Betsy Talbot's Blog, page 27

The Power of Naming Your Dream

Say you’ve got this slightly out-of-your-ordinary goal, like traveling over land from Thailand to Portugal. As with everything else in life, it won’t happen without help and input from other people. But it can be tricky to put it out there if you are a little bit shy or nervous about explaining what you want to do. How to get around the fumbling and rambling?

Easy, you simply give your dream a name.

The power of naming

When you name something, it gives it power, substance and identity.

In ancient times, knowing an enemy’s name gave you power over him.  In modern times it gives you a shorthand to share information with other people, just like your regular name.

(I call myself Betsy instead of  The Eldest Freckled Daughter of House Gray, though reading Game of Thrones is making me rethink this decision.)

So if the reason to name something is to give it substance, gain more control over it and better communicate its identity to other people, it makes perfect sense to start naming your dreams.

Naming your dreams

We named our overland journey the Eurasian Adventure 2012, both as a descriptor of the journey and an indicator it was different than the rest of our travels. We set out on April 1, communicating along the way our intention to travel about 18,000 km across both continents without using a plane.

At first, people thought we were weird. “Why wouldn’t you just fly?”

But as we’ve said before:

No one has to approve of or understand your dream for you to do it.

As we continued our journey, people began reaching out.

“You should definitely check out this place/food/activity.” (Sure thing.)
“My family/friend lives there! Please look him up.” (We did.)
“Can we meet up when you get here?” (Of course.)
“Stay at my place!” (Why, thank you.)
“Will you house sit for me?” (Certainly.)

We named our adventure, and even though some people thought it was weird at first, those who got it came out of the woodwork to help.

Naming encourages help

We are now in Berlin, kicking off the European leg of our journey. Because we named our dream and publicized it, we’ve garnered some great partners for the remainder of our journey. Let us tell you about them:

Eurail has sponsored our train travel throughout Europe for the next 2 months with first-class rail passes. We love trains, and there is no better or more convenient way to see Europe than by train. (My favorite thing? You arrive in the center of a bustling city, ready to explore, rather than in a sterile airport fighting your way to a taxi and a budget-crushing ride into town. It makes a huge difference in attitude.)
Wimdu has sponsored our European kick-off week in Berlin with a fantastic flat in the trendy Kreuzberg district of Berlin. We first discovered Wimdu in St. Petersburg, and we love staying in a more home-like atmosphere after all our travels. (Their slogan? Travel like a local. Which is exactly what we like to do.)

How this applies to you

There is something you want to do in your personal or business life – a big change, a medium-sized tweak, or a healthy addition – and you struggle getting this goal off the ground by yourself. You know why?

Because all great dreams are heavy and require many hands to lift.

If you can give your goal a name, you make it easier to manage yourself as well as for others to step in and help, offer guidance, and make it better or easier than you could on your own.

How to name your dream

This isn’t the time to go small. It’s your dream, after all, and probably a big departure from your normal way of living. So give it a grand name worthy of the effort:

The Massive Brain Investment 2014 for your savings plan to return to college
The Healthy Happy Heart Hour for your new daily exercise commitment
The Midlife Get a Life Plan of 2013 for your goal of trying a new hobby or activity every month of the year
Sexy Summer Streamlining Strategy for your goal of cleaning out the clutter in your life
The Free Bethy Project for your goal of becoming self-employed by a certain date

Notice the similarities in these examples. Most contain a descriptor AND a unit of time. This is important, because we’ve talked before about dreams without deadlines (they don’t ever happen). The other consideration is to make it something you can share with other people. We learned this in a very powerful way as we saved for our big adventure with the Phrase to Save (fully outlined in Dream Save Do), and it really brought it home when our friends started repeating our phrase back to us.

To create your dream’s name:

Think in terms of the result or feeling, not the specific actions to get there.
Put a date or timeframe around it.
Be grand and use adjectives.

We’d love to hear the name of your dream on Twitter/Facebook/Pinterest as you share the article. In fact, the most creative name on a share by August 6, 2012, gets a free copy of one of our books. (Be sure to tag us in your response so we can see it.)

Remember, once you name a dream, you give it substance and increase your power over it.

Need some encouragement to name your dreams and live more boldly? Get bite-sized doses of inspiration in our latest, In Confidence: Essays on Bold Living. Click here to get this 99-cent pep talk for busy people.

Say Yes to New Friendships (the Russian/English/Hungarian edition)

We were stopped at the border of Mongolia and Russia, going through the 11-hour bureaucratic delay it takes to transition from one country to another via train, and I was reading book 3 of Game of Thrones. I looked up to see a woman standing in the corridor with her phone held up and looking back and forth from it to me.

Strange, but certainly not the strangest thing I’ve experienced on this overland trip from Thailand to Portugal.

She then said, “are you Betsy Talbot?

(Okay, now we’re getting into strange.)

The two women sharing our compartment also looked up, wondering how this stranger knew me. She didn’t look familiar at all, though she certainly appeared friendly. Good to know when you realize you are on a train together for the next 24 hours.

She told me she had just logged on to Facebook and saw that a friend of hers had “liked” my picture and status about leaving on the train to Russia, and she worked out we must be on the same one. So she decided to go looking for me.

We were just 3 doors down from each other.

The backstory

Our mutual friend is a woman named Michelle, and she and her husband Russ have been traveling for about a year. We “met” them online via email when Russ found our website and wrote to ask some questions about long-term travel. Warren took the time to respond in detail, remembering how we felt as we were giving up our jobs and regular lives to take to the open road near mid life.

Many months later, we all happened to be in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We got together for a drink and really hit it off – so much so they booked a room at our guesthouse for a month. We became fast friends, enjoying many evenings on the rooftop of our guesthouse drinking boxed wine and talking books, music, travel, and life.

Fast forward to the present, and I’m looking up at this woman on the train who has identified me from a Facebook photo. I smile and ask her to come in, and we begin talking about our connection to Michelle and travels. She is an English woman who has led quite an interesting life, and we discovered we were on the same train schedule all the way through Moscow.

An early test of friendship

We parted ways at the train station at Irkutsk but met up again at Lake Baikal the next day. By this time, Warren and I had run into a serious problem – no cash. You see, the tiny tourist town we were visiting had no bank. We didn’t even have enough rubles to pay for our room at the homestay, much less get back to Irkutsk and possibly eat.

We met up with our new English friend along Lake Baikal as we were walking to the only bank machine in town at a hotel 4 km away. If it didn’t work, we had enough rubles for one of us to go to Irkutsk and get money and then come back. We told her of our problem and how dumb we felt for not getting cash in Irkutsk, and she pulled out her wallet and gave us 5000 rubles. Just like that.

