We recently connected with Rinus Pauel and have shared our conversation below.

Rinus, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

I will tell the story of how I quit my job attempting to make a world record, travel the world, learn foreign languages, meet my fiancé, move across the planet and end up switching career paths to live my dream live.

7 years ago I was living in Belgium and had just started working as a full time physical therapist. Fresh out of college and working hard at a successful career in pro-sports.

I was working in a well-established private clinic that had steady stream of pro-athletes. Somehow, I got lucky enough to get offered a crazy position that I believed would catapult my career in the pro-sports world.

For the next year I was to be the personal physical therapist for a professional ultra marathon runner. For 1 year long he would run a marathon and a half (avg. 40 miles) every day! The goal was to run from the south pole to the north pole. Starting on the antarctic peninsula before going from the tip of south America to the northern most point in Canada along the Pan-american highway.

There would be a whole team present, guiding this project because it takes immense planning and resources to do so. The twist was that the entire team, including the runner was Chinese and spoke no other language. My 23 year old self didn’t think of this as a problem, after all I was promised a translator at all times and personally had a knack for languages. This would turn out to be a huge misjudgment as the translator who was often not even present, spoke only entry level english and relied on Google Translate most of the time. And given the fact that Google Translate only works when you have service, which was severely lacking in the Andean mountains or the Patagonian Pampas, our efforts to communicate were severely hindered. This meant we relied heavily on body language and gestures to communicate. On top of that, I had to learn Chinese quickly.

Considering all of the areas we were to travel through, this project came with daily life-and-death risks. We were on the highway all the time, often in places where you should not be nor do you want to be. Sleeping or eating in shady areas. There were days were for hundreds of miles you will find nothing but desert. We had to traverse through the jungles and mountains in central America with enormous monsoons, 120 degrees F and 90% humidity. In Patagonia where the wind blew so hard we had to walk almost horizontally to keep from getting blown away. In El Salvador where people walked on the streets with shotguns and claimed murder was as common as daily bread. Through Nicaragua in the middle of a Civil War. Through Mexico where the risk of kidnapping was so high that even our Mexican driver dared not to venture further with us.

Sidenote, he turned out to be right, as the runner did in fact get kidnapped by the cartel. After telling the kidnappers of the feat we were attempting, they were so impressed that they simply let him go. But not before giving him a plate of tacos, a bottle of gatorade and asking for a selfie along with all the men lined up including their guns and machetes.

Often times we managed to traverse through dangerous situations following pure intuition and quick wits which felt like we were walking a tightrope over a cliff while trying to thread a needle. I learned to trust my instinct and listen to my inner voice. Not always did we escaped unscathed but somehow, through sheer willpower, blood, sweat, tears and a big dose of luck we managed to make it all the way through South America, Central America, the Mexican border, the US, to Canada.

I can write a book filled with crazy stories on the dangers we encounter along the way, the tears shed, the pain, the loneliness but also the laughter, the beauty or the numerous revelations and invaluable life lessons learned from this project. I jumped into this project not knowing what it would give me, but it shaped my entire life to come.

I managed to learn Chinese and Spanish, became very adept at running and treating running-related injuries which gave me a whole new angle to work with. In the years following the project, I was able to travel to China, I had made friends all over the world. However, what’s most precious to me and what I least foresaw is that along the way I fell in love with a woman who would later change my entire life. After the project ended we spent some time together in Arizona where she lived. She came over to Europe several times after I moved back to Belgium and coincidentally even pursued a study abroad program only 2 hours from where I lived.

After doing long-distance for several years and through the COVID pandemic, we sat with the question of how to join our lives together. Once again I was faced with the option to jump into a deep dark unknown and leave behind a lot of good things. I was to quit my job which I passionately loved, say goodbye to my comfortable life, and leave behind my friends and family to move across the world to the US. My previous experience with the running project had taught me that often times the biggest unknown and struggle nets the highest rewards. Plus I could not live with a burning “what if?”. So I made up my mind and left for America.

As often is the case with these adventures, it gets bad before it gets good. We now faced one of my hardest adversaries thus far – the American bureaucratic system. What we had thought would be a quick and seamless immigration process turned out to be a long, expensive, and cumbersome period filled with uncertainty and endless back and forth. I assumed that with my rigorous education and unique work experience that I would easily land a job. This, however, turned out to be a problem as getting my license to practice seemed near impossible. After 2 years of fighting bureaucratic errors and sinking all my savings into the process, I was still not able to work as a Physical Therapist.

Every time I tried to jump over a hurdle, three others seemed to come up. This started to take a huge mental toll on me and had it not been for the loving support and quick wits of my girlfriend, I would be nowhere. It felt as if life was telling me that there was another path for me to walk and I started to juggle with the idea to take a different approach.

I started out with trying to find various ways just to make an income, but nothing felt right. But truthfully, ever since I was a kid, I’ve always dreamt of becoming a musician. And even though I had been playing music so passionately my entire life, I never dared to pursue it professionally because it always seemed too risky, unstable and I didn’t really know how to turn it into a viable career.

But after 2 years of constant failures since my move to the US, I finally decided to go for it since had nothing to lose and everything to gain. I could build out my dream job and actually earn money while doing so. The beauty of the US is that there are opportunities everywhere, much more so than in Belgium where I had resided before.

Although I had been playing guitar for a long time, I still had a lot to learn before I could be up to par with the talent here, in order to be able to perform regularly and earn a living.

Now years later, after tremendous effort and the continuous support and love from my fiancé, I am living my dream life and can finally proudly tell my past self that it IS possible for me to earn a living as a musician.

I perform several times per week earning a steady income and am working hard on releasing a lot of original music to build out my career. I’m also working as a personal trainer, which allows me to continue my love for physical therapy in a different form. All the while living in a beautiful part of the country with the love of my life.

I’m so incredibly grateful to say that I am actually able to work as an artist. It is something I’ve only ever dreamt of in secret for several years. I’m filled with joy thinking of the opportunities and next steps I get to take in this incredible adventure.

All of this could not have been possible had I not taken a leap of faith into the deep unknown – a grand project, filled with adventure and dangers, not knowing if we would make it, unaware of the rewards and risks involved. Only to come out with a more beautiful life than I could have ever imagined for myself.

Rinus, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am performing live music in Arizona, mostly in and around Phoenix. With the rise in AI produced music, I feel like live music is such an important and genuine form of art that sadly is not as big anymore as it used to be.
I have a lot of original music and am working hard on releasing this in 2025. I make music that is a blend of blues, funk, soul, rock and some pop influences.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Go out, watch, listen and support your local scene. Many things have stagnated over the past decade because we have less incentive to leave the comfort of our homes. It feels as if less people are going out and engaging with their local scene.

The music industry is run by big corporations pushing music through paid marketing ploys that influence the algorithms that dictate what you hear. There is less and less space for smaller artists to push through.
Just showing up to support helps a lot, and on top of that obviously sharing and following artist to help them have a voice.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I still am a little, but used to be an extreme perfectionist and very self-critical. This hindered me a lot from showing my creative process and music to the world. I could always find something to say as to why I wasn’t ready enough to do something. I really had to fight through my instinct to shy away from public eyes and accept that if I want to do this I will be judged regardless. I accepted that it is better to just do and adapt and learn along the way, than to try and perfect something before showcasing it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rinuspauel.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rinuspauel/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rpauel1/
• Youtube: @TheRealRinusP