Lifestyle Design Strategy: Get In Touch With The Freedom To Live!
Are you ready to design your life on your own terms? Getting in touch with your freedom to live can help you imagine a future you never dreamed as well as well increase your motivation for following your passions in life.
Before beginning the life design process, it’s a good idea to get in touch with your true freedom, as it can open possibilities that help you create the life you’ve always wanted.
As evolving, changing creatures, our lives are not meant to be bound or constrained. You are free to be whomever you imagine for yourself, and no one should limit your freedom to choose what you do in life. You have nothing but freedom to build the life you can love, and the only thing stopping you is yourself.
Getting in Touch with Your Own Sense of Freedom
Here are a few strategies to help you tap into your sense of freedom, which can unlock your creativity and help you find fulfillment in life.
1. Create Unscheduled Time
I like to leave some empty spaces in my calendar this allows me to explore my interests and do spontaneous things. Give yourself a morning or evening to do either absolutely nothing or whatever comes to mind that day, but don’t place any expectations on these hours other than they are yours. Remember to use it for yourself, not to catch up on other things or finish your to-do list. To learn to enjoy freedom, you have to have the space for it.
2. Find a Place Where You Can Feel Small
Get outside to enjoy nature, which can help you realize the immensity of the world. Think long walks in the woods, being outside among rolling hills, or sitting at the edge of the ocean. Find somewhere in your area where you can experience the sheer power of nature, the immensity of scale that comes with the living, breathing planet.
This can not only help you relax and breathe a little deeper but also helps put yourself into perspective with the rest of this giant rock we call home. This can bring you healing and power to enjoy the freedom you have in life.
Another option to this is to go to a place that makes you feel like a child again, for me this is going to Disney or a children’s movie. Recently, we went to see Mary Poppins at the theater. I felt like a little kid sitting in the theater and transformed to whimsical thoughts.
3. Lifestyle Design Means Getting in Touch with Yourself
Spend time regularly doing things that are just for you. Connecting with yourself, paying attention to your needs, and spending time alone with your thoughts are all excellent ways to tap into your passions and reflect on where you want your life to take you.
Spending quality time with yourself, without having to answer to others about how you are spending your hours, is an essential part of realizing what aspects of life are limiting you and how you can free yourself from those constraints.
4. Break Away From Those Who Try to Control You
If there are people in your life who are trying to push you in specific directions, even when your heart is resisting, it is time to let them go. While support is important when designing your life, it is equally essential that those in your life are there to listen and provide love, not to force you where you don’t want to be.
If you have controlling people in your life, you need to be strong and break ties, which will give you the freedom to be true to yourself.
5. Expect the Best Outcome
Set yourself up for success by expecting the best result. Too often we think that only the mediocre or lackluster is what we deserve. That encourages you to accept “good enough.” Demand the best.
6. Create Your Own Cheering Section
Surround yourself with successful people and let them know about your goals. Look for “Creative Champions” as Julia Cameron would call them. These people understand the importance of goals and will congratulate you as you work through obstacles to achieve them. Distance yourself from “Poisonous Playmates,” people who constantly throw a wet-blanket over your ideas and goals. These two terms come from Julia Cameron’s book the Vein of Gold.
7. See Yourself as Successful
Identify your unique qualities and recognize that these are the tools that lead you to success. Don’t dwell on weaknesses, just find someone who has those strengths and put them on your team.
You Are the Master of Your Own Life
If you feel like your life is dictating your choices, then you need to adjust. You can either change your attitude to accept this reality, or you can change your life to make it what you want.
Only you can know what makes you feel free, and only you can make a choice to change your life. Gain clarity about what freedom really means for yourself, then you can design a life that helps you achieve that sense of freedom.
But what if doing the same thing each day won’t lead to your goal?
What if there are multiple steps? Multiple milestones. This is a Journey Goal.
Before we launch into journey goals, it’s important to figure out what your goals are.
The Problem of Too Many Ideas
Many entrepreneurs have the same problem that I have, where I come up with too many ideas. Everyday, I have at least 10 ideas for a new business or a new product or a new service. This on top of my service business and role of mother. If you read James Althucher’s Choose Yourself, he says to write down 10 ideas a day. So I was doing this. This is not a bad habit but it can lead to mental overwhelm if it is not managed.