“You can pay me back on the train.”

We gratefully accepted her loan but decided to try to get to the ATM at the hotel anyway, and we made plans to meet up with her for lunch and report our progress. After several wrong turns, we finally made it to the hotel only to find out it didn’t work. We trudged back to the restaurant and thanked her profusely over a lunch of savory piroshky.

This is when she told us she had forgotten to change her Chinese yuan when crossing the Mongolian border, and we indicated there was a Chinese-owned hotel on our street (it pays to learn your flags, kids!) and we’d gladly see if we could exchange it for her. It was the very least we could do.

At this point she had given us 5000 rubles plus all her Chinese money, the equivalent of about $430 US.

When was the last time you trusted someone you just met with $430? Or even someone you’ve known for a long time?

Returning the favor

We left our room later that afternoon to exchange the Chinese money down the street. Before we got there, however, we were greeted by some Russians who were celebrating the arrival of a friend and asked us to join them.

Actually, the red-headed woman hosting the party repeatedly said: “Sit Down. Please. Thank You” in a strong tone that really didn’t allow for argument. And they had food and drink, so who were we to say no? We spent the next several hours speaking in a combination of broken English and Russian about family, travel, and work as we sipped whisky and vodka and munched on watermelon. As we were talking, a Norwegian man and his Russian bride stopped by and joined us. She spoke 4 languages and he spoke English, so the conversation really became lively then.

By 8 p.m. the Russians had drunk themselves into an early bedtime (they don’t sip like we do), so we made our exit and went the Chinese hotel. While we were getting the money exchanged, we began talking in the courtyard with Jin-Chywan, a scientist from Taiwan who was researching fish DNA at Lake Baikal. As we chatted, he revealed he had gotten his Ph.D. in the US at a school in Texas. Warren perked up: “What school in Texas?”

It turns out they both graduated from Texas A&M. Siberia is probably the most remote place we’ve ever met another Aggie. After secret handshakes and reminiscing about the local college hangouts, we finally called it a night.

Our 15-minute trip to exchange money took 5 hours.

We went back to Irkutsk the next day, relieved to get rubles from the ATM and be able to pay our new friend back and continue our journey.

How this applies to you

Taking the time to connect with a stranger via email led to opportunities and relationships we could have never imagined, and this scenario continues to play out in our lives on a regular basis. (Click here if you don’t see the video below, which details yet another chance meeting that turned into something else.)

Had we never responded to Russ’s email, we would have never befriended him and his wife Michelle in Thailand, leading to all the other adventures we had in Siberia.

Saying yes to new people and experiences will open up opportunities in your life you cannot even imagine with your current world view.

I’m not asking you to be nice to people; you’re already doing that. What I’m asking you to do is add some action to your smile, inviting new people into your life without expectation and saying yes to new relationships.

Talk to strangers.
Ask questions…and listen to the responses.
Introduce new people to your current friends.
Invite new acquaintances to parties, events, movies, and clubs.
Be generous with your knowledge and connections wherever possible.

You can say these kinds of connections happen to us because of the website and travel, but we both know that’s bullshit. These kinds of things happened to us before we left and I have no doubt they will continue happening no matter where we live or how much we travel. It is a way of interacting with other people that enriches your life regardless of your location, relationship status, or income level.

If it can happen for us in Siberia, imagine what saying yes to new relationships can do in your own backyard.

We begin the European leg of our 18,000-km overland trip this week, so be sure to subscribe to stay up-to-date on the adventure and the lessons  we learn. Interested in the specifics of the journey? Click here to find out why we’re doing it and here to view the details on a map with photos.

Celebrating your place in the world

Perched high up on a rock, we could see the trails of dust heading our way. After seeing less than 10 cars in the past 4 days of driving around the desert, it was almost a traffic jam to watch a dozen heading straight for our ger camp.

We were in this remote location to witness a family reunion, Gobi Desert style. The matriarch was 94 years old, a tiny woman who could be mistaken for a child at first glance, at least until she opened her mouth to make her wishes known. Then she was a giant. She is a respected Buddhist in the community, well regarded by even the senior monk at the nearest temple.

Her 5 children and their extended families were on their way to take part in honoring her, many of them from the ‘big city’ of Ulan Bator. Before 9 a.m. there were tents erected all around us, including 2 giant canopies to contain the food and the special seating for the guests of honor. A PA system was installed, running off solar power. The music was a combination of traditional Mongolian and an occasional song by Adele or Jason Mraz.

A lone goat was tied to a rock nearby, nervously awaiting his fate.

In the center of one canopy was a giant blue barrel of airag, an alcoholic drink made from fermented mare’s milk. It tastes exactly like it sounds, and despite this it is a favorite drink of Mongolian men in the summertime.

The celebration started at midday in the giant canopy with everyone gathering around. Most of the men and women had donned ceremonial deels over their summer clothes, and the event took on a more reverent feel. We felt decidedly underdressed.

We tried to stay on the outskirts of the tent to give the family room to kneel, but we were ushered inside to take part in the festivities.

The matriarch started by giving blessings to the children with handfuls of candy. She included us in this ritual, and we ate our candy along with the kids, smearing chocolate on our hands in the hot desert heat.

After kneeling down we were offered a large cup of airag. It would have been impolite to refuse, especially as everyone around us was downing it, so we bravely sipped ours. As our throats constricted and our eyes watered, we listened as family members stood to introduce their siblings, children and their accomplishments to pay homage to the little mother who started it all. There were tears, laughter, and congratulations all around.

The drinks continued to flow, now including vodka and wine, and there were servers dedicated to filling empty right hands. Yes, you read that correctly. Holding a drink in your left hand means you still have a desire for an alcoholic beverage in your right. Poor left-handed Warren learned this lesson the hard way.

The family then gave gifts to the matriarch. The presentation was beautiful, with brightly colored scarves serving as an elaborate wrapping for each gift. Our gift was a bottle of vodka, which we thought she would add to the table of drinks for everyone. But no, she slipped it into her goodie bag of gifts to save for later. Then she gave us more candy.

As the sun continued to beat down, we began feeling effects of the airag and vodka. It doesn’t take much in the dry desert air to bring on dehydration, and the sour taste of airag made me nauseous. The airag is actually a great digestive cleanser, and the Mongolians shake off the sluggishness of winter by ingesting up to 5 liters of it in a day in springtime. First-timers can experience gastric distress by drinking even a small amount of it. First timers like me, for example.

