Chris Guillebeau, an American author and blogger had an audacious life goal. He wanted to visit every country in the world. It took him 10 years to travel 195 countries and he did it by age 35!!!
After achieving his own quest, Chris surveyed several others across the globe who had been toiling away on a quest of their own.
In his book “The Happiness of Pursuit”, he explains why pursuing a quest, big or small, would bring meaning and purpose to our lives. He also shares the personal stories of people pursuing similar quests, and lessons learned from their experiences.
Here’s a list of 15 such personal quests from his book “The Happiness of Pursuit” that I’ve found the most intriguing.
John Wallace
John “Maddog” Wallace set the world record for running marathons in most countries. He was a former smoker who could hardly run at all. But after his first ever marathon, rather than waiting a few months to ease back into running, he just waited for two weeks to participate again. His quest officially began at age 54 and he has now run 383 marathons in 132 countries!!!
Tom Allen
From his hometown in England, Tom Allen set out to cycle the planet. After receiving the news of a job offer, Tom knew that his life was set in place for the near future, but he felt a strange discomfort. That was the tipping point for him to embark upon this lifelong quest.
Nate Damm
Nate Damm, a 20 year old from Portland, Maine walked across America. He says that it was an idea that has been nagging him about two years before he decided to finally act on it. Over the next 7 months, he walked across the United states, covering 3200 miles.
John Francis
John Francis was an environmentalist. Angered and frustrated by an oil spill in 1971, he resolved to stop riding in cars. Few weeks later, when he had to visit a party 20 miles away, John decided to walk, instead of drive. He finally reached there by midnight.
Few days later, he decided to keep walking indefinitely. And on his 27th birthday, he decided to remain silent for a day. For 22 years, John Francis walked everywhere and he remained silent for 17 years!!!
Thomas Hawk
Thomas Hawk is a photographer with a day job and a family. His goal is to shoot and publish 1 million finished and processed photos !!!. Every moment of his free time is spent on this quest. He takes his camera everywhere and offers $2 to strangers on the street in exchange for taking their photo. Every finished photo is then shared online.
Jia Jiang
Jia Jiang was turned down in an investment pitch for his business idea. To prepare himself against similar rejections in the future, he took upon the “100 Days of Rejection” project. Every day he would make a series of bold requests from strangers and record the results.
The requests ranged from asking for a burger refill to requesting a box of donuts in the shape of Olympic rings at a popular fast food chain. He even asked a police officer if he could sit in his cop car once.
Sasha Martin
Sasha Martin, a mother from Oklahoma, had grown up living abroad and wanted to introduce her family to different cultures of the world. At the time, she couldn’t travel abroad, so she chose to cook a meal from every country instead. The cooking project lasted for 4 years. She cooked an entire meal from each country’s cuisine on a weekly basis, in the alphabetical order of countries, for 195 weeks.
Scott Young
Scott Young, author of the book “Ultra Learning” had been experimenting with fast learning for over a decade. He’s famously known for completing the 4 year MIT computer science course in just one year, without taking any classes.
Gabriel Wyner
Gabriel Wyner is an engineering student turned professional opera singer. He successfully learned four languages, using the immersion process, which meant that he spoke only the language which he was learning the entire time, including evenings and weekends. He now speaks 5 languages comfortably and is learning a sixth.
Julie Powell
If you’d seen the movie “Julie & Julia”, you’d know about Julie Powell. In 2002, she attempted to cook all the recipes from Julia Child’s cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. She cooked 524 recipes in 365 days. Her blog chronicling the entire project, gained a large following.
Judith Levine
Author of the book “Not Buying It”, Judith Levine and her partner, Paul , spent a year without any purchases except for necessities.
Stephanie Zito
Stephanie Zito has been working in the nonprofit sector for 15 years, but she was feeling discouraged. So she took upon a mini quest, that for an entire year, she’d learn about a new person or project that’s making the world a better place. She’d also make a $10 donation towards the cause. She called it the #Give10 project.
Giving $10 to a different person or organization everyday was hard, even for her. She even made a rule that she wouldn’t sleep at night until she had made the donation for that day.
Mark Boyle
Mark Boyle, author of the freeconomy blog, from Bristol, England, chose to live without money for more than a year. He says that helping people unconditionally, made them support him in return, without the need for money.
Miranda Gibson
Protesting against illegal logging, Miranda Gibson spent more than a year living in a tree in Tasmania. She climbed a 60 meter high eucalyptus tree and resolved to stay there until the illegal logging stopped. The loggers stayed away in fear of all the potential media attention. She eventually got down, due to a forest fire.
Laura Dekker
16 year old Laura Dekker wanted to undertake a solo sea journey across the world. She had sailed all her life and when her local government denied her the permission to sail, she sued them. Since she was 10 years old, she wanted to become the youngest person to circumnavigate the world. She eventually won the court case and completed her quest.
Summary
Embarking on a quest can be very rewarding and can be a meaningful experience. Apart from the practical aspects of achieving it, the pursuit itself will improve you as a person. Also its not necessary that everyone take upon a decades long quest, that requires major lifestyle changes to reap the benefits.
It has to be personal but it can be small. However, it must have the following characteristics to qualify as a quest.
- Have a clear goal and specific endpoint
- Be challenging
- Requires sacrifice
- Driven by inner calling
- Requires incremental progress towards the goal
Any quest you plan to undertake would require a significant amount of your time, money and energy, but looking at the experiences of people who have pursued them successfully, they definitely seem to be worth the effort.
Have a quest of your own? Or know anyone who does? Do let us know in the comments below.
Please subscribe here to get my latest posts delivered straight to your inbox.
