Discovering Your Ideal Lifestyle

In the previous episode, we discussed two major emotions that can hold you back from living out your ideal lifestyle.
Now that you’re prepared for what is to come, we need to discuss the most important question you will encounter along the journey to lifestyle freedom.
What is important to me?!
It’s both extremely simple and extremely complicated. We all seem to know some of the things that are important to us such as maintaining our fitness and cultivating meaningful relationships.
However, very few of us have actually explored some of the most basic human needs and figured out the type of actions we need to take in order to thrive in those aspects of life.
Today, this is what we’ll be discovering together.
Discovering Your Ideal Lifestyle: Imagine that you’ve woken up one day with the ability to do absolutely whatever you wanted. You have no monetary restrictions, all of your friends and family are ready to join you in your adventures at a moment’s notice, and you are able to travel anywhere with ease.
What would you do?
It’s a difficult question to answer. You may not be able to answer that question because you have never considered lifestyle freedom a possibility before.
Since we were born, we have been surrounded by societal trends such as 40-hour workweeks, flawless bodies that require extensive gym visits, and family lives that are more stressful than fulfilling.
Here’s the truth: It doesn’t have to be this way! In life, you are your own boss. You control what you do, how you go about it, when you do it, where you do it, and who you do it with.
You may be thinking, Natalie, I do have monetary restrictions and other things holding me back from living my ideal lifestyle!
I understand you completely.
While you may not be able to sit down right now, map out the rest of your life, and make it happen by snapping your fingers, you do have the opportunity to make the choice to start moving into a place of freedom.
Make that choice right here and right now. Take the leap with me and begin your journey to a life of freedom by figuring out what it is that you truly want.
Step 1: Dream, Dream, Dream Remember the question I asked you earlier about your ideal day? I want you to answer it right now. Most importantly, I need you to answer it as specifically as you possibly can.
For example, this is how I envision my perfect day:
"I wake up in the morning with no alarm and no phone next to my bed and I wake up naturally. I turn to my lover Mr. Josh and I give him lots of kisses, hugs and cuddles. And then little Kayla, who is not so little anymore comes around my side of the bed in for a cuddle, who just snuffles her nose into my hand and I just love, love, love my little white German Shepherd to death.
And then I roll out of bed and I roll out the yoga mat and I will do about 20-30 minutes of yoga with Adriene. I recently did a Facebook live about her and I think she is fabulous. She has a free Youtube channel called Yoga with Adriene. I just love her yoga. She’s funny, she’s joyous, she’s grateful and she doesn’t take life too seriously and it’s just a pleasure to do yoga with her.
And then I will roll into anywhere from a 5-15 or 20 minute meditation. I’m working my way up into doing more of that and by this stage by the way, before I’ve started my yoga I’ve thrown open the curtains and right outside our windows this gorgeous creamy white rose which is just in full bloom right now. So it’s the first thing that I see in the morning with the sunlight coming up and all the trees and the gorgeous greenery around our lawn and over to the hills in the distance. So it’s a pretty spectacular way to start the morning and given that it’s spring here right now, the sun is already shining on me. So when I’m on my yoga mat I’m getting heated up by the warmth of the sun.
And then I have a lovely hot shower which I am so grateful for. And I go through to the kitchen and typically make breakfast with Josh and either do a green smoothie with something really awesome from my garden like kale or spinach and then strawberries, blueberries, banana and coconut water or I go and grab the fresh eggs from our chicken and I make omelets or scrambled eggs or poached eggs with avocado and smoked salmon or bacon because breakfast is my favorite meal of the day.
And then and only then, do I actually head over to my laptop and I either set up in the lounge or in the study or out in the coworking barn and I start working in my most important action of the day which I have typically written up the night before or in that moment into our project life spreadsheet and we always try and balance this out across the week between the 8 sort of areas of life that are really important."
So that’s just the start of my Perfect Day and I am living it right now which is pretty fantastic.
I want you to be able to describe the type of room that you are waking up in. I want you to be able to describe the food that you are eating throughout the day. I need you to be able to envision the exact temperature on the thermostat of the home you are living in.
Why am I asking you to be able to state the exact temperature of your house? While it may not seem important, specificity is key to designing your ideal lifestyle.
