People often ask us how we got to this point in our lives. What drove us to act so deliberately on a decision that would be impossible for most people to even consider, let alone act upon.
“It’s not that life is so short, it’s that we wait so long to begin.”
–Frank Lloyd Wright
Sometimes, you just have to go for it. All of it. Your dreams, your goals, your aspirations. The things you’ll wish you did when you look back 25 years from now.
Over 15 years ago, I dreamed of meeting my soulmate. It happened in San Francisco, and bar none was one of the greatest things to ever happen to me.
Careers in the high-flying technology industry of the Silicon Valley were next on the list. This happened for both of us.
Then we both dreamt of buying brand new cars. We achieved that pretty quickly with all the money we were earning from those high-tech careers of ours.
Marriage was the next step in our dream life. After a couple of years of scraping together a wedding fund, we made it happen. In fact, we just celebrated 10 years of amazingly happy marriage this past August.
After the wedding, our next big dream was to own a house of our own, in the suburbs, with a large back yard. This too came to pass, just a couple years after we got married.
A Paint-By-Numbers Life
We thought we were living the American dream. No, actually…we WERE living it. And that was the problem. That dream was written by society. It was a paint-by-numbers story, a template so often used that it was nearly impossible to make a mistake. That is, until we realized the mistake was in not following our hearts when the excitement of traveling the world was alive and kicking within us.
Of course we enjoyed the house, the parties we hosted, and also the fun times we had spending money to fill the house with things. You know…the big screen TV, the home theater, the furniture, the stuff that dreams are made of.
The truth is, our biggest dream wasn’t to own a house. It was to travel the world together. When we had the choice ten years ago, we thought we were doing the sensible thing to buy a home instead of traveling. Everyone was doing it…so why shouldn’t we?
It wasn’t until I was laid off from my Silicon Valley marketing job that I woke up to realize we were living the wrong dream. I didn’t let it get me down…I was working on a bigger dream. Later that same year, I finished the impossible…the Ironman triathlon. This set the stage for us to start some big thinking.
The Plot Thickens
We started a coaching business a few months later. We trained people of all ages in everything from 5K fun runs to 26.2-mile marathons, on up to the full distance Ironman. How did we know that we had it in us to help others make their biggest dreams a reality?
Here’s the crazy thing: We didn’t know if things would work out. We just went for it.
I had this crazy idea that I wanted to be a coach. More than teaching fitness, I wanted to help people overcome their fear of taking action. I was a guy with an undergraduate degree in aviation, a minor in business administration, and 10 years of experience in technology marketing…and I intended to be a coach. Go figure.
Jo and I have been coaching for the past few years, and it has been nothing short of amazing. It would be impossible to know the ripple effect in the lives of the athlete’s we’ve coached. No matter. We’re just happy to serve.
Going For It
Then we went from big thinking to HUGE thinking. We started reading a lot of materials on personal growth, success, and dream building. Deliberate action led us to networking with like-minded people who also decided that it was time to take life by the horns and steer it with intention.
We hadn’t forgotten that dream we had about traveling the world. We just set it on the backburner a little while longer to do some insanity checking before we pulled the trigger.
It would take a year to get things in order for a dream this big. After all, we weren’t talking about a 3-week trip on a guided tour with lodging and one daily meal included. We had been waiting over half our lives for this moment. It was a big deal.
I remember it clearly. It was Easter Sunday in 2011. We went for it. We gave up everything. The cars, the leather furniture, the 60-inch TV, the surround-sound…all of it. This was the stuff that the old dream was made of. For more than a decade, the comfort of filling our life with these material things blinded us to the vision of our truer dream of seeing the world together.
It took a lot of courage to walk away from it all. But after realizing just how little we had accomplished in the way of true happiness…it wasn’t hard to find that courage.
Living The Dream
We’ve been on the road for over 7 months now. We returned briefly to help a dear friend finish one of her own huge goals, but we were right back on the road soon after.
We haven’t stopped coaching either. As a matter of fact, we’re just getting started. Our mission here at Intrepid Motion is not about traveling for its own sake. It is about learning as much as we can through a survey of the world, so that we can spread our message of taking bold action to dream a new dream for yourself.
It’s been an incredible ride so far, and there are even more amazing lessons to learn in the adventures that lie ahead.
Rewriting your story takes courage. But if you’re tired of waiting to begin a new chapter in your life, why not start now?
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