Reading Time – 5 minutes

I had a transformative experience 17 years ago. It completely changed my life and was a critical part of a key pivot I made in my future at that time.

It was late 2007 and I had gone through my divorce about six months prior. I was 35 years old. I had not yet made the transition to Unchained CEO or Alpha Male 2.0 but I could feel a difference inside me, calling me to something very different than I had ever lived previously.

I had never been to Las Vegas. I had spent the prior 35 years of my life growing, working, and being a responsible dad. I had taken virtually no time for me. So, as a newly divorced man, I decided to go for an extended four-day weekend to Vegas and check it out. Even though I was casually dating someone at the time, I wanted to go by myself.

The recession of the Global Financial Crisis had already begun and, as usual, it hit the tourist cities first and hardest. So Las Vegas was suddenly extremely cheap. I rented an upper-level suite at the Wynn, the nicest hotel in Vegas at the time, and it only cost me a small fraction of what it would cost just three years later when the recession was over.

I really liked Vegas, much more than I expected to considering I don’t drink alcohol and don’t sleep with hookers, the two biggest reasons a lot of people go to Vegas.

Instead, I walked around, looked at all of the amazing resorts, played blackjack, went to some cool shows, went on some roller coaster rides, ate some amazing food, and had a fantastic time.

The second day I was there I was briefly working on my laptop in the afternoon in my hotel suite. Most of the rooms at the Wynn (the most expensive hotel ever built at that time and now one of my favorite hotels in the world) have gigantic floor-to-ceiling windows that cover an entire wall. It’s super impressive and Steve Wynn was a damn genius when it came to hotels.

I had spent extra to get a larger suite on a higher floor. The view was (and still is) breathtaking, and I mean that literally. You look down (because it’s one of the tallest hotels in Vegas) on all the lights, towers, and excitement of the Las Vegas Strip, then you see the distant lights of the city of Las Vegas beyond, then beyond that, you see the desert, then beyond that, you see massive, insanely beautiful rocky mountains. It’s desert so the visibility is fantastic and you can see for miles.

I stood there, looking out at the view, as I saw distant lightning strike the tops of the mountains as the lights of Vegas slowly came to life, the sun setting on the other side of the hotel.

I had never had an experience like that. The closest I had ever come to a similar experience in my limited, stunted, societally-appropriate, location-dependent, beta male life was looking at the boring, 1970s-style city of Portland, Oregon from atop a small hill on the south side of town. Not exciting to say the least.

But as I stood looking out over a view that was incredible enough for people to travel all over the world to Vegas to see, I had an almost spiritual experience. I almost cried, and that’s saying a lot because I’m not an emotional guy.

I had several shocking, striking new thoughts all at the same time.

My first thought was that the world outside of my little pussy-Portland life was incredible, beautiful, exciting, passionate, dangerous, rich, and wonderful. It was full of deep adventures that called to me and that I was meant to experience. It was full of things that would make me not only happy beyond belief but a better man as well.

It called to me, and I answered. I made a commitment to see it all, to experience it all, to live within its bosom, and to emerge as something greater.

The second thought was something strangely solipsistic. I was and still am a hardcore objectivist in all things. I see the world through rational objectivity at all times. Yet, I had this weird thought at that moment that this entire vista and event I was experiencing was entirely constructed from the ground up for me. Just me. No one else in the world existed other than me. The entire $1B hotel of the Wynn, the entire Vegas Strip, the entire city of Las Vegas, the desert that surrounded it, the mountains that ringed it, the lighting I saw strike the distant mountains, the sky and clouds and lights… all of it was created for me. Just me, to experience.

It was a gift from… well I don’t know who from because I don’t have that hard data, but it was a gift from someone to me. Just me.

I actually raised my arms and said out loud but in a quiet voice, “This is all for me.”

I still maintained my objective view of the world, that I am a tiny cog in a vast universe beyond the ability of my primitive primate brain to understand, and in a few short decades I will die and never come back, and in a few short decades after that, no one will remember me or give a shit that I was even here regardless of how many people buy my books or consume my content.

Yet I also maintained an entirely subjective and solipsistic view at the same time; that this entire amazing world was constructed purely for my pleasure and enrichment alone. Since no one else can get inside my brain and experience what I am experiencing with my emotions and viewpoints, this indeed was the case. If I don’t experience the harbor in Hong Kong, the spires of Dubai, the mountains of Montana, the rolling grassy hills of England, the bullet trains of China, or the oceans of the Maldives, then effectively, no one else will. All of these things will go to waste.

The amazing aspects of the world and this existence must be experienced by me before I die or they will crumble into dust for all eternity. There is no third option.

The third thought I had at the same time was that I was finally free.

For the first time in my life, I was free to live any way I wanted. I was no longer married in a traditional handcuff-like marriage. I didn’t have a job and thankfully had my own business. It wasn’t a location-independent business yet, but now I could make it so. I was financially strapped at the moment due to the ongoing divorce, but I knew that was only temporary, and soon I’d have access to my usual amount of money, enabling me to make any changes to my life I needed.

So not only was this amazing world now available to me, but I now had the freedom to go experience it.

I thought back to when I was in my early twenties, working at a 9-5 job in my little cubicle for a large software company. How I had to be there from 8 AM to 5 PM every workday. How I had to get permission from someone else just to take a bathroom break for 15 minutes. How I had exactly 45 minutes for lunch and then had to run back to my cubicle or else I’d get “written up.”

A prison.

I thought back to when I was traditionally married. How I couldn’t work on the projects I wanted to work on and how I couldn’t travel, because the wife would get upset. How I could live or spend significant time in any other city or country because the wife didn’t want to move.

Another prison.

I even thought back to when I was a child, living at home with my parents in the 1980s, and how I dreamed of moving out of that house someday and doing what I wanted rather than what my parents or teachers commanded. I thought back to the last few months as a senior in high school, where I spent hours upon hours every day waiting for that stupid clock to hit 3 PM so the school day would be over and I’d be one more day closer to adulthood and real freedom.

Yet another prison.

All of these things seemed so distant now, at that moment, looking out over that majesty. It was almost like they were experienced by a completely different person.

Because they were.

That day, I changed. I became someone very different. I had stepped through a holy light that had transformed me forever. And I would never be the same.

This was 17 years ago and I still remember how, that very evening, I excitedly called my assistant and gave her numerous instructions on how I was going to change my business to make it location-independent, as well as researching other countries.

Just a short time later, I was indeed 100% location-independent, traveled all over the world, and moved abroad. Today I have multiple homes, multiple flags, and multiple people in my life in numerous countries all over the planet.

But it all started that day way back in 2007 when the lighting hit those mountains. It hit me too. And I’m forever grateful that it did.

Leave your comment below, but be sure to follow the Five Simple Rules.