The 2016 Start-A-Blog Challenge is Live + A Chance to Have Your Work Featured on Live Your Legend!

18 Oct The 2016 Start-A-Blog Challenge is Live + A Chance to Have Your Work Featured on Live Your Legend!

“Nothing feels better than knowing who you are, living it and sharing it with the world.” –Scott Dinsmore

As some of you know from Scott’s TEDx Talk the Live Your Legend framework for discovering and doing “Passionate Work” consists of 3 pillars:

• Pillar 1: Becoming a self-expert
• Pillar 2: Doing your own impossible
• Pillar 3: Surrounding yourself with passionate people

And here at LYL, since we believe in taking small steps to create big leaps, we think there is no better way to contribute to all of these pillars than to begin one simple daily habit—writing!

And that is why we launch a blog challenge two times per year—to give you that little extra nudge to get you one little (or big!) step closer to living your legend!

JOIN THE BLOG CHALLENGE TODAY!

But, Wait, Why Writing?

Great question indeed… Well this Start-a-Blog (SAB) challenge contributes to those 3 pillars in a few ways…

Pillar 1: Why the SAB Challenge Leads to Self-Discovery

“If you’ve never done anything to take the idea from you head into the world, there’s a good chance the decision is more about fear than logic.” –Jonathan Fields

Scott certainly believed that writing was crucial to better understanding yourself. Live Your Legend—this now-global community only exists because he decided to start a blog and begin writing.

And writing has been huge for me too over the past year. I have always kept a journal, but got much more serious about it with when dealing with the major change and challenge of losing Scott in 2015. So writing helped me clear out all that was going on in my mind, which was a great discovery tool in itself.

But by choosing to write posts for Live Your Legend (which, by the way, I never thought I could do!) helped me take that discovery a bit further—because as they say, the best way to really understand something is to teach it to others. So in taking what was going on within me and determining how I could distill it down to relate to challenges everyone faces (i.e., overcoming fear instead of just overcoming grief) made me take that understanding to a whole new level.

When you get the thoughts from inside your head out into the world, you begin to understand things better about yourself. You begin to see patterns. You begin to notice feelings. You begin to gain awareness—and all of those lead to taking action!

Here’s what a few past challengers had to say:

“I have not experienced the “flow” feeling, time disappearing and just been lost in a task in soooo long. I have been postponing writing for years, with tons of excuses, even though I have known it was exactly what I wanted and needed to do. Although I am still afraid of showing myself, I have thrown all fears aside and started writing, resulting in these posts containing very personal information about me. Yet, the liberation, to have finally put them into organised words in my space, my “shrine”, feels so fulfilling. I did [this] FOR ME, for what I believe in, for what I want to build, for finding out more about me. I have come to feel a satisfaction unexperienced by anything I have ever done before. I feel renewed and empowered… this has lifted me higher in my journey of self discovery, specifically of self-acceptance. Thank you.” –Karina

“The most valuable thing that I learned in doing this is that I have a voice that is worth hearing. I had known, previously, that I have a voice and that some people like listening to it. What I didn’t realize what that my voice had value and was worth listening to. This helped me to realize that. It also made me think about what I will be leaving for my children. They will be able to look back at this and get a better understanding of who their mother was and what she was all about.” –Toni

JOIN THE BLOG CHALLENGE TODAY!

Pillar 2: Why the SAB Challenge Shows You That You Can Do Your Own Impossible

“Competence becomes confidence, that feeling of radiant ease. Like you’re doing something you are truly extraordinary at”. –Jonathan Fields

Many of us don’t think of ourselves as writers—because, well, it sounds so professional. I certainly never did—and in a way still have a hard time saying that. But I write… therefore I guess I am.

However, as I mentioned above, I never thought I could craft articles that people would want to read, nonetheless ones that would actually help people! It wasn’t until I decided to write a post to this beautiful community just a few weeks after Scott’s passing that I realized I could do many things I didn’t think I could do… I wanted to thank people for the love and support they were giving me, so wrote my first blog post.

Then I began to get messages of how my post helped people who were going through hard times. So I wrote another. Then another…

Since then gaining that confidence and proving my own impossible in one area led me to continue to do things that I would have thought were impossible, like create courses, give speeches, and travel the world on my own. It was a wave that once started, just kept gaining momentum. Who knows what impossible is next?!

So while you may not see yourself as a “writer,” you never know what wave you might create when you get those thoughts onto paper—or computer. 🙂  And you don’t have to take my word for it, check out what past challengers had to say:

“The most valuable thing I’ve learned since starting this blog is the value and importance of sharing my stories. By modeling openness and vulnerability, others also feel permission to share their stories. And when this happens, authentic connection is possible. Finally taking the leap and blogging has given me the courage to keep going and pursue my dreams.” –Vanessa 

“The most valuable thing in starting a blog for me is that I will now try not to give up on my life and enjoy something that once seemed impossible for me…  Before starting a blog, I never thought that there would be a solution to find a better way for my life. I felt that I was in a maze that didn’t have any exit and I would live in this maze forever. But after having started a blog, I started to think about how I want to live my life. Today I’m still in the maze but the difference between before and after starting blog is that now I’ll try to find an exit—and I believe I can find it!” –Hiroyo

JOIN THE BLOG CHALLENGE TODAY!