In fact, one study conducted by Gary Latham and Edwin Locke found that 90 percent of people who set challenging, specific goals were able to actually meet them rather than those who had simple goals with no direction.
No matter how silly it may seem, think about every possible angle of your perfect day and write it down. You may not need every detail but you will be better prepared for the next step.
Step 2: Determine What Matters Most Now that you have a better idea of what you would like to be doing with your time, take a look at your list and go through the 5 W’s:
Who- Who was it that you wanted to spend your time with? Did you list your spouse during your perfect day vision? Did some of your old friends crop up while you were daydreaming? Review your notes and come up with a list of the people who appeared most.
What- What were you doing during your ideal day? Were you working from home rather than in an office? Were you working out in your own yoga studio? These actions will help you to identify some of the major areas that you want to focus on in the future.
When- When were you the most active? On the other hand, when were you experiencing the most relaxation? You may find out that you are currently working when you want to be relaxing and relaxing when you are most energetic.
Where- Did you travel? What type of house were you in? What did nature outside of your living area look like? As the saying goes, “if you don’t like where you are, move. You are not a tree.” You may not be happy with where you are currently living and this daydream session will tell you exactly that.
Why- Why are you doing the things that you are doing? If this is your perfect day, you must care about the actions you are taking. Evaluate each action you have written down and ask yourself whether or not you care about the thing you are doing, if it adds value to your life, and if it helps you get towards where you want to be.
Make sure that you have done this thoroughly. Each category helps you to better determine what you will be working towards once you’ve decided to live a life of freedom.
Step 3: Come Up With a Rough Life Sketch Take what you’ve collected over the past few steps and compile it into a rough plan.
For example, let’s pretend that I’ve come up with my own life vision where I am living in France, running my own clothing business during the day from my large, well-lit apartment, and spending the majority of my time with my friends during the night.
Although this a brief example, I’ve identified who I want to spend my time with, where I want to be, when I want to be doing things, and what I am doing with my time. Why am I doing this?
Clearly, I’ve crafted this plan because I truly want to live in France, I love the idea of running a clothing business from home, and I want to be spending my time with friends who care about me.
This is by no means a list that will help you to reach said goals and lead a free life. Instead, this is the foundation upon which you will build your ideal life.
In episode 3, we will be discussing how to categorize and task out these goals in order to assure complete domination over your ideal lifestyle.
And if this is kind of opening your mind up to the possibilities of what you really want to be doing with your life but you don’t feel like you are close to that or if you are actually just wanting to rock out 2018 then you are in for a treat because on November 29th, I am running a LIVE online workshop called “Plan Your Ideal Freedom Year!”.
I will personally walk you through my step by step process to have your ideal year, including how to:
SET YOUR VISION FOR 2018 and plan out your entire year so you prioritize what matters - we will map this out real-time together and I'll show you behind the scenes of how I plan out my year. MAP OUT YOUR QUARTERLY, MONTHLY and WEEKLY ACTIONS based on your annual goals and the calendar so you know exactly what to do to achieve amazing results in your business in 2018! Take your big vision and plans for 2018 and put them into your OWN CONTENT, MARKETING and EDITORIAL CALENDAR so you feel focused and in control - I'll show you my calendar as a real example of what's possible. Learn my 6 STEP DAILY SUCCESS PLAN to become more productive in a week than you are in a year - no seriously. PLUS you'll learn the key questions EVERY entrepreneur should be able to answer to get you fully prepared to get the most out of this course and your year ahead. BONUS #1: You'll get my awesome Content, Marketing and Editorial Calendar template to use to plan out your amazing year. BONUS #2: You'll get follow up access to the recording of this workshop, broken down into a micro course to work through at your own pace, at any time, as well as a PDF summary handout. Want reliable hosting for your blog and website at 50% off? HostGator allows you to run your business from anywhere, at anytime, with their 99.9% uptime guarantee. HostGator won't take up any room in your suitcase, but will still be there for every step of your adventure with their 24/7/365 live support. Thanks to their 24/7 – 365 days a year live support – which you can get via chat, phone and email – any and all questions you have can be answered in no time at all. HostGator has partnered with me to help my listeners get started. Click the link below to get 50% off any shared hosting plan.
Visit https://www.hostgator.com/quest