The first part of the celebration started winding down to allow people to rest in the heat of the day. We found a shady spot in a cluster of rocks and sat down to talk and avoid another drink being placed in our hands. Pretty soon we were joined by 3 boys, and we spent the next hour teaching each other words and singing songs from The Lion King. I don’t know if I was more surprised to learn the boys knew the words to The Lion King song or Warren did.

 

Later in the afternoon the goat was brought out. It had been cooked with hot stones in the traditional way and was set out on the table for everyone to eat. By this time, several of the men were staggering more than walking and many of the younger people had changed out of their deels and back into summer clothes, which gave Warren the opportunity to try one on.

That evening as the sun went down the music started again, though this time it remained traditional. As it neared midnight, the music was turned off and everyone joined together to sing a capella under a blanket of stars. We couldn’t believe we were there to experience such a beautiful moment in time. We went to sleep in our ger that night to the sounds of old women singing, peeking at the stars through the top vent, and feeling like the luckiest people on earth.

The next morning people began packing up early to leave, including us. It was back to regular life for everyone, both those who had herds to tend in the desert or desk jobs back in the city. The day before seemed to put a pause button on daily life, the chores, habits and responsibilities that keep everyone too busy to think about the bigger picture. It took only one day – 24 hours – to remind everyone why they do what they do and how it fits into the circle of life.

“Home is where your rump rests.” ~ Pumba

 

Unexpected Turns

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest post is from Amber Singleton, who started one dream and ended up with something completely different. She would have never found her calling if she didn’t first pursue the desires that didn’t make sense or fit in the current version of her life. Guess what? You won’t either. 

A couple of years ago, I decided to do something I had always felt a strong pull to do:

adopt a child.

Being the avid researcher and planner I am, I sent off for some information on the topic, not realizing it was from the Dave Thomas Foundation, an organization that supports foster care adoption.

When I got the information, I immediately disregarded it, “I won’t adopt from foster care,” I thought. I had a plan. I imagined myself with an infant or a young child no older than a year. Foster care seemed too unpredictable, too rough around the edges, and (although I hate to admit this now) too imperfect.

A year passed, and I started to feel like I might be ready to move forward with adoption. I still wasn’t quite sure how, but for whatever reason, kept being drawn to the photo listings of foster children who were available to adopt.

One day, I saw two siblings who stood out to me for some reason. I stayed up passed midnight thinking about them, and the last thing I did before going to bed was write one question on a notepad I keep by my bed:

How?

Less than eight hours later, my eyes popped open, and I immediately thought of the two girls. I went to my computer, pulled up their pictures, and asked myself the question again, “How?”

I wrote down all of the things that were standing between me and the girls, and I’ll admit, the list was daunting. How could I afford them? How would I put them through college? I didn’t even have any toys or clothes, and their would-be bedroom was now my tiny office. Could two girls of their age even fit comfortably in my home? And, wouldn’t I need to be approved or something? Surely, there was a process that needed to be followed.

I called my local DCFS office and found out what steps I needed to complete – more to add to the already daunting list. Three weeks later, I was sitting in a foster care orientation class. “What was I doing, and how in the world did I get here?”

Letdowns and New Directions

A few months passed, and before I could get certified, the girls were placed in another home, one of many disappointments and changes along the way.

I found another sibling group, boys this time, but they would eventually be placed, too. Another disappointment, but this time, my perspective seemed to change.

All of a sudden, instead of worrying that the one child or sibling group I had in mind would be placed before I could get certified, I found myself wondering how I would ever pick just one. My list had grown to over twenty individual children and sibling groups, and there was no way my little, two-bedroom cottage would accommodate us all!

Being an entrepreneur by nature, it wasn’t long before I was dreaming up ways to help more and more kids, and before long, the idea had acquired a life of its own.

A Farm and a Concert

In order to take on more kids, I knew I needed a way to feed them (or at least that was the first of many priorities that came to mind). I thought about a farm and growing our own food and how it might also provide a family-oriented lifestyle most foster kids were severely lacking.

But, I knew that couldn’t be the end of it. How would we sustain ourselves? Sure, we might be able to grow our own food on the farm, but what about other basic needs, like keeping a roof over our heads?

I decided it was important to build a community around us (it takes a village, after all) and to have people directly take part in the farm, so I came up with a reason for them to keep coming back: regular events centered around the farm and our lifestyle. My thought? Recurring farm concerts that would keep the community involved and would help kick off and sustain the larger operation financially. Plus, the concerts would help raise awareness around foster care and adoption (I am only one person, after all, and there are only so many kids I can take on myself!).

And, so began the idea for FosterJam, a recurring concert series and fund-raising event to help Fund the Farm, a project dedicated to building better lives for kids in foster care, and to raise awareness for foster care and foster care adoption.

Watch Out for That Hill

It’s funny how things work out. You start out with one thing in mind and take one simple step to get it going, and before you know it, your life is spinning off in an entirely new direction.

Warren Buffett says, “Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill.” He’s exactly right.

The dreams you have in mind for yourself right now can grow bigger than you ever imagined. They might not be perfect or at all like you had planned, but as long as you stay open and keep moving forward, in spite of the setbacks and disappointments, you’ll find that things have a way of working out exactly as they should.

Amber Singleton Riviere writes for Rock Your Genius and is now the head foster mom and event coordinator at FosterJam and Fund the Farm. You can learn more about her life (and work) at AmberSingleton.com.

Letting Go of Stuff Is Never Easy

Today’s guest post from Sherry Ott, our brave and intrepid friend, is a nice reminder of the struggle to let go of the stuff in our lives.

I recently read something in People magazine about the review of the book Stuff.  It’s all about compulsive hoarding.    It describes hoarding by saying “ the compulsion to accumulate objects to the point where the clutter interferes with our lives”.  Sure – this seems accurate, however I believe differently.

Hoarding is the compulsion to accumulate objects to the point where it keeps us stagnant; cemented in place, scared to move and change without our stuff.

As I was visiting my parents in South Dakota this winter we were going through boxes of stuff, trying to convince them that they no longer needed to hold on to all of these boxes in the garage.  My parents aren’t hoarders, but like most people they hold on to things much longer than they need to.  Each box and item was a negotiation with my father; if the negotiation was successful, it went into the burn pile, if it wasn’t it sadly stayed and collected dust for another 5 years.