A Better Way to Capture your Big Lofty Ideas
Ideas are awesome but if you are not capturing these ideas in a system then you may as well just throw them away. Buy a simple spiral notebook, start an Evernote notebook or write them in my new book, Design Your Lifestyle Roadmap . Consider this your modern day dream catcher.
But don’t stop with just the idea. Write about why this is a good idea and who would benefit. You may find repetition in your idea notebook. The same idea pops up in your mind repeatedly. This is a good thing. As my Missouri heritage says, “The cream rises to the top”
Big Lofty Ideas
One morning on my sunrise walk, trudging along feeling overwhelmed. Just overwhelmed, with all that I had to do. Walking along, looking at the sidewalk and deep in thought. A little voice in my mind said, “Look up….hurry look up.” So I looked up into the sky and saw a huge hot air balloon rising up over the lake I was walking around. I watched it quietly and gently rise higher into the sky. I started to walk again and suddenly another balloon glided into my view. It was just as colorful and graceful as the first one that graced my eyes. Stopping and admiring the sight of two balloons in the air. I began walking again and a third balloon rose from the horizon, this time I was not surprised. While admiring the three beautiful balloons against the pink sky. I heard the little voice again say, “All your ideas are beautiful, Kimberly but you can only launch one at a time.”
So I went back to the idea notebook and I looked at all those ideas I had dumped in there. I landed on writing this book as a starting point for women entrepreneurs who like me may struggle with figuring out what to do next on their entrepreneurial journey.
Designing Your Life as a Journey
Think of it this way: If you plan to take a road trip and want to get a car first, getting a car that can operate well in different terrains will allow you to take a number of different routes to your destination. Even though the destination doesn’t change, you might not want to take the interstate the whole time.
This line of reasoning is particularly important for young people. You are already expected to know what you want to do for a living when you are in high school, but many people change majors at least once while in college. This is often seen as a problem because what you do for a living is seen as the goal, when the goal should really be living comfortably and being happy – a goal that is not limited by your profession. If you have a plan that is dedicated to eventually achieving financial independence, changing your major or your career path can be seen more as taking a new route rather than not knowing what the plan is.
Your Big Someday Goal Should Be A Little Vague
When considering your most important goals, it is important to make them somewhat vague. The grand-scheme of what we want for our lives isn’t likely to change too much over time, but how we expect to achieve it can change drastically. Of course, that’s okay, but it’s best to make plans that can fit different trajectories or roads to getting there.
Leave Room In Your Design to Change Roads
Of course, what career path you take isn’t the only way that your path toward your goals can change. Many people plan their lives as though they were the only person involved, which is never the case. You should be the focus of your life plan, but when designing your life, never forget that there are other people who can help you in any number of ways.
Include Family & Friends while Designing Your Life
Family may be able to offer financial support. Friends or romantic relationships may be able to offer emotional support. Teachers, bosses, mentors, and other figures can offer advice, access to new resources, or change the path that you take to reach your goals. Be careful about neglecting your loved ones while designing your life. It may seem like it allows you to have a clearer plan with fewer variables. After all, it’s easier to plan what you will do than it is to know what people you will run into or how they will impact your life. However, not allowing these sorts of influences into your life will mean passing up on opportunities and resources that can take you to your goal, even if it means taking an eraser to part of your life’s design plans.
Don’t Carve Your Map in Stone
As in the previous section, the best thing to do is to never have your design plan set in stone. The important thing is keeping the main goal in sight and having a plan that will let you take the best route to that goal, even though you may not know the best roads to take when you sit down to make your plan. You may also find interesting places to stop along the way.
Focus on Your Big Someday Goal but Be Willing to Change Your Path to Getting There
Designing an effective life plan means that you need to keep your goals in mind. The more you focus on your life goals, the more you can tweak your plans to achieve them. It can be tempting to watch the variables to the point that you have no design at all, but this too is risky. Be prepared to go back to the drawing board but be sure that there is always something on that board.
Instead of setting New Year’s Resolutions, I like to set habit goals. A habit goal is a regular tendency or practice.
Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting S.J. Scott who wrote the books Habit Stacking and Bad Habits no more. One of the things that S.J. said that I thought was pretty brilliant was “Sometimes it’s the smallest of actions that can make the biggest difference in someone’s life.” We were discussing how the simple act of sending a loving text message to his wife everyday was so important to her.
“Sometimes it’s the smallest of actions that can make the biggest difference in someone’s life.” S.J. Scott
What habits can you create in your life to be the kind of person you want to be? It may be just a quick and easy habit like S.J. shared.
You likely have many habits that you are regularly practicing. Many of these habits you perform on a daily basis, maybe unconsciously and a part of your regular routine. Unfortunately, some of these types of unconscious habits that you have built up over time are typically not the best types of habits.
Good habits, in particular, need to be developed and developed intentionally. Developing good habit goals can create a new, fresh, and better you. Here is why you should reinvent yourself by starting good habits today.
The Benefits Of A Good Habit Goals
Habits are small activities that define or create who you are over time. The benefitof developing good habits is that it creates and define good attributes in youover an extended period of time. A good habit is like interest building in abank. Over time, the interest continues to grow without much effort on yourpart. Likewise, a good habit continues to develop character and attributes inyou, without much concentrated effort.
Developinggood habits also takes the “work” out of doing the things that you want to do. Whensomething becomes routine or automatic, it no longer becomes work. It is justsomething you do. Being able to routinely perform activity or tasks withoutmuch effort allows you to put your energy and focus into other areas of life. Developinggood habits gives you the benefit for accomplishing more with less effort.
Repetition And Time Is The Key To Good Habit Forming
Developinga good habit may take longer than you think. When developing a new habit, thegeneral rule of thumb has been about 21 days. This time frame was developedfrom Dr. Maxwell Maltz work in the 1960’s with amputees adjusting to the lossof a limb.
However,a more recent study from Lally et al, entitled How are habits formed: Modeling habit formation in the real world, indicates that it takes an average of 66 days for an activity to become “automatic”. The study also indicated that missing a daydid not lead to negative effects to developing your habit, but that the morerepetitions earlier in your development produced larger effects.
Developinggood habits is both a marathon and a sprint. Start your habit forming strongwith consistent repetitions in those first few weeks. Then turn your eyes tothe horizon and settle in for the time that it will take to develop your habit.
New Habits to Start in the New Year
Thereare lots of good habits that you should develop for yourself. Here are few thatyou should consider:
Exercise
Instead of setting a goal of losing weight try setting a habit goal exercising 30 minutes a day. This is the obvious good habit that you should be developing. The American Heart Association states that you can significantly improve your cardiovascular health with just 30 min of exercises a day. Even if this 30 min is broken into 10 min periods. Developing a habit of a daily walk can significantly impact your health and mindset.
Saving Money
This habit is not flashy, or exciting, or particularly fun. But it’s absolutely necessary. Start small and save a specific amount each week. Then build to a particular amount each month or a certain percentage each year. Building this habit can have lasting rewards for years to come.
Reading More Books
Developing the habit of reading 15 min each day can lead to all kinds of benefits for you. Daily reading can increase memory and vocabulary or decrease stress and anxiety. With only 15 min of reading a day, you can easily read 1-2 books a month or 12-24 books a year. Imagine the benefit of learning new skills for recreations and work, or understanding a new topic, or developing a better imagination, all from 15 min a day.
Waking Up Early
This is a difficult habit for me. I am a night owl by nature but creating a morning routine has helped me get mornings off to a better start. Getting up early in the morning is not natural for everyone, but is a habit that can be developed. Start by setting your alarm 15 min earlier than usual. Every 1-2 weeks move your alarm back another 15 min until you reach your desired wake up time. Waking up early can benefit your health, energy, productivity and motivation.
Pay Attention To Your New Habits to Start in the New Year
Whatever good habits you decide to develop will be worth the invested time. The important thing is to pay attention to the habits that you are developing.
Start today, and make a note of all the habits that you find yourself routinely doing throughout the day. Is this habit something you want to keep? If not, start a better habit and begin the process of redesigning your life.
