Growing up, I was always taught that I must go to school and get good grades in order to get a good job and make good money. However, this was a struggle for me as I was diagnosed with learning disability.
During the second grade, I was nearly held back due to my grades. My parents had me tested, and we found out that my learning disability was specifically in reading comprehension.
I was placed in a special class for kids with learning disabilities in reading for the remainder of elementary school, and my parents had me tutored in the afternoons. I then returned to normal classes once I entered middle school and developed a strong liking for math and science.
Once in high school, I excelled in math and science to the top of my classes. This, along with the persuasion of my parents, ultimately let led me to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering.
However, once I got in college, I began to fail miserably. My GPA for the 1st semester is a horrific 1.3, and the 2nd semester wasn’t much better. My learning disability had reemerged! But my parents weren’t about to let me drop out. We found more tutors and arranged my curriculum based on my challenges, and eventually I graduated college about a year later than planned.
I then moved and found my first job in automotive manufacturing. However, it was very stressful and chaotic. I was working tons of overtime, but was making good money.
After about a year, I thought there has to be more than this, but I continued to put in my time and take the harassment from the job. I began to look for other options.
Over the years, I began to invest more heavily in my retirement account and save more money to invest in the markets. I also begAn to invest in real estate. I had a dream to retire early.
Although I had made money in both the markets and real estate, I began to realize the investment process takes time. I began to look at other investment options such as small businesses and other real estate options.
Ultimately, I realized that it wasn’t retirement that I wanted. After all, I do like doing some types of work. I do like working on cars and enjoy construction and the since of accomplishment after completing a job.
Financial Independence is what I truly wanted. I want to be able to do the things that I wanted, when I wanted. And I wanted to work on projects and tasks that are important to me and provide a semse of fulfillment, while also paying the bills.
Over the years, I have also realized that it takes consistency and discipline to achieve the things you want in life. So you owe it to yourself to ask yourself, “what kind of lifestyle that you want to live?”
What is your dream lifestyle?
What does your dream lifestyle look like? Do you dream of living a lifestyle of luxury with a large house, nice cars, fancy parties, and elaborate vacations? Or do you dream of simple living in the country, maybe evening living off the land?
Do you dream of making your own schedule or living life on your terms? Do you dream of spending more time with your family and friends? Do you dream having more time live a healthy lifestyle? Time to get proper rest, and exercise? Time get out and enjoy nature?
No matter what your dream lifestyle is, you can start living it today. You simply need to start by making a decision. A decision to start and stick with it no matter what! After all, isn’t it your dream?
You may be thinking, well, what would I do? How could I make money doing the things I enjoy? What kind of life would I really want to live?
The truth is you will have all kinds of questions that you don’t have answers for. Just know, that is normal and is something you can figure out along the way.
Once you make a decision to make a change in your life, start taking small steps to get to where you want to be. Small improvements every day is the key to improving any aspect of your life. Develop a growth mindset.
Create a plan
Start by figuring out just one or two things that you want in your life. Do you want to make a certain amount of money per year? Do want certain house? Do you want to be healthier? Do you want to find more joy and happiness in life?
Once you figure out what you want more of in your life, set some goals. Where do you want to be in 1 year or 3 years? How about 5 or 10 years? Setting a goal is great way to plan the life style you want to live, but you also need a way to track it.
To do this, determine a way to measure what it is that you want. For money it’s easy, it may be X dollars a month or per year. For health, it may be a little more difficult. You may want a certain type of body. You may want to determine a certain percentage of body fat that you think is ideal, or you may want to be able run a certain distance. These are tangible ways to measure where you are and where you want to be.
For goals such as happiness or fulfillment, it is much harder to find a way to quantify your success. For these things, you may want to ask yourself, what is one thing I can do today that will make me happy? Or how can find happiness in the present? Then ask yourself how happy do you feel once a day on a 1-to-10 point scale and track your results over time.
No matter what your goal is, creating targets and tracking your results is necessary to seeing where you are and where you need to go. If you aren’t’ reaching your targets, you may need to readjust your approach and try again.
Create new habits
Once you have determined what you want more of in life, then you need to begin to build the foundation for creating those desires in your life. You need to form new habits.
In my case when financial independence was the goal, I had to develop new habits of tracking my budget, save more money, and find ways to create passive income.
I made it a habit to review my budget on a monthly basis to make sure I was hitting my targets. I also review my retirement and investment accounts regularly and made adjustments when I see opportunities. Once every 6 months I review my expenses and see if I can cut back anywhere. You may be surprise that as your life changes so do your habits, and you may not be using some services that you pay for regularly anymore.
Create some habits of some things that you can do to build your dream lifestyle. It may be a challenge at first, but stick with it and over time the habit will form. If you plan to do something that improves your life once a day, you may only complete that task 2 or 3 times the first week. The next week you may do it 3 or 4 times, and the next week you may do it 5 or 6 times.
You will most likely have set backs in the beginning, but this is part of the process. You may perform your task more consistently in wk 2, than you do in wk 3. Just keep in mind tomorrow is new day, and next week is a new week. If you fail try again the next day or the next week.
Also create a schedule for the most import task or habits that you need to implement to create your dream lifestyle. What gets scheduled gets done, and breaks the cycle of “I’ll work on that when I get a chance”, or “I’ll do it when I feel like it”.
If you want to break old habit, the best way to do so is by creating a new habit. Therefore, becoming proficient in forming habits is a requirement for building the lifestyle of your dreams.
Find your purpose
Finding will power to create habits is A must, but will power isn’t sustainable over the long term without purpose. Finding your purpose will give you the motivation to keep on pushing when the going gets tough.
You need to figure out why, or find your “purpose” for doing the things that you need to do create your dream lifestyle. If you want to be rich, you will never truly be satisfied. Making more money feels good for a little while when you indulge in something that you haven’t had before, but the feelings will wear off over time. You must connect your goals with providing something that is important to you.
Helping others creates a great sense of fulfillment. Not only do you make some sort of gain from helping others, but you also are improving their lives.
If you connect your goal with your purpose, then you will have the motivation that you need to succeed. If you set a weight loss goal to loss 20lbs, then you may maintain that weight for a while. But what usually happens, you begin to put that weight back on. If you say you want to lose 20 lbs to get healthy so that you will be around for when your kids have kids, then you much more motivation to maintain that weight.
For more information about designing the lifestyle you want to live check out designthelifestyleyoudesire.com