Pillar 3: Why the SAB Challenge Causes You to Surround Yourself with Passionate People

“The greatest creations, most legendary relationships, works of art and lives have all come from people who were willing to live and act in the face of uncertainty long enough for greatness to emerge.” –Jonathan Fields

We believe so deeply in the power of this challenge that we offer it twice a year. But what began as a belief has turned into living proof—because of all that you guys have shown us!

Over the past year, we have had over 5,500 people join us for the challenge. Talk about having a group passionate people in your corner! And the support, encouragement and collaborations that we have seen as a result of this challenge in our closed Facebook group have been nothing short of inspiring. Here’s what a few previous challengers had to say…

“I felt totally connected to a network of people just like me! It was so awesome! I found my people. 🙂 People like me, with a huge desire to give themselves, their hearts and their energy to the world, to contribute, to make a difference and make the world a better place; people who love to write and read, to think, and are super interested in self-improvement! I opened up, connected myself to my pen name and made like-minded, super supportive friends! I am so grateful to LYL for providing this opportunity and experience!!!” –Rania

“To be specific and concise: I learned about myself. The powerful result: I overcame an obstacle that had been preventing me from writing and restarted a writing habit I had gotten away from. Writing for the challenge helped me process the changes going on in my life currently as well as helping me see a path forward for creating a travel/photography blog. More than anything I enjoyed reading the blogs, seeing the different formats and learning along the way. Reading some many of the other blogs only made mine better. I couldn’t be more thankful for the LYL community, all the help and encouragement from the LYL team and the other participants was amazing.” –Becky

So there is no denying that by taking on this simple challenge, you also are taking on a community of supporters.

Are you in yet?

JOIN THE BLOG CHALLENGE TODAY!

No One Does Anything Alone

Well, if not, I have one more reason to add. And that is the fact that…

We want to hear your voice!

I’ve stood at the forefront of LYL and proven to myself that I am capable of more than I ever could have imagined. And this community has been incredibly supportive over the last year—for which I am beyond grateful!

But I also recognize that while I have been able to write about many different topics over the past year, there are topics Scott covered that I am unable to. In some ways, I work incredibly different than him—hence the reason he called me his Chief Balance Officer!

And the last thing I would want to do is to strip you guys of the opportunity to have a wide variety of information to help you find and do work you love. I also know that many voices are far more powerful than one. And I see this community as the heartbeat of LYL, because you guys are the ones that are out there discovering deeper insight, doing your impossible and making strides towards living your legend day in and day out.

Now, don’t get me wrong, you’ll still be hearing from me plenty! But in my opinion, the mission of LYL (changing the world by doing work you love) is far more powerful than any one voice, so while Scott started this platform and I am nurturing and growing it, I see the future of LYL as a community driven by all of you!

And that is why we are giving you the opportunity to have your voice heard on LYL—meaning that we will feature the “best of the best” articles that are submitted. I certainly can’t wait to hear what you all have to say about living your legend!

The Free Challenge Includes:

• A video tutorial on How to Start a Blog in Under 10 Minutes with Zero Tech Experience
• A free 7-day email course to help you build a successful writing habit in 10-20 minutes a day
• A new writing prompt each day focused on helping you find your passions & do work you love
• Private insight on our favorite tools & process for writing and building the LYL blog and business
• Access to our interactive writer’s & creator’s community for built-in accountability and support (with over 4,600 members)
• The confidence that you finally acted on an idea you’ve probably had for years!

So if you choose to join us for the 2016 Blog Challenge, we’ll send you some writing prompts and then give you the opportunity to have your voice featured on LYL. I see it as a win-win for this community to hear from the legends within Live Your Legend!

JOIN THE BLOG CHALLENGE TODAY!

Are you in? Let us know by commenting “I’M IN!” below.

I look forward to hearing what you have to say and watching you take that next small step.

See you on the inside,

–Chelsea Dinsmore

P.S. Not sure you are savvy enough to start a blog? No worries. We have this video tutorial that will get you set up in under 10 minutes!

P.P.S. A few more things to note:

• Joining the SAB challenge is free of charge should you choose, although we do suggest a Bluehost hosting platform, of which we are a proud affiliate.
• By joining, you will be entered into a 7-day writing course. At the end of the course, you’ll then be given a writing prompt to guide your submission of an article, for the opportunity to be featured on LYL!
• In order to have your article featured, you must join the challenge by midnight PST on October 24, 2016.
• It is completely up to you whether or not you choose to submit your article—so even if you don’t want the grand prize, you can still join the challenge.
• You can join the challenge if you have an existing blog; otherwise, we will walk you through step-by-step of how to set one up.
• We will be following up the blog challenge this time around with a special Q&A with blog and online business expert, Corbett Barr of Fizzle, to help you take the next steps to build your blog, should you want to!