After much effort we had quite a large burn pile and my brother manned the big bonfire in the field where long-time possessions deemed not even useful enough to donate were going up in smoke.  I strangely love this feeling; the feeling of getting rid of stuff.  It makes me feel lighter and more open to possibility.  Yet I do understand how hard it is to get rid of stuff.  My dad was in a state of agitation the whole day, and I don’t blame him.  But I also know how unimportant stuff can be. While I’ve been living out of my suitcase and a small storage unit for the last number of years, I also realize that there is very little I miss.  I think my dad will realize that too when the day is over and the smoke clears.

My brother and I continued to go through boxes, laughing and joking about how silly it was that our parents were unable to give this seemingly meaningless stuff up.  And then I lifted the lid of the shoe box and there they were – hundreds of paper napkins.  Each one was different, some were from childhood restaurants, some from birthday parties but each was saved and collected with care by me…yes me.  As a child I used to collect paper napkins.  I realize now how silly of a collection it was, but at the same time I think it was an indication of how I would always always be looking for things that were different in life; a way to stand out and be different.  While friends collected friendship beads, bears, and stuffed animals -  I collected paper napkins.

When I was a child, I created a scrap book of napkin memories, and when the book filled up my mother had me put them in a shoe box.  She even wrote on some of the plain white ones describing why a simple plane napkin was special; “from your sister’s college dorm cafeteria” it read.  It threw me back into memories of how sad I was when my sister left home and went to college – I missed her incredibly as it was the first time our little family unit was ever apart.

I came across old airline napkins and thought about how different airline travel was then.  Not only are the logos different – but these napkins came from a time when meals were free and smoking was allowed!

The napkins triggered memories of times gone by, but even though I was amused by the napkins and the memories they evoked, I knew what I had to do.  My brother stared at me wondering if I would be a hypocrite or stand by what I had been preaching to my father earlier.  In good brotherly form, he egged me on and taunted me asking if I would get rid of my ‘meaningless’ stuff.  I must admit – I was a bit torn and just like old times I really wanted to hit him for pissing me off.

Letting Go

I realistically looked at the napkins and realized that a woman who had no home and lived out of a suitcase had no reason keeping these napkins.  Nor did I have a right to continue to ask my parents to keep them for me.  So I did what I always do – I took pictures.  Images of my favorite napkins would be all the memory I would need.  Then by the handful I threw the paper napkins into the bonfire and the napkins went up in flames of blue and green, crackling as if the fire itself was happy to receive this new offering.

The memories will live on.  I don’t have to save things and collect stuff to have memories; none of us do.  I have the photos and that’s enough.  I know just how easy it is to hold on to stuff, and soon you have a whole garage of it.  Stuff that you never really look at again, it gets put in a box for 30 years and simply takes up space and anchors you.

One of my favorite things about my life is not being anchored.  And every piece of stuff I can cast off counts – even something as small as a few napkins.

Sherry is a long term traveler, blogger, and photographer with one goal in mind – to make you wish you were somewhere else.  She seeks out unique travel experiences and writes about her around the world adventures on Ottsworld.  She’s also a co-founder of Meet, Plan, Go!, a website and national travel event teaching you how you can take your very own traveling career break or sabbatical.

Learning to Let Go (A Primer for Control Freaks)

 

The thought of turning over the details of anything to someone else, especially something important, makes your skin crawl. You know no one would give it the right amount of attention, and no one cares about your projects as much as you do. It kills you to have to ask for help, mainly because you know you’ll have to go back and recheck it anyway.

It’s just easier to do it all yourself. Or is it?

Today we explore the art of letting go and the benefits of not always being in control. Buckle your seatbelts, control freaks, this one is going to be bumpy!

When You’re Forced to Let Go

There are 50 million head of livestock in Mongolia and only 3 million people. This simple statement explains everything you need to know about getting around within the country:

Mongolia is set up for herding, not traveling.

Normally Warren is the planner of our trip, mapping out bus routes, subway systems, and walking routes to our various destinations. But in a country without any modern infrastructure outside the capital – a country whose unmarked highways are still often made of dirt and meander through fields – it is hard to be your own tour guide.

Because of this fact, we really had no option to see Mongolia as independently as we normally travel. That said, we still didn’t want to be part of a packaged tour or limit ourselves to one small area. Gana, the owner of our guesthouse, told us he could help us arrange transport to travel just about as independently as possible in Mongolia on our budget, and we took him up on it.

This is where Warren started getting itchy.

Baby Steps in Letting Go

We walked to the lobby with our daypacks and our food and water for the start of our 5-day adventure. Gana introduced us to our driver, Sancho, and we loaded up the SUV and left.

We quickly realized Sancho spoke not a word of English. All of a sudden, our experiment in letting go became real and we were really concerned.

We had no idea exactly where we were going, where we would be staying, and how we would communicate with the driver. Did he know how much we planned to walk and where we wanted to go? And we only saw one tent in the back; were we all going to sleep together?

The fee we paid included a daily rate for the driver, his food stipend, and the responsibility to pay for the gas we needed along the way. When we stopped at a supermarket on the way out of town for water, the driver didn’t buy any food, and we wondered if we were going to have to share our carefully calculated supplies.

We had no way of asking all these questions, much less getting answers, so we did the only thing we really could do: we let go.

Letting Someone Else Take the Lead

Sancho drove us through a complicated warren of roads and fields to arrive at a small village outside Ulan Bator, where we stopped at a family ger for milk tea. It was only 11 a.m. and we wondered if this was our location for the night, but of course we couldn’t ask.

After the tea was finished, Sancho walked us out to the road and then pointed in the direction we should go. He mimed meeting up with us later on the path, and we set off wondering what the hell we had gotten ourselves into. This feeling quickly went away as we walked across grassy plains toward little clusters of trees, mooing and cows and bleating at sheep as we went past. A stream meandered through the valley, and we watched eagles soaring overhead and horses running around us. It was easy to forget our worries for a while with so much beauty.

Several kilometers later, we happened upon Sancho parked in a field waiting for us, giving us a slightly different direction to walk. We kept going, meeting up with him every 5 kilometers or so to adjust our path.

This kept up until we reached 20 km, our daily goal. We then hopped into the SUV and drove a short distance to Sancho’s family village, where he set us up in a comfy ger for the night.

Problems in Letting Go

The next morning we didn’t leave the ger until 8, a late start if you are a hiker interested in avoiding the heat. We forded a river and then entered the outskirts of the national park. We told Gana we weren’t interested in a heavily trafficked tourist area, so we were really anxious about how the day’s plans were shaping up.

