I've noticed a lot of negativity in the comments of articles that are about people traveling, moving to another country or doing something that may seem or feel out of reach. It's brought back memories of a mindset shift I had a couple years ago.

Let me share a little bit of my story first, for context.

After nine years in management consulting, I decided that I wanted to switch careers and design my life around what makes me feel alive , that thing I have to share with the world that I love to do. And I wanted to write a book. I didn't know what my passions were and I didn't know how to go about finding them. So I started with what I did know...

I love to travel and I learn a lot from getting out of my comfort zone. When I wanted to make my own change, it felt natural to go travel and embrace the unknown... although it took me two years to sort things out and make the leap. There were scary parts about it, but they were scary in an exciting way.

The "write a book" part was much harder. I looked at people like Elizabeth Gilbert who inspired me with her travels, writing and purposeful approach to life. She was already an accomplished writer with a book advance when she departed on her Eat, Pray, Love journey. I was jealous. How much easier would this soul quest be if I had a book advance and wasn't terrified of my dwindling finances?!

With some encouragement, I started a blog anyway, guarding the little creative person within who felt totally vulnerable by convincing myself that the blog was just for information updates and was not my "real writing".

So I wandered around Argentina and into Chile and Peru too, writing about my experiences, noticing that they often brought me into nature and up mountains. I was feeling so alive and falling more in love with adventuring in nature. What would it look like to have a life with more of this?

I found myself meeting people who were born in the mountains and had been playing in them ever since. They were sponsored adventurers, wilderness guides, sought after nature/adventure photographers having been places and accomplished things that I was longing to do. This was clearly their "thing."

I grew up in suburban Chicago living a fairly conventional life. This all felt so out of reach. And I think it would stay that way if I remained focused on this ominous vision and what others had that I felt I didn't have... yet.

Then a friend who I had met in the mountains of Colorado happened to be passing through Argentina on his way back north from guiding kayaking trips in Antarctica. We had never really talked about my "old" life and while on a hike he asked what I had done for a living before coming to South America.

I told him how I had been in management consulting, specializing in change management/ corporate transformations; how my job was to understand a client's vision and help them get there by asking the right questions, understanding the impacts, creating and executing strategies to bring people through the desired change. He gasped and expressed what an awesome and applicable skill set that was to have for going through a personal change, such as I was. Until that point, I had not thought about it as directly as that.

I spent the next day writing out a list of questions I would typically ask a client and after answering all of them for myself, I had fifteen pages of information that would help me move my journey forward from a point where I was feeling a little stuck. I still revisit those questions and add to them and they still help... a lot.

Fast forward a year and this would become a cornerstone for what I was discovering my passions to be. I didn't have a book advance and I wasn't born on a mountain; those are things that I would have to actively pursue. But I did find my own "thing" that I had to start with, my interest in and experience with inspiring and facilitating change . It was so natural that for a while I had missed it as my "thing." Not only was it helping me, but it could also be a part of the gift that I was looking to give. And thanks to the courage I mustered to start my blog, I already had a platform to start sharing this.

There were a few big learnings for me:

• A lot of work, ups, downs, haves and have nots, mini successes and mega failures go into making dreams a reality.
• In full disclosure... I still get jealous of those who appear to be living my dream. I try to notice that energy and use it to learn something about myself. What am I longing for that I see in these examples? Jealousy without inspiration to act is useless and keeps us stuck.
• It is often easier to recognize what someone else has that we don't than to recognize what we do have. I do this all of the time. Now I try to remember that I don't know their whole story. They may just as likely be longing for what I had as my "thing" to start with.
• The big picture/end goal view of something can be so daunting to the point where it paralyzes us. While it is great to have something to work towards, it helps to focus on doable steps. What am I going to do next and why?

And we all start with something . If we have that nag in us, that call to adventure, then there is something within our current value system, skill set or natural being that we can use to take the next step... like the universe is tapping our shoulder to see it and use it.

Rather than seeing comments such as "must be nice" or "I would if I could," I would much rather see people sharing what their thing is and how they are inspired to get started. What are you starting with? What's your thing?