Hero (13 page)

G. M. Rao had the courage to follow his own dreams, and look what he’s done with his life. He has built airports, highways, and hospitals, and developed cities in India. He has improved his country and the lives of hundreds of millions of people because he made a decision to follow his own bliss.

It often takes courage to do the thing you love and go against the majority. Resist the temptation to try and please anyone, and be true to yourself. It’s not your job to please anybody else, anyway; it’s their job to please themselves and find their own happiness. This is your life, and you must follow your own heart. There is something special about you, a talent or skill that is unique to you, and you have a responsibility to your life to bring it out.

“Take a job that you love. I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don’t like because you think it will look good on your resume. Isn’t that a little like saving up sex for your old age?”

Warren Buffett

Business Magnate and Investor

ANASTASIA SOARE

Look into your life. If you are happy where you are, good for you. If you are not happy, you should start analyzing. “Okay, what makes me happy? I’m in a job and I’m unhappy.” Well, change the job.

If you’ve decided that you’re going to make a change but you don’t know how, the first and biggest step you can take is to start to follow your bliss.

ANASTASIA SOARE

You are an accountant, and you are totally unhappy. Well, maybe you like to cook. Go and become a chef. Don’t drop your job immediately, because you need to pay your bills, but try to set the plan. “Okay, I’m going to do this part time.” You have to plan. Every penny that I made I wanted to make sure I would use to follow my dream. If you do not have that support from money, the stress that comes from not being able to pay your bills will shatter your dream.

Anastasia had a family to support, and so she spent two years planning her business before she took the leap. Now she has a global company and she’s living the life of her dreams. If Anastasia hadn’t worked on a plan and followed her bliss, she would still be working fourteen-hour days in someone else’s salon.

There are so many things you can start doing now to follow your bliss. Take a free course on what you would love to do. Get books and magazines and read up on the people who are doing what you want to do. Find out what kind of job you could get to put you into that field. Use the Internet, social media, write blogs, and do research. You have the world at your fingertips and more opportunities than ever to connect and explore. Put as much attention as you can into what you would love to do.

LAIRD HAMILTON

How do you transition from what you’re doing into a place where you’re doing what you love? Subsidize doing what you love to do with doing something else in order to give you enough support to do the thing you love. All of a sudden you will be doing the thing you love as the thing that provides for you. And that transition will occur much quicker than you think.

MASTIN KIPP

If you have other responsibilities you can slowly start to build up a side business, and eventually you just take the leap.

“Follow your bliss and the Universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”

Joseph Campbell

Mythologist

You can begin right now to follow your bliss, because somewhere in your life there is something you’ve always wanted to do that you haven’t done yet. Have you had an urge to learn ballroom dancing or rap, surfing, or white water rafting? Have you had an urge to take an acting class, a painting or gardening class, or to learn how to style clothes or the interior of houses? Or is there a musical instrument that you’ve had the urge to learn because when you hear it played you immediately go into a state of bliss? Do you feel drawn to a particular country, and when you hear the language being spoken something inside you stirs? Was there something you loved doing as a child, but as you grew into adulthood you put it aside because you had to make a living? What is it that you’ve always wanted to do?

Most people either never get around to acting on these urges or they put them aside because they think they’re insignificant and have no relationship to the bigger things they want in their life. But that urge you feel to do something in particular is the Universe calling you to follow your bliss, and that particular thing is definitely connected to the path of your dreams. You can’t see the connection from your perspective on earth, but the Universe can clearly see it’s the path that will lead you to your dreams.

The Thing that Moves You

What are you drawn to? What moves you? What have you always had the desire to do? Follow that urge; follow your bliss, because while you might not consider it relevant to your dream, it is in fact the very thread that will lead you there – as it did for my daughter.

From the moment she learned to read, my daughter said she was going to be an author when she grew up. Aside from writing, she loved two things more than anything else: being in nature and horse riding. She maintained her love of all three from childhood into adulthood, but when she moved to America she had to leave her horses behind.

With her relocation, her lifelong dream of becoming an author sat quietly in the background, while another big dream took over her – to meet her perfect partner and have a family. She made a list of everything she wanted in her perfect partner, but for some months he was nowhere to be seen.

Then she made a decision to just follow her bliss. So she started horse-riding lessons, she started to write again, and she bought a little house surrounded by nature. Her little house needed a
lot
of work, but she was blissfully happy living in it, because she was surrounded by nature.

Here’s what happened when my daughter followed her bliss. She was given a new horse to ride in her lesson, and the moment she got on that horse they were at one with each other. She had found the horse of her dreams, and she was given the opportunity to buy the horse in gradual payments she could easily manage. She came up with an idea for a children’s book, and she finished writing her first book. She was blissfully happy; she had her dream horse, she was living in nature, and she’d finally written a book.

And right there and then, amid her bliss, my daughter met her perfect partner. Two months after the dream of her perfect partner came true, her lifelong dream of becoming an author also came true; a major publisher accepted her book for publication! On top of that, things were suddenly looking promising for her little house in need of a lot of work – her perfect partner just happens to be the son of a builder!

You can have it all. No matter how unrelated you think your bliss might be to a bigger dream, follow your bliss and follow it with all of your heart. Although you can’t see the whole way ahead, your bliss is the thread that will lead you to
all
of your dreams!

LAYNE BEACHLEY

Ultimately, to achieve anything in life you have to believe that you can. That belief is what allowed me to win many world titles.