel isolated and unseen. We can belong to groups, platforms, networks, communities, and comment sections, while quietly wondering whether any of it is real.

Belonging is one of those words that sounds warm until it starts demanding payment. Sometimes the price is small: a bit of compromise, a shared rhythm, a willingness to care about things may not naturally interest us. That is part of living with others, and can be a good thing. Yet sometimes the price of belonging is too high. We begin editing ourselves into a more “acceptable” version. We keep quiet to preserve the mood. We confuse harmony with silence. We trade honesty for approval, then call it maturity because that sounds better than fear.

Eight years later, this still feels like one of my hardest lessons. Real love should give us more room to be ourselves, not less. It should challenge and refine us, yes. It should occasionally irritate us into becoming better people. But it should not require us to disappear.

The Book I Wrote Then, the Person Reading It Now

One of the odd gifts of writing books is that they become a letter to your future self. Not like a diary; a book is shaped, edited, structured, and hopefully made readable for someone who does not live inside the author’s head. (Lucky them.)

Still, when I look back at Love 2.0, I meet a version of myself who was trying to understand relationships in all areas of life with the tools I had at the time. Some of those tools have gotten sharper over time. Some assumptions have softened. Still some questions remain unresolved, which is annoying but probably honest.

We sometimes expect old creative work to represent us perfectly forever. If something I wrote eight years ago still reflects exactly how I see everything today, then either I was unusually wise back then or I have done zero useful thinking since.

What I appreciate now is not that Love 2.0 captured a sincere attempt to understand love as part of freedom, not separate from it. That idea still feels right today.

Love and Freedom Are Not Opposites

A lot of people talk about freedom as if it means having no obligations, and no commitments. There is some appeal to nobody expecting anything from you, especially after dealing with international bureaucracy, family logistics, or a relationship conversation that begins with “we need to talk.”

Freedom without connection is often empty inside. And the opposite, connection without freedom, can become suffocating. The answer lies somewhere in the middle. How do we build relationships that support a life with more freedom rather than shrinking it? How do we choose people, places, and commitments that make us more honest, more capable, more alive? How do we stop treating love as either a cage or a rescue boat?

That is where Love 2.0 belongs within The Freedom Project. It is not a detour from the freedom conversation. It is one of the more difficult chapters of it. Because freedom is not just the ability to travel, work differently, or design your own schedule. It is also the ability to relate to others without abandoning yourself.

Get Into Action

Eight years after The Freedom Project: Love 2.0 was published, I’m less interested in celebrating the book as a finished object and more interested in the questions it still raises.

• Where have you confused peace with avoidance?

• Where has belonging started to feel a little too expensive?

• Which relationships give you more room to become yourself, and which ones quietly ask you to stay smaller?

Those are not questions to answer in a hurry. They are better carried around for a while, perhaps on a long run/walk, over coffee, or during one of those inconveniently honest moments when life refuses to stay neatly organized.

Buy the book

Further reading

I may be the only Dutch person alive who doesn’t care about soccer. Somewhere, a distant relative I don’t know is probably shaking their head into a plate of bitterballen. I live in Canada for a reason, I suppose.

So when FIFA announced Vancouver as one of the host cities for the 2026 World Cup, I didn’t exactly run into the street waving an orange flag. I also didn’t immediately become one of those people who complains about every big event that comes to town. Vancouver has hosted large events before. Some of them even leave behind something useful besides traffic cones, security fencing, and a temporary shortage of patience amongst local residents.

Big events can be good for a city. They can bring attention, investment, visitors, and a certain amount of civic cleanup that somehow only becomes possible when the world is watching. Funny how that works. A homeless camp that exposed a city’s deeper issues yesterday can become an image-management emergency tomorrow, once an international television crew might accidentally film it.

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Calgary Said No, and I’m Still Not Sure They Were Right

Cities sometimes underestimate the value of being seen. A few years ago, Calgary decided not to pursue hosting the Winter Olympics. Cost was the main concern, and obviously that concern was not imaginary. The city had every right to look at the price tag and wonder whether the whole thing was worth it.

I do wonder if Calgary may have missed out on something though. Yes, Olympic budgets can become financial sinkholes with (st)rings attached. But a major international event also puts a city in front of people who may never have heard about it before.

In case we forgot, Calgary, of course, has hosted the Olympics before. The 1988 Winter Games put the city on the international map in a way people still talk about today. So when they opted not to pursue hosting again, I wondered whether they were underestimating the long return of investment an event like that can bring.

Then There’s FIFA

Personally, I prefer to live somewhere a little more ambitious, so I moved to Vancouver. (I write that with huge wink, a lot of affection, and also from a safe distance.) Now Vancouver gets FIFA, and I’m still not happy.

Yes, Vancouver looks very good on Instagram: mountains, ocean, glass towers, floatplanes, seawall, overpriced coffee served with the silent expectation of an 18% “customary” tip (just to remind the tourists). If you’re selling Canada to the world, Vancouver is not a terrible cover picture.'

But even for people who actually love soccer (not me), the event feels less like a public celebration and more like a luxury product that happens to involve sports. I’ve seen local ads from people trying to sell their tickets at face value. Most of these ads sound less like excited fans who had a change of plans and more like hopeful speculators who bought early, expected a quick flip, and are now discovering that “everyone wants to go” is not the same as “everyone can afford to go.”

The Speculation Game

In addition to the exorbitant cost of the ticket to begin with, the speculation is the part that bothers me. People are actively trying to offload tickets at face value, which suggests their gamble is not be paying off. I somehow hope they’ll enjoy watching the game themselves, with a $30 watery beer as a consolation prize.

There’s a certain dark humour in watching people buy up access to something they don’t personally care about, hoping someone else will care more later, only to discover the “someone else” is also looking at hotel prices, flight prices, food prices, and the general cost of existing in Vancouver, and quietly deciding to stay home. Somehow this isn’t a sporting event anymore - everyone is just trying to make money.

Spending Money on “Experiences”

When tickets climb into a price range where even locals shrug and stay home, the event starts to feel detached from the place hosting it or the “sport” associated with it. At this point, Vancouver isn’t the host so much as the backdrop. The city becomes scenery for a travelling global money machine.1

Yes, I understand nobody is forcing anyone to buy a ticket. If someone wants to spend a mortgage payment watching a ball cross a line, that is their choice. People spend money on all sorts of things I don’t understand. I ride a Harley-Davidson, so I’m not exactly throwing stones from a financially spotless glass house. (Mine just has chrome and makes more noise.)

Unsolicited financial advice aside, there’s still something off about a global sports event that depends on local enthusiasm while pricing out many of the true fans, whether local or not.

Big Events Matter

I like cities (and people) that take action and do real things. I like movement, visitors, energy, and the sense that a place is connected to the wider world. Travel has taught me that cities are living systems that need new people, new money, new stories, and occasionally a reason to repaint things that should have been repainted six years ago.

FIFA may bring real benefits to Vancouver. It may give local businesses a strong season. It may introduce travellers to British Columbia who come back later with more time and less face paint. It may create memories for people who genuinely love the sport. For them, this is a big deal, and I don’t want to take that away.

But I do think we should be honest about who gets to participate. A citywide event that many residents experience mostly as higher prices, closed streets, crowded transit, and impossible tickets is not quite a celebration.

Get Into Action: My Game-Day Plan

As for me, I may go for a long run or take my motorcycle out of town on game days. Assuming, of course, that getting out of the city is easier than getting in. That may be optimistic. Traffic in the Lower Mainland has a way of humbling even the most carefully planned escape.

