7 Feb 2010

People often ask me where I get my inspiration to keep going- it's almost 4 years now that I've been trading my matchstick into an office.

One of the places I look to for inspiration is other people. And I've been meeting some pretty inspirational people lately!

One of those people is Jolandie Rust. She was telling me recently about how she got into her cycling adventure she is on at the moment.

Jolandie and me

Jolandie was travelling a few years ago with her boyfriend in Israel, and they decided to go on a cycling trip- to cycle the length of Israel. They headed off at 11:00pm one night, and cycled for over 24 hours non stop to get through a highly volatile and army guarded strip.

At one point in their cycling trip they ended up in a camp where they had run out of money and food, and were trying to work out what their next step was. They overheard a family camping next to them, who had hamburgers for dinner but no tomato sauce, and the children were complaining that they wished they had some sauce to go with their burgers. Jolandie had some tomato sauce- that was all they had left actually - but they had no burgers to have the sauce with. So Jolandie went and bartered with her camping neighbours to get a burger in exchange for her tomato sauce.

Since then Jolandie has returned to South Africa, and sadly it was the death of her boyfriend that got her to start living her dream. And she has a big dream!

Jolandie is going to set a world record by cycling 40 000km around Africa. She's going to become the first woman to circumnavigate the entire African continent on a bicycle. And that is inspirational to me! Very inspirational in that she's putting aside her own and other peoples fears and perceptions, and taking the action to make this epic trip possible.

She has just finished cycling for 100 days, covering 6000 km's, all on her own around South Africa, in preparation for her big trip around Africa. She's busy with the final stages of her planning to get things ready for her trip, which will start in about a years time, and take her nearly two years of cycling to complete!

She's quoted to have said "Get out of the pool of fear and take a swim in the ocean of possibility" which is so up my alley! I believe that anything is possible, and she's showing again that this is true!

So, Jolandie Rust, I salute you on your big dream, and on taking the action to make it happen. You're striking that matchstick and lighting a bonfire with it, not a candle, and hence have become an inspiration to me!

Connect with Jolandie here so she can inspire you too with her adventure around Africa:

Her website: http://jolandie.co.za
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jolandie.rust
Twitter: http://twitter.com/jorusty

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