Last week we drove from New York to New Hampshire to Vermont and then back to New York.

Phew!  Lots of driving, and lots of fun shows last week.

At Paul Smith’s College in the Adirondacks we had a crazy turnout. (see below: my crazy  face at the crazy turnout)

At Southern New Hampshire University we met our youngest/most awesome fan:

at Johnson State College we scoped out the lovely campus and ate delicious veggie pizza at The Hub:

And at Le Moyne we saw the most genius marketing scheme ever:

The RHA who planned the event, printed out our Facebook posts, and asked students to write their dreams on them.  Love!

After our week of touring Chip and I hung out in Ithaca and experienced the Ithaca Apple Festival and the Cayuga Wine Trail.  And we celebrated Chip’s 25th birthday with delicious food at the Ithaca Ale House. 🙂

This week we are visiting:

• 10/1/2012 Saint Bonaventure University (event details here)
• 10/2/1012 Hamilton College (event details here)
• 10/3/2012 The College of St. Rose (event details here)
• 10/4/2012 St. Michael’s College (Colchester, VT)

The Dream Share Project’s fall tour has begun!  This tour has us driving all through the northeast.

We visited Husson University and University of Southern Maine’s Portland and Gorham’s campuses this week.  But, when we weren’t driving (Maine is far from Maryland!) we partook in a few classic Maine activities.

We found Stephen King’s house!!!

And then we visited the Great Desert of Maine (aka tourist trap #1 in Maine, after visiting the L.L. Bean flagship store).

The story on the desert is that 1,000 years ago a glacier moved through the area and left behind a trail of mineral and sand deposits that created a desert.

Once the smarty family living on the land realized they couldn’t use the sand for glass or bricks or really anything at all, they popped a sign up on the highway in the 1900s saying “Come see the freak of nature- The Great Desert of Maine!” and charged 1o cents per family entry.

And so, the Great Desert of Maine Tourist Trap was created.

(awesome tour guide Pat)

And we’re just 2 of the 40,000 suckers tourists who visit a year.

But, that’s not all we did in Maine.  We also hopped on a ferry and visited Chip’s Aunt Kim.

And when I say hopped on a ferry, I mean we had to drive our car directly onto the ferry.  Gulp.

Chip was a champ.  Good thing, since he was the driver.

I felt more like this doggy:

Woof.  Despite my “jelly belly” (see: major motion sickness), and the fact that I was pretty sure our car was going to roll right off the back of the boat due to the 100 cans of canned beans in our trunk, we got some great views of the Maine coastline.

Once we got to Kim’s we were greeted with Maine lobsters, caught that morning.

and then she made us lobster rolls the next morning, with the leftover lobster.

Hands down, those are going to be the two best meals we eat this whole trip.  Also, uh, Aunt Kim can we come live with you please?

This is Willie, one of Kim’s westies.

We contemplated stealing him and using him as our mascot, but unfortunately, our car has no room for extras.

Oof. No more room for another passenger.  Maybe next time Willie.

This week we’re headed to:

• Monday 9/24, Paul Smith’s College (event details here)
• Tuesday 9/25, Southern New Hampshire University (event details here)
• Wednesday 9/26, Johnson State College (Johnson, Vermont)
• Thursday 9/27, Le Moyne  (Syracuse, New York)

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”

-H. Jackson Brown

We all get overwhelmed with our daily routines and obligations. Jobs, family, and chores can consume so much of our schedule that we feel like we don’t have any time left over for working on our passions. Here are 8 ways to find more time to work on your passion:

