As I’ve been interviewing nearly 100 passionate entrepreneurs (aka “passioneers”) over the past two months, I’ve heard many great ideas and suggestions for dream leaping. So I invite anyone who is feeling scared or discouraged about their own leap to consider the ten tips below from these passioneers, so you can move forward. If you have your own ideas or suggestions, please send them our way.

Tips for Leaping into Your Passions Fully

1. Don’t leave your day job, and have at least one year’s savings before you make the leap into your passions!
2. Take baby steps. A strong recommendation to make the leap by taking many little steps.
3. Face the fear…and do it anyway.  Every one of our guests has felt some fears around making their leap.  Their suggestion?  Don’t succumb and keep moving.
4. Surround yourself with positive people.  Ditch those who aren’t supportive or negative.  Fill your life with folks who respect and honor your path.
5. Vision your future.  Get very clear on what you want in your life and take the focus off of what you don’t want.
6. Prosperity is much more than material wealth.  It means friends, health, free time, and being your own boss!
7. Persevere regardless.  The road will get rocky, so when it does, take a deep breath and put one foot in front of the other.
8. Get used to the mystery.  You aren’t going to always know where you’re headed.  So best to release control and enjoy the ride!
9. Don’t go it alone.  Real success is achieved through other people, so learn to build community around you.
10. Go with the flow.  Following your passions can be tough, AND if you keep hitting a wall, perhaps it’s time to take another route. 

You can also reach us by contacting our website:  www.lifesparks-coaching.com or our radio show at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/passionsandpossibilities.  Thanks so much!!

So what’s the perfect timing to leap fully into your passions? After interviewing nearly 100 bold, talented individuals who made the leap (aka “Passioneers”), I have the definitive answer: “It all depends”. Some Passioneers transformed their passion into a full-time venture over several years, while others make the leap in one fell swoop (e.g., after being laid off of their full-time job). Still other Passioneers have so many passions that they don’t want to fully commit to only one!

Below are 5 tips for timing your leap, based upon 5 months of research and 25 years of common sense:

1. There’s NEVER a Perfect Time, So Just Do It! If you’re waiting for the moons to align and the prosperity gods to agree, then you may as well turn in your Passioneers climbing harness and go home right now. THERE IS NO PERFECT TIME, and once you finally get that, you’ll get over yourself and move forward. So, whatever your passion, simply take ONE step forward NOW! Yes, right now.  Even if you commit to spending one-hour a week exploring your passions, that’s an awesome start! Baby steps, one at a time. Examples? Research what you love on the internet for an hour. Conduct an info interview with an expert who’s doing what you love. Or write down the benefits of unleashing your passions.
2. Eliminate “Either/Or” Thinking. Many individuals believe that they have to wait until they can spend 60+ hours a week expressing their passions before they should make the leap. That they must sacrifice everything else to pursue their passions. NOT SO! For some ridiculous reason, an entrepreneurial myth of rugged individualism and self-sacrifice has perpetuated over the years. It’s time to STOP the insanity now.  What if…you could continue to earn a living in your current dead-end job AND move close to your dream life each week? What if being a successful entrepreneur requires LESS than 40 hours a week (witness the Ferris’ book, The 4-Hour Work Week.) Even one hour a week being and doing what you love moves you closer to your dream (via baby steps). Through many baby steps, you can make HUGE progress without even realizing it. What does this require? Patience and persistence.  Neither was Rome built in one day, nor was a car eaten by Dick Miller in one sitting.  Ask me about this later. 
3. Don’t Leave Your Day Job (at least not right away). Transitioning into your passions full-time, OVER time, is a great idea. Many Passioneers gather the skills and experience they need to make the leap, while being employed in a full-time job that’s not really their passion. Well guess what? Whatever full-time job you’ve had so far is providing you with the PERFECT skills and experience for what’s next.  Every Passioneer I’ve interviewed confessed that they couldn’t have created their dream profession without having had their prior jobs, which brought them just the right insights, skills and experience.  Don’t believe me? Call me in 5 years and we’ll compare notes.  The next time you want to complain about your current job, think again!
4. Feel the Fear and Keep Moving Anway. It’s inevitable. There will be days and even weeks, when your knees are shaking and you have no idea why you decided to pursue your passions. Maybe you have a fear of failure, a fear of success, or even a fear of not deserving to shine in your passions. Who cares? The definition of courage? To feel the fear and do it anyway. Get moving!
5. Learn to Live Within a Budget AND Prosper. Most Passioneers I’ve interviewed have noted that their prosperity quotient (PQ) rose significantly after making the leap into their passions. A PQ considers much more than your annual net income, including your happiness, health, and overall satisifaction: Being your own boss, making your own schedule, spending more time with family and friends, etc., etc. Without exception, Passioneers who made the leap from high-paying jobs indicated that they now have a higher PQ then before they made the leap…and absolutely NO regrets in making the leap.

