In June of 1997, on an otherwise uneventful day, I made a discovery that was going to change my life. I was doing some research on a new technology called RealAudio, which enabled you to listen to radio broadcasts over the Internet, when I found a recording of a speech given in Los Angeles only a few days earlier.

The speaker was Bran Ferren, who at the time was working for Disney’s Imagineering group. In his speech, Ferren made an outlandish remark that caught my attention: “The Internet,” said Ferren, “is the biggest technological advancement since fire.”

Ferren was a big believer in storytelling. In fact, according to him, storytelling was the most important thing in the world. The Internet, argued Ferren, introduced a new protocol, a new means for communicating – and telling stories – that would completely transform the way we communicate with each other.

Intrigued, I ran a search on Ferren. One result sent me to a university course taught by Alan Kay, one of the fathers of the personal computer. Kay called his course “The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet,” and invited a different guest speaker to teach each class. One of them was Bran Ferren.

But there was more. Someone had recorded all of Kay’s classes and uploaded all of the transcripts online.

During a marathon weekend with a lot of coffee and not much sleep, I finished reading the transcripts from all thirteen classes. The other guest speakers were as intriguing and thought-provoking as Ferren. I felt as though someone had just awakened me from my slumber. What Kay’s guest speakers had to say were, by far, the most interesting things I had ever read.

Over the course of that weekend it became clear to me what my passion in life was: interview the most thought-provoking people on the planet, videotape them and make these interviews available for all over the Internet.

Imagine being able to listen to the Dalai Lama talk about spirituality or Steven Spielberg talk about movies or Peter Drucker talk about management. There was so much wisdom in the world we hadn't been able to access till now and my new venture would change all of that.

Then came Monday and I went back to my day job. I didn't launch my venture, I didn't meet the Dalai Lama and I didn't interview Peter Drucker on management.

Peter Drucker died last month. And when I heard the news, the first thing I could think of was that I’d missed my chance. I would never be able to interview Drucker. What always seemed as a remote possibility was now a definite impossibility.

They say that life is what happens when you’re busy making plans. Drucker’s death reminded me of another passion I had harbored for many years. When I was a teenager I always wanted to become a writer. And as I long as I didn't have to actually write anything, the idea seemed like a possibility. When I’d really want to write, I told myself, I’d just sit down and do it.

Twenty years had passed and the possibility of me becoming a writer began sounding more and more like a work of fiction. Until I took a week-long course in theatre improvisation. The day after the course I woke up and spent 30 minutes writing a short story. The day after, I wrote another one and the day after, another.

Nine months and 150 short stories later I looked back with amazement on how, for the first time in my life, the impossible became possible.

But why did it take twenty years for me to become a writer? Why was I able to turn this passion into a reality, but failed to do so only a few years earlier? The answer was that when I started writing short stories I followed three simple rules. I don’t know if they'll work for you, but if you've got a dream you're thinking about turning into a reality, you might want to try them out.

Step 1: Find a trigger.
Taking the Improv course was a wacky idea. I had to fly half-way across the world and take a week off to do something I'd never done before. But without it, I would have never become unstuck. Sometimes it takes a new, immersive experience to change the way we see things.

Step 2: Find a muse.
Before I started writing, my friend Tami kept on telling me how I was already a writer; I just hadn’t realized it yet. Find someone who believes in your dream more than you do and listen to their advice.

Step 3: Give your word, then keep it.
I had a strict rule when I began writing my stories: Every day a new short story had to be sent to my audience. It didn't matter if I was too tired, too bored or too ill. Unless I gave my readers prior notice the day before, I had to send a story out. It turned out that giving my word to a group of people I knew changed everything. When you don't have a choice but to do something, you don’t waste time thinking about whether you should do it or not.

During one of his classes, Alan Kay (he of the university course) was asked a provocative question: What’s the best way to predict the future? Kay went silent for a while, then answered: The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

If you have a passion in life, but never found the time to make it a reality, now is a good time to start. Go do something you've never done before, find one person who believes in you, give them your word and then keep it. Your dream might just come true.