But the next time a major event comes to your city, try looking past the headline excitement and ask a few questions: Who benefits? Who pays? Who gets priced out? What stays behind after the visitors leave? And most importantly, does the event help you experience your own city more fully, or does it make your home feel temporarily unavailable?

That same question applies to travel in general. A trip is not automatically meaningful because it is expensive, famous, or hard to book, even when Instagram influencers suggest otherwise. Often, the better experience is the quieter trip you actually picked for yourself. 2

Travel safe.

Further reading

I have an elevated referral offer available right now for the personal Amex Platinum card. I could do what the internet usually does and start waving it around like I discovered fire. I could write a post about big points, premium perks, airport lounges, and the like. I’m not going to write that post today.

Premium travel cards look simple from the outside: get the card, meet the spending requirement, earn the bonus, travel better. The marketing tends to wrap the whole thing in a soft-focus cloud of “free travel,” as if a bank suddenly decided to sponsor your personal growth, with a glass of complimentary airport champagne.

The Word “Free” Is Where the Trouble Starts

I like travel rewards and use them all the time. Points absolutely reduce the cost of travel. They can turn an expensive business class seat into a manageable expense, make a better hotel possible, or simply soften the sting of a trip you were going to take anyway. Used well, travel rewards cards are a practical tool. They can create real value by unlocking experiences you may have not enjoyed otherwise.

Premium cards also come with annual fees, spending requirements, terms, credits, categories, deadlines, and little bits of administrative confetti that someone has to keep track of. Did I use my dining credit already this year? When does the annual incentive reset again? Some perks are great, but the onus is on you to make sure you take full advantage of them. To make that easier, you’ll want to ensure the card fits in with the rest of your life easily.

One Simple Rule

For me, the first rule is simple: I treat these cards as charge cards only. Technically, the personal Amex Platinum is a charge card (the balance has to be paid in full each month), but I apply the same logic to any card I own. I use the card, collect the value, and pay it off in full, every month.

The minute you start paying interest, the math changes quickly and any points value starts shrinking. What looked like an asset or a useful travel tool becomes a liability. Not because the card changed, but because your behaviour around it did. Nothing ruins a “free” flight quite like paying for it through interest charges you did not need to create in the first place.

A Travel Tool Is Only Useful If It Serves the Trip

A premium card makes sense if you travel enough to use the benefits. If lounge access saves you from another sad airport sandwich and a plastic chair near Gate 47, great. If the insurance, credits, hotel benefits, or airport perks replace things you already value, even better. If the welcome offer helps fund a trip you were already planning, that can be a smart move.

If you have to change your spending habits, invent reasons to travel, or reorganize your life around a card’s benefit calendar, the card may not be serving you as well as it should. When the perks stop feeling like freedom, you should reconsider.

Yes, there are points people who can track fifteen cards, four loyalty programs, six promotions, and a spreadsheet that probably deserves its own carry-on allowance. That’s not for me. I prefer sustainable systems that support my life without becoming my life. This is the system I teach in my Travel Revolution course.

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A tool that saves you time, adds comfort, and reduces friction is useful. A tool that creates extra work, extra spending, and extra mental clutter is not luxury.

That is why I do not think a premium referral offer should be treated as an automatic yes. A bigger welcome bonus might make it easier to ignore the boring stuff.

Get Into Action

For my VIP readers, I’ll share a unique referral link that could earn you up to 140,000 Membership Rewards® points - worth about $1,400 in travel credits. That’s about $300 more than what’s publicly available.

This is a special offer that is not currently available publicly, and it’s subject to Amex approval. Details included below. And if the Platinum fee still feels too steep, don’t worry: that same link lets you explore other Amex cards with different benefits and lower annual fees.

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There’s a moment that seems to happen on almost every trip, usually somewhere between the second margarita and the last sunset: everything feels just right. The light hits differently, time slows down a bit, and for a brief second I catch myself thinking: I could live here.

I have that moment on almost every trip. Buenos Aires, Rome, Paris, New York, and yes (for a very brief moment) even Toronto - I could picture myself living there.

Tulum definitely had that moment. The beach, the warm evenings, the rhythm of days that don’t really need a plan. While you’re on vacation, it’s easy to get swept into that feeling. Like a quiet thought that shows up uninvited and sits down for a bit.

And then, just as naturally, the thought fades again. Not because the place isn’t special, but because there is a difference between visiting a feeling and building a life inside it.

The Difference Between a Vibe and a Life

Travel has a subtle psychological trick built into it. In my book, I’ve called it a catalyst for personal growth. You remove everything familiar, and start exploring with a blank slate.

It makes a destination feel bigger than it actually is. More complete. More permanent. The separation between real life and visiting somewhere disappears a little. When travelling, almost everything I experience is curated, and intentional.

But living somewhere is different. It includes grocery runs, utility bills, routines, responsibilities, and all the parts that don’t make it into a highlight reel. The same beach that feels magical on day four becomes background noise after a few months for most people. The rhythm that feels relaxing might start to feel limiting.

Recognizing that in real time has become part of how I travel. I don’t push the thought away when it shows up. I just let it settle back into reality. It’s also become part of how I live my life by experience: even as an immigrant in Canada and recent transplant to Vancouver, I still try to seek out those “touristy” experiences that most people only get to experience once in a lifetime. I get to live in it.

Why I Rarely Go Back

Near the last day of almost every trip, I always say I’ll come back. I usually don’t.

Not because the place didn’t matter, but because something else calls my attention before I get the chance. Another destination, another curiosity, another experience I haven’t had yet.

That’s the traveller’s paradox:

Over time, I’ve stopped making return plans and started building a quiet “maybe someday” list instead. Places I’d happily revisit, without needing to commit to it.

Tulum is on that list now. But so are Buenos Aires, Santiago, Lima, Paris, Rome, London, New York, New Orleans, … (yes, this list goes on for a while).

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The First Trip Is Discovery. The Second Is Different

The first visit to a new place is all about discovery. Figuring things out and getting a feel for how it works. There’s a bit of friction, but that’s part of the experience. Once I figure out a supermarket for something to eat and a bottle (or box) of wine, I’m happy and the settling in has started.1

If I ever go back and revisit a destination, the second trip is different. Everything feels easier, and maybe a little more relaxed. I already know where to go, what to avoid, how the place moves. It becomes less about finding my place and more about enjoying it.

But if that second visit never happens, that’s fine too. There’s something nice about leaving a place exactly as it was experienced the first time. Untouched, and complete.

Get Into Action

If you’ve ever had that feeling of wanting to stay somewhere, or wondering why you don’t go back as often as you think you will, you’re not doing travel wrong. You’re just experiencing it fully. That’s exactly what I explore in The Freedom Project: Travel, where I break down how to travel in a way that actually adds to your life instead of pulling you away from it.

If you’re ready to take the next step, request a free preview to my all-inclusive travel hacking program The Travel Revolution below. I’d love to have you on board.

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Further reading

“Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

I know that quote has been used so often it almost belongs in a museum of motivational clichés by now, but every once in a while it still fits. In my case, it applies to a cardboard box of allegedly “imperfect” produce.

After much consideration, I signed up for Odd Bunch a few weeks ago because groceries have become ridiculous. I’ve been walking out of the supermarket lately with a small bag of stuff, wondering if I had accidentally bought a small appliance. Grocery shopping appears to have become another high-stakes financial decision.

Odd Bunch promises imperfect or surplus produce at a lower price, delivered as a box of fruits and vegetables. The idea is simple: Some produce is oddly shaped, too small, too big, cosmetically imperfect, or simply surplus inventory that might not fit the polished supermarket standard. Apparently even what you buy in the supermarket needs to be social media worthy. Who knew. So instead of otherwise perfectly good items going to waste, it ends up in a box on your doorstep.

