Crazy Enough To Try

By Ryan K. Bonaparte

Crazy Enough To Try is a book written for those of us looking to incorporate our passions into our lives. Whether we find passion in our careers, our hobbies, our religion, or elsewhere, we're looking for something that calls to us, pulls us out of bed in the morning, and gets us excited for the day ahead.
Discussions around passion are often filled with platitudes and quick one-liners like, “Follow your passion and you’ll never work a day in your life,” or advice like “Give up on your crazy dreams and find a real job.”
That’s not this book. This book is about learning what passion really means to you, and how to realistically apply your passions in a way that works for you.
In this second edition, Crazy Enough To Try goes even further than the original, adding an additional four interviews for a total of ten full-length interviews with extremely passionate people to answer four key questions:
1.What is passion to you?
2.What are you passionate about?
3.How did you get to where you are in your journey?
4.How could someone else figure out his or her own passions?
These thought-provoking conversations are retold, each with radically different paths, each with ideas on what passion is, and how each person is incorporating passion into their life. From a twenty-something world traveler to a middle-aged executive, Crazy Enough To Try is filled with successes and failures from all walks of life.
What readers are saying:
“A must read if you are confused about what you want to do in life, or if you know what you want to do but are confused about how to proceed about it. You will not be disappointed.”
— Avery
“I loved reading about people’s journeys through life. It’s always good to know you are not the only one searching.”
— Hershelle
“Crazy Enough To Try won’t solve all your life problems, but it will equip you with the tools to really find your passion and incorporate that passion into your life. This book really helped to give me a better sense of what I want to do with my life.”
— Rick
Read Crazy Enough To Try to learn how those that are living a life of passion transformed themselves and how you can apply these strategies to your own life right now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ryan K. Bonaparte
• Release date: Apr 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301454037

Book preview

What readers are saying:

A must read if you are confused about what you want to do in life, or if you know what you want to do but are confused about how to proceed about it. You will not be disappointed.

— Avery

I loved reading about people’s journeys through life. It’s always good to know you are not the only one searching.

— Hershelle

Crazy Enough To Try won’t solve all your life problems, but it will equip you with the tools to really find your passion and incorporate that passion into your life. This book really helped to give me a better sense of what I want to do with my life.

— Rick

Crazy Enough To Try

Conversations in my search to live a passionate life.

By Ryan K. Bonaparte

Smashwords 2nd Edition

Copyright © 2015 Ryan K. Bonaparte

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

* * *

Thank you to all of my family and friends who supported me and provided guidance for this book.

A special thanks to my friends who volunteered to be interviewed and share their stories with the world. This book would not have been possible without you.

* * *

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

Part I

2. My Search

3. Sam

4. Nancy

5. Tarikh

6. Morgan

7. Dawn

8. Scarlet

Part II

9. Wade

10. Miranda

11. Matt

12. Karl

13. My Passion

Introduction

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

- Howard Thurman

When I first wrote this book, I thought that it would be a great starting point for a productive conversation about passion. A lot of the discussions surrounding passion focus on the need to follow your passion and do what you love in life.

That's not this book.

While I do encourage people to explore their passions and understand what they are, really it's incorporating your passions into your life that leaves you feeling satisfied. However you choose to do that is up to you. It could be through a hobby, a volunteer effort, or even as a profession.

The stories contained within this book are from people who don't just have thoughts about passion, but they have actively incorporated their passions into their lives.

The purpose of this book is to help you explore what you consider your passions to be and how they've already become a part of your life.

My goal is to have you take time after reading this book to reflect on what you've learned not just about others, but really about yourself. Are there stories that you resonated with? Some you completely disagreed with? Were there elements of one of them that you could take and apply to your own life?

In this second edition of Crazy Enough To Try, I've expanded the number stories beyond the initial six interviews I conducted. Since publishing the first edition, I have since spoken to dozens of people about their passions, and included a select few conversations in a new section.

I've also included an area for notes at the back of the book. If you feel the need to write in the margins as you read, by all means do what works best for you. But I've found that for myself and others, having a centralized place to go back to is extremely helpful in organizing my thoughts not only for now but for reflecting in the future.

