Lifestyle design. The new definitive phrase for concocting the life style of your dreams. An all encompassing frame work of how your day, months and years will play out designed by you. Sounds flawless right? You follow Tim Ferris’s advice and figure out a way to actually build and sustain a four hour work week. You have the thatched roof cabana on the crystal sand beach. Your private jet rockets you around the globe numerous times and you are pretty sure that gorgeous Brazilian girl is going to call you after the way you wined and dined her in Rio. And yes you can have it all. Anyone with the will and freedom to build this life can.
As someone who has gone through the steps, perfected my most ideal lifestyle, moved continents, and splashed head first into a location independent life, I urge you to reconsider how you define your ideal. As I have realized, swimming in my cookie cutter life wasn’t actually what I wanted or needed for personal growth.
When I left San Francisco about six months ago I had it all thought out. I would travel the world as a dancer, pilates instructor, and professional blogger. I would see new places, meet interesting people, float and feel my way around the globe. I wouldn’t care about making it luxurious or glamorous. The path would reveal itself to me as I floated. I would be a message in a bottle floating in a sea of reality. Allowing the current to push me were it may. Mind you this is still a frame. Still a definition. Still a constraint on possibility.
In my first three months I spent my time doing what I had planned. I city hopped from Sydney to Melbourne so I could continue to dance. Something I wouldn’t dream of living without. Along the way I saw as much as humanly possible. I was stretching my boundaries in that sense at least. I immersed myself in yoga classes, a variety of dance classes, rock climbed, hiked, swam, etc. I was trying all the things I never made time for, or as I have realized, never truly valued. Dance was my life, which meant nothing else compared or mattered. Especially now that I was out of my home country I clung to dance as though my life depended on it. It became my sanctuary away from the continual confrontation with the unknown world. The funny thing is, Australia is very similar to the U.S. So why was I freaking out? Because I felt I was slowly losing my identity.
My entire definition of who I was, my ego, was constantly evolving no matter how hard I tried to cling to it. What I had worked so hard to become was disintegrating with every step forward. Sure I had skills a, b and c, but I soon found them suffocating. They trapped me in a box. Labeled me. I was closing myself off to possibility.
So I set forth over the last two months (with one more to complete) to let it all go. To do the unimaginable and give up my passions for a while in order to travel. In order to see how everyone else lived. It was at this moment it registered why I had flown the coop. To gain much needed perspective. I didn’t want to build my ideal, I wanted to escape it. Why? Because the irony of life is that it’s in doing the opposite of what we desire that we grow like a weed on freshly cleared soil. It’s when you have nothing that you gain everything. It’s when you stop clinging that you are given a hug.
Like holding sand…the more you try to grip it the more it pushes through your finger tips. The only way you can have it is with an open hand.
When everything is ideal you stagnate. Sure you can keep building new enterprises, make more money, buy more stuff, see more beautiful beaches, and challenge yourself in those ways. But I ask you to be honest with yourself. Is that going to give you the growth you want? Or better yet, the growth the world needs?
I realize that in writing these words I am a complete hypocrite. One minute I am excited to share a build your ideal day method and the next I am suggesting you drop all ideals in order to keep your options and growth potential wide open. As with everything it’s a fine balance of the two. Set ideals, but broaden your awareness enough to discern when they rip you from the reef, bag you and toss you in an aquarium complete with a plastic volcano and peg leg pirate.
Lesson Learned: I adore my passions with every ounce of my being, but needed the opposite to appreciate them. Along the way I have picked up so many skills and experiences that once were out of my reach as a “pilates instructor, dancer, blogger from California.”
