Rolf Potts on Travel Tactics, Creating Time Wealth, and Lateral Thinking (#41 & #42)

Tim, thank you for reminding me of the concept of “Exploring appreciation vs. achievement.” I often lean heavily toward achievement at the expense of appreciation. I’m getting to a place where the two concepts are present to a degree but I don’t know if they are balanced (or if balance makes sense there).

Howdy Tim. Stephen here – long time listener, first time caller. 🙂 I recently listened to your podcast with Rolf Potts, and you mentioned that you would like to read more poetry, but that you had had some bad experiences with pretentious folks attempting to convince you that you had to appreciate a certain type of poetry (the kind that I call prose), or else you just “didn’t get it.” I’ve been writing poetry for several decades now (off and on), and I also feel the same way about silly prose that people try to pass off as poetry.

All of my poetry rhymes. This particular poem was one of the first I wrote, and even though I hadn’t yet seen Robin Williams in “Dead Poets’ Society” it sort of follows his character’s reasoning for why men write poetry. Memorize this, recite it to girls, and many of them just melt. I’m currently writing a book which will be a tribute to the female form in poetry and prose. Since I can’t paint or sculpt, I have to paint my pictures with words. 🙂 This one is in praise of that most noticeable and glowing part of a woman – her smile. I hope that you enjoy it, and that it kindles a bit more interest in poetry. Enjoy!

Her Smile

By Stephen R. Melvin

I love her for the way she smiles at me,

For when she does, that’s all I see.

The way the sun shines in her hair,

Her grace, she’s here, now there, now where?

Pearls are set like gems in stone,

And the sound coming forth-a bell like tone.

Each chord, each note, each tale, each word,

Like nothing ever have I heard,

A figure full like a cup o’erflowed,

Her harvest rich is a field well sowed,

The hands? They are gentle yet strong, so complete,

To me her legs, to a starving man wheat.

Her eyes which seem to touch my soul,

All these things extract their toll.

Yet they all pale when she smiles at me,

For when she does, that’s all I see.

Travel is eye opener. There are endless possibilities open up by just traveling and paying attention to what’s different.

I absolutely love travelling and I’ve been travelling a few times a year for the past decade (even when I was broke as a student). I think that the best thing about travel is the inspiration and different perspective that it offers. It’s very often truly eyes-opening.

My tip is to make sure you write down your ahas and valuable observations on the spot, before you forget them 🙂

I love to travel…I noticed when I travel you meet people and sometimes I connect with someone like I knew them in a pass life..

Hey Tim and Rolf just wanted to thank you for this podcast. Listening to it half a year ago I decided to plan a hitchhiking adventure from the Netherlands to Japan, funded by my company which I outsourced inspired by the 4 hour workweek. [Moderator: links removed]

Thank you again for all the inspiration and the freedom this brought to my life!

@Tim… just wanted to say I absolutely LOVE your show notes. As interesting as your podcasts can be, I honestly wouldn’t make it through many of them, but with the notes, I can jump around the the bits and pieces that grab my interest. Mega thanks!

Just got around to listening to these two episodes. By far some of your best. Great quotes from Rolf.

Best episode ever! I’ll surely look to know more about Rolf Potts, everything he says is so wise! And what I really liked about him is that he surely has a lot to brag about, but he doesn’t. Instead, he preaches simplicity.

Everyone warned me French people were snobby after I announced plans to travel there. I maintained my disbelief until I arrived and was immediately treated to a snobby waitress at the first restaurant we stopped at. Still, I was unwilling to trust in this stereotype so I struck up a conversation with her after satisfying my tummy somewhat on. I found she lightened up quickly and even sat with us a while to chat. What I discovered wasn’t that she had assumed we were Americans, instead it occurred to me that we had not acknowledged her as a person (beyond hello and a quick smile) before ordering (we were hangry and hadn’t but had bad airplane food that day). Here, we expect you are paid to do your job and will do all that is required to excel at it or lose it. The interaction with your server is a coordinated dance designed to grant minimal comfort and timed to maximize efficiency. In North America we ask people what they do immediately after meeting them. Over there individuals wish to be recognized as people and not their job first. Ask them about how they are doing, learn about their family, background history, something about their individuality before getting to the task at hand and the moody waitress becomes quite sweet. I did this over and over and tested and retested and it changed my trip entirely. They do things differently there. People first, work second – if you get that wrong, you are the snobby asshole, not them.