Sancho drove around the start of the national park for a few minutes before stopping to ask directions of a guy walking toward us. The man hopped in the vehicle to direct and we forded another section of the river and drove past about a dozen ger camps. Finally, we stopped and Sancho ran out with a package for a family. Where we thought we were lost, he was just trying to find an address for a delivery of bread!

Warren began getting a little frustrated over the delays and wondering if we would be in the park with all the tour groups. He began grumbling about not getting what we paid for, and this is when we had the conversation that led to the Big Revelation:

We were expecting the experience to be a certain way instead of letting the experience guide our expectations.

It was a lightbulb moment that set the tone for the rest of our trip. I mean, how much more authentic does it get to have a stranger hop in your car to give directions or to go hunting through small clusters of identical gers to make a delivery? This is the real Mongolia and exactly what we asked for.

The rest of the trip continued in the same vein, walking for half the day and then stopping each afternoon at a beautiful spot, setting up camp, and enjoying a gorgeous sunset and hot meal. On our last full day of hiking, we saw Sancho parked up on a hill much sooner than expected. It wasn’t until we came to the peak that we saw the reason why: In the distance was the 40-meter high statue of Genghis Khan astride his horse, one of the largest statues we have ever seen. We think Sancho just wanted to see the expression on our faces, and he wasn’t disappointed!

We set up camp our last night in a field not too far from the Genghis Khan statue. As we laid out our mats in the warm sunshine to read and relax, Sancho sat down beside us and tried explaining he needed to leave. We were a little bit surprised, given there was a big storm developing. We asked if he would be back for dinner and he shook his head no, which is when we got really concerned. Were we really going to stay by ourselves with no kind of transportation with a huge black cloud and lightning coming our way?

We had dozens of questions but no way to ask. He began cooking himself an early dinner, and we really got worried. How would he find our tent in the dark in this huge area? How would we cook our own meal later if the rain didn’t let up?

Finally a van came up to our campsite and another driver plus an English-speaking person from our guesthouse emerged. He told us Sancho had to return early for a 7-day tour only he could do, so they were providing us with a new driver to take us home the following day. They moved all of our belongings to the van, introduced us to the new driver, and then took off with Sancho.

We were safe, had food to eat, and a dry place to sleep, just like all the other nights. Of course Gana wouldn’t let us stay out in the middle of nowhere alone, and we felt a little silly for having worried he would.

We made the mistake of thinking since it was our first time, it was everyone’s first time.

What We Learned

I’m not sure we would have had this experience in letting go if we had not been forced into it. Warren has been planning much of our trip since 2010, and even though the whole purpose of our 18,000-km journey is in living in the moment, we have still kept almost 100% of the planning responsibility ourselves.

Now that we’ve had it, though, we realize all the things we would have missed if we had tried to do this journey ourselves:

Staying with local families
Venturing off the beaten path
Seeing Mongolia through the eyes of a Mongolian

This trip taught us we don’t always know best, and knowing all the answers is not the same as having the best experience. In fact, we set up another similar tour with Gana to experience Naadam and the Gobi Desert, and that week of giving up control gave us some of the most incredible experiences of our entire journey (stay tuned for details and photos).

When we gave up trying to control all the details and get all the answers, we had a lot more space available to simply enjoy the experience.

How This Applies to You

If you are a control freak, you are undoubtedly using a lot of brain space to manage things. Your mind is constantly whirring to keep the parts of your life moving, and you are likely using lists, reminders, and alarms to keep yourself on track. You are a vision of efficiency, though probably very tired of managing it all.

If you are like us, you won’t start letting go until forced to do so. You could come all the way to Mongolia, but the easiest way is by simply trying something brand-new or last minute, something you have to depend on someone else to manage or arrange.

A class to learn a new hobby or skill
A Meetup experience at a new location led by someone else
A last-minute deal on a weekend trip from a bargain site

There are a few things to keep in mind:

You are not the first person who has tried this, and the experienced person leading the way has answered or experienced every worry in your mind.
Unless you are skydiving without a parachute or walking through fire, your chances of death and dismemberment as a worst-case scenario are minuscule. Realize your biggest danger is disappointment, which is something well within your control.
When someone else is in charge, let them do their jobs. If they screw up entirely, you can then take pleasure in letting them know how you would have done it better. If they don’t screw up, you enjoy the experience. Either way, you win.

Continuing to Let Go

We aren’t experts at letting go just yet, but we are making steady progress as we go through this overland journey from Thailand to Portugal. We continue to make our plans as we go, not researching the next destination until we are at the previous one and asking other travelers and local residents for recommendations before making our own plans. It is working out surprisingly well, though we do still struggle a bit when things aren’t done as we think they should be.

It’s all a work in progress, and we are quickly learning to let go of our compulsion to control our freedom, and ironic statement if there ever was one.

(If you don’t see the video below, click here)

Getting Going: How to Overcome your Overwhelming to-do List

Today is the first in our Take the First Step series. The first step in any big effort or in following a dream is often the scariest and most challenging. Through this ongoing series we’ll share stories of people who took the plunge and how they took the first step towards their dream.

Long before we became the perpetual travelers of EverywhereOnce.com, we were an average couple in our mid-thirties with a hazy vision of a shared dream. Shannon and I both longed for a life on the road and saved diligently for years toward that end, but frugal living and saving were never our primary problem.

Originally we thought that our adventure would take us overseas, vagabonding across all the world’s continents. We love Europe, have barely scratched the surface of Africa, and have never set foot in Asia, South America or Australia. We knew we had a lot of ground to cover if we wanted to see it all—and that we’d never achieve these ambitions as long as they were constrained by our allotted yearly vacation time. For what we had in mind, we’d need months, or more likely years, of continuous travel.

So we’d talk, frequently over dinner but other times as well, about what we’d do, where we’d go, and most importantly, how we’d make it happen. But the conversations always ended with the same question: “What will we do with our cats while we travel?”

Our cats were part of our family, and they were either coming with us or we weren’t going. After deciding our felines would fair poorly in carry on bags, the conversation always ended with us postponing our travels. How depressing?

The answer turned out to be incredibly simple. It arrived out of the blue the way epiphanies normally do. As often happens, we were blinded to it by our preconceived notions. We assumed travel meant backpacks and hotels. Never did we seriously consider taking our house along for the journey.

It wasn’t until Shannon mentioned re-prioritizing our travels that all the pieces fell into place. If we started domestically, we could travel in an RV and take our pets along with us. If our goal really was to “see everything,” we’d need to explore the vast expanses of North America eventually. Why not start there?

With that realization, our dream instantly transformed from a gauzy, loosely defined, far-off objective to something specific and real. The recognition that everything we had talked about for so long was finally within reach felt totally amazing.