So how odd are we talking, exactly?

Odd Bunch isn’t glamorous or some elite performance hack. Nobody is going to film a video about me unpacking slightly odd-looking produce in my kitchen.1 But it does deliver: I get some fruits and vegetables into my fridge at a price that is at least half of what the supermarket charges me.2 In my experience so far, that math holds and the value has been good.

More than good actually. I worried whether the produce is actually good, or whether “imperfect” is just a polite word for “sad vegetables near the end of their emotional journey.” Just over a month in, I’ve had zero quality issues. Only a few items looked a little unusual. Think some of the smallest apples you’ve ever seen. But they tasted great.

Supermarkets have subconsciously trained us to expect produce to look a certain way. Shiny apples, straight carrots, perfect peppers. Size matters. Everything displayed as if it is auditioning for a lifestyle magazine, complete with the occasional “mist” for that extra shine.

But flavour doesn’t follow cosmetic standards. Most supermarket blueberries, blackberries, and the like, are half moldy before you can carry them home. Instead, Odd Bunch seems to have a shorter supply chain, allowing produce to stay fresh in my fridge for much longer than I expected.

The Green Bean Issue

Full disclosure: there has been an issue. There have been green beans, two weeks in a row. Even worse, someone at Odd Bunch considers green beans a “plus” item. I beg to differ. I hate green beans with a passion. I don’t want them lightly steamed. I don’t want them tossed with garlic. I don’t want them hidden in a stir-fry. I don’t want them described to me as “actually good if you cook them properly.” I don’t want them, period.

Luckily, Odd Bunch allows me one free substitution per week. Out with the green beans, in with something else (of my choosing). This is how peace is maintained. More substitutions are available for a small fee, but so far the one free swap has allowed me to keep my meals green-bean-free.

This is one of the things I actually like: while you have some control, the boxes are “curated” and there is an element of surprise. That matters because a produce box only works if it fits real life. If I’m “rescuing” produce to only throw out items I detest myself, we’ve missed the point.

The Margarita Experiment

There’s no recipe cards (although they’re working on that), so the best part is that you have to get a little creative in the kitchen. If grapefruit shows up, that can become a margarita. Blood orange? Also a margarita. Pomegranate? Absolutely a margarita.

I’m not saying every produce problem can be solved with tequila, but I’m also not ready to rule it out. Almost everything else can be turned into something good with either an air fryer, slow cooker.

A squash can look intimidating if you have never really dealt with one before. Then you figure it out, make a mess, get the seeds out, and suddenly you’re halfway to a meal that feels more interesting than whatever you would have bought pre-made at the store.

The box pushes me to use what is there. Some of it gets roasted. Some of it goes into fried rice. Some of it becomes a smoothie. Some of it becomes a margarita.
The green beans, of course, become someone else’s problem.

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Learning to Improvise

One thing I love about travel is that it gets easier when I stop needing everything to go exactly according to plan. The best meal of the trip might come from the place I found by accident because the original plan fell apart. Maybe the restaurant was closed due to a power outage, a schedule change disrupts the plans, or the local grocery store carries things I don’t normally buy. It’s all part of the fun.

Odd Bunch brings a little of that home every week. I’m working with what is actually there instead of what I thought I wanted. Sometimes it leads to a better meal than I would have planned. Other times it leads to margaritas. Either way, for a minute, I stop trying to optimize every little decision and just work with what is in front of me.

I’m not trying to make healthy eating inspirational. I just have to make it easier. A box of fruits and vegetables is not magic. But it helps.

The Verdict: Is Odd Bunch Worth Trying?

In a world where groceries cost too much, food waste is still a problem, and most of us could probably use a few more vegetables in our lives, this felt like a pretty good idea. And I have not been disappointed, especially since I have veto power over green beans.

If you’re curious about trying Odd Bunch, order a box. You’re not locked into any contracts: I’ve found skipping a week to be easy, and you can cancel anytime. Click the button below if you want to give it a try with $10 $15 off your first box.

$15 your first box (limited time)

Update

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Three years ago, at the start of my running career, I ran BMO Vancouver1 for the first time, and I promised myself “never again”. This year, I remembered why, but did it anyway. It’s true, the scenery on course is very pretty - but the hills are relentless.

The hard part wasn’t the marathon, the hills, the heat, but the taper: The strange mental mess that happens when the hard work is already done.

My training followed a rhythm I followed before2: only three runs a week, supplemented with cross-training like yoga, strength, interval/speed workouts, and weekly long runs that all combined made the difference on race day. I no longer need to run six days a week to prove anything, especially when I’m also trying to have a life outside the training plan.

The real marathon: 18 weeks of training

The real marathon is not the 42.2 kilometres you run on race day. It’s the weeks of planning around work, sleep, weather, meals, laundry, appointments, social capacity, emotional energy, and all the other invisible things you do in the weeks leading up to race day that either support your training or slowly ruin it.

This time, the actual race was hard. Vancouver is not a flat course, and the weather turned unusually warm, climbing toward 24 degrees Celsius. I like heat more than most runners do, and I was probably one of the few people deliberately running in the sun while others chased every patch of shade.

But the part I want to write about here is not race day. It’s the taper. Because somehow, after all those long runs, all those early mornings, all those structured weeks, the taper still managed to be the strangest and most difficult part of the entire training cycle. Doing less sounds easy, until you have to live through it.

When less running creates more noise

Doing less is easy, right? You reduce mileage, and let the body absorb the work. You stop chasing fitness and start preserving energy. You trust that the training is already in the bank. Somehow, this is where it’s all supposed to magically come together.

For me, taper weeks feel like someone took away the one thing that was keeping the whole system organized. During peak training, I know what I’m doing. There is a long run. There is a midweek run. There is a treadmill class or speed session. There is yoga, maybe strength, maybe some recovery work. The week has a shape to it.

Then taper arrives, and suddenly the structure is gone. That should feel restful, but it can also feel unsettling. I start noticing every small ache. My mind starts questioning every decision: Do I run? Do I rest? Did I do enough? Did I do too much? Is that tightness something real, or just taper madness with better branding?

By the final week before BMO, I wasn’t exactly floating into the race in a state of blissful calm. I had trained well, but emotionally it had been a tense week. Work, life, conversations, fatigue, and the general static of being human all seemed louder than usual. The running volume goes down, but life does not always get the memo.3

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Three runs a week still works for me

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No matter whether it’s in business conversations, personal development books, or even casual chats about life goals: Mission and vision get bundled together like they’re interchangeable, thrown into the same sentence, and treated as if they mean the same thing.

But mission and vision are two different things. And the confusion, subtle as it seems, is often exactly what keeps people stuck. The problem usually isn’t the goal. It’s that the path to get there hasn’t been thought through, or worse, hasn’t been separated from the goal at all.

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The Mission Is the Destination

The mission (should you choose to accept it) is the end goal. The thing that, if I’m really honest with myself, I want to move toward no matter what. The goal is the anchor.

The goal usually doesn’t change much, regardless of how long it takes or how many versions of myself it requires along the way. It’s likely tied to your passions in life, the things you keep doing no matter what, even if the circumstances change.1

For me, a lot of that has always tied back to freedom. Not in the abstract, Instagram-quote sense, but in a very real, lived way. The ability to design my days, to travel when I want, to not feel boxed in by systems that don’t align with how I want to live my life. That concept hasn’t really changed over the years. If anything, it has become more clear.

The details around it have, but the mission itself has stayed remarkably consistent.2

The Vision Is the Path

The vision is how you get there. This is where things get more fluid, and honestly, more interesting. Vision is the strategy, the approach that will (hopefully) get you to the goal. The way you choose to move toward your mission, based on where you are right now.