Stay Passionate,

Ryan Bonaparte

[e-mail]

www.crazyenoughtotry.com

Part I

My Search

What am I passionate about? That particular question had been plaguing me for weeks, probably months by now. I thought about it a dozen times a day. While I was driving to work, while I was standing in the shower, while I was playing video games, or strangely enough while drinking cocktails in a nightclub. It didn't matter where or when, I was thinking about passion.

Some people think of passion as a whimsical concept for those who have too much time on our hands and not enough responsibilities. I disagree. I have witnessed it, and I know it to be much more than that. But when it came time to act on my passion, I was at a loss. I didn't know what I was passionate about.

I would see a musician, watch as she was fully taken over by her music as she performed and think to myself, This is passion and it comes through in every note. I would read articles about people doing amazing things in third-world countries, dedicating their lives to helping others and trying to even out societal inequalities through education or healthcare initiatives, and I would know without a doubt that they were passionate about their work. I would hear of people who wake up absolutely in love with life, anxiously awaiting what the day ahead of them would bring, thinking this may be the day they find a cure for a type of cancer or find a way to dramatically reduce computer file sizes, or whatever was their dream.

In every case, these people were doing what they loved. I wanted that. I needed that. I needed to be doing something I was desperately passionate about. First, I just needed to figure out what passion really was...

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Most of our career preparation comes from our formal schooling. After graduating from high school, I attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and majored in Materials Science and Engineering. I've always loved science and technology, so it seemed like a natural fit to go into engineering. What I soon learned was that I didn't actually know what engineering was or what I would love to do in such a wide and varied field. I followed along in the classes and did the work that was required, but I didn't know if that would prepare me for life after school.

As I neared the end of my college career, I still felt that I wasn't quite qualified to be an engineer, or if there was any job that I felt compelled to do. So I did what I thought was the best next step; I attended graduate school thinking that a master's degree would help me figure things out. But even after that, I still felt unsure about what I was supposed to do next.

I joined an engineering company and I found that I really enjoyed specific elements of my responsibilities. This was the first time where I had the chance to actually decide what to focus my energies on. I knew I had to pay close attention to what I liked doing as it would give me a clue as to what I was passionate about. I also started to think more introspectively, about what I learned throughout my formal education as well as my day to day life. As it turns out, the most significant experiences that have shaped my perspective on passion stem more from my personal relationships than from the various courses I've taken.

I've learned a lot of major life lessons watching people close to me. My mother taught me about showing compassion. Every time I thought I had seen the limit of human compassion, she found another way to surpass it. A long-time friend of mine taught me about perseverance through severe adversity. I'm not talking about having a bad day or a bad week or even a bad month. No, I mean the kind of adversity that makes you throw your hands up to the sky and laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. Life would rain down blow after blow, and yet she kept on going.

It comes as no surprise then that it was a friend who showed me the importance of passion. When I first met this particular young woman we were still in college and I had no idea we would become friends, let alone the impact she would have on my life. But we did become friends. And as our friendship grew, I began to learn more about her and what she wanted from life. She wanted to help people. She needed to help people. That was her calling. That was what she was on this planet to do.

She was so passionate about this calling that, at times, she would be outright frustrated. Frustrated at the fact that she was in school and not out helping people. Frustrated the serious inequalities apparent in society that no one else seemed to care about. And frustrated that life had given her problems of her own that were keeping her from being there for others.

As our lives progressed, our friendship evolved as well, and eventually we went our separate ways as many friendships do. The one thing that always stuck with me was this passion she had. It was this definition of passion that I had held onto when searching for what I knew to be real.

–--

It was a sunny morning in August. I was sitting on my bed with my computer in my lap, scrolling through webpage after webpage, link after link. I was looking for My Passion. After weeks of thinking about it, I had finally let myself do what was almost certainly a waste of time: search for it on Google.

Who ever looked for something akin to the meaning of life on Google? If they did, I doubt they found it amongst the latest viral YouTube video and links to the latest smartphone app promising to connect you with friends you didn't even know you had.