Everyone wants to make a living doing what they love, but very few are ready to put in the effort that is required to make it happen.

You see, you are in charge of your life. You are responsible for how your life looks today and what your future will look like.

Now, I’m not saying you can control every aspect of your life, but I think you know what I mean. We are all responsible for what we do and don’t do in our lives.

One of the best decisions I ever made was to find and go after my passion with relentless determination.

It’s very simple, but not easy.

If you’re ready to take one single step every day, you can reach your goals and live the life of your dreams.

1. Get Clear

The first step towards turning passion into profit is to get clear about what you want.

For me, this means setting goals that are specific, realistic, and that have a deadline.

What do you truly want from life? Do you want to contribute to humanity with your art? Or do you want to travel the world, experience new cultures, and share what you’ve learned with the rest of us? You can create whatever you decide.

There is always a way to turn your passion into profit if you’re determined enough to make it happen.

2. Take Action

Next, you need to be willing to take massive action. You need to be willing to take steps every single day towards achieving your goals.

If your goal is to travel the world, find out exactly how much money you need, what you need, and how you need to do it. If your goal is to travel to Thailand and live there for a year, find out how much airfare is, how much the cost of living is, and everything else that’s essential.

Then ask yourself what you have to do to make it happen. Start executing even if you don’t know exactly how it will all work out.

Something magical happens when you take action. Never underestimate the power of the universe.

3. Model People

One of the most powerful tips I can give you is to model people. What I mean by this is to find people that are doing exactly what you want to be doing, and do what they did.

If you do what successful people have done to become successful, you will become successful. It is inevitable.

This may mean emailing someone and becoming their friend. For some people it may mean joining a training course where you can get access to people that are already living the kind of life you want to live.

Whatever it is, avoid making excuses and take action. There will be no perfect time to go after your dreams, so you might as well start now.

4. Destroy Your Obstacles

Once you have a very clear goal of what you want to achieve, take a clean sheet of paper and write down the obstacles you think you will face on the path toward your goal.

What this does is it anticipates the bad stuff that will happen, and it lets you come up with solutions before you even bump into the obstacles.

This usually eliminates most of the obstacles right away, and makes the whole journey smoother.

5. Face Your Fears

Going after your passion is not a walk in the park. If it was, more people would live a life of passion and fulfillment.

Facing your fears is a simple as being determined to get to your goals with fears or no fears.

You can either succumb to your fears and live a life of mediocrity, or you can face your fears and live a life of true freedom. The choice is yours.

6. Baby Steps

Most people underestimate how much progress they can make in a few years just by taking one small step every single day towards their goals.

When you have your plan, and you have your obstacles in front of you, it’s time to brainstorm ideas of what steps you can take today to get closer to making a living doing what you love. Nothing remarkable needs to happen; you just have to start the journey toward your dreams.

7. Patience

This journey takes a lot of patience.

You will run into a lot of obstacles, you will have to face your fears, as things probably won’t go as smoothly as you’d like them to go. It’s all a part of the journey. And none of it really matters when you love what you do.

Turning your passion into profit is something that everyone can do, but not everyone has the determination or willpower to make it happen.

It is up to you to decide whether you want to live up to your full potential or not.

Henri Junttila writes at Wake Up Cloud, where you can get his free course: Find Your Passion in 5 Days or Less. And if you liked this article, you will enjoy one of Henri’s top articles, 33 Powerful Ways of Overcoming Fear.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 7 Simple Steps to Turn Your Passion Into Profit

Last week I made a painful 35-hour journey from Bangkok to Tokyo to Los Angeles to Texas. I spent a nerve-wracking 8 hours in the Narita Airport waiting out a fresh new earthquake just days after the one that caused extensive damage (and tsunamis) across the country, and a few aftershocks. (Impressively, everyone was all smiles in Japan, very very friendly and helpful, considering the incredible tragedy the country has just gone through.)

The moment I boarded the American Airlines flight to the U.S., I was reintroduced to American standards of customer service (piss-poor compared to Asia), cultural sensitivity (now I’m being completely sarcastic), and security checks. At LAX, I refused the backscatter X-ray machine and was the lucky recipient of the up-close-and-personal new pat downs the TSA is graciously giving out.

Welcome back, Cody!

Finally, I arrived in Austin, Texas, for the tail-end of the South By Southwest Interactive conference and the start of the city’s immense music and film festival that attracts tens of thousands of people from across the country and the world every year.

For four days, I had the great fortune to hang out with friends at The Monarch apartments in Austin, right in central downtown, with a great view of the city, meeting several faces I’ve known for years (but only online), catching up with a couple old friends, and interacting with several fascinating new folks. Here are just some of them:

Markus Urban is without a doubt, one of the most profoundly inspiring people I have ever crossed paths with. He unapologetically pursues what he desires and follows his every instinct and passion (he calls this Living on Impulse). He has an incredible, sometimes startling ability to connect and relate to others, pierce through all the things that typically distract us from being completely 100% authentic, and turn the seemingly “impossible” into reality. He currently uses his superpowers to bring awesome people together into the same environment, collaborate on exciting projects like the upcoming DMAD.com and I Want to Travel show, and generally create fun everywhere he goes.

Ashley Spiker found the perfect niche for herself online when she combined her love for designer shoes and blogging at ShoeRazzi. Ashley and Markus are digital nomads that have been traveling across timezones together for the last year+. We met for a brief time in Krabi, Thailand, last year and they made a profound impact on my life, even in such a brief time. The two of them were generous enough to invite me to stay with them at the brilliant condo they rented in Austin for the month—the Superhuman Loft! It’s largely because of the two of them I was introduced to dozens of motivated, ambitious, interesting young folks all working to change the world in their own ways.

Will Hutson produces awesome television and video, including A Drink With Dave (with MTV’s Dave Holmes), among other things, and heads up Unscripted, the production company working on the upcoming I Want to Travel show mentioned above. He also shares cool and funny stuff at thehipsterdiet.

Nick Reese is a passionate young entrepreneur, affiliate marketer, and nomad. He’s recently released an impressive project with Chris Brogan, the book How to Turn Traffic and Trust into Sales, and explores what sets some people apart from the crowd at Becoming Bold.

Jenny Blake is a Career Development Program Manager and internal coach at Google, and has just recently published her book Life After College: the Complete Guide to Getting What You Want. A passionate young woman with a personal growth obsession, find her at Life After College.

Thursday Bram is a prolific freelance writer who’s done tons of impressive work for CNET, GigaOm, Lifehack, and many other publications. She’s also runs Hyper Modern Consulting, and is a really friendly gal to bounce business ideas off of over lunch, as I discovered with Jeanie Witcraft (see below).

Karol Gajda is my Polish-American, vegan, digital nomad friend who’s about a foot taller and even more dynamic in person than I imagined! He’s on a mission to help 100 people achieve Ridiculously Extraordinary freedom and he’s setting out on a tour of every roller coaster in the U.S. Karol is also the author of How to Live Anywhere: The Official Guide to Ridiculously Extraordinary Freedom.

Jenny Leonard is a skater chick and a courageous young soul who’s taken some huge risks recently to completely reboot her life, overcoming health challenges and other obstacles, selling all her belongings, and leaving everything behind to start traveling the world. Jenny, Markus, and I shared some cool, deep, vulnerable conversations. She’s always been self-employed and supported herself with her graphic design and creative freelance work. Find her at Where Is Jenny for now.

Andy Drish is someone I’ve been following for a very long time, since the beginning of my time online, so it was great to finally meet him face-to-face, albeit brief. Andy has worked extensively in corporate leadership development, social media marketing, and sales development and shares his knowledge through speaking, training, and workshops.