So, in one sentence: Just DO it now, even if it’s slowly by taking baby steps, by being smart, courageous, and by having a clear idea of prosperity. Good luck and happy Passioneering!

During a recent coaching session, a very successful massage therapist shared that she was unclear, anxious, and in a flux about her next steps in her business. She had just returned from a quiet retreat in the South American jungles and was reentering her daily routine in Seattle. Her retreat time in self-reflection now had her re-evaluating her direction and goals. Messy, murky, and uncomfortable…ugh!

As a business growth coach, I highly recommend that my clients start with the end in mind, when it comes to taking their next big leap. That is, that they clarify VIVIDLY what they want to create in their lives, both professionally and personally. Face it, if you don’t have this level of clarity, it’s like telling the ticket counter clerk “I’ll take a ticket to destination Anywhere, please”. And, you’ll be lucky to reach your destination, if at all! Napoleon Hill tells us that, as we conceive and believe, we achieve. So, what does your dream business look like in one year? How does it feel, sound, and even smell or taste? If you don’t yet know, it’s a great time to MAKE the time to figure it out.

Several studies have shown that simply visualizing success (e.g., seeing yourself making a free throw with a basketball) will create tangible, successful results. That’s why journaling and vision boards are so popular for goal-setting. Engaging all of your five senses is a powerful tool for conceiving your dreams and realizing them. Unfortunately, most of us do not dream big enough. If you want to create something bigger in your life, you must dream bigger dreams. Below are 4 steps to BIG visioning for your next big leap.

Step 1: Make Time to Reflect on Your Dreams. It’s easy to get pulled away to urgent, non-important tasks such as errands, while your important, non-urgent tasks (e.g., dreams, goal-setting) take back seat. I highly recommend that you literally block out regular time for self-reflection in your calendar. Hint: Create a color-coded category in your schedule using Microsoft Outlook’s categories functionality. I use bright orange for mine!

Step 2: Let ‘Em Come Freely without Censoring. When ideas/intuitions arise about your dreams, refrain from censoring them. Don’t worry about the “how” at this stage, but simply allow the “what” to come forward. We often choke our dreams by head-tripping how to make them come true. Bottom line? A dream that you are passionate about cannot NOT be fulfilled – you simply have to get out of the way.  The HOW will arrive, in its own sweet time. Focus on the WHAT for now.  

Step 3: Don’t Just Talk About Them. Write Them Down! Talk is cheap in dream-town. So many passionate entrepreneurs talk about their dreams, but when I ask them if they’ve written them down (let alone shared them with others), what do you think their answer is? You got it: a big fat NO! The written and spoken word carries great power. Somehow when you capture your dreams in a written format, you create accountability with yourself, and, to the extent that you choose, accountabilty with others. If you don’t like to write, then sing, paint, draw, or otherwise express your dreams somewhere, somehow!

Step 4: Make them Part of Your Life. Dreams that collect dust will never happen, at least not intentionally. If you want to create the business and life of your dreams, you must take your vision and have it FRONT AND CENTER in your life. What does this mean? It means seeing, hearing, talking, and walking your Dream Talk. Tell those know and trust about your dreams (extra credit for telling others!). Keep a regular diary of your dreams, and print and post an affirmation, symbol, or words/phrase about your dream where you can see them at least every day. You literally want to carve a new Dream groove to bypass the old patterns and crap that hold you down.

The key is the make your dreams a reality. Take them off of the shelf and breathe life into them. No one is going to do this for you. Someone once told me: if you don’t live the life of your dreams, someone else will for you. Not a pretty picture, and definitely not my choice!! Happy Passioneering!

As a passions and possibilities coach, I’ve heard just about every excuse under the sun for not pursuing one’s passions fully. Consider this: every single excuse drains you of energy and focus. So if you want a really slow death “by a thousand passion cuts,” try using several excuses at once. For those of you who want to perfect the art of passion-killing, try these ten sure-fire steps. They are guaranteed to dampen your dream-light forever!

Steps to Successfully Kill Your Passions

1. Remain completely unconscious of your dreams. Whatever you ignore will wither and die. So whenever you feel ANY urge to explore your passions, distract yourself immediately with food, TV, web-surfacing, shopping, or another great alternative.