Then it almost completely fell apart.

It took us only a couple of days to realize that walking away from your life is easier in the dreaming than in the doing.

In the fantasy, we simply loaded up an RV or a backpack and set off on untold merry adventures. Back in the real world, we had jobs, and friends, and possessions and responsibilities. But more terrifying than anything, we had absolutely no idea what we were doing.

We had never owned an RV before; never driven one; never even slept in one. We didn’t know the first thing about the lifestyle. We soon discovered that things we used to take for granted, like having health insurance or even a driver’s license, required a physical address and we planned on not having one.

We were in over our heads, and the swim to the opposing shore seemed impossibly long. As we looked at the learning curve that confronted us, we felt as if our dream was steadily dissolving back into the mist. All the specificity that was so exiting at first now raised fresh doubts in our minds: Could we actually do this? Is this what we truly wanted? Wouldn’t it be easier to just stay put?

The answer to all three questions was a resounding “Yes.”

We absolutely wanted to start a new life of perpetual travel and we knew, or soon found out, that we were more than up to the challenge of making it happen. Yet it really would have been much easier to stay on the sidelines living the life we had while dreaming of the one we wanted. But we’ve always believed that dreams are meant to be chased. We just didn’t know where to start.

After a short period of hyperventilating and self doubt we realized the specifics were killing us. There were simply too many things to research, and we were getting overwhelmed by the details. We needed a plan to keep our heads above water.

Here’s how we coped and, eventually, prevailed:

Divide and Conquer

Early in the process, Shannon and I worked independently, often covering the same ground and running into the same dead ends. Duplicating our efforts made each task seem twice as large and take twice as long.

We had a tendency to gravitate toward the same tasks; probably because some were easier or more interesting than others. Specifically delegating responsibilities became absolutely necessary. By deciding early how to split up the chores we not only avoided duplication but also confrontations over the distribution of work that threatened to distract us from our larger goal.

Work the Critical Path

In any complex process, there is a natural order to things. Some things have to be completed before other things can be started. That critical path isn’t always immediately obvious. Not identifying it early can mean wasted effort trying to solve problems that can’t yet be solved.

An example for us was obtaining health insurance. One of our biggest financial concerns as U.S. citizens is that one of us will develop a chronic and expensive medical condition. We knew we’d lose our existing plan once Brian left his job. Going “naked” was absolutely not an option. Having a good plan, with guaranteed renewal, was so important to us we’d rather abandon our trip than go without.

With such an important problem to solve, it was natural to want to tackle it first. After all, our entire dream hung in the balance. But in the U.S., health insurance is governed by state regulation with each state having different requirements, restrictions and costs. We couldn’t start researching health insurance plans until we knew our state of residency. We couldn’t know that until we figured out how to become a legal resident of a state without actually living there (more on our eventual solution here: How to Become a Global Citizen).

Compartmentalize

We could have stressed about not having our health insurance buttoned up. We could have spent countless, fruitless, hours researching all the various options in all 50 states. Instead, we decided to ignore it for the time being. Health insurance simply wasn’t a critical path item. If we couldn’t solve the problem until tomorrow, we should delay worrying about it until then too. And we did.

Employing the adage, “out of sight, out of mind,” we went so far as creating two separate to-do lists. Our “Master Project List” covered absolutely everything we needed to get done until the day we walked out our front door for the very last time. That list was so overwhelmingly long we tucked it in a drawer and only consulted it when absolutely necessary.

We created a second to-do list that only included the next 5 or 10 things on our critical path. Only when we completed the things on that daily chore list, did we revisit our Master Project list.

Keep it Simple Stupid

We even broke large questions down into smaller ones. Instead of listing imponderable tasks like “Find the perfect RV to live in,” our daily to-do list had more basic questions like “Figure out the differences between a Class C motor home, a 5th wheel and a cow.”

That first question is really hard while the second is quite easy. By working up through a series of easy questions, we eventually arrived at a point where the answer to that hard question became obvious.

With short to-do lists of generally basic tasks, we were always crossing stuff off. We found that tremendously rewarding and motivating. Even though each item may have represented baby steps in a long journey, it felt like we were making real progress every single day. That feeling of progress kept us going when things got tough.

Keep your eye on the prize

In their book Dream Save Do, Betsy and Warren call it “Dream Porn.” We called it keeping our eye on the prize. Daily reminders and discussions about the end goal (a lifetime of perpetual travel for us) helped get us past all the inevitable rough spots.

When you’re deep in the weeds of minutia, it is easy to lose sight of the big picture. Take occasional breaks from those details to admire the beautiful landscape you’re working to paint. Remember why you set out on this journey in the first place and imagine the feelings you’ll experience once you reach your goal.

There is no question that chasing a dream is hard work. It’s easy to get discouraged. It is easier still to let the drift of current events determine the course of your life. We found these simple tricks and techniques kept us on track and motivated toward the life we had dreamed of for so long. Mostly it all boils down to a variation on some very old wisdom: the longest journey begins with a single step.

You just have to get moving.

Full-time travelers since April 2010, Brian and Shannon are as passionate about helping others break free from convention as they are about seeing the world. Shannon is a freelance writer and co-author of Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West (National Geographic Books). Brian is chief chef, big rig handler, photographer, and creator of the travel blog EverywhereOnce.

The Shortcut to Confidence

Shoulders back, head held high, and a grin of anticipation on your face. Isn’t that the way you want to feel when embarking on a new new challenge? The good news is you can.

One of the most frequent questions we get is how we have the confidence to do scary things like travel the world or be with each other 24/7. People often think there is a magic trick to this, or that an adventurous life is only for those lucky enough to be born with confidence.

Those people are wrong, and today we’re going to share our big secret with you.

(Click here if you don’t see the video below.)

Bravado vs. Confidence

We all know people who talk a good game and seem to have all the answers, but unless these people are actually walking the talk, they are merely showcasing bravado. Confidence comes from knowledge and experience, and bravado comes from fear and inexperience.

The fear doesn’t even have to be overwhelming to bring bravado to the forefront:

A friend’s weight loss inspires the overweight person to dole out diet advice and warnings.
The person who always talks about getting out of their one-horse town never even takes a vacation.
The biggest complainer at work is rarely one to propose and execute a plan for fixing things.

“When the person talking shit hasn’t done shit, you can stop listening. Especially if that person is you.”

The Shortcut to Confidence

Confidence happens through a series of successes and through learning from failures. The commonality in both of these scenarios is action, because without actually doing something you won’t gain either.