Benny Lewis is a multilingual Irishman who’s been traveling for almost a decade. He speaks at least 8 languages fluently and constantly relocates to new locations around the world to embark on new language-learning missions and become Fluent in 3 Months. It was especially good “craic” (fun) hanging out with the nondrinking, vegetarian Irish Polyglot for my favorite holiday, St. Patrick’s Day. If you’re into travel and languages, check out Benny’s extensive Language Hacking Guide.

Sean Ogle is a good friend that I spent several months with in Bangkok, so it was great to spend time with him again after some time. Sean quit his finance job to travel the world and work with Dan at the Tropical MBA, picking up a wide range of entrepreneurial skills along the way, and now he travels freely, working on several cool projects with some of the biggest names online. He recently put out a great course about Overcoming the Fear of Uncertainty, and you can follow all his unconventional adventures at Location 180.

Ryan Martin recently finished a ridiculously epic full year of travel. A close friend of Sean’s who I met back in Thailand, they should be somewhere between Las Vegas and Portland right now. Ryan will soon be working as an adventure tour guide all across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Check him out at Follow Me Everywhere.

Andrew Norcross was one of our partners when we started up Untemplater, so it was really fun to finally meet him in person for the first time in Austin! Norcross is an incredible developer, always helping solve my technical problems, and a stunning web designer (if you need a site redesign, I highly recommend you hire him). As he says, his ’personal brand’ is a combination of Camel Lights, tattoos, his son, and the word ‘fuck’, which is hilarious.

Adam Baker was another cofounder of Untemplater. We met while he was on his worldwide travels with wife Courtney and their young daughter through Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand, and this year the Baker family is on an RV journey across North America. Baker is author of Unautomate Your Finances, Sell Your Crap, and provides tons of great personal finance and life advice at Man Vs. Debt.

Chris Dunphy & Cherie Ve Ard are two technology-enabled nomads who have been traveling full-time since 2006. They started as RVers wandering across the U.S., and this year they’re living on the US Virgin Island, St. John. I only got to hang out with them briefly at the HP Trailer Park at SxSW, where they showed off some of their cool iPhone/iPad apps made for travelers based on needs they’ve addressed in their own travels (app one and app two). You can follow their travels at Technomadia and grab their book Answers to Common Excuses Not to Travel Full-Time.

J. Money is a lively, good-humored, punk rock kinda guy who learned a tremendous amount about personal finance when he got married and bought his first house and now shares it in an exciting, sexy way at Budgets Are Sexy.

Nate St. Pierre wants to change the world, by focusing on giving hope to people on an individual level, one at a time. He and J. Money work together on a truly inspiring project called Love Drop. Check out how you can make a difference in the world in just 15 minutes a week at ItStartsWith.Us.

Jeanie Witcraft has worked as a mental health therapist and is just starting to build a radically new life doing work to change the world sustainably, balancing different spheres of time, focus, and life, and connecting with people one-on-one to help in healing society’s ills.

Monica O’Brien was another of our cofounders when we started Untemplater in 2010. It was fantastic to finally meet her face-to-face, although entirely too brief (we’ll have to do it again soon). Monica is the marketing director at Braintree, and author of Social Pollination, and just recently released her first fiction work Silver Smoke.

A huge thanks to all these folks, and especially to Markus and Ashley who put a lot of us together in one place and made a ridiculously cool mashup of minds possible. It is indeed true, when you surround yourself with insightful, ambitious people, you up your game. I hope to release some interviews and videos with a couple of these folks soon…

Also, credit to Markus Urban for most of the photos on this page.

Please share your South By Southwest experience in the comments!

Finally, a side note: today is my birthday! If you want to help make my year, please consider contributing or helping me spread the word about my 5-week tour across the U.S. I’m seeking a sponsor to make one of my biggest, most ridiculous dreams come true, and I hope to host a big personal development and entrepreneurship summit in April (or next year if we have to, but we will make it happen!) Please help me spread the word by sharing on Facebook or sending a Tweet to your followers. Sincere thanks!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 20 Inspirational, Superhuman Folks I Hung Out With at South By Southwest

Alright, so it’s official!

I’ve purchased tickets halfway around the globe and I will be traveling the U.S. for about five weeks, between March 14th and about April 21st, 2011. I’m very excited about this trip, because it will be my first venture home in two years, and because I’ll have the opportunity to visit several cities and meetup with old colleagues, blogger friends, clients, DNA students, friends and family.

(Read on to see my rough itinerary if you’d like to meet up in person in March or April.)

So here’s the slightly crazy part (every entrepreneur needs to be a little bit insane, right?):

I’ve already invested in airfare, I’m covering travel expenses myself, and no matter what happens, I will be visiting several conferences & events throughout Texas, Arizona, and California for five weeks. But I would love to find a corporate sponsor to help me make the most of my 2011 Whirlwind Thrilling Heroics U.S. Tour and fund some BIG ideas I have for my time there.

If I am going to spend just 5 weeks in North America out of every 2 years, then I want to do some huge, impossible, ridiculous shit while I’m there. I’m confident this can be a massive win-win-win situation for the right company or startup that shares my vision for making a change in the world.

Here’s what I’m about in a nutshell: I am tired of the world some of us grow up in and I want to shatter any notions that people have to settle for “normal” life. I want to truly convince people that they CAN in fact do anything with their lives. They can be anything they want. They don’t have to fit into anyone else’s cookie-cutter expectations, they don’t have to do the same thing everyone else does. I want to help crush people’s fears, and the self-imposed limitations that hold us back. I want to encourage more people to spend a LOT of time to figure out what they’re sincerely interested in and passionate about, to CREATE more, to start up their own small businesses, their own global microbrands and projects to leave their impression on the world, and to have more control over their own time, happiness, and freedom. I want to encourage more people to travel, to live abroad, and to have a wide range of experiences that will make them more informed, compassionate members of the human race.

I believe these things are the future. We won’t make the world a better place ensuring everyone studies calculus in school, by increasing spending year after year on stupid government “solutions” without ever looking at results, or by taxing everyone so we can go murder women and children on the other side of the world, all for control over resources.

No. The future—if our species is to have one for very much longer—requires more creativity (not destruction), more curiosity (not fear), more connectedness. We need to remove as many of the rules as we can—no more white picket boxes—we need to encourage young people to follow their passions, not money. We need billions of people all doing things they love, creating goods and services of real value for each other because they care.

If I sound like a raving lunatic, then you should probably leave now. If these crazy ideas sound like they align with your beliefs, if your company could benefit from working on some interesting projects along these lines, and connecting with a network of remarkable people who believe similarly—people who are actively working to make the world a better place—then read on.

There is a lot of crap out there. But I know for a fact there are thousands (maybe millions) of passionate entrepreneurs out there, creatives, and small organizations that truly seek to make a transformational change in people’s lives and change the world for the better. If what I have to say here on Thrilling Heroics resonates with you, with your worldview, with your company’s mission, then I truly believe there is an opportunity for collaboration that would both make sense commercially and make a difference—it would increase your visibility, get you connected with changemakers, and create a lot of excitement.

Who the Hell Am I to Sell Out Like This?

I’ve spent the last three months pouring myself into building Digital Nomad Academy with my two cofounders Brooke and Milt. In that time, I’ve not taken on any new paying clients for my development and marketing consulting business, no big new projects, other than DNA, which is a personal passion project to help more people create meaningful online businesses (that will also help them travel and live wherever they want). We had a hugely successful prelaunch, and now we’ve got roughly 60 students all going through our course for the first time and helping us ensure that everything is top-notch, and being patient with us as we sort out all the technical aspects and get things running smoothly.

We’re reinvesting a large portion of our revenue back into the business, into the infrastructure, into software to create the best membership site and deliver content in the best way possible, into marketing plans and tools for our official launch the next time around…  And I’m investing the bulk of my time now with our students, ensuring we get the best teachers involved each week to speak with them, answering questions on weekly live phone calls, combing through our peer forums, listening to a lot of feedback, making improvements to the site, and generally trying to ensure Digital Nomad Academy reaches its full potential and that our students are successful in making the life change they desire.

So naturally I was living on savings as we got DNA ready for consumption, draining most of the TH coffers for now…  And I’m investing several thousand dollars now in airfare, travel and living expenses, to get halfway around the world for five weeks and be at several big events.

Like I said, no matter what happens, I will be visiting several conferences & events throughout Texas, Arizona, and California in March and April, but with your support I hope to make this time absolutely remarkable, to plan several gatherings and at least one big retreat, and to connect with as many people as I can and make the biggest impact with my time as humanly possible.

With that said, I am certain if people are interested, I’ll have interest from some organizations that aren’t the best fit for Thrilling Heroics. I will carefully review anyone who applies, speak at great length with the best applicants to ensure that our vision aligns, brainstorm exactly how we could collaborate together on a case-by-case basis, and guarantee that we can create a win-win-win situation together. This is not an invitation to just any company; I only want to partner with someone if it’s a genuine fit.

The 2011 Whirlwind Thrilling Heroics U.S. Tour Schedule

Alright, so here’s my tentative itinerary for my five or six weeks back in the States so far:

• South by Southwest Interactive, March 14–18. I’ll be hanging out in Austin, Texas, for the tail-end of SxSWi and the beginning of the film & music festival. I’m already confirmed to hang out with Benny Lewis from Fluent In 3 Months (who’s generously hosting several bloggers for the week), Karol Gadja from Ridiculously Extraordinary, catching up with my old cofounders Adam Baker from Man Vs Debt, stellar web developer Andrew Norcross, and author Monica O’Brien, as well as Gary Arndt, Sean Ogle, Markus Urban (Mr. Impossible himself!), Chris & Cherie at Technomadia, Charlie Hoehn, Tyler Tervooren, and several others.
• Phoenix, Arizona, March 18–23. I’ll be visiting my little sister and spending time with family for my birthday on March 20th (btw if you want to help me make my biggest birthday wishes come true, please contribute), but would love to meet with entrepreneurs and blog readers in the area. I’ll also be in Sedona, AZ, on the 21st.
• Sacramento, California, March 24–? This is home for me. I’ll spend a few weeks here catching up with friends and working overtime on Digital Nomad Academy, interviews, and other projects for Thrilling Heroics (gotta make use of the blazing fast internet at home while I can!). But if you’re in the area, feel free to let me know.
• San Francisco, California, April ?? At some point, I will be heading to SF to catch up with my old friend Jun Loayza, gen-y serial entrepreneur, visit several friends, and hopefully several other bloggers and readers. Time for a Tweetup!
• Los Angeles, California, April ?? When I head south, I will definitely pop in to check up on my good friend Ryan Lei (recently relocated to the U.S. by the UN Refugee Agency), Clay Boeschen, possibly the Tropical MBA guys, and others. Tweetup time again!
• Coachella Music and Arts Festival, Indio, CA, April 15–17. This is a tradition with a few close friends of mine. I’ve already got my VIP tickets and would love to catch up with any readers who will be there. This is a great festival to see artists from across the region and meet many creative types who flock to Southern California for great music in the middle of the beautiful Coachella Valley desert, surrounded by palm trees, mountains, and gorgeous sunsets.

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Are you going to be in any of these locations?? I would love to meet you! Let me know in the comments below, on Twitter, or on Facebook.

Be a Thrilling Hero and Help Me Make My Impossible Dreams a Reality

I’m doing this either way, to the best of my ability. But with your help, I could network with the A-listers, organize several events in three states, and hopefully run a large retreat that will transform people’s lives. For the right sponsor, this could be a ridiculously cost-effective way to reach thousands of people.

Major Opportunities:

#1: As described on their website: “The South by Southwest® (SXSW®) Conferences & Festivals offer the unique convergence of original music, independent films, and emerging technologies. Fostering creative and professional growth alike, SXSW is the premier destination for discovery.”  I don’t have a badge to attend the official SxSW events, but being in Austin while nearly 30,000 people converge for the event still offers plenty of opportunities to meet & greet. For now I’m just crashing the unofficial events, meeting up with tons of people for coffee & after parties, and hopefully organizing my own meetup or two, but if I partner with a sponsor who can help cover the conference costs, that might change, and I’d have the opportunity to attend several keynotes, events, workshops, and private parties, and multiply my impact while I’m there.

#2: If I get full funding, it’s my impossible dream to host an entrepreneurship, personal development, and lifestyle design summit—a sort of unconference & retreat with inspiring, like-minded people who want to create radical change in their lives and build meaningful businesses. Host a group of 15-20 for a series of talks, workshops, trainings, and networking in a beautiful venue for 3-4 days—a place where a group of motivated, creative people can hang out with other like-minded folks to encourage and support each other, probably either in LA or San Francisco in mid-April. Originally I had wanted to plan this in conjunction with Coachella—spend the week sharing inspiration & knowledge, and collaborating together on business ideas, and then spend a fun weekend together at the festival, but my early proposal didn’t get accepted for funding. You can see it here for more details. If not this year, then definitely we will make it happen in April 2012. Do you want to be a part of this??

Thrilling Heroics has over 5,000 subscribed readers, approximately 11,000 members in our larger social media community (on networks like Twitter & Facebook, etc.) and about 15,000 unique visitors per month. This is a relatively small, but very loyal and engaged audience of passionate, motivated, creative, entrepreneurial people who are curious about the world, travel, and building things that make a difference. According to Twitter, when I share about one of my colleague’s product, or a hotel I recommend, or a trip a take, my messages reach at least 50,000 people in my expanded network!

With other communities I have helped build (Digital Nomad Academy, Untemplater, Business Backpacker, In Search Of Sanuk, see here for many of my clients and companies I’ve built online platforms for), it’s nearly impossible to measure the reach of Thrilling Heroics online, however of all websites online, TH currently ranks #56,426 for traffic in the U.S., and is within the top 65K most-visited sites worldwide.

And imagine how those numbers will go up after I rub shoulders with the big wigs at South by Southwest and across the U.S. this year!

So how much would it cost to help make my 5-week U.S. tour Thrillingly Heroic and expose your company to thousands of motivated world-changers?

I am looking for 1-3 unique, remarkable companies to sponsor me with about $5,000–$6,000 US. This will help me cover all transportation and accommodation, conference fees, and startup costs for my big in-person retreat. If you think you would be a good fit, please send me an by email at cody at thrillingheroics.com and we can discuss further possibilities and how to make this a huge success for all of us.

6 Things You Get If Your Company Sponsors My Trip

1. A major sponsor that aligns with my philosophy and my audience’s interests will get prominent adverts across ThrillingHeroics.com site for all of 2011 (probably the only adverts you’ll see on TH anymore).
2. Major thanks and exposure in multiple blog posts, emails to my growing list, and social media updates throughout the year (Twitter, Facebook, etc.). Building communities is what I do. If you have something that I believe in and trust, then let’s talk about how I can help you present your service, product, or message to my community and create a win-win-win.
3. Here are just a few people I hope to interview in the next few months: Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, Brian Johnson of Philosopher’s Notes, and Vishen Lakhiani, founder of MindValley. Want your name or logo attached with interviews like these? Get recognition on any video interviews or podcasts I make for Thrilling Heroics this year.
4. Recognition and thank-you, as well as your banner or slide prominently displayed  at any events I coordinate this year, like my dream retreat. Help me orchestrate a killer major event and come participate in-person and present your business directly to attendees if you want!
5. Get access to my network of friends and colleagues on five continents. If there is a possible partnership or collaboration that benefits you both, I am happy to connect you to entrepreneurs in Asia, awesome developers in the US, assistants in the Philippines, affluent world travelers, sailing enthusiasts, underwater basket weaving experts, whatever!
6. Again, if it’s a fit, potentially promote your product, service, or message to customers of my other companies & projects elsewhere.

Make a Donation to Help Me Reach My Dangerously Ambitious Goals

As I said above, my birthday is on March 20th, and if you want to help me make my biggest birthday wishes come true this year, please do it by contributing to my 5-week 2011 Whirlwind Thrilling Heroics U.S. Tour! Individuals can make a small contribution through PayPal if you want to support my trip. Here’s the deal:

• If enough money is donated ($5,000+) and no company sponsors me, I’ll go to SXSW and write about it here to share what I learn with you, and I’ll do as many interviews as I can to help expose you guys to the coolest, most remarkable entrepreneurs out there, ad-free! Also we’ll have seed money to set up my personal development retreat for this and/or next April in Southern California.
• If a sponsor fully funds my target amount, I’ll donate all reader contributions to The Girl Effect and In Search Of Sanuk (my friend Dwight’s charity project in Bangkok).

Please click the donation button at the bottom of this page and make a $25 donation (that’s my suggested amount, but please feel free to make any contribution you feel comfortable with), or you can become a recurring micropatron if you love what I share here on Thrilling Heroics.

Help Me Spread the Word About My Impossible Dreams for 2011

Please help me seek sponsors and spread the news about my impossible goals by sharing this story on Twitter, Facebook and anywhere else you can. If you know anyone who works at a company you think would align well with my mission here at TH, or in an ad or PR company, please email them the link and tell them my story. If we make this happen, hopefully you can count on meeting me inside South by Southwest and there will be a HellaCoachella retreat in April!
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6 Damn Good Reasons to Help:

1. You love what I write here at TH and want to give back for the time & energy I’ve invested here for the last 5 years.
2. I’ve helped motivate or inspire you to make a major change in your life.
3. You’d like to meet me in person at South by Southwest Interactive.
4. You like to support a hard-working entrepreneur trying to make a little dent in the world in a very unconventional way.
5. Help me grow the Thrilling Heroics community so I can make a bigger impact to help you live the life you want.
6. You want to help me make my idea for a fun entrepreneurship, personal development, and lifestyle design summit a reality.

If you’d like to help me make the most of my 5-week trip Stateside, I will be truly appreciative for any generous contribution you can make. Just click here to make a donation. And if you will be in Austin, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, or Indio in March and April, let me know so we can try to meet up in person!

Thank you for your support!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The 5-Week Thrilling Heroics U.S. Tour: Help Me Make the Most of It!

I finally received video footage from the Guerrilla Entrepreneurs Seminar in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where I spoke about my experience as a nomadic entrepreneur and permanent traveler back in August.

My friend Hani Khaursar invited me to share the stage with some great folks including Vishen Lakhiani, Brian Wong, and others, and I discussed lifestyle design, finding your purpose and passion in business, geo-arbitrage, and living the digital nomad lifestyle anywhere you choose.

We had a blast! Attendees to the full-day summit paid more than $100 to hear our talks, but here’s your free ticket to watch my presentation below (hopefully I won’t get in trouble with Hani). Also you can follow along with my interactive visual presentation right below the video.

Enjoy!

Let me reiterate what I said at the end of my presentation:

The tools and the resources are the easy part—it’s the mindset, and breaking your preconceived ideas about your business and your life that’s difficult.

But I’ve said it before, if I can do this, anyone can do this.

If you’re serious about learning the mindset and overcoming the challenges that are holding you back from living life fully, on your own terms, then take a look at Digital Nomad Academy, where we bring together a faculty of incredible, experienced entrepreneurs from all backgrounds who’ve done it, that can help lead you where you want to go.

If you enjoy the presentation above, you can also watch my interview on the Leaderonomics Show in Kuala Lumpur, for more on similar topics.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: How to Make Friends Around the World & Serve Clients on 5 Continents

This articles is a case study by Henri Junttila, who writes at Wake Up Cloud, where he simplifies the path to passion and freedom. He is also the author of Passionate Living: A Guide to Doing What You Love.

For almost the past six years, I’ve been working for myself. I’ve never held a real job, except once when I had a summer job washing boxes.

I realized early on that I had absolutely no desire whatsoever to get caught up in the 9-to-5 grind. When I got out of school at the ripe age of 18, I jumped straight into playing online poker.

I read books and I talked to successful players. I was extremely motivated to make it work. I never put any of my own money onto an online poker site, because I’ve always been very careful with money.

I started off playing something called freerolls, where you can enter for free, but win small prizes. Online poker sites use these to attract clients.

I played them for a few months before I won $1.50 (yup, one dollar, fifty cents). I then proceeded to lose that and had to start all over again. I did that until something clicked and I started making progress. I played online poker for about five years until I finally quit cold-turkey in early 2009.

Being Uncomfortable

There are many different ways of being uncomfortable. In early 2009, I had been playing online poker for almost five years and I had been feeling like something wasn’t right for years.

I was making a living, but I was being drained on a soul-level. I was uncomfortable in what I was doing, but I was also very uncomfortable with the thought of leaping into the unknown.

Working for yourself means becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable. That doesn’t mean that you’re not uncomfortable. It simply means you acknowledge that the feeling is there.

Showing Up

What I’ve realized during the few years I’ve been on this blue planet of ours is that showing up is essential. Almost everyone already knows that, but they don’t apply it to their lives.

You won’t feel on top of the world every second of every day, but you still have to keep showing up, taking action, and do your best.

I’m a pretty unconventional guy when it comes to how I make a living. I wouldn’t have it any other way, but working for myself hasn’t always been a walk in the park like many would like to portray it.

The Real Truth

I’m usually not this negative, but I wanted to make a point that there are times when you don’t want to pursue self-employment.

It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be scary and it’s going to take a lot of hard work, but none of that poses a real problem when you’re following your passion and doing what you love.

You see, what I realized one cold day in early 2009 was that while working for myself was awesome, I wasn’t willing to do it if I felt like shit.

That’s when I decided to take the leap and follow my heart. I’d always loved making websites, writing, and in general playing around in the online space.

I jumped into building websites and later writing my blog. Looking back, it was one of the best decisions of my life.

There’s nothing like working for yourself and loving every moment of it. The harsh realities of doing your own thing pale in comparison to the rewards when you truly enjoy what you’re doing.

The stars will never align and things will never be perfect, so listen to your heart, and go after what your heart yearns for, because that’s what life is all about.

Feature image from Nikki @ South East Asia Backpacker

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The Harsh Reality of Working for Yourself

Feature photo by Bing Ramos

Today’s guest post is courtesy of Richard at Lifestyle Design Unleashed.

When a surgeon goes to do an operation there are a number of pieces of equipment that he or she will most likely need. Scalpels. Clamps. Trays. And so on. If they go in with a skateboard, a banana and a doorbell instead then the surgeon is obviously going to be far less likely to be able to make a success of the operation.

And so it follows with lifestyle design. There are a number of traits which, if you can implement them, will help you greatly in designing and then creating your ideal lifestyle, so I thought it might be beneficial now to run over a few of these to serve as thinking points for you.

I’d love to hear your opinions and feedback on these elements, so I encourage you to leave a comment at the end of this post and also to suggest any traits that you think I’ve missed out.

Motivation To Make Changes

The first key to successful lifestyle design is having the motivation to make changes. I assume that if you’re here now, reading this blog, then that is you. But I’m not just talking about a passing interest in designing your lifestyle—instead I mean a burning motivation that keeps you awake at night dreaming about the possibilities.

I heard a useful phrase recently which went something along the lines of “a dog on the hunt doesn’t stop to scratch its fleas”. In other words there are always going to be small annoyances or things that get in your way while you’re on this lifestyle design journey, but if you have enough motivation and you’re focused on the end game then these minor issues won’t slow you down.

Passion For Life

There are two aspects of lifestyle design really—the negative and the positive. The negative elements are all those things you want to escape from, to avoid, to eliminate. Maybe that’s a boring job. Maybe that’s debt. Maybe it’s something as simple as a cold climate.

But the other side are the positives. What are you going to add into your lifestyle? When you’ve got rid of all those negatives, what positives are you going to add in?

What countries would you like to visit? What new skills would you like to learn? What food would you like to try, what languages do you want to learn? Who do you want to meet and what do you want to achieve?

Too many people know what they don’t want (I want to be able to quit my job) but struggle with what they do want to do. Remember that eliminating your job by setting up a lifestyle business, for example, by its very definition, opens up a huge amount of free time, and you’ve got to do something with it.

It’s worth, then, considering what you will do. Maybe go to some evening classes to see what appeals to you. Maybe go and meet some new people and just get chatting until you start thinking “wow, I’d love to try that”.

Find the things you’re really passionate about in case you aren’t already aware which will create even more motivation to make the necessary changes to your life.

A Vision Of Your Potential Life

I remember listening to an audio tape years ago which included information on an architect. When he designed a house he could visualize it so strongly that apparently he would go out to the plot of land with his clients and walk them through the house in such detail it was like the house was already built.

He could see every aspect of it in his mind’s eye. He joked that it seemed too real to him that sometimes he would knock his elbow on a piece of furniture!

This vision—this ability to see your potential future in your mind’s eye in glorious Technicolor—is yet another step in achieving your goals. After all, if you don’t know what you’re aiming for, how will you know when you get there?

So don’t just make a list of what you want to eliminate and what you want to add into your life. Imagine yourself actually living that life. What does your home look like? Where is it located? What do you look like? What do you do? Who do you know? Make this vision so strong that you too can walk into imaginary furniture.

Debt Free

Debt has a nasty way of taking away options. And the fewer options you have the less freedom and control over your life you have. If you’re up to your eyeballs in debt, then you may well be stuck in your job until you’ve paid it off. You may not be able to afford the vacation you want, or to buy that house you dream of. Debt repayments can eat up a lot of your monthly income, which means you need to earn more.

Without debt though, all those monthly repayments disappear. Depending on your point of view, you either need to earn less (meaning your lifestyle business can support you that much sooner) or you have more expendable income to spend on the things you really want.

In short, getting out of debt is an essential part of the lifestyle design project.

What else is important for your lifestyle design journey? Please leave your feedback and visit Richard at LifestyleDesignUnleashed.com

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Success Traits For Effective Lifestyle Design

Today I’m really excited to unveil an exciting new community for twentysomethings, college students, and young professionals who want to shatter the ‘template’ lifestyle and live an awesome life on their own damn terms!

Work where you want… Live how you want… Be who you want to be.

Untemplater is the culmination of nearly four months of hard work with some incredibly cool co-founders: Jun Loayza from Viralogy.com; Adam Baker, nomadic family man at Man Vs. Debt; the philosophically-brilliant Carlos Miceli of OwlSparks; published author and consultant Monica O’Brien; and our rad web developer Andrew Norcross. We’ve also got dozens of fabulous writers lined up—young entrepreneurs, lifestyle designers, digital nomads, and more—who will share their personal stories and guidance on how to design your ideal lifestyle and career.

There are many blogs and books meant to teach and inspire you to leave your corporate existence in order to pursue a venture that you’re “passionate” about. Most of these sites mean well and are inspirational, but they’re written by gurus who’ve already “made it” and aren’t in touch with your reality, or they’re written by pure theorists—people who haven’t actually put their lessons to action—they talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.

Untemplater, on the other hand, is composed of real people who are in the trenches, working hard to live the life that we want to live. It’s not easy, nor is it glamorous. You’ll see our pain, struggles, successes, and failures as we create an existence that we are proud of and enjoy 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

We are MBAs; we are husbands, wives, and fathers; we are scrappy entrepreneurs, authors, and freelancers. We live all over the globe. We’re a small group of unconventional folks who hope to build a thriving community for anyone who ever sought more out of life—and we hope to help you learn how to sidestep the traditional life to find the career, relationships, and lifestyle that makes you come alive!

Grab a Bunch of Awesome Free Shit!

Jump in, read the free download we’ve put together for you that examines the Untemplater lifestyle and shows you six unconventional, remarkable lifestyle case studies.

[Also check out my first feature post at Untemplater to watch my lifestyle design video success story since reading The Four Hour Workweek in 2007]

We’ve also partnered with some incredible folks like Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Chris Brogan to give away tons of great business books, as well as a few $500 seats in Josh Kauffman’s Personal MBA Business Crash Course! Starting tomorrow and for the rest of the week, we will be hosting giveaway contests to win all kinds of stuff, so sign up for our exclusive Untemplater Insider email list and stay tuned to Untemplater.com throughout the week to participate!

Join our rebellion against the status quo at Untemplater and learn how you can Work Where You Want to Work, Live How You Want to Live, and Be Who You Want to Be in 2010.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Take Back Control of Your Life in 2010!

Feature photo by Diego Cupolo

To get you guys thinking like proper renegades, today I share some of the absolute best manifestos I’ve come across. This is my guide to 14 of the best-available ebooks out there—some free and some not—that will help guide you through the long process of branding yourself, creating your own successful freelance business, outsourcing, automating, systematizing, and turning your business into a vast empire with the power of the web, easing into an unconventional nomadic or otherwise remarkable lifestyle and getting the best travel deals while you’re vagabonding around the globe.

Add these to your Christmas gift wish list or use them as stocking stuffers for that special nomad in your life, and check out my page of lifestyle design and digital nomad resources for more tools to help you on your journey.

A Brief Guide to World Domination by Chris Guillebeau

One of the world’s most traveled dudes—Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Nonconformity—offers you a clear alternative to being unremarkably average, giving lessons on how to identify the work you’re most passionate about and how to go about changing the world. Awesome!

Probably the first ebook you should download and consume, right this instant! Download it from The Art of Nonconformity.

New Economy Superstar by Corbett Barr

This isn’t a book about fame or celebrity or making millions. It’s about a new type of success that isn’t reserved for the lucky and well-connected few. This opportunity wasn’t available until just a few years ago, and you’re just in time to take advantage of it. Learn how the biggest opportunity of this generation will make you happy, wealthy and independent!

A great primer for making a successful living outside the corporate career, including interviews with many remarkable people. Download here and visit Corbett at FreePursuits.

Rockstar Personal Branding by Skellie

Personal branding isn’t very different than product branding, except that the entity being branded is you. Just like Nike uses its brand to attach a certain personality and uniqueness to the shoes it sells, your personal brand is made up of the qualities and unique traits you relay about yourself. Your personal brand represents the way you want other people to think about you.

Download for free when you sign up for Rockable Press’ free newsletter here. Also visit Skellie’s great blog Anywired.

The Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself by Chris Guillebeau

The greatest benefit of self-employment, or even a side project that produces additional income, is personal freedom. When you can take more control of your choices, you’ll experience an independence that money can’t buy. No one will do this for you. If you want freedom, you’ll have to make it happen for yourself. This guide can help.

Let Chris teach you how to create personal freedom through your own very small business. Get the book here.

How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer from FreelanceSwitch

Covering everything from getting started to expanding your business, if you want to start your freelance career the right way, then How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer will give you everything you need to become the best freelancer in town!

Get 212 pages of expert freelancing advice from Collis & Cyan Ta’eed—the founders of FreelanceSwitch. Grab your copy here.

SourceControl by David Walsh

David is an entrepreneur who’s been pushing the limits of outsourcing for years to build projects and create companies—and he’s blown an absurd amount of time and money along the way. Anyone who tells you outsourcing is simple & cheap is lying to you. After all the chaos, the mistakes, the blown budgets and the wasted hours—yes, it’s simple and a massively profitable. Everything leading up to that point is anything but. He’s taken every lesson he learned over the last 3 years and put it into a 160 page, fully annotated, resource-packed book that is everything you need to start outsourcing successfully. No other resource available gives you this level of detail toward leveraging your time and money.

Get this incredible outsourcing framework for the dangerously ambitious from MuseLife genius David Walsh now!

Not By The Hour: A Guide to Making Passive Income from FreelanceSwitch

Streams of passive income can take a bit of work to get started, some even take a little work to maintain, however they are well worth it. Having a steady source of income is particularly useful for a freelancer as it helps mitigate risk and balance out some of the ups and downs of freelancing. Besides who doesn’t want a source of income that keeps generating with or without your input!

Another useful guide from Collis Ta’eed, founder of FreelanceSwitch. Grab this one for free here!

The Zero Hour Workweek by Jonathan Mead

Learn Jonathan’s story of liberation and his journey to getting paid to be himself (by doing what he loves). Discover why the world needs you to do what you love and how to find the intersection between what you’re good at, what you’re passionate about, and what people will pay you to do.

I was honored to be featured as a Zero Hour Case Study for Jonathan’s 0HWW book. Check out some of my thoughts on how to get paid to be you.

How to Be Remarkable by Colin Wright

Colin wrote this book to share some valuable tidbits of knowledge with everyone because he firmly believes that if the world has more inspiring, ambitious and remarkable people we’ll all be a lot better off. John Bardos, Diggy, Kristin Norris, Carol Segrave, Carlos Miceli, Anoush Rima Tatevossian, Amber Rae Lambke, Paul Smith, Christophe Galland, Jenda Michl, Alan Perlman, Sean Ogle, Robert Granholm and JD Bentley all contribute useful lessons to this great compilation.

Download this free ebook from Colin Wright at Exile Lifestyle.

Overcoming the 7 Major Obstacles to Traveling the World by Anil Polat

Anil’s blog series on overcoming obstacles to traveling the world turned out to span 2 months, generated over 100 comments, and had his inbox filled with messages from people who wanted to, had, or were currently overcoming the 7 obstacles themselves. Hear personal stories and advice from other world travelers … and build your knowledge of how to prepare for and sustain long-term travel.

Anil interviewed me to get my personal experience and advice for other long-term travelers too!  Download the book here and visit Anil at foXnoMad.

Life Nomadic: The Life Changing Guide to Travel by Tynan

Life Nomadic is a book that will change the way you think about travel. Rather than think of it as an expensive luxury, you will understand it for what it is: a surprisingly affordable necessity for fully experiencing life. In 2007, Tynan sold everything he owned and began traveling the world. He became a nomad. This book is a collection of the travel strategies, tips, and philosophies that he’s accumulated since then.

Download Tynan’s helpful and revealing guide to the nomadic lifestyle at Tynan.net.

007 Lifestyle: Living Like James Bond by Derek Johanson

This is a definitive guide to living a kick-ass, real lifestyle just like James Bond’s. Derek will share with you the essential ingredients of how he lives the ultimate 007 lifestyle. Follow this guide and you will feel like 007. Your friends will be jealous as they watch you travel the world with ease and take control of women’s hearts effortlessly. You will be able to design a lifestyle that rocks your boat. You will have more options and freedom to pursue your goals and ambitions. You will become a positive influence on others to live happy and fulfilling lives.

You can read more about the ebook and see Derek’s recent MI6 Report where he interviewed me for the 007 Lifestyle series here. Also find Derek at Live Uncomfortably.

How to Make Money with Your Travel Blog by Nomadic Matt

Matt makes over $3,000 dollars a month from his travel websites and has been for many months. That is enough to keep anybody traveling and being a digital nomad for a long time. Even if you don’t want to be a digital nomad, it’s still a nice side income. This ebook has all of his tips, tricks and advice on how to build a successful blog, rank high in Google search results, and how to make money through advertising.

Check out my recent interview with Matt Kepnes and see Nomadic Matt’s Travel Site for more info.

Frequent Flyer Master: Free Travel Anywhere by Chris Guillebeau

Chris has traveled to about 120 countries so far and has roughly 80 more to visit every country in the world. He has a war chest of Frequent Flyer Miles on eight different airlines and all three airline alliances. Between earning and redeeming, over the past year I’ve been through well over half a million miles. My current balance is 676,583 miles in eight accounts. Learn how to go anywhere in the world for nearly free using Frequent Flyer Miles, even if you don’t travel very often.

Chris even guarantees that his book will earn you at least one free plane ticket! Check it out here.

What are your favorite guides for creating a remarkable life? Be sure to check my resources page for more useful lifestyle design and digital nomad resources.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 14 Must-Have Ebooks for Lifestyle Designers

Steven Roberts was a pioneer of the mobile lifestyle in 1983 when he took off on a solar-powered recumbent bicycle—lovingly dubbed the “Winnebiko”—loaded down with computer gear, traveling 17,000 miles across the United States and earning his way as a freelance writer.

Naturally, Steve is a huge inspiration for digital nomads and location-independent types. But it really struck me when I came across this video of his presentation at Xerox PARC in 1989 about his solar- and human-powered journey on a custom-built technobike: he was an eager young guy like myself, extremely passionate about his work and about living life on his own terms, and forging new ways of working remotely from anywhere in the world.

Now he lives part-time on a beautiful, fully-loaded sailboat, a 44-foot steel raised-salon pilothouse cutter called the Nomadness, which is sure to induce envy in geeks and boat lovers alike. You can follow his sailing and digital nomad adventures at Nomadness.com and check out all of his experiments and projects at Nomadic Research Labs.

There has been a lot of talk about passion and responsibilities recently. My friend Jun is someone I know is really intrigued by the mobile lifestyle, but he recently wrote about the challenges of doing what he’s truly passionate about because of his responsibilities to family. Then “Nerdy Nomad” Kirsty asked if it’s selfish to reject the average lifestyle, and others’ expectations of you, to follow your passion.

The below essay from Steve is something that instantly resounded with me. (Perhaps it was the Pink Floyd opening!) In his words, “this little essay from 1992 captures some of the mad, driven intensity that is the engine behind creativity and growth.” Roberts touches on the desire to embrace those serendipitous moments where your life could take you down very different, alternative paths, rejecting the template lifestyle even if it means you go broke, and living life consciously and not falling into mediocre escapes. Steve Roberts is someone who has a few more years, a bit more wisdom, and a lot more experience, and I found this too powerful not to share with you.

—

Passion: The Heart of Nomadness

Dangerous Influences

Maybe it’s the music, classic Pink Floyd penetrating me as I write this. Wordless memories overtake the present, obscuring it, rendering the computer puzzling even while practiced fingers perform their familiar little dance.  Perhaps madness lurks herein:  time is inside-out; the swirling vapors of time are suddenly real.  Guitars like scalpels part the callused years, revealing visions of terrible glorious color overlaid upon freight trains rumbling gritty in the night, memories of adventures and obsessions potent enough to raise gasps and gooseflesh… my first astonished discoveries, 20 years ago, that life is a thing of infinite potential.

I recall suddenly a day up Boulder Canyon, long ago, free-climbing far beyond my skills.  The rock, hard and hot against my cheek… my legs, vibrating with the tension of death’s leering proximity… and on top of it all, that crazy moment when reality gets lost among a dozen hotly competing alternatives – each convincing, each alluring, each equally fatal if mistaken for the real thing.  I grinned into the stone and inched impossibly upward, curiously disconnected, vision overloaded, abruptly FREE…

Yes, freedom.  That’s what is behind all this:  the exhilaration of walking empty-handed away from Somebody Else’s Plan and sticking out a thumb, leaning against the superstructure of a drawbridge for a thrumming three A.M. liftoff, dynamiting a love nest with walls where once were windows, releasing the brakes what-the-hell and flying with a shout down a mountain road, releasing reality and flying wide-eyed into the infinity of psychosensory unknowns… it all tastes of freedom.

Try, please, to capture this.  Reach into your past, before marriage and business, and examine the brief gaps between commitments.  Inside those gaps are subtle tears in the fabric – glimpses of wild seductive alternatives to everything you knew at the time… other realities inches away, dancing just out of reach, teasing you with infinite possibilities even as you turned dutifully from one chapter of your destiny to the next.

But did you let it lure you away?  Did you leap into the unknown and hitchhike off somewhere, not caring where, yearning for the sweet sense of movement and discovery?  Did you shock your family and chase a crazy dream, abandoning years of conditioning to let that spark inside you explode into flame?

And what about now?  Is the notion of staying ten years in one place depressing… but somehow inevitable?  Are you doing exactly what you want to do with your life, not only at this moment but at 9:00 Monday morning and tonight in bed?

The most delicious freedom comes from venturing beyond the assumptions that other people have made about you.  The real prisons are those of expectation:  denying the possibilities of your life in order to be what somebody else wants you to be.  I’ve watched brilliance tarnish, fade, and finally disappear in the murk of a stupid marriage.  I’ve seen those capable of pushing the big envelope waste a lifetime waiting for little ones with paychecks, rationalizing lost time with vague dreams of retirement travel and future ventures.  I’ve seen others, constrained by circumstances or interests to a steady job, discard all leftover energy in a nightly haze of television, alcohol, drugs, religion, or dull routine.

I am not a proselytizer for nomadics – or anything at all, really, other than what’s already inside you.  There are countless ways to explore that, and my own peculiar choices are obviously not for everybody.  But damn it, do you have any idea how much brilliance and wit rots away undeveloped?  We need to do away with the numbing influences of this mad age and start developing passion.  What could you teach others if you applied your skills and insights to whatever you love most?  Could you change the world if given a chance, even if only through a tiny increment in the evolution of intelligence?

Today’s assignment:  do something that involves risk, learning, awe, passion, courage, invention, insight, or the sweet sparking of another’s awareness.

Tidal Passion

Let’s talk about passion.  It’s a driving theme of nomadness, of learning, of life in general – it’s the crystallization of dreams, the lust for evolution, the antithesis of comfort.

Without passion, life is spent waiting… waiting… waiting for someone else to make it all seem worthwhile.

With it, growth is a way of life and you are in control.

Passion is not an intellectual notion, nor a psychological abstraction.  It often appears for a while in association with sex, but that’s not what it’s all about either.  Passion is raw and all-consuming, and can’t be replaced with religion, New Age interpretations of experience, academic compartmentalizations of the universe, pleasure seeking, or a romp up the career ladder.  It’s intense, almost violent; it renders everything else in life unimportant while driving you on a quest of personally epic proportion.

Something like that is not to be taken lightly, especially if you once felt it but now sense it slipping away.

The problem is that our cultures, in different ways, discourage passion – although not overtly, of course.  We’re politely encouraged to excel, to invent, to make something of ourselves.  But the people who actually do so have had to struggle past the boundaries of a society that offers up numbing entertainment, reduces education to the level of homogenization, discourages personal risk in its corporate world, applauds conformity, treats the exceptional as aberrations, and rewards the successful with that spectacularly sanitized mediocrity known cynically as suburban bliss.

There’s an abrupt boundary between the haves and the have nots, as far as passion is concerned.  You can’t just dabble in passion – it’s all or nothing.  Suddenly finding it makes you resent Christians for appropriating that otherwise useful term “born again”; losing it makes you feel dead.

No, there’s no such thing as a passion dilettante.  Your life is either driven by a grand, magnificent, all-encompassing design… or it isn’t.

What is possible, unfortunately, is to live passionately for a few years then suffer through the agonizing process of watching it slip away – without even knowing whether it’s recoverable.  It must be a bit like Parkinson’s Disease…  the mind goes, but slowly enough that you witness your own dissolution and understand perfectly well what it means.

I am discovering, however, that passion can be viewed as a tidal, and thus cyclic, phenomenon.  It has been in my life, certainly, with every ebb a slow tragedy and every flow an exuberant celebration of new growth.  I recoil from stasis with the fire of a new project… then burn out and fall back into stasis.  The question is:  how can one short-circuit this process and keep passion alive?  Could we survive nonstop passion, day in and day out?  Is endless passion even possible?  If we see it slipping, can we snatch it back?

One way, I think, is with landmarks.  For me, it’s a strange mix of favorite road music, an amusing juxtaposition of nomadic system design concepts, fantasies of magical encounters Out There, and a few freeze-frame images of intense romance or adventure etched like lightning flashes on my brain.

Another way to hang on to it is by spending time with passionate people – other mad, driven souls who brave the chortlings of the complacent, celebrate risk, and fear not the specter of bankruptcy.  It’s powerfully reinforcing stuff, and when you forget your own passion, a spark from someone else’s can reignite the blaze.

Yet another way is through obsessive learning:  peeking under rocks, exploring different cultures, chasing seductive unknowns, and emerging into the sunlight from the mine of your own specialties to exchange information with those in other mines (a process better known as consulting).  Learning is a delicious addiction, even though schools usually present it as a method of working for approval rather than daring to reveal the terrible secret that education is actually a magnificent form of play.  Satisfying your curiosity at every opportunity is a good way to keep your passion alive.

Now let’s list a few methods that don’t work:

• Making lists of things to do, especially if they represent the intellectualization of something about which you were once passionate.
• Perennially reshuffling your workspace, filing systems, business structure, software choices, circle of friends, or hometown – all in the name of correcting problems that are interfering with your pursuit of the Big Dream.
• Waiting for someone else to come along and solve your problems, or, if you’re wealthy, attempting to subcontract your quest.
• Praying, drinking, getting stoned, swilling coffee, playing computer games, watching TV, or otherwise engaging in any numbing and time-consuming ritual that by direct effect or superstition is somehow involved with soothing your psyche or warding off danger.  (Not that all these things are necessarily bad, mind you, they just don’t have much to do with passion… even though some of them feel pretty good.  Why, one day on a coffee buzz I broke 2 million in Crystal Quest and celebrated with a drink.)

The important thing is recognizing when your passion is slipping – and stopping it before it’s too late.  The trappings and rewards of past brilliance echo sweetly with the magic of days gone by, and it’s blissful to sail upon remembered waves if you ignore the fact that you’re not on a boat anymore.

Remember why you are.  Life is only once, and slips by so smoothly that you can get away with coasting through a whole career and still look pretty good.  Think about what you really want.  Grasp it with unshakable passion and focused desire.   Everything else is secondary.

© 1992, 2004 by Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs

Reprinted with permission

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Finding Your Passion and Living on Purpose

Feature photo by nattu.

In June, a new blogger on the lifestyle design scene sent me a great email seeking “some real world insight from people who have gone before me and are still trekking on the path to financial freedom.” Rob Granholm has built up his freelance web design and tech support business, and at The Life Design Project he has set upon a fantastic mission to document his journey implementing Tim Ferriss’ principles in The 4-Hour Workweek, trying to find avenues to create passive income from what he knows so he can be fully self-employed and get “a little of that dream living” going on.

I’ve watched him make a ton of progress, and in the last few months we’ve become friends, but in June he asked me:

What was the single catalyzing product, idea, or venture that took you from driving a beat up old car with hopes, ideas, and willpower…to making thousands a month to free your lifestyle?

The short answer is that—truth be told—I don’t have thousands coming in each month!

I’m still very much in the early stages of this lifestyle design journey just like Rob. Figuring out what your purpose is, building a business you’re passionate about, and consciously living and pursuing your ideal lifestyle is a journey, not a destination. It’s an ongoing trip where you never stop learning, you never quite get there, because your interests will always be changing and you’re always growing. People like us will always have new goals to attain, every time we achieve the last one.

The long answer: you have to re-frame the problem.

I too read The 4-Hour Workweek, and it just blew my mind. It changed my outlook on work and how we spend our time.

What really sparked my “success,” or my ability to have the live-anywhere lifestyle was actually the realization that I didn’t need thousands of dollars per month to live the way I truly wanted to! It was realizing that I don’t have to play the game like most people do, “keeping up with the Joneses” as they say. I scaled back the stuff I own, got it to the point where I can easily move around with a backpack and a carry-on bag, and started only putting money into things that I really want. If you are into the location-independence thing, or the “mini-retirement” as Tim calls it, you can find tons of places around the world where you can live fairly luxuriously for $1000 or less per month.

At least in my experience, rather than play by the same rules most people are playing by, I looked at what kind of lifestyle I wanted, what kind of place I wanted to live in, and realized that it could easily be had for much less than you’d think if you look in the right places (obviously, for me, Thailand is where I chose to live for at least a year or so).

When I first read 4HWW, I was doing a little bit of freelance WordPress work on the side while I was employed full-time as assistant to the Dean at my university’s College of Business. (It was a great job, but I just didn’t want to work for someone else for long.) I started really leveraging the freelance business and, thanks to my mentors and a few really fantastic early clients, turned it into something that could support me. It was my realization that there was a need to be filled with all these businesses jumping into the blogosphere and social networks. I knew a ton of designers, but no one who knew how to code for WordPress at the time. So I started Thrilling Heroics Consulting.

And then it was getting over myself and realizing that I had actual marketable skills that people would pay for if I communicated them effectively and packaged them properly. Now I’m making a transition from a programmer to a consultant, coaching non-profit organizations and innovative social entrepreneurs on how to build their tribe with social media, and turning my one-time project work into ongoing service plans that can provide a more consistent income each month.

There was no single catalyzing change! Entrepreneurship and lifestyle design are a series of experiments and failed attempts, but if you have the persistence to keep pursuing your goals, eventually you’ll get there.

What does your ideal lifestyle look like? Can you achieve it by bending the rules? Changing the game?

How much money do you really need to do the things you want to do? If you’re willing to stop keeping up with the Joneses, it’s likely much less than you think.

What are you good at that provides value for others? Do you have some marketable expertise or skills that others will be willing to pay you for?

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The One Breakthrough That Will Make Your Ideal Lifestyle Possible

Gary Vaynerchuk embodies authenticity, transparency, passion, and hustle. His dedication to his community has made him a juggernaut in the social media space, so if you don’t know him already, you need to.

Garyvee, as he’s called, can teach you a lot about following your passion.

Gary’s a wine guy. He’s the 33-year-old director of Wine Library in Springfield, New Jersey, where he has successfully built up a following of over 80,000 viewers a day through blogging, Twitter, and Facebook. Wine Library TV, the company’s video blog, now has over 750 video podcasts. To quote his bio:

With a wealth of knowledge and an entrepreneurial spirit, Gary spent every weekend of his college years at his parents’ store, rebranding the family business as Wine Library and establishing himself as a respected expert. As the store’s only wine buyer, he sampled every wine that entered the store. Customers depended on Gary for his advice and within a five year time period, Wine Library grew from a $4 million dollar business to a $45 million business.

But Gary’s career took a new turn with the advent of Wine Library TV. Gary’s key goals are twofold: “First, I want people to try different wines. How can you have a favorite if you only know a few? Second, I tell people to trust their palates. If a wine appeals to your palate, then it’s a good choice. Don’t feel pressured to like popular brands or what experts recommend. Buy what ‘brings the thunder’ for you.”

Even if you’re no wine connoisseur, Gary’s experience in social media and business has far-reaching implications in this new economy.

In internet currency, Gary Vaynerchuk has more reach than Tim Ferriss, who you should be familiar with if you’re a reader of this blog. Gary has spoken around the world and been called the “Social Media Sommelier,” and he’s successfully leveraged all this exposure into a 10-book deal with HarperCollins, national TV appearances, and much more.

At the Web 2.0 Expo, Gary put out a call to action: he says it’s time to stop doing shit you hate and embrace what you love. The web makes it possible to go out on your own and make a living doing what you care about. In his new book out this week, Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In On Your Passion, he’ll share his path to success and teach you how to do just that.

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Truly Badass, Exclusive Video for Thrilling Heroics (Must Watch!)

Since Gary and the guys he works with effin’ rock hardcore style, they took a few minutes to videotape answers to two of my biggest questions for the Thrilling Heroics community:

• How can Gen-Y start applying your advice to “stop doing shit you hate” and the lessons in Crush It! to gear their career around their passion?
• How can the non-profit & social entrepreneurship world leverage social media & transparency to be successful?

I was truly blown away that with his busy schedule promoting the new book, he made time to do this. I pushed hard because I wanted to share with you guys, and I owe a lot to Marcus at VaynerMedia for all his help.

Gary still runs this huge multimillion-dollar business like a mom-and-pop store. He makes time to answer everyone, to interact and respond with the little guys like myself, and I’ve watched him take full ownership of his mistakes. He’s someone who knows how to provide superior customer service, and how to go above and beyond. He treats everyone like a rockstar.

He’s incredibly enthusiastic and engaging in his videos. He’ll be uniquely honest and transparent about his feelings. He’s authentic and entertaining, and all of these things have made him a success. He’s real. He gives a shit. He’s himself.

He’s not afraid to call people out on their bullshit, he advocates radical transparency, and hustling your ass off to make a living doing what you’re passionate about.

If you want to make a living with your passion, pick up your copy of Gary’s new book Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In On Your Passion today.

If you enjoy a nice glass of wine now and then, you can find him at Wine Library TV, and even if not, make sure you subscribe to his social media video podcasts and follow @garyvee on Twitter for some really useful tips.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Why You Need to Listen to the Legendary Gary Vaynerchuk

This discussion has been months in the making. Clay Collins caught my attention long ago when he was writing at The Growing Life and Finance Your Freedom. Today he’s dedicating his attention to a fantastic program teaching people how to build purpose-driven freedom businesses.

Clay is an expert marketer, with solid knowledge of market research, testing, keyword research and SEO. But he’s also someone who uses this stuff for good. Clay Collins is someone who has built his life and his business around helping others find their purpose.

His writing has always been really compelling, but I feel like I’ve watched him find his true passion over the last year or so and the quality of his message has become truly captivating. Finance Your Freedom evolved into Project Mojave, where Clay and a faculty of awesome folks like Jonathan Mead, Laura Roeder, Johnny Truant, Michael Martine, and Dave Navarro have helped tons of people turn their passion into profitable businesses that can take them out of the 9-to-5.

I had the chance to get to know Clay better and get his perspective on freedom and purpose in this 25-minute interview:

You can grab Project Mojave’s impressive, free manifesto The Liberation Revolution and check out this opportunity to get involved in the 4-month course for free! Update: You can now find Clay providing his incredible marketing strategies inside the Marketing Program and with The Marketing Show.

Project Mojave‘s doors open for 200 more students starting Tuesday. That’s tomorrow! What makes this different than crappy programs like Teaching Sells is that Clay and other teachers will actually hold your hand through the process of building and launching a product or business. Clay is going to personally take one lucky member’s idea and build an automated freedom business out of it himself.

Even if you’re not interested in the course, make sure you check out Clay’s blog, where he’s got tons of great, motivational content and of course, the inspirational ebook, for free, and follow him on Twitter @claycollins. Some great posts from ProjectMojave.com:

• 47 Decent Lifestyle Design Resources
• The Freedom Business Blueprint

Update: If you want to find out how Clay’s genius marketing strategy led me to a $17,000 product launch day, make sure you visit his Marketing Program!

Clay on finding your purpose—it’s a journey, not a destination:

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: How to Build an Internet Business that Supports Your Purpose & Freedom with Clay Collins