And unlike the mission, this part can (and probably should) evolve over time. I’ve had different versions of my vision over the years. At one point, it looked like climbing the corporate ladder while squeezing in travel where I could. Later, it shifted toward building online courses, writing, and creating something that could support a more flexible lifestyle. Now, it’s a mix of both, with a different priority. What I do supports the life I want to live, not the other way around.

Same mission. Entirely different vision.

That’s the part most people resist, because changing the path can feel like giving up on the goal. In reality, it’s often the opposite. It’s staying committed to the destination while being honest about what’s actually working.

Where Things Get Messy

The trouble starts when mission and vision blur into one. This is when the “how” becomes so rigid that it starts masquerading as the “what.”

For example, you may define a mission to be “successful”3, but then connect success to a very specific job title or company. Or, as I share in my Happiness book, it may be tied to being an entrepreneur instead of an employee, or vice versa. Somehow the grass is always greener on the other side. Years go by, things don’t quite click, and instead of adjusting the path, we double down on a vision that was never meant to be permanent in the first place.

Or, “I want to travel more”. Another popular mission. People say they want to see the world, but lock themselves into one version of how that should look. A specific type of trip, a certain level of comfort, a rigid itinerary. When reality doesn’t match that picture, the experience feels off, even though the underlying mission is still completely valid.

If travel is the mission, maybe the vision shouldn’t be limited to an “around the world cruise”. Maybe a cheaper, shorter repositioning cruise is more achievable for now. Or maybe travel is just a road trip to a nearby town. It doesn’t matter what it is - as long as you don’t give up on travel altogether because the vision is too limited.

Why This Matters More Than It Seems

Separating mission and vision gives you room to breathe. It allows you to keep your eyes on what matters while giving yourself permission to adjust how you get there. And maybe have a little fun along the way.

When I’m clear on my mission, I don’t panic every time something doesn’t go according to plan. A failed idea, a course that doesn’t land the way I expected, a trip that doesn’t quite deliver the experience I was hoping for.4

Yes, “limited vision” sucks, but none of that shakes the foundation. It just informs the next version of the vision. Being ok with that creates a very different relationship with progress. It becomes less about getting it right and more about staying aligned over time.

There’s a calmness in that. If the route changes or life throws some curves your way, you can lean into them and you’re still moving in the right direction.

Keeping mission and vision separate removes a lot of unnecessary pressure, because you no longer expect one decision along the way to carry the weight of both.

Get Into Action

If this resonates, it might be worth taking a step back and looking at your own setup. Not just what you want, but how you’re going about it, and whether those two things are clearly defined or quietly tangled together. Maybe you’re overthinking your passions (like me), or you’ve confused the end goal with the road there (also like me).

Either way, that’s fine. Just take a few steps back and a minute to reflect. Inside my Break Free Experience course, I go deeper into this topic by helping you define both a personal mission and your vision in a way that actually works in real life. Not just the end goal, but the strategies and systems that support it, so you’re not left guessing what to do next, even when circumstances change.

Preview the course (free)

Further reading

There’s a part of travel no one really likes to talk about: coming home. This is loosely what inspired me to write a book about Happiness. When we talk about Travel, we share the destination, the highlights, the sunsets and the stories we want to remember. The ending, whether it’s the trek back home or actually coming home, isn’t usually part of that highlight reel.

Trips don’t usually end with a perfect Instagram-worthy moment. The vacation doesn’t fade out on a beach with a drink in your hand and a profound sense of closure. Quite the opposite: it ends with packing, airport transfers, security lines, delays, and a bit of mental fog.

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The Quiet Weight of Return Day

The feeling is hard to describe, but I woke up with it on my last day in Mexico. It’s not sadness exactly, just… friction. Nothing was wrong and the trip had been great. Food, beaches, margaritas, everything I wanted it to be, despite the media trying hard to convince me otherwise.1

But at the end of the trip, there can be this subtle shift in energy. For me this is usually somewhere between the last few days and arriving back home. It’s the “travel twilight zone” where the trip is no longer happening, but real life hasn’t quite resumed yet either. You’re in between worlds, and neither one seems to fit.

Reframing the Travel Day

The trick is to be ok with feeling lost or out of place for a little while, without trying to fix it. Instead of seeing the travel day(s) as the end of something, or worse, a failed attempt at rest, I treat it as a decompression buffer.

When looked at it differently, long travel days have a strange quality to them. You’re moving across the planet, but at the same time, you’re completely removed from everything that normally demands your attention. You’re unreachable and no one expects anything from you.2 There’s no productivity to chase, no decisions to make beyond what to watch or whether you want another coffee glass of wine.

You’re just a human being sitting in a seat, simply existing for a few hours between places. There’s something oddly comfortable about that state of existing.

The Re-Entry Phase

The mistake I used to make was expecting to land and feel instantly “back” to normal routines and rhythms. That almost never happens.

Instead, there’s a “re-entry phase” where life feels slightly off. Even the familiar feels unfamiliar for a moment. My own bed doesn’t immediately feel like home again. My usual routine feels a bit forced. It’s temporary, but it’s real.

In my Freedom Project books, I’ve described travel as a catalyst for personal growth. By stripping away everything familiar, you have to figure yourself out again and discover your likes and dislikes in an unfamiliar environment. When done right, returning to everything that once was familiar, isn’t necessarily the same as the person inside that context may have changed, even a little. Travel expands, while coming home is the contraction. And transitions between those two states may cause a bit of turbulence.

So the interesting part isn’t the day I get home, but a day or two later when the experiences I took home from the trip start to settle. It’s when the small details that don’t stand out when I’m in them every day, suddenly feel grounding again. I’m back to my morning runs, a good cup of coffee, and my cats (who once again ensure I can never sleep in).

“Travel isn’t about finding a place to stay. It’s about discovering why you keep moving.”

Get Into Action

If return days tend to throw you off, you’re not alone. It’s not a sign you need a better vacation, it’s a sign you’re actually feeling the contrast. In The Freedom Project: Happiness, I share my blueprint for rediscovering joy and meaning in life. Whether you’re climbing the corporate ladder or running your own business, this book will challenge your assumptions about success and guide you toward a life of true freedom and happiness.

Buy Happiness

Further Reading

I tried to make my life a bit easier this week: I booked a cleaner. Not because I hate cleaning, but just because I was busy and wanted to save some time. I blocked my calendar, worked from home and moved a few things around so this would all go smoothly. In a busy month, it felt like one of those small life upgrades that should create a bit of breathing room.

Instead, it turned into three days of friction. The first cleaner cancelled late the night before. Life happens, I get that. The second one showed up late, left early, billed a bit generously, and did a job that was… fine. Not terrible, not great. Just enough that when I walked in, my first thought wasn’t relief. It was, “I could’ve done this myself in a few hours.” And, since I’m picky, there were a few things I noticed I would’ve done better.

Somewhere during those three days, this stopped being about cleaning.

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The Subtle Cost of Convenience

The gig economy sells you on convenience, and to be fair, it delivers. You can get almost anything at the tap of a button now. A ride shows up in minutes. Food arrives at your door. Someone can come clean your home while you’re on a Zoom call. On paper, or better yet, my phone screen, the concept is brilliant. We’ve turned our smart phones into a remote control for daily life: with the right app, anything imaginable shows up at the touch of a button.

But the convenience removes something else: ownership. The person showing up isn’t building something that’s theirs. They’re completing a task that lives inside someone else’s platform. And you can feel that difference, even if you can’t always explain it right away.1

It shows up in small ways: A bit less attention to detail, a bit less pride in the outcome, a bit more “close enough.” Just enough to not get a bad review, and then they ask for a tip.2

When It’s Actually Your Business

I’ve worked with cleaners and other contractors before, but those were always small, local businesses. Same service on the surface, completely different experience in reality.

