By E.B. Boyd

For every real-life maverick out there, there are a thousand dreamers, people with great ideas about how to make the world a better place but unsure of whether they should try to make them real. If only there were a handbook to show them the way. Now there is. Would-be world-changer: Meet your very own “How-To” guide.

How To Know If You’re The One

So you have an idea. You’ve tossed it around at parties. Your friends think you’re brilliant. (And, of course, you are.) But do you have what it takes to be a successful maverick?

The first thing to ask yourself, says career coach and “Have Fun • Do Good” blogger Britt Bravo is: Are you obsessed? Does your idea keep you up at night? Has it grabbed hold of you and won’t let you go? Your answer has to be a resounding yes. The life of a maverick is filled with overwhelming obstacles and roadblocks. You need extraordinary stamina and passion to keep going when it looks like the odds are against you.

Next, ask yourself: How much are you willing to give up for your idea? A few years back, journalist Cristi Hegranes struggled to understand the story of a Nepalese woman she was interviewing. In desperation, Hegranes gave the woman her notebook and asked her to write her own story. What came back was an eloquent piece of journalism. The young writer realized that local people could probably tell their own stories as well or better than foreign correspondents. She created the Press Institute for Women in the Developing World to create journalism training programs in Nepal and Mexico. Another institute opens in Rwanda this year.

Hegranes’ work around the clock does not draw a penny from the organization’s budget. Instead, she bartends on weekends to support herself. “I know all these people who have wonderful ideas about how to make the world a better place,” she says, “but when push comes to shove they’re not willing to make personal sacrifices to make it happen.”

While mavericks need drive and determination, they don’t necessarily need a soup-to-nuts roadmap. By definition, mavericks operate in unchartered territories. Few of the people interviewed for this story had concrete plans for how they were going to bring their ideas to life when they started out. Instead, they just strapped on some courage, pinned on some faith and trusted in their own ingenuity to find their way forward.

How To Find The Courage To Leap

Mavericks are paradigm shifters. They challenge conventional wisdom and accepted ways of doing things. Both are good ways to get people — even those who could be and should be your supporters — to tell you your idea will never work. Some even brand you an outright enemy to your purported cause. It takes a brave person to challenge the norm.

Where does that courage come from? Usually, from utter exasperation with the status quo. “I was so sick of going to conferences and hearing people talk and nothing ever happening,” says Emily Pilloton, a furniture designer and writer. Last year, she created Project H Design as a vehicle to help designers create products that improve the lives of people in the developing world.

Strategists Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus set off a firestorm in 2004 when they declared that environmentalism was dead. Collectively, the two had three decades’ worth of consulting with environmental organizations under their belt. When it came to climate change, however, their research convinced them that traditional environmental approaches weren’t going to work. The pair was so convinced that the old ways were broken that they took the audacious step of breaking party discipline and declaring their views at a conference of environmental philanthropists.

“Don’t be scared to get a good hate on,” says Shellenberger, who, with Nordhaus, founded The Breakthrough Institute as an incubator for their ideas. “If you’re going to create a big, positive, affirmative vision, you have to be incredibly critical of the status quo.”