Praise for Changing Course 
I receive many newsletters and this is hands down my favorite.
It is truly filled with useful and inspiring information,
not just fill and fluff.
~ Mary Anderson
Thanks for your wonderful newsletter. This is
absolutely the most helpful newsletter I have ever received!
The information is inspiring as well as practical. It's
wonderful to see someone who is actively following their
passion.
~
Barbara Garland
After reading your newsletter, I always feel
so much more confident to break out of this corporate prison
and live my life doing what I was truly meant to do. My
confidence grows more and more with each newsletter. Please
keep them coming!
~ Jennifer Schulden
I love reading the information that you share
and want to say THANKS for what you do. I am a corporate
refugee and I have been seeking to find other methods for
living without a JOB. I do have a JOB at the moment but I
would love to be doing other things. Anyhow, your newsletter
inspires and excites me. Thanks for what you do.
~
Barney Mayse
Your
newsletter has kept me going for over a year at my j-o-b,
and I am sure it had something to do with my decision to
accept a redundancy and just leave it, without quite knowing
what to do next. I don't think I would have done it had I
not known that it was possible to make a living following
dreams!! Also I owe it to your newsletter to have started
the Long Ridge Writers Group
course and I love it!
~
Armelle from Ireland
Taking the Leap: A True Story
Tomorrow is my last day as a lawyer in a
large Manhattan financial services firm. After stumbling
upon your website in 2003, and signing up to receive your
weekly newsletter, I began formulating an escape plan....My
plan consisted of figuring what I wanted to do after I quit
my job, and putting myself in a financial position that
would allow me to walk away from a well-paying, but
unsatisfying career. Here I am two years later, and I wanted
to give you a brief update.
Early this year, I crossed over the financial
independence threshold. No, I am far from wealthy. My
husband and I spent the last year practicing what it would
be like to live on only his income (I was the higher earner
for the past few years. After much trial and tribulation, we
finally started living successfully on his paycheck, and
creating an emergency fund with mine. All the while, I
received and read your newsletter. There were plenty of
weeks when we fell off the wagon, or maybe work wasn't so
awful, and I would lose my motivation. Inevitably, your
e-mail newsletter arrived to remind me of the great
possibilities that still existed for me if only I took the
leap.
You see, my parents, who were both high
school drop outs and immigrants to this country, wanted
nothing more than for me to become a lawyer. I worked very
hard to get through law school at night, all the while
working fulltime and struggling financially. When I finally
achieved what I thought was the brass ring, e.g., good
salary, fancy title, etc., it was a thoroughly disappointing
revelation that this was the end result of all the hard
work. It felt very empty and meaningless, further made so by
the birth of my two beautiful children. I just felt as
though I could not possibly have been put on this earth to
toil way for 12 hour days at a job that kept me away from my
family, and which I dreaded going to everyday.
Next week, I have a clean slate. I never did
accomplish the second part of my goal - to find my multiple
streams of income! I have a few possibilities, but I'm not
worried. In fact, it's pretty exciting. It's like getting
out of college again, and having a clean slate. I do not
know where I am going to end up, or what might come my way.
In fact, staying home with my kids right now may be the next
calling, and after that, who knows!
Thanks Valerie for all the great quotes, articles,
and inspirational pieces. I knick-named your newsletter
Staying on Course, because it had the effect of pulling me
back to my escape plan whenever I started fearing the
unknown again, or just got lazy. I will continue to read it
for ideas and motivation. Of course now I can read it on my
home computer in my sweatpants while my daughter naps,
instead of on my Blackberry while riding the 8:02 P.M. train
back to the suburbs from work. Regards from the other side.
Ursula Clay
Morristown, New Jersey
live life on purpose