When someone owns the business, even if it’s just them, the energy is different. They care about how the place looks when they leave. They care about whether you call them again. What you say about them to others matters more than the review you leave on some faceless online platform.3

With a business owner, you can build a relationship there, even if it’s informal. With a platform, that connection is thinner. You’re matched, the job gets done, and both sides move on. If it doesn’t work out, no big deal. There’s always another cleaner, another customer, another ride, another pizza to deliver.

The Middleman Takes the Margin

That flexibility is the selling point, but it’s also a big problem for anyone participating in the gig economy (sellers and buyers). The issue is the laughing third party that’s quietly part of every transaction. The platform benefits the most, without doing any work. The platform isn’t the one cleaning your home, cooking your food, or driving your car. But they are taking a cut from it all, and often not a small one.

So you end up in this slightly awkward setup where the person doing the work is not fully invested, the customer is not fully satisfied, and the platform quietly collects in the background. It’s a lose-lose no matter what you do, except if you own the platform.

You See It Everywhere

Walk down the street and you’ll see delivery drivers everywhere, rushing from one order to the next. In Vancouver, electric bicycles and scooters fly by on the sidewalk. Restaurants, already operating on tight margins, hand over a percentage of every order just to be visible on those third-party delivery apps.

More and more places now nudge you to order directly, offering small discounts or incentives if you bypass the platform entirely. That tells you everything you need to know.

Uber is another obvious example. It works, most of the time, but it rarely feels like a private driver service in the traditional sense. Occasionally you get a great driver, someone who clearly takes pride in what they do. More often, it’s just a ride. A functional and hopefully somewhat predictable way to get from A to B. That leaves a lot to be desired from Uber’s original tagline ‘everyone’s private driver’.

What Happened to Pride in the Work?

Did we, collectively, decide somewhere along the way that “good enough” was enough? This is the struggle I keep coming back to with gig economy. My cleaning dilemma was never really about being late or missing a room or billing an extra twenty minutes.

There’s a quiet gap between completing the job and doing it well. Between finishing a task and taking pride in the outcome. The platforms own the relationship and take their cut no matter what, and when nothing is truly yours, it’s harder to care that much.

Build Your Own, or Choose Someone Who Did

If you’re the one doing the work, there’s something powerful about owning it. Even as a sole proprietor you can set your own standards, build your own client base, and create something that reflects how you want to show up.

And if you’re the customer, there’s value in seeking out people that take ownership for the work they do. Working directly with someone who actually cares for what they do. Sometimes you may pay a bit more, maybe, but in return you’re getting something that feels more human. And you support local.

After my experiment this week, I’m leaning back in that direction. Not because the gig economy doesn’t work. It’s because what I keep coming back to, is that “working” and “being good” are not the same thing.

Get Into Action

If this resonates, it might be worth taking a closer look at where convenience is quietly lowering your standards without you realizing it. My various business courses are created for entrepreneurs and business owners looking to own their platform, instead of participating in someone else’s. You can discover how to optimize your online presence, implement growth hacking techniques, and leverage social media for business success. Free previews available via the link below.

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Further reading

Earth Day is coming up, and every year it tends to bring the same conversation back into focus: Be more mindful, consume less, take better care of the planet. Instead, this year, I challenge you to do something good for yourself. Because if we take care of ourselves, maybe the planet would also be a little happier.

The more I travel, the more I notice that how I move through the world has very little to do with the destination and everything to do with how present I am while I’m there. No matter which exotic destination you pick next, it’s just another place to go. Nothing wrong with that, but if you’re not in it, then it doesn’t matter so much where on the planet you are. The same type of trip can feel different, depending on what’s going on in my head.

When the Same Trip Feels Completely Different

I’ve had trips that looked incredible on paper but felt strangely flat while I was there, and I’ve had simple, almost unplanned days that ended up being some of the most memorable experiences I’ve had.

The difference wasn’t the itinerary or the hotel. It was whether I was actually there or just running some kind of mental background process the whole time, and couldn’t fully disconnect. I was thinking about what’s next, comparing it to something else. Trying to “get the most out of it” instead of just letting it be what it is.

That’s something I’ve become a lot more aware of over time, especially after reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. One idea stuck with me in a way that feels very relevant to travel:

The ego doesn’t stay at home when you leave for a trip.

You may leave everything familiar behind, but you take yourself with you no matter where you go, quietly shaping how you experience everything.

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The Subtle Ways We Miss the Moment

The problem with “mindfulness” is that it doesn’t work that way. The point this Earth Day is to empty the clutter, and focus on what matters. You could call it “mindlessness” instead. It’s a subtle shift from full, to less.

Instead, our minds are full and always engaged. It’s that low-level feeling that you should be doing something more, seeing something else, making better use of your time. You may notice it from the urge to capture something instead of experience it. Don’t look with your camera phone, look with your eyes, and experience where you are.

The Difference Between Outer and Inner Purpose

None of this is a travel problem, but an awareness problem for a busy mind. It doesn’t get solved by booking a better trip, or building a better life. It may help to notice the distinction between your outer purpose and inner purpose.

Outer purpose is everything we usually focus on when we plan a trip. The destination, the logistics, the upgrades, the experiences. It’s the part I’ve spent years optimizing, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I still love finding a great hotel or figuring out how to make a trip smoother and more enjoyable.

Inner purpose is how present you are while all of that external “stuff” is happening around you. This is similar to what I wrote in The Freedom Project: Happiness. For a long time, travel felt like an escape. A way to step out of a life that didn’t fully feel like mine.

The problem with that approach is that you always have to come home to the life you left behind in the first place. When you do, everything you were trying to get away from is still there, waiting for you to bring yourself back to that context.

At some point, I realized that if I didn’t change how I experienced my everyday life, I would just keep chasing the next trip to feel okay again. That’s not freedom, but just a more expensive version of avoidance.

Acceptance, Enjoyment, or Let It Go

If you can’t enjoy what you’re doing, or at least accept it, stop doing it.

How many times have I stuck with something on a trip because it was “on the list,” even though it didn’t feel right? Or stayed in an environment that looked great online but didn’t match how I actually wanted to feel while I was there?

This is not just about travel. It shows up in everyday life too. I’ve written about toxic workplaces more than once. The difference is that travel tends to highlight it more because the contrast to everyday life is so obvious. You’re somewhere new, surrounded by all the ingredients for a great experience, and yet something still feels slightly off.

Some of my best travel days have come from letting go of the plan a little. Walking without a destination, sitting somewhere longer than expected, not trying to optimize every hour of the day.

What This Has to Do with Earth Day

So where does Earth Day fit into all of this? For me, it comes down to awareness.

When you’re present, you naturally consume differently. You’re not constantly looking for the next thing to fill a gap. You don’t need as much stimulation, and you’re less driven by that restless feeling that something better might be just around the corner. It’s about mindlessness, and starting to appreciate what’s already there.

Mindlessness changes how you travel, how you spend, and how you move through the world in general. It’s a quieter shift, but it’s a meaningful one. Not because you’re forcing yourself to do better, but because you’re actually experiencing what’s in front of you.

The moment you’re in is already complete in a way we tend to overlook. Whether you’re halfway across the world or at home, there’s a version of that moment that doesn’t need to be improved or optimized. That’s where travel stops being an escape and starts becoming something that actually adds to your life in a sustainable way.