The big secret to confidence is just like the big secret to saving money for your dream. It is all about bringing it down to a small task, one you can repeat frequently to build your knowledge and skill over time.

You realize that’s what confidence is, don’t you? It is merely learning how to do something well enough to keep your fears in check. You don’t normally gain that level of expertise with a one-time experience, which is why repetition is the key.

To run a marathon, you first jog around your block.
To speak in public, you first voice your opinion in a friendly group.
To travel the world, you first explore an ethnic neighborhood in your own city.

These tiny actions repeated on a regular basis will give you the confidence to build on them, venturing further on your daily runs, voicing your opinions to strangers as well as friends, and booking tickets to visit your first foreign country.

Build Your Confidence Now

What is is you’ve always wanted to do? It may scare the hell out of you right now, and that’s okay. In fact, it is perfectly normal. What we’re going to focus on is the tiniest little aspect of that dream and turn it into a regular activity.

One-time activities can be scary. Regular activities are not.

Create a daily habit, something a little bit challenging for you to do but well within your capabilities. Maybe you simply start saying ‘no’ to other people’s requests as you carve out more time to pursue your own goals. 

As you become comfortable doing this, you’ll naturally expand it over time until you are doing the thing that currently scares the crap out of you.

It is how we went from walking to the grocery store to taking 100-km walking trips in Mongolia. It is how we went from saying hello to strangers to creating an international network of friends. It is how we went from writing a weekly blog post to writing three books.

It is how we went from bravado to confidence and how you can, too.

Are you struggling with confidence and the ability to say and do what you really want? It isn’t other people holding you back; it’s you. Learn how to uncover your confidence with some authentic living in our latest book. Click here to learn more.

How I Got a Book Deal, Quit My Day Job, and Changed My Life

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest post is from Dream Save Do success story Beth Hayden, who’s new book on Pinterest marketing for small business is available online and at bookstores this week. Read on to see how Dreaming + Action = Better Than She Ever Expected. And get her book – it’s really good!

For four years, I led a double life.

During the day, I was a mild-mannered administrative assistant at a tech company. I filed expense reports, booked travel, took minutes at meetings, and got coffee.

During the weekends and evenings (and on my lunch breaks), I was a hustling entrepreneur. I ran an online marketing consulting business. I built WordPress websites for small business owners and taught them how to use blogging, social media, and email to increase sales. I loved my clients and the business I was creating.

I hated my day job. It was boring, repetitive, stifling, and every day got harder and harder as I worked for a company who underutilized my skills and kept me locked into an administrative role that I had outgrown years before.

As my own business grew, I held on to the day job for the health insurance benefits and the steady income. As a single mom, the security of having a steady paycheck every month was appealing, especially when the nightly news was filled with a steady drumbeat of reports about the lousy economy.

I talked about quitting the day job and making the leap to full-time entrepreneurship, but I always had a ready excuse why I couldn’t let the job go — the bad economy, not enough cash in the bank, insurance woes, etc. Weeks turned into months, and months turned into years, and I continued showing up every day at my job, wishing that things were different.

Then in October of 2011, of pair of fairy godparents came into my life. Their names are Betsy and Warren Talbot.

At my day job, I followed Betsy and Warren’s story online. I loved reading about how they saved up for their trip, how they jettisoned all their possessions, and how they left on the trip with nothing but backpacks, their love for each other, and a desire to accomplish something remarkable with their lives. I felt awed and inspired at their courage and tenacity.

Since I was already such a big fan, I ordered their book, Dream Save Do, as soon as they announced their sales page was open. As soon as I downloaded the book, I sat down at the kitchen table and started reading it. I tore through their story like a starving woman, knowing deep down that I was looking for a way to save my own life — a way to stop feeling dead inside every day when I trudged into the office and sat through endless meetings discussing things I didn’t care about.

The Free Bethy Project

When I finished their book, I hatched a plan. I the “Free Bethy” project, and the goal was to get me out of my day job as quickly as possible.

In Dream Save Do (for those of you who haven’t read it) Betsy and Warren recommend creating what they call “dream porn,” — a large visual reminder of your dream. The Talbots’s dream porn, for example, was a huge map of the world they placed in a really prominent location in their home.

I finished Dream Save Do in under three days, and immediately created my dream porn — a giant collage of images that I knew would inspire me to stick with my budget and keep taking steps toward reaching my dream.

The goal I set was to quit my job on March 1st. I had a financial goal in mind, too — a specific amount of money I wanted to save in order to make quitting possible.

I had a vision for my business. I wanted to teach entrepreneurs how to grow their businesses, help women find their voices through social media, and make the world of technology a little less scary by being a voice of calm in the chaos.

I made steady progress on the “Free Bethy” project from October through December. I built my business, added new classes, socked money away and paid down my debt. Every day I still reported to my admin job, but I went to work with a much lighter heart, knowing that the end was in sight. I was saving money more slowly than I expected, but I was making progress, so I figured I was doing just fine.

Then at the beginning of 2012, things started to get really interesting.

As a blogger and a social media coach, I knew the importance of doing guest posts (like the one I’m writing here, for Warren and Betsy) for getting new readers and growing one’s online audience.  I had written a few guest posts for other social media sites in the fall, but in early 2012, the Dream Save Do book inspired me to aim a little higher with my guest blogging ambitions.

I had taken a class with Jon Morrow about guest blogging. In that class, Jon taught us how to approach popular bloggers for guest posting opportunities, craft great posts that would draw lots of social media attention, and inspire our audiences with our unique messages.

A blog post I wrote for one of the class assignments caught Jon’s attention, and he passed the post on to the editors at Copyblogger, one of the biggest and most influential social media blogs in the world. The editors liked my idea and published my guest post shortly thereafter.

But honestly, my initial guest post didn’t take off the way I hoped. The Copyblogger editors were happy with the post, but the article didn’t really get any real traction. I was disappointed.

Somewhere in my subconscious, I think I believed that on the day of my first Copyblogger guest post, the sky would open up and the heavens would rain money down on me.

When that didn’t happen, I thought, “Okay, I may not hit my March 1st quitting date. But that’s okay — as long as I’m making progress, I will get there.”

So on the night my first Copyblogger guest post went live (after I got past my disappointment), I pitched the Copyblogger editor with ten additional post ideas. He liked several of them, and invited me to develop one particular idea into my next guest post. This second article was called 56 Ways to Market Your Business on Pinterest, and it was published on the site on February 14th.

