What happens when we ask 23 women the same questions about dreams, fear, failure, success and how they want to live their lives?

Quite simply, we receive 23 completely different answers :) And perhaps that is one of the most fascinating discoveries of all. Yet some intriguing patterns still emerge. Dreamers & Seekers does not try to tell you how to live well. Instead, it reveals just how many different ways there are to do it.

Through the true stories of 23 women, the book explores how dreams are born, how we lose them, how we find our way back to them and what happens when we finally dare to act on them. Among these women are entrepreneurs, artists, creatives, therapists, coaches, teachers, writers and seekers. Some have spent decades building what they believe in.

Some are only now trying to make a living from their creativity. And there is also a nine year old girl Liz, who is just beginning to write her first stories but already knows exactly what she wants to become: a writer. This book is not interested only in the glittering final chapter of a success story. It explores what happened before. How does a young woman’s first idea about baby swimming, together with her dream of owning a pool, eventually grow into a franchise business? In fact, she can also proudly count the Young Leader of the Year Award among her achievements.

At 23, Vivien Varga left college for the second time because she knew she was not where she belonged. A friend introduced her to baby swimming, and something began there that she could never have known would lead so far. Her book, Hogyan indulj el a saját utadon (How to Start on Your Own Path), was also a huge source of inspiration for me personally.

And Petra?

How can someone discover, almost by accident, the vocation she had been searching for until the age of 29? One woman had spent years feeling as though she was living her partner’s dream instead of her own. Then a friend casually invited her to join a makeup course, and she fell in love with the craft. Years later, she was named Wedding Makeup Artist of the Year two years in a row.

Oh and Zsuzsa?

How does a city based HR professional become a coach, kitesurfer and apartment owner whose life is deeply connected to Fuerteventura? It all began with a cheap flight to an island she knew almost nothing about. Then, on a windy day, she saw a group of kitesurfers out on the ocean. Two months later, she returned to learn. At 38. One of the first lessons kitesurfing taught her was not really about the sport at all. When everything begins moving in the wrong direction, sometimes the answer is to let go of control. Update: Oh, and she now organises creative writing retreats too!

And what happens when someone cries on her thirty third birthday because she still has no idea what to do with her life? At 34, she might discover clay. Júlia’s story explores what it means to find a creative calling later in life. It also reveals what the perfect images on Instagram rarely show: the reality of being an artist, entrepreneur, photographer, marketer, packer and salesperson all at once, and the slow process of building a sustainable life from a passion.

We meet a circus performer who was captivated by her brother’s acrobatics as a child, an artist who created 350 individual ceramic leaves for a single installation, family businesses, writers, artists and women who have not yet reached the end of their stories.

This book is not only about those who have already made it. It is also about those who are still searching. Those who are beginning again. Those who are afraid. Those who have an idea but still have no idea whether it will work. This is precisely why the 23 stories sometimes contradict one another. What worked for one person did not work for another. What one woman calls failure became the foundation of a new life for someone else. Some believe in perseverance, while others believe in letting go. Some found their path early, while others did not even begin looking for theirs until after the age of 30.

There is no single formula. And perhaps that is one of the book’s most important messages.

But Dreamers & Seekers does not end with the twenty third story. At the end of the book, readers are invited to turn some of those questions towards their own lives through a collection of creative self discovery exercises. They begin working with their own. The exercises include reflecting on the path already travelled, imagining the future, exploring emotions and habits, creative visualisation and even a zombie film.

Yes. Zombies. One strategic idea from World War Z, known as the Tenth Man Rule, inspired a self discovery exercise. What would happen if we applied this question to our own dreams: “What if everyone is wrong?” What could happen that we have not anticipated at all? What might threaten our dream? And what could we do to ensure that an unexpected obstacle does not force us to abandon it? This is how a zombie apocalypse becomes a strategy for protecting your own dreams.

The exercises in the book include Life Script, Map of My Heart, Treasure Map, Rainclouds and Sunshine, The Strategy of Dreams, Well of Emotions, Letter from the Future and Habit Chain. Dreamers & Seekers is therefore much more than a collection of interviews. It is not a conventional self help book. It is not another guide promising to teach you how to become successful. It is more like 23 open doors.

You can step inside other people’s lives, decisions, mistakes, fears and dreams. Then you can close the book and ask yourself the very same questions. What would you do if you did not doubt yourself? What would you try if you were no longer concerned about what other people might think? And what story would you begin writing if you finally believed that yours mattered too? This is not a book of answers. It is a book of questions, real lives, unexpected turns and different possibilities.

Read their stories. Question their answers. Find your own.

Sometimes the story that changes our life is not the one we read. It is the one we finally begin writing for ourselves.

And I have not even mentioned what Louise Hay, Rick Rubin, Elizabeth Gilbert, Virginia Satir, Paulo Coelho, Simon Squibb and many others are doing in its pages.

And if you’d like to continue their stories with your own, you can find the book on Amazon in several countries. Just search for Dreamers & Seekers.

Shall we begin?