Get Into Action

If you’re starting to see travel differently and you want to go deeper into that idea of building a life you don’t feel the need to escape from, that’s exactly what I focus on in my Break Free Experience course. It’s about designing a lifestyle where travel fits naturally instead of feeling like a temporary reset. You can check it out here when you’re ready:

Break Free Xperience

Further reading

In many popular destinations, the default option has become an all-inclusive resort. In Europe, people flock to Spain. In North America, we equally venture south: to Mexico. As I wrote in my travel book, the opposites always seem better: Mexico sounds fancy for European travellers, while Spain may be the more exciting destination for North American. Both destinations are just another place to go.

No matter where you end up, all inclusives follow a similar recipe: big buildings, (maybe) private beaches, (definitely) buffet restaurants, and (always) wristbands that (with any luck) let you order drinks all day without ever reaching for your wallet. Except when they ask for a tip on every order.

For many tourists, that setup is perfect. You land, get on a shuttle, and disappear into a resort bubble for a week of sunshine and relaxation. It almost doesn’t matter where in the world you are. I’m not here to judge: there’s nothing inherently wrong with an all inclusive vacation. A trip to a comfy bubble can be a great vacation.

It’s just very much not how I like to travel. Being trapped in a luxury prison, away from civilization, needing an “excursion” to experience local culture? No thanks.

The strange architecture of resort bubbles

During my recent trip to Tulum, I noticed something that perfectly captured the difference between two very different styles of travel.1

Driving along the coast from Cancun to Tulum, I passed many mega resorts. They all had one thing in common: massive gates guarding the entrance, and high fences lining the property. Some even had electrified barbed wire running along the perimeter. It must be nice once you get in and get your wristband, but from the outside, these “resorts” look more like a prison complex than a beach getaway.

It makes you wonder if the resorts are designed to keep people out, or keep them in. Everything is designed to face inward. Pools, restaurants, entertainment, activities. The entire experience is built so guests never really have to leave.

Which, of course, is the point of staying at an all-inclusive. If you never leave the property, you’re eating every meal there, drinking every drink there, and booking every activity through the resort. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it creates a strange reality where you could be almost anywhere in the world and not notice much difference.

Pizza, pasta, and the illusion of travel

One of the things that intrigues me about these large resorts is the food. You fly halfway across the world to Mexico, and the buffet proudly features… pizza and pasta.

Some resorts have ten “different” restaurants on the property, with menus designed to be as internationally neutral as possible. Nothing too adventurous, or unfamiliar.

The result is a vacation that’s comfortable, predictable, and safe. It’s also strangely disconnected from the place you actually traveled to. Again, you could be anywhere in the world and not notice much of a difference other than the stamp in your passport.

Why I chose a small luxury hotel instead

For my Mexico trip I intentionally selected the opposite of an all-inclusive experience. I picked a small luxury hotel in Tulum, featured on FoundersCard. I prefer a curated selection over the thousand+ options on travel sites like Expedia.2 The hotel was quiet, beautifully designed, and even provided bicycles to encourage guests to explore the surrounding. The daily happy hour with free food and cocktails by the pool got me close enough to an all-inclusive experience.

Within a short ride I could reach cenotes, beaches, local restaurants, ruins, and the national park. Instead of spending the week moving between the pool, buffet, and bar, the whole area became part of the experience. That’s the kind of travel I enjoy.

Staying somewhere smaller creates freedom. You’re not locked into a schedule of buffet hours. You’re not trying to “maximize the value” of an all-inclusive package by making sure every meal happens on the property. If you feel like riding into town for tacos, you go. If you want to explore a quiet beach or grab a drink somewhere unexpected, you can.

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Travel vs vacation

There’s a subtle difference between travel and vacation. An all-inclusive resort delivers a vacation, with comfort, convenience, and predictability. For many people that’s exactly what they’re looking for, especially if you just want to unplug for a week and don’t really care where in the world you are (as long as the sun is shining).

But travel is about something different. It’s about freely experiencing a destination instead of observing it from behind the walls of a property designed to keep you contained. Those little moments are what make a trip memorable.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Whether you prefer travel or vacation, is personal. What feels like a dream vacation to one person might feel limiting to someone else.3

For me, the joy of travel comes from stepping outside the bubble. I want to see the streets. Taste the local food. Talk to the people who live there. Explore the beaches and ruins and parks that exist beyond the resort gate.

Sometimes that means trading the convenience of a buffet for a bit of curiosity and adventure. And in my experience, that trade is almost always worth it (either way, bring at least Tums, Gravol and Advil, just in case).

Get Into Action

If you’ve ever felt like travel could be something more than simply booking a resort and following the crowd, that’s exactly what I explore in The Freedom Project: Travel. The book is about unlocking more meaningful travel experiences, learning how to explore destinations with intention, and designing trips that feel less like a packaged vacation and more like a real adventure.

If you’re ready to go beyond the book and see how I book free airfare and luxury hotels at a fraction of the cost, get yourself a free preview to my Travel Revolution online course today. I’d love to have you on board.

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Further reading

A news headline caught my attention recently:

A U.S. airline will now remove passengers who refuse to wear headphones when listening to audio on their devices.

Good idea, in my humble opinion. But let’s dive a little further. The story, on my Canadian Apple News, was quietly framed as an example of American airlines cracking down on “Canadian travellers.” I’m not sure if this is considered clickbait, political misinformation, or something in between. Either way, the headline was less about headphones and more about the way two great countries are pitched against each other in an ongoing trade war. Give me a break. Wearing headphones has little to do with cross-border tension, nationality, politics, or travel friction between countries.1

The “U.S. airline” vs “Canadian travellers” framing felt unnecessary and frankly a little manipulative. This isn’t an American rule targeting Canadians. It’s not a geopolitical issue. It’s not some new front in the never-ending media cycle of cross-border outrage. The way this story was framed says more about the current media environment than it does about the policy.

The real story is about something much simpler: basic etiquette. if you are sharing a confined public space with hundreds of other people, please use headphones. That’s it. If you’ve spent any time in public lately, you’ve probably noticed that basic etiquette around audio seems to be disappearing. So let’s talk about that.

The strange new social experiment

There’s a strange new phenomenon that seems to have quietly become normal: people walking around holding their phones in front of their faces on FaceTime speakerphone. Seriously, who invented this? Scrolling social media feeds with the audio blasting is a private experience, nobody else cares. People watching videos on full volume in cafés, waiting rooms, transit, or airplanes - did you forget your headphones, or you just don’t care about anyone else?

The sound is always the same: that unmistakable tin-can audio coming from a phone speaker somewhere in the vicinity. Once you notice it, you start hearing it everywhere.

This is not about perfect silence in public. Cities, travel, and life can be noisy, messy experiences. That’s kind of the point. But do we really need to add to that? There’s a difference between ambient noise and someone broadcasting their personal media to everyone around them. Again, nobody cares.

The airplane example

Airplanes are actually a great example of why this matters. Space is confined, and for several hours you get to spend quality time with a couple hundred complete strangers in an air-compressed tube. Everyone is sharing the same small space, which (especially in row 37 by the bathroom) is already a bit uncomfortable. The least we can do is try to make that experience tolerable for one another.

Most airlines have always had a rule that you must follow crew instructions. In theory that could already include being told to mute your phone or use headphones. Since common sense isn’t that common, United Airlines simply decided to make the expectation explicit.

If you want to listen to something on your phone or tablet, use headphones. If you refuse after being asked, you could be removed from the plane. Sounds like a good idea. I’m not even a big United fan2, but on this one I think they got it right.

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The yoga studio moment

The story popped up on my newsfeed right after I experienced a smaller version of the same problem, when I arrived early at a yoga studio. The room is clearly marked as a no-phone zone, which is meant to give people a quiet space to decompress before class starts.