To my amazement and delight, this Pinterest post on Copyblogger went viral. To date, it has received nearly 4,000 retweets, 3,000 Facebook shares, and over 350 comments.

Beth’s ‘Overnight’ Success

One week later, I got a short email from an editor at the business division of John Wiley & Sons asking if I might be interested in writing a book on Pinterest marketing.

Was I interested? Are you kidding? Of course I was!

The editor’s goal was to be the first to market with a book on Pinterest marketing.  But that also meant that she needed a book proposal in five days, so she could take it to an important in-house pitch meeting.

I started working on the proposal as soon as I could, reaching out and asking for editing help from some author friends (who I knew through a local women’s networking group). Through that same group, I had become friends with a wonderful book agent. I reached out to her and she offered to help me write a killer proposal.

As I was writing the proposal, the editor at Wiley asked me how quickly I might be able to write the book. I thought it over and came up with the most aggressive timetable imaginable: four months.

The editor replied, “Could you do it in six weeks?”

Six weeks is an insanely short amount of time to write a book. But I thought to myself, “If a book editor asks you to write a book in just over a month, you say yes. And then you figure out how to do it.” I told her that six weeks would be just fine.

I finished the proposal, and the editor’s in-house pitch meeting went well. A week after my guest post had gone live on Copyblogger, I had a signed book deal. It was absolutely amazing, and completely terrifying (truth be told)!

Even more amazing was the fact that the book deal Wiley offered me included an advance — and that advance was for the exact amount that I had wanted to save before I quit my job.

Things moved really quickly after that. The day after I got the offer, I quit my day job. The date of my resignation was February 29th — one day short of my goal date to quit my job. Better yet, it was Leap Day!

After a whirlwind six weeks, I somehow made my deadline with Wiley. I handed in a 35,000-word manuscript.

Wiley immediately put the manuscript into an accelerated production schedule, and the book was published on July 3rd. It’s called Pinfluence: The Complete Guide to Marketing Your Business with Pinterest, and I will always think of it as my miracle book.

What I learned from this experience is that there is incredible power and genius in:

Dreaming big and aiming high
Setting an intention
The Art of the Ask
Continuing to move forward (even in the face of disappointment and setback)
Relying on community
Saying yes to crazy things

I feel like my new life started the moment I finished my Dream Porn collage and posted it above my kitchen table. From that moment, I set my intention and worked incredibly hard until I reached my goal.

I’m so grateful to my two fairy godparents for starting me on this magical and miraculous path.

So what kind of intention can you set today? And what first step can you take toward reaching your goal?

Editor’s Note: Beth was able to quit her job one day before her deadline and now makes her living doing just what she dreamed of doing. She has more time to spend with her son and new opportunities to pursue because of her willingness to take action on her dream instead of just thinking about it. Will you be the next Dream Save Do success story? We’d love to hear from you.

About the author: Beth Hayden is a social media expert and author of Pinfluence: The Complete Guide to Marketing Your Business with Pinterest. To learn more about Pinterest marketing, download her free Pinterest e-course . (And check out what we’re doing with what she taught us on our own Pinterest page.)

Anticipation Increases Your Happiness

We can never know about the days to come
But we think about them anyway – Anticipation by Carly Simon

For months we’ve dreamed of Mongolia and what we’d find when we finally arrived on the steppes. We discussed the idea of walking the same ground as Ghengis Khan and the great Mongolian Empire. We read about the history of the country and learned about it’s relatively recent shift to a democracy (in 1990). We spent hours discussing what we’d find when we stepped outside of the city and encountered the vastness of the plains. Since our initial interest was piqued last year excitement has continued to grow.

We’ve built up the anticipation of seeing this country with a wealth of hope and reading (thank you Conn Iggulden). Our thoughts conjuring images of endless plains of sand and grasslands which were the battleground of the Mongol Empire. The excitement was so thick that we were like little kids on Christmas morning when we boarded the Trans-Mongolian railway on June 19th. We knew we had 30 hours of travel in front of us but that was simply more opportunity to build our anticipation for Mongolia.

Embrace Anticipation

When looking forward to a big event or your dream, just the anticipation can make you excited. You may be looking forward to the day you give notice to leave your job, the day you first get paid you for your writing, or the moment your feet touch the sand of your vacation beach. You shake with enthusiasm as you envision the moment and relive the experience over and over in your mind.

Anticipation is a wonderful part of the process of going after your dream and should be embraced early and often. Building up the excitement of fulfilling your dream will help you during those times when you question your sanity (which happens to us all) and will remind you why you are taking this leap.

Anticipation is also a way to start living your dream now. You can imagine your new life and see yourself in it. In fact, research from the Journal of Applied Research in Quality of Life found ”the largest boost in happiness comes from the simple act of planning a vacation. In the study, the effect of vacation anticipation boosted happiness for eight weeks” (NY Times – How Vacations Affect Your Happiness).

Mongolia: Worth all the Anticipation

After months of anticipation, and a day on the train, we awoke and received our first taste of Mongolia – the Gobi Desert was just outside our window. The sight simply blew us away. We both stood there at the train window for 5 hours while we watched the landscape go by, catching our first sight of camels, eagles, and sand dunes. Slowly the scenery changed to grassy hills with small clusters of trees. Then, we began to see our first signs of civilization as we neared Ulan Bator (12+ hours after crossing from the Chinese border). The culmination of all this anticipation was so intense at times we found ourselves with tears in our eyes looking out at the expanse before us.

That moment when anticipation became reality blended so well together that it was simply perfect.

After a couple days of planning in Ulan Bator, we were ready to head out into the steppe for our first real interaction with the country. We were not prepared for what unfolded when we left the city last Saturday to spend 4 days with nomadic families about 3 hours southwest of the city. Within minutes of leaving the city all our anticipation culminated in the most magnificent of moments – exceeded expectations. Mongolia is simply stunning and no amount of thinking about it could have prepared us for what unfolded. We stopped in the midst of a hike to record our thoughts and share a few images.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here for a few thousand to give you a sense of what we encountered, with so much more left to explore in the next 2 weeks.

Whatever your dream may be, revel in the anticipation for what is to come. Let it build slowly and enjoy the process and feeling of excitement that comes from envisioning your new life. Slow down this week and embrace this anticipation by reading a book related to your dream, watching a movie, or talking with friends/family to get your juices flowing.

What are you anticipating? Drop us an email, leave a Facebook comment, or record a video and let us know. We’d love to hear about it.

Anticipating your dream is one thing, but taking the first step to making it a reality is another. What is stopping you? Buy a copy of Dream Save Do today and begin creating your plan to making it happen.