2. Play the victim. It is not your job to fulfill your own dreams, especially since other people and situations are always bringing you down. Be sure to complain whenever you can, looking as mournful or disgusted as possible.

3. Pack your schedule with boring, tedious tasks. There are only so many hours in a day and so many urgent, unimportant activities to squeeze in! Passions are luxuries anyway, aren’t they?

4. Never ever expand your comfort zone. It’s really scary and even dangerous beyond what you already know and are good at. Remember: nothing good comes to foolish risk-takers!

5. Use “either/or thinking”. There are no gray areas! So either work hard and pay your dues, or frivolously follow your passions. Either earn a decent living, or be a starving, starry-eyed dreamer. You get the picture.

6. Put yourself last, always. Following your passions is selfish, egotistical, and wasteful. Much better for you to make others a higher priority than yourself. They will be happy and you won’t, which is the end-game.

7. Never share your dreams with anyone. They will ridicule you as a freak and renegade. It’s much safer for you to act “normal” and be “realistic” like the others. Silence is golden. Besides, no one really cares about your dreams anyway.

8. Remember: making money beats happiness every time. Happiness doesn’t pay the bills, does it? I can’t use joy to buy groceries, can you? Enough said.

9. Never appreciate yourself or others. Appreciation is highly-overrated. Passionate people are so sickeningly positive and upbeat. Thanking someone here, praising someone there – it’s crap! The world’s a tough place, so you gotta play tough.

10. Keep your confidence very very low. You really don’t deserve to have the life of your dreams. Only people who are rich, famous, or lucky get to follow their passions fully. You’re born, you die, and there’s this little snippet in between.

Congratulations! You’ve just accomplished all of the steps necessary to live a life of quiet desperation, like so many others in the world. So, until next time, unhappy trails and bad luck!

Whenever I ask anyone about their passions, their face lights up and they’re suddenly grinning ear-to-ear. They’re excited, and they just can’t stop talking about it. Then, at some point, their energy drops and they say something like “Oh well, it’s just a dream…I gotta be realistic.” If you look up the word “realistic” in the dictionary, you’ll find this definition: “resembling or simulating real life.”

Well, I certainly don’t want a life that’s simulated. Rather, I want one in which I’m expressing my full passions and possibilities, so that when I die, I’m carrying no unsung tunes! So what’s the secret to releasing your own passions? Does it mean sacrificing your whole life and becoming a full-time, card-carrying starving artist or struggling entrepreneur? Not at all! Below are three simple steps to move forward today in your own passion story. Be aware, be accountable, and be active. Together these three steps represent my AAA card for leaping into my passions, and I never leave home without it.

Step 1: Be Aware of Your Passions
Passions point to your purpose, especially if they mesh with your inherent talents. Most of us have many passions! Try this exercise: Make a list of 100 passions that you have. Keep going even if you get stuck halfway through. How might you express at least one of your passions each week? How about each day? What becomes possible in doing so? Often, expressing our passions takes a back seat to other, more urgent matters in our life. That is, life simply gets in the way. My challenge to you: declare today that expressing your passions is both important AND urgent. Observe what happens when you make this declaration.

Step 2: Be Accountable for Your Passions
No one can release OR block your passions…except you. Releasing your passions is a conscious intention from a place of accountability. Miracles arise when you take responsibility for your passions and stop playing the victim (e.g,. “My family always comes first.” “My work gets in the way.”). Even in the midst of a recession, you can choose to commit to expressing your passions…regardless. Find an accountability partner who will hold you to this commitment in a loving, supportive way. How do you find one? Simply let others know that you want one, and notice who shows up! Like the old adage: “When the student is ready, the teacher will come.”

Step 3: Be Active
Dreams will stay dream-like until you take concrete steps towards them, even if they’re baby steps. One woman described to me her dream of creating a restaurant with great jazz music. When I asked her about her next steps, she simply said, “I can’t think of any!” After a few moments of frustrated silence, she declared three small, but mighty steps to move forward. “Wow,” she said afterwards. “I feel like a huge block has been removed, and I can finally move forward.”

What being active does NOT mean:

• Doing it alone. So build a solid, powerful support team – your cheerleading squad, including your accountability partner.
• Being broke. Do not leave your day job unless you have at least one year of savings. Having a part- or full-time job that can fund your passions is an excellent strategy. So be grateful if you have one!
• Sacrificing your current life. Instead, it simply means that you make your passions a priority and find time, even small chunks, to express them. So leaping into your passions fully can happen gradually over time, easily, gracefully, and prosperously.