Someone didn’t get the message and walked in while playing audio on her phone. The instructor hadn’t arrived yet, and nobody said anything. I couldn’t help wondering that if the rule says “no phones,” maybe she should’ve been kicked out as well? Where is United cabin crew when you need them most?

The thing that makes this whole debate even more absurd is how easy the solution is: headphones can be tiny, and easily fit into your pocket. Using earbuds isn’t some oppressive rule, but a small gesture of consideration for the people around you. And if you needed one more reason: Smart phones do not come with good enough speakers designed for public listening anyway.

Maybe more places should adopt the rule

The United policy might sound strict, but in practice it’s just putting into writing something that most people already understand: don’t play audio in shared spaces, like airplanes, trains, cafés, and yoga studios.

The rule itself isn’t particularly newsworthy. What is worth noting is that airlines feel they need to formalize something that used to be basic social etiquette. Hopefully most of us can figure that out without needing a contract of carriage to enforce it. For the rest of us, you’ve been warned.

Get Into Action

Travel is full of little details that make the experience better or worse. Etiquette, preparation, and understanding how systems work can transform a frustrating trip into something memorable. I share many of those insights in my book The Freedom Project: Travel, where I break down the mindset and practical strategies that help people travel better and more intentionally. If you’re curious about making travel a richer part of your life, it’s a good place to start.

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Further reading

The cover image for this story was taken in the airport lounge before my flight from Santiago, Chile to Lima, Peru. LATAM did it right: a truly quiet, premium space with a great food and beverage selection. But it’s not always like that. Sometimes the “lounge” feels more like mix between a crowded coffee shop and a daycare facility, than the premium experience it used to resemble. With so many credit cards now offering access, you wonder if it’s quieter outside the lounge than in. What used to feel like a quiet pre-flight escape now has lineups, crowds, and a mediocre buffet of lukewarm soggy food. Was it a mistake to even deal with the lineup to get in?

But there’s good news: some changes are coming. American Express, amongst other providers, is tightening lounge access. A lot of headlines focus on the impact for US cardholders, but the effects are very real for Canadians too.

Right now, the Canadian Platinum Card still gives access to Priority Pass lounges, Plaza Premium lounges (a big one in Canada) and Centurion Lounges where available. In the US, guest lounge access is tied to annual spend on the card, a model they’re now starting to introduce in Canada.

Starting in 2027, you’ll see more subtle restrictions, with limits on your lounge visits limits and guest policies, and a gradual shift toward rewarding higher spend.1

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When the lounge becomes worse than the terminal

I’ve had a few moments recently where I walked into a lounge and thought, this is actually worse than outside.

The Plaza Premium lounge in Vancouver US departures used to be a decent option. Lately, it’s been hit or miss at best. Packed seating, food lines, and people on speakerphones. The noise levels and cramped feeling completely defeat the purpose of being there.

And then there was the Air Transat lounge in Cancun. I’m not exaggerating when I say it might have been one of the worst (and shortest) “lounge” experiences I’ve had. Overcrowded, chaotic, and somehow more stressful than just sitting at the gate. With several families with screaming kids, it felt like a daycare facility that served alcohol.2

At that point, what are we even paying for?3

“When everything is premium, nothing is.”

The real issue isn’t access. It’s behaviour.

Some people think of “travel hacking” as pure optimization with no regard for sustainability. People sign up for cards, grab the welcome bonus, and then barely use the card. Rinse and repeat.

This is credit card churning. Technically clever, but short-sighted.4

That kind of “travel hacking” overloads the system, devalues the experience, and forces companies to tighten rules for everyone. It’s like abusing the Costco return policy. It’s flexible, but even the Costco return policy will turn against you if you abuse it. Eventually every system corrects itself to prevent abuse.

So by tightening the lounge access benefit, Amex is trying to restore balance. Premium providers are happy to provide premium experiences, but only if there’s a real relationship behind it. As a card provider, they’re not so much interested in building a relationship with cardholders, but with cardholders using their product.

A more sustainable approach to travel hacking

So at first glance, you may think “less benefits for the same annual fee”. But if fewer people get unlimited, frictionless lounge access, the experience inside improves for those who are there.

Maybe it’ll be a step closer to what lounges originally were meant to be: more space, less noise, and better service. If you’ve ever sat in a packed lounge wondering why you even bothered, you may appreciate this system resetting itself.

This ties directly into the travel hacking system I’ve been teaching for years:

That means using your cards strategically, following a system that’s designed to build real relationships with programs, and leveraging perks without abusing them. Yes, my approach to travel hacking is slower, but more intentional. And most importantly, it’s sustainable if you stick with it.

The irony is that this “long game” approach often leads to better travel experiences anyway. The play isn’t to panic or churn harder, it’s to adapt early, before these changes come into effect next year.

Get Into Action

If you want to build a travel strategy that actually holds up over time, not just for the next welcome bonus cycle, I walk through this in detail inside my Travel Revolution course. You can preview it for free and see if it fits your style of travel.

Preview the Travel Revolution

In the full Travel Revolution course I teach a sustainable travel hacking system that works for everyone, without taking advantage.

And for my VIP subscribers, I’ll include a private link to access an Amex referral bonus that isn’t publicly available below. If you’re going to play the game properly, not just chase points for the sake of it, this may be worth it for you.

Elevated Amex Invitation

New Platinum^® Cardmembers can earn 110,000 140,000 Bonus points, which is enough for up to $1,400 of travel credits. This invitation link is not available to the public. Unlock my private invite below, or find it in my own VIP Lounge. 😊

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Earlier this month I wrote about travel advisories and how they deserve a bit more interpretation than people realize.1 Advisories are important, and I’m not suggesting they should be ignored. But they’re also not the full story.

I wrote that post at the tail end of my recent Mexico trip. In the weeks since then, I’ve been watching something unfold in the news that I found a bit one-sided.

If you follow the same headlines, you might have noticed stories on Canadian travellers who are suddenly reconsidering their spring break travel plans because of “ongoing tensions” in places like Mexico and Cuba. The coverage makes it sound like something is actively unfolding right now.

But the reality is a bit different. The incident that triggered most of the Mexico coverage happened nearly four weeks ago in several Mexican states, including the popular tourist destination Puerto Vallarta2. Within about a week, flights resumed and reports suggested things were getting back to normal there. Yet weeks later, the headlines keep repeating the same narrative as if it’s still unfolding in real time, today.

That disconnect between headlines and reality caught my attention even more because I was actually in Mexico this month.

The trip I almost second-guessed

My own trip was scheduled to depart only days after the Puerto Vallarta incident. The timing wasn’t great. And to be honest, what I saw in the news made me pause. I’m not immune to those headlines. When you see the same story repeated over and over again it’s easy to start wondering if you’re being reckless by going ahead with your plans.

My trip wasn’t even to Puerto Vallarta. I was headed to Tulum on the Caribbean side of the country. For context, Puerto Vallarta is in the state of Jalisco on Mexico’s Pacific coast. Tulum sits on the opposite side of the country near Cancun. The distance between the two is roughly 2,500 kilometers. If you were to drive it, you’d be looking at around thirty hours on the road.

At one point Cancun briefly appeared on the Canadian travel advisory website in relation to the situation. I spent some time trying to understand why, because I couldn’t find any reports of related incidents in that area.

As always, I was doing my homework before departure.

Choosing to travel differently

Part of what made me pause was the style of trip I had intentionally chosen. Instead of booking an all-inclusive resort, I had selected a small luxury hotel in Tulum, which was featured on FoundersCard.3 I wanted to explore the area properly. The hotel even provided bicycles so guests could ride around to nearby ruins, cenotes, beaches, and the national park.