1. Create a schedule. Sometimes, it helps to have a visual representation of how you spend your time. List your activities for an entire day – write down what you are doing each and every hour. Are you truly busy from dawn til dusk? The odds are that you will find a few gaps of time that can be re-purposed to your dream.
2. Multitask. Find a way to pursue your dream during other daily activities. For example: listen to a podcast about your passion during your commute, write your business plan during your lunch breaks, read a book about your dream during dinner, etc.
3. Cut back on time-sucking distractors. Don’t get suckered into leisure activities that eat up your day – a reality TV marathon, an addicting cell phone game, bottomless blog browsing or website surfing, etc. Instead, use these leisure activities as a reward – if you work on your dream for 15 minutes, you can watch 15 minutes of TV, etc.
4. Do the math. Even if you have a full time job or are a full time student, you still have tons of time for your dream. Don’t believe us? Run the numbers: there are 168 hours in a week. If you work 40 hours a week and spend another 49  sleeping per week (7 hours a night is what adults need), that leaves you with 79 hours of time that could be used to pursue your dreams per week.
5. Increase your efficiency. Abraham Lincoln said that if he had 6 hours to chop down a tree, he would spend 4 hours sharpening his axe. Follow honest Abe’s advice – before completing a task, spend some time researching how you can work smarter, not harder.
6. Maximize your morning. What time do you wake up? What if you woke up one hour earlier and spent that hour working on your dream? This will make you feel productive right from the start of your day.
7. Share responsibilities. Do the activities that take up the majority of your time need to be solo activities? Could you share any of these time-consuming responsibilities with loved ones, co-workers, or friends? For example: you could trade-off grocery shopping and cooking duties with a significant other, work with a partner to split tasks on a project, ask a friend to help you with chores, etc.
8. Take ownership of your time. Time is your most valuable asset and resource. Do not waste it on things that are not moving you forward to where you want to go in life.
   

Fear of failure or rejection is a common roadblock that holds us back from going after what we really want.  But, we need to make lots of mistakes and slip-ups in order to learn, grow, change and get better.

Simply put, we cannot succeed without failing multiple times.

Failing is a part of the dream-chasing journey.  If you never try, you can never fail or succeed.  If fear of failure is holding you back, take a look at these famous failures:

Oprah Winfrey – was fired from her television news anchor job because she was told she was “unfit for tv.”

Theodor Seuss Giesel – Almost every American kid knows The Cat in the Hat or Green Eggs and Ham, yet 27 different publishers rejected Dr. Seuss’s first book To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.

Michael Jordan – The most famous name in basketball was actually cut from his high school basketball team.

Steven Spielberg – dropped out of high school and applied to attend film school three times.  He was unsuccessful due to his C grade average.

Stephanie Meyer – The author and creator of the multi-million dollar Twilight empire had her book proposal rejected by nine literary agents.

Louis Pasteur was told by his chemistry professor that his theory on germs was “a ridiculous bit of nonfiction.”

If you look at failure as moving you one step closer to success, or a learning tool, you cannot “fail.”  True failure is never trying, or giving up after a setback.

What could you achieve if you accepted “failures” or mistakes would be a part of the journey?

For two great exercises on dealing with fear go here.

Setting and reaching goals means putting in daily work.

But, sometimes you don’t want to do anything at all.  You feel lazy, unmotivated or bored.  To help you out, we’ve got ten handy, dandy techniques to help you get work done, even when you don’t feel like it.

Tens Ways to Get or Stay Motivated:

• Promise yourself a reward: “If I work on my business plan every weekday this week, I can go out to dinner with friends on Saturday night.”
• Take something away:  “If I don’t work on my business plan every weekday this week, I’m not allowed to go on Amazon for a week.”
• Shut down distractors.  No Facebook/Twitter/Internet/television/reading/fill in your favorite distractor, until I do ________________________. If all else fails, use a program like Leechblock, Antisocial or StayFocusd to limit your access to Internet timesuckers.
• Set an easy time goal to fulfill: Sit down to do work for 20 minutes.  If after 20 minutes you really want to stop, stop.  You might be pleasantly surprised that the hardest part was getting started.
• Create a way to track your progress. Googledocs is a free, online program where you can create spreadsheets to track your progress.  For an example of a spreadsheet I made to track my novel-in-progress word count, click here.
• Envision how good success will feel.  Let yourself daydream or visualize what your life looks like once you have reached your goal.  How do you feel?  What is the best part of reaching your goal?  How will you reward yourself?  Savor the vision in your head, and then get to work!
• Enlist a buddy.  Corral a friend into checking up on your progress.  Ask for emails/phone calls/texts to annoy you to get started or keep going.  In return, do the same for your friend.
• Post motivating quotes on a mirror/desk/laptop screen.  Sometimes the right quote, in a place you frequently see, is all you need to get moving.  Pinterest is an online bulletin board where you can collect motivational quotes to rev you up during bouts of laziness.  You can check out my “Motivation” board here.
• Change your scenery. Go to the library, a coffee shop, or another workspace that is more conducive to getting things done.
• Just start.  No excuses.  Get done what you need to do and move on with your day or night.