“Being bold is having the courage to listen to your inner voice and live in a way that makes you light up despite what other people think.”
Jake Heilbrunn is an author, blogger and speaker who, at the age of 20, is already living a pretty bold life. He dropped out of college after his first semester, backpacked around South America alone (without a phone!) and then wrote a memoir about what he learned. Off the Beaten Trail is a coming-of-age pilgrimage that led Jake to realize there are unlimited ways to live and that people can create their own destinies when they trust their intuition and take action.
“When we take a leap of faith based on our gut, based on our intuition, things tend to work out and we find the happiness in the pursuit of what we’re doing.”
By the end of his first semester of college, Jake was unhappy and unhealthy. He had a passion for traveling, but he was afraid of the unknown. Then a career counselor asked Jake two questions that changed his life:
“I realized that I was living a life based on the expectations of others. The life I was living and the life I wanted to be living were not in alignment.”
Two months later, Jake was on a plane to Guatemala with a backpack, no cellphone and very little Spanish. He spent four months backpacking through Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica so he could explore other ways of life and disconnect from a society dominated by social media.
As Jake learned to find happiness in the journey, he became a more process-oriented person. He adopted an intense morning routine, inspired by Tony Robbins, that helped him write 100,000 words in three months:
“With or without writing a book, writing is a very powerful way to process what you experience.”
Jake demonstrates the power of visualization to manifest a better (and bolder) life. By visualizing the future he wanted and taking bold action to achieve it, he manifested book endorsements from two awesome influencers that he really looks up to – Jack Canfield, author of Chicken Soup for the Soul and The Success Principles, and Chris Guillebeau, NYT Bestselling Author of The $100 Startup and The Happiness of Pursuit. Like a GPS system, visualization can keep you in route when you are heading towards a goal.
“Because I’ve been visualizing it, it’s like I set this GPS in my head … If you take conscious action that’s guided by vision there’s less re-routing.”
You can pick up a FREE Kindle version of Jake’s book on Nov. 2nd & Nov. 3rd by going to Amazon and searching for “Off the Beaten Trail: A Young Man's Soul-Searching Journey Through Central America”
It’s really awesome to see someone as young as Jake setting such a good example for people of all ages. He shows that life experience isn’t necessarily tied to how many years you’ve been here, but how intentional you’ve been with the time you have had. Pick up a copy of Off the Beaten Trail (Kindle version is free Nov. 2-3, 2016) and get inspired.
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Production & Development for The Bold Life Movement Podcast by Podcast Masters