It was exactly the kind of travel experience I enjoy. But it also meant I wasn’t going to spend the week inside the alleged safety of a resort bubble.

The question naturally crossed my mind: had I made the wrong call? I considered cancelling, or changing to a different type of vacation than what I had planned. Maybe it would be better to be “stuck” on a resort after all?4

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What I actually experienced

Once I arrived, the picture looked very different from the stories shared in the media before (and during) my trip.

Yes, there was a visible presence of Mexico’s National Guard. Trucks with guards in military uniforms patrolled the town frequently. Some had mounted machine guns on the roof and a full crew standing in the back of the truck. At first glance, it’s a little intimidating.

But, as always, the context matters. These patrols were clearly there to maintain safety in a region that depends heavily on tourism. They drove along the beach roads, sometimes stopping near busy areas where visitors were walking between restaurants and beach clubs.

And they were surprisingly friendly. At one point a truck passed while I was walking along the beach road. I nodded and said, “Thanks guys.” They smiled and waved.

The message from the locals

The message from local people working in restaurants, hotels, and small shops was equally friendly. They want tourists to come and visitors to feel safe. They want people to understand that the headlines often don’t reflect what daily life actually looks like.

Tourism is a huge part of the local economy in places like Tulum. The people there have every incentive to keep things welcoming and safe. During my entire stay, I never felt unsafe.

We rode bicycles around town. We explored beaches and cenotes. We ate at local restaurants instead of resort buffets serving pizza and pasta for international tourists.

My trip felt like normal travel.

The reality about safety while traveling

My story doesn’t mean you should ignore safety altogether. Quite the contrary. You should absolutely pay attention to your surroundings, especially when you’re outside the resort areas. Stumbling home drunk after a late night party is rarely a good idea anywhere in the world. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in Vancouver, Amsterdam, New York, or a Mexican beach town.

Travel always involves a bit of situational awareness. That’s part of being a responsible traveler. But there is a big difference between sensible caution and the kind of fear-driven narrative that has been dominating the news lately.

News cycles are built around conflict and dramatic events. A single incident can generate weeks of good stories because it captures attention. The far more common story of millions of people traveling safely every year without incident, isn’t media-worthy. There’s no conflict there, and as such, no story to sell. The quiet normality doesn’t make the news.

Reading recent articles about Canadians changing their spring break plans because of “ongoing tensions” felt strange after having just returned from Mexico myself. The place I experienced on the ground looked nothing like the picture being painted in those headlines.

Make your own assessment

None of this is meant to dismiss travel advisories or suggest that risks don’t exist. Every destination carries some level of risk, and everyone has their own comfort level when it comes to travel decisions.

The key is to look beyond the headlines and make your own assessment based on multiple sources. Understand the geography. Know where you’re going and what you’re getting yourself into. Look at what is actually happening in the specific region you plan to visit.

And if you do decide to go, travel with awareness and respect for the place you’re visiting. That approach will take you much further than reacting to the latest news headline.

Get Into Action

Travel has a way of expanding your perspective in ways headlines never can. If you’ve ever wanted to travel more intentionally, explore beyond the resort bubble, and learn how to unlock better travel experiences along the way, that’s exactly what I share in my book The Freedom Project: Travel. It’s a practical guide to making travel more accessible, more meaningful, and far more rewarding than simply following the crowd.

If you’re ready for more and want to go beyond the book, check out my travel hacking program the Travel Revolution. Previews are always free.

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Further reading

Every spring and fall we go through the same ritual. Phones update automagically overnight, the microwave shows the wrong time, and everyone spends a day feeling slightly off. The good news? This year might have been the last time.

Last weekend, British Columbia moved its clocks forward with the intention of never changing them back again. It’s summertime forever, despite the rain. If the new policy holds, the province will stay on daylight saving time permanently.

Time zones shape how the world moves. Flights, business schedules, cross-border meetings, and even how jet lag feels are all (side) effects of these invisible lines. And BC just decided to redraw one of those lines.

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A decision that was years in the making

The idea of ending clock changes in BC isn’t new; we’ve talked about it for years. The legislation enabling the change was already passed back in 2019, but the plan to move to permanent daylight saving time was never put in effect.

The question was “who goes first”. Cities like Vancouver are tightly connected to places like Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles through trade, tourism, and daily flights connecting us all. The province wanted to make the permanent time change together with the U.S. west coast.

So we waited, for each other. If Washington, Oregon, and California all switched to permanent daylight saving time as well, the entire Pacific region would stay synchronized. U.S. states can support the idea, but changing daylight saving time ultimately requires federal approval in Washington, and that process stalled.

So BC finally decided to pull the plug and move forward anyway.

The strange travel side effect

If BC stays on permanent daylight saving time while the U.S. continues switching clocks, Vancouver will be one hour ahead of the U.S. west coast for about four months every winter. Noon in Vancouver would be 11am in Seattle and LA. That’s odd. When you cross the US-Canada geographic border, it’ll be like stepping into a temporary time zone where the clocks drift apart seasonally.

Airlines schedule flights months in advance, and they prefer entire regions to operate on synchronized clocks, following fixed time zones. When one jurisdiction shifts independently, it adds complexity. Imagine a typical winter flight between Vancouver and Seattle: you might depart Vancouver at 9:00 in the morning and arrive in Seattle before 8:50. Mathematically correct, but slightly confusing. It almost feels like time travel.

Still, this is nothing new and aviation has adapted to stranger time quirks before. Similar things happen when travelling short distances in Europe: flights from Amsterdam to London take about an hour and there’s a one-hour time difference. Which means you land the same time as you depart.

The Canadian experiment

Even the experiment to abandon seasonal time changes isn’t new, and British Columbia is not entirely alone in this experiment. The Yukon already switched to permanent daylight saving time in 2020. Residents there now live with extremely late winter sunrises, sometimes well after 10:00 AM.

Most people adjusted without much trouble. If BC sticks with this policy, Canada will effectively have created a small Pacific region that stays on summer time year-round. That might eventually nudge other jurisdictions to reconsider their own clock changes.

The global conversation about time

Meanwhile, the debate over daylight saving time is happening all over the world. Similar to BC, the European Union also voted to forget about seasonal clock changes several years ago. Implementation stalled when member states couldn’t agree whether to adopt permanent standard time or permanent daylight saving time.

For travellers this would be a welcome simplification. The twice-a-year clock shuffle creates small disruptions everywhere. Flight schedules change. Meeting times shift. Our internal clocks struggle for a few days. It’s not dramatic, but it’s a reminder that time zones are human inventions layered on top of a rotating planet.

The real test will be winter

The biggest criticism of permanent daylight saving time is simple: winter mornings get very dark. In Vancouver the sun could rise close to 9 AM in January, which means most people will start their workday before sunrise. But, we’d have lighter evenings allowing for more activities after work. Supporters argue that those brighter evenings matter more to people. Critics worry about darker mornings affecting sleep patterns and commutes.

Like most public policy experiments, the real answer will come from lived experience. If there’s one thing the travel industry has proven over the years, it’s that it adapts quickly. More importantly: Travellers have become surprisingly good at adjusting to the quirks of global time.

The BC decision might quietly start a broader global shift.

Get Into Action

Travel has a funny way of revealing how arbitrary many of our daily systems really are. Time zones, borders, currencies, and even social norms start to look different once you move through them often enough.

That perspective is exactly what inspired my book The Freedom Project: Travel. It’s about using travel not just as an escape, but as a way to rethink the structures we take for granted.

If this story about clocks, borders, and global movement resonates with you, the book is a good place to start exploring how travel can reshape the way you see the world.

Further reading