Achieving Ultimate You.
I'll use these viewpoints in this article to guide you toward the solution you have in mind for that query. The end of the year is an excellent time to start considering lifestyle design if you haven't done much of it previously. While we're talking about long-term well-being, try to discover at least one or two suggestions here that will assist you in the days ahead because Monday is also an excellent day to start the week off properly.
Viewpoint #1: Planning Your Ideal Day
In this time-honored activity, you meticulously describe your ideal, perfect day, down to the time you wake up, what you eat for breakfast, and who you speak with at each hour of the day. The strategy will be more effective if you can give additional specifics.
Then you start making preparations to modify your life to move closer to the ideal day you have imagined for yourself. If you take this exercise seriously, you could start making more deliberate choices about your time and attention. Even if you don't make many changes, the knowledge you get will help you learn a lot about who you are. Every time I do this exercise, which I do once a year in December, I find that the following year I make a lot of progress.
Second viewpoint: radical goal-setting
As I previously said, the Perfect Day exercise is a classic in the literature on lifestyle design, and it may be really helpful for you if you've never given any attention to what you like doing. But even though this activity has two severe flaws, if you don't address each one, you may significantly enhance your life. However, you'll continue to ponder the question, "Is that all there is?" The first flaw is the realization that life isn't ultimately about you.
Most individuals don't want to spend every day in a castle with someone bringing their perfectly-buttered toast to them in the mornings; they want to accomplish something significant with their abilities. Therefore, you must do more than just design the ideal day for yourself. They want to improve the state of the world. They seek a solution to the problem that is specific to their skills. I think most of us won't be able to enjoy life to the fullest without addressing this issue.
The second flaw relates to the objectives themselves. They are where?
Most of the time, the Perfect Day exercise doesn't include objectives at all. Goals are not included when defining the kind of job you perform, who you engage with, etc. As a result, you must somehow include goal-setting into the strategy. I have incorporated "Radical Goal-Setting" into my unusual life planning since I tend to believe that if something is worth doing, you may as well do it completely. Normally, I would say this:
One Year Objectives (I make the goals for the next year in December after reviewing this list a few times a year).
Five-Year Plans (this list gets reviewed once a year).
Future Objectives (this list gets reviewed once a year, and make sure to include some really big ideas for your lifetime goals).
Health, Friends, Family, Writing, Business, Travel, Income, Savings, Giving, Service, Spiritual, and Personal are the categories I use to categorize each list.
(If you complete this for yourself, you should have a lot of the general categories plus at least a few that are particular to your circumstance.)
As disciplined as you would assume, we aren't. Really. Instead, a lot of us have developed a framework for our work that enables improvisation. We set goals and work extremely hard, but any discipline that develops is often the consequence of creating a solid foundation in the first place.
I've had some of my most rewarding encounters on days when I didn't have many plans. Without a map or any understanding of the local language, I've set out on lengthy runs in dozens of cities throughout the globe. In Zambia and the Faroe Islands, I enjoyed the sunsets without any particular plans. Almost every time I have an encounter like this, I find myself saying, "Wow. It's a nice life. I'm so grateful to be alive. serendipitous encounters don't always have to be foreign or unusual. I also like to play video games, go out for coffee virtually every day I'm at home, sleep in a few times a week, and sometimes just decide to do something entirely different.
Another way to put it is that I want to spend my time in the long term concentrating on my objectives, and my ideal world, and assisting others in whatever way I can. I must take immediate action to make sure that happens, but the environment is not heavily controlled. It's more of a flexible but useful environment. Serendipity is not something you have to give up at all. Instead, when you try to create your Ideal World, you'll often find that you have more time and energy for the "fun" activities you like doing.
Paying for Your Life
Commentaries on lifestyle design often fall into one of two categories: those who behave as if money is nothing or as though it is everything. Naturally, there are issues with each of these perspectives.
Money is crucial; otherwise, how would you be able to live the life of your desires if you had no income or savings? It's hard to get by on dreams alone. I am a renegade entrepreneur who thinks that by working for myself and taking responsibility for my actions, I can create my independence. This takes effort; things seldom fall into place on their own.
However, it is also true that the main barrier preventing individuals from achieving greatness is not always money.
Where is the line between denying the fact that we need money and obsessively worrying about it? I believe the answer resides in a) knowing exactly how much money we need to achieve what we want (as accurately as feasible), and b) creating a strategy to get that sum of money.
Start from where you are
Last but not least, never undervalue the influence of little decisions. I sometimes get letters from individuals complaining that they are too young, too elderly, too in debt, or otherwise unable to design the life they desire. Always start small, I advise. This week, do a new action that will get you closer.
Have you ever come across someone who switched from an entirely sedentary lifestyle to an entirely active one? The man has been smoking for a year, and he also drinks too much and eats too much. The next year, he goes through a remarkable change in which he gives up smoking, drastically alters his diet, and develops into a fitness maniac.
We find those folks amazing when we see them. I find it to be quite great. But the initial steps are the most exciting portions. Momentum begins to build somewhere along the route and never ceases. When you desire something, the whole cosmos works to make it happen for you.
You are free to accept or reject it as you see appropriate. I will just state that momentum is real. It transports athletes in marathons from Mile 24 to Mile 26.2. It may assist you in obtaining your goals, but you must first be very clear about what you desire.
