Behold!  Everything you ever needed to know about life explained by these Choose Your Own Adventure books.
(What in the tripped out cartoon hell is going on in this cover?)
Ah, the gems hidden in these pages.
If you aren’t familiar with them, this is what happens….

The book starts and gives you a little bit of story, and then it gives you options, for instance “If you decide to use the key to open the secret door, turn to page 15” or “If you choose to ignore the key and pick up the magic wand instead, turn to page 42.”

The book keeps giving you choices and decisions to make just like life.
It offers 40 possible different endings.
There’s high stakes in these books, half of the endings have you dying by being swallowed by dragons, sea monsters or aliens, and then a few of the endings have you throwing your body into a huge room of rare gold coins and jewels pillaged by pirates that now all belong to you.

I wanted what the pirates had.

So rather than take a chance of being charbroiled by a dragon, by some bad decision making, I did what the pirates would want me to do…..

I cheated.

I would flip through the book and find the last page of each of the 40 endings and decide which ending I wanted the best.

I then would go backwards from ending to beginning to see the right choices that I was supposed to make to get to the ending I wanted best.

This is how I live my life now.

Want to do this with me?

One – you’ve got to know what one of your endings is.  And by that I mean, what is one of your ultimate fantasies or goals?  What is one “destination” of where you want to be?

For instance, eight years ago, one of my goals was to do burlesque and make a living at it.

I imagined my ultimate fantasy….I imagined touring all over the world, I imagined being able to perform almost every night.

Two – then you take the story backwards….

how would I get from my ultimate fantasy of burlesque to where I was 8 years ago?

It would go something like this…..

Tour the world.

Get on television doing burlesque.

Get a regular gig in NYC, and find my burlesque home.

Teach Burlesque.

Get to know the burlesque community and producers, and get corporate gigs and private parties.

Reach out to people and get burlesque gigs in NYC.

“Kitten” (pick up performers’ costumes off the stages) to get practice on stage.

Come up with routines.

Take a Burlesque Class.

By knowing what your wildest dream is….you have a destination.

Go backwards to see the little places you have to hit along the way to get to that goal.

Then it makes your journey more clear and less ambiguous.

Now you’ve got your steps outlined and you can pick the right choices to move forward and get to the destination that you want.

And sure….sometimes there’s going to be an unexpected dragon.

But you’re a badass.  And I believe in you.

Your story doesn’t end until you say it does.

And PS.  You are the Hero of the Story.

Act like it.
And OWN IT.

Have an awesome weekend.  I love you guys.

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