Making the Lifestyle Transition

One thing we’ve touched on briefly that deserves a little more attention, is the actual impact that a goal can have on your lifestyle.

Because very often, the old adage ‘be careful what you wish for’ can end up coming into play here. All too often, the goals we set ourselves don’t turn out quite the way we want them to.

All too often, the actual day-to-day work that is involved with being a CEO, with being a rock star, or with being a stay-at-home Mum can end up not being everything we believed it to be.

And even when that’s not the case, having such a big and important goal is always going to be change to your lifestyle and it’s always going to be a little hard to adapt to at first.

This is where ‘lifestyle design’ comes in…

What is Lifestyle Design

Lