Find yourself, find your tribe, and live the good life

The holy grail for people on a mission to follow their dreams is to find a way to fund it in a way that doesn’t seem like work. A writer wants to be paid for writing, an inventor for creating, and a traveler for discovering.

It doesn’t always work out that way, and we spend too much time trying to patch together an income that lets us pursue those dreams. Often, the jobs take up so much time that we no longer have the energy to pursue our dreams, or we get addicted to having more money so we sacrifice the pursuit of dreams for a bigger paycheck. We’ve been guilty of all of that in the past.

Aligning your money with your mission

But what if you could find something that you liked, that didn’t feel like work, and allowed you to be in contact with people who shared your interest every day? And if you could use this new venture to help fund your dream life?

We talked about creating a second career for yourself out of your talents and skills in Chapter 13 of Dream, Save, Do. This strategy bought us a 2-week trip to Antarctica and continues to fund part of our travels. Longtime member of our tribe Tranque Fuller has taken this idea 10 steps further and given us a blueprint for aligning our missions in life with our money. (You guys all know Tranque from the comments - now you can see what he and his wife Yumi look like in the above picture.)

Are you interested in that? We sure are!

This idea was a game-changer for us

I came across his strategy while reading an early draft of his book. I was finishing up Dream, Save, Do at the time and we had agreed to critique each other’s books as a favor. Little did I know that his plan would completely take over our to-do list and set us off on a brand-new idea for Married with Luggage. In fact, if you are a subscriber to the Try Something New ezine, you’re seeing the result of that idea.

We asked Tranque to share his ideas with all of you so that you can see if this will help you fund your dream life. Read on as we discuss getting out of your own way and learning to see things as they are instead of what we’ve built them up to be in our minds.

Tranque and I do love to chat, so if you don’t have the time to read the whole interview right now (though I hope you will come back), read on for a quick recap and then scroll to the bottom so you can get Tranque’s plan.

The skinny from Tranque

• At any stage of the game we can choose to “rewrite” our life story, both from how we remember the past (or, more accurately, “mis-remember” the past) and let it influence our current behavior to how we think of our future.
• The “tall tales” we tell ourselves keep us mired in the past or unfairly influence our plans for the future. When we begin to unwind those stories and focus on the simple facts of what happened, we can free ourselves from the wrong conclusions that have been influencing us for years or even decades.
• When we finally get rid of the stories we’ve been creating all these years by looking back, we are left with a clear vision for the present. When we live in the present, we learn to “act” rather than “react.” We take responsibility for our lives and stop laying blame because we know it doesn’t get us anywhere.
• Do some simple research to find out whether your business idea built around your interests has legs or if it needs to be tweaked a little. Use Amazon and Google to find out what kind of information people want on this topic.
• When Tranque went from asking “Does this have the potential of getting me rich so I can then begin living my dream life?” to “What do I need to do to focus solely on my purpose and passions?” he finally changed his bank account balance and his life.

The full interview

What is a Life Story Rewrite, and how did you come across this idea?

Life-Story Rewrite is an ezine or inbox magazine (delivered via email) that is wholly dedicated to providing our readers with the information, education, guidance, and inspiration they need to begin to experience lives that they’re just damn excited about when they roll out of bed in the morning—rather than living what Henry Thoreau best described as “lives of quiet desperation” that many of us are experiencing.

The term “Life-story rewrite” is something I came up with as my way of simply describing the processes of experiencing sweeping changes in our lives as we realign them to finally match our deepest core values and begin to center them on our True Purpose and what we’re sincerely passionate about. I absolutely believe (based on personal experience) that at any stage of the game that we can choose to rewrite our “life-stories” into one that we absolutely love; and we can do this as many times as we want. There are no rules or regulations on this—the only guide for this comes from within.

Of course if you’re a 43 year old, five-foot-six, two-hundred-forty-three pound guy with bad knees, no matter how incredibly passionate you are about basketball, your shot at playing in the NBA can still be accurately characterized by the word “Ziltch.” However, that definitely doesn’t mean that your passion for the game can’t be expressed in other ways that are more . . . um . . . prudent.

You mention in your ebook the “tall tales” we tell ourselves about the events in our lives and why they are holding us back. Why do you think we tell ourselves these stories since they are obviously causing more harm than good?

“Tall-Tales” are what I call those intricate stories we create about essentially every single event and situation that flows through our lives.

Tall-Tales are almost the antithesis of being Present. In the end, that running dialogue of chatter that runs endlessly through our heads at every waking moment is 95% pointlessly repetitive, unfalteringly incomplete, skewed and inaccurate, almost always focused on Past or Future, more often than not is contributing to our emotional suffering and as a whole completely unnecessary.

When you take away the stories, what’s left? And how does a person who has relied on these stories for years - decades even - move forward without them?

If we remove our Tall-Tales we’re left with something incredibly beautiful: We become Present. We’ve cut through the clutter of Mind-Stuff and are finally able to experience only that which is Real without the incessant need to analyze it. We choose to act; not react. When we’re totally Present we don’t need the Ego so we become totally Authentic. We’re no longer a frightened shadow hiding behind that artificial façade that we’re constantly presenting to the world.

We’re also finally able to tap into the Infinite Stream of Consciousness that is an endless source of perfect Wisdom and Peace and is also where all Creativity and Innovation originate.

The second phase of your LSRW is financial, specifically in finding a way to make money doing what you love with and for other people who love it, too. How does a regular person without a marketing background know if their idea is going to have traction in the marketplace?

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for “wanna-be” entrepreneurs is the idea that we need to create something totally different that hasn’t been done before. I call this the “Pet Rock Syndrome.” (Actually that’s a lie; I just made that up now. ) Another common error is to look at a market and see that there is a lot of competition and decide it is “too saturated.”

The reality is that we drastically improve the likelihood of success in business if we choose a market with a fair bit of competition; it means that there is money to be made there!

A few basic steps to determine if our idea has an actual viable market:

• Is it something you’re passionate about? Ask yourself. “Am I the only one on the planet that is passionate about this?” Could be . . . so go to the next steps.
• Go to Amazon.com’s magazine section and other online magazine directories and see if there are any magazines dedicated to your topic or closely related topics.
• Depending on the idea/topic you may want to search for trade magazines as well.
• Start doing Google searches on “keywords” related to your topic. If nothing comes up in your searches, it is a pretty clear indication you’re probably on the wrong track. Also, it is important to notice if there are any paid advertising (the search results in the far right under “sponsored ads”), if nobody is willing to pay for advertising there may not be a market there.

Once you determine the viability of a market then it is time to come up with your “pet rock;” your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)—your unique angle to it. But keep in mind that this may be as simple as injecting your own personality into it. You don’t have to totally transform an industry just to carve out your own profitable niche in it.

You spend just as much time on the “inside work” in your ezine as you do the “outside work” of creating a business from your interests. Why do you think it is so important to focus on both of them at the same time? Are you ever done with either of them?

I think what you’re referring to here is working on your “Inner-game”—what goes on between your ears verses the outward, step-by-step practicalities of building a business; is that correct?

At the risk of getting to embarrassingly personal, but maybe people will relate to this. In my seemingly never-ending quest to find my perfect career and “make my millions” I kept going from one “shiny object” to the next. I poured time, effort and money into stuff like MLM’s, real-estate investing, day-trading and Forex and either lost my shorts or I just broke even if I was lucky.

Why was this happening? It certainly wasn’t from lack of trying! It is because I was basing my decisions on essentially one standard: Does this have the potential of getting me rich?
I definitely wasn’t passionate about them; some (like the MLM’s) I even hated doing. And without exception nearly everything I tried either ignored or simply violated my deepest core values.

And the crazy thing is deep down I knew this! The “game-plan” was always, “I’m going to do this thing that I don’t really enjoy now so that I can get ‘filthy-rich’ and then I can finally start doing the things I love like being creative, exploring new ideas, things and places as well as adding value to the lives of others.”

Pure insanity! Any six year old if simply presented the facts could tell you why this is stupid; but I couldn’t see the truth of it for about 15 years! And I’d feel a lot worse about myself if it wasn’t for the fact that my craziness was actually just a microcosm of the collective insanity that plagues nearly all of our modern society.

It is as simple as this:

• Take full responsibility for absolutely everything that happens in our lives. By doing this we leave behind victimhood and embrace our personal power to transform our lives.
• Strip away the unnecessary and unessential in our lives. (Step off the mindless treadmill!)
• Take the time and actions necessary to discover our Purpose(s) and Passion(s) and do only them.
• Do this now because Now is all there really is; the “future” is only a figment of our imaginations. Be Present. The sooner we abandon the myth that living miserably today will somehow lead to happiness at some far-off point in the future, the sooner we will begin to experience our Perfect Life—now!

Also, nothing energizes the inertia that keeps us stuck more than focusing all of our attention on Past and Future. The Past consists of “baggage” that drags on us; the Future fills us with uncertainty and fear; they both keep us stuck! In the Present we can focus on the actions we need to take now and DO them!

(And yes, this is a never ending process because at the heart of it is ongoing personal growth and embracing change and transformation instead of hiding out in your comfort-zones frozen in fear.)

Tell us your big goal for LSRW - what do you want people to do when they hear your message?

Well . . . let’s see. I want everybody that “hears” my message to live their absolute perfect life centered on their True Purpose (or purposes) that they’re passionate about! I have a BIG Vision for LSRW which is more than just being an ezine; I want to create a movement. And the way I see it, as the world economy continues to unwind, more and more people will be finding themselves in a situation where they’re being forced to undergo a “life-story rewrite” whether they wanted it or not. So my hope is that LSRW can help these people to begin to recognize that what they thought was their worst nightmare is actually the best thing that could have happened to them.

Get Your Own Life Story Rewrite

I’ve already told you: we’re doing this. It dovetails perfectly with our message in Dream, Save, Do and in our blog these past 3+ years. You have to take action on your dreams, and what better way to do that than to build a business around them?

Do you want to know more about this? Are you already coming up with ideas you could use to fund your own dreams? We’ll, Tranque has made it easy for you to get the info and get started. He is offering both books, LifeStory Rewrite AND How to Turn Your Passions and Interests into Big Bucks for one low price of $20. But that’s not all - he’s actually donating the entire amount to Kiva.org so you can help fund someone far less fortunate than you as they build a small business in a third-world country.

Click here for the free newsletter and to check out the deal on both ebooks.

Because Tranque is an “overkill” kind of guy, he’s also offering your money back up if you don’t like the ebooks. (Which I don’t quite understand since it is going to Kiva - if you don’t like it, Tranque will actually be pulling money out of his own pocket to refund you. So you can see how much he believes in this.)

Donate to Kiva and get your copies of Tranque’s ebooks. And don’t forget to sign up for his ezine so you can see exactly how he follows his own advice.

We don’t make a dime on this, but we hope like hell that you do. But you won’t know if you don’t try…so start clicking!

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