How Pursuing a Quest Can Bring Purpose to Your Life

In 2002, I walked into a cafe, laptop in hand, to begin a grand adventure.

My adventure did not involve swords, dragons, or golden cups; it didn’t require me to hike the Appalachian trail or steer a boat solo across the world. All I had to do was sip a cappuccino and tap away at my keyboard. After years of detour as a corporate lawyer, I was finally allowing myself to reach that mythical state of being I’d dreamed of since age four: becoming “a writer.”

Believe me when I tell you that I had no idea I would ever publish a best-selling book. My goal was simply to publish something— anything —by age seventy-five. That took the pressure off and put me in a state of near constant flow, and occasional bliss. I wrote a play, a memoir, poetry, and half a novel.

After three years, I started writing Quiet and knew instinctively that this was the one.

But the adventure began long before Quiet and its runaway success. The adventure was the simple act of trying to become a writer in the first place.

In September 2014, my friend Chris Guillebeau came out with a wonderful new book . A book about quests and adventures and about how doing that big crazy (or quiet and intimate) thing you’ve always dreamed of may be the best thing you’ll ever do.

I’ll let Chris tell you all about it…

How Pursuing a Quest Can Bring Purpose to Your Life

by Chris Guillebeau

We all like to adopt habits and make choices that improve our lives—or at least we like the idea of doing so. Small changes can lead to big results, whether it’s being mindful about what we eat or trying to get an extra hour of sleep. Improvement is good.

But what if there’s something bigger that you could do…something that would fundamentally change your life for the better? After thinking carefully about what you enjoy doing and what you find most meaningful, maybe you should think about making that thing the focus of your daily life for years to come.

Perhaps you should consider a quest .For the past ten years, I’ve been pursuing a grand adventure . Even as an introvert (or perhaps because I’m an introvert), I’ve always loved travel, whether it’s exploring new cities and losing myself in foreign markets or heading into a small village after an extended bus ride from a larger hub. After going to a bunch of places, I decided to create structure around those discoveries. Instead of just traveling for fun, I’d turn it into a mission: I’d attempt to visit every country in the world.Every country, no exceptions—and in case you’re wondering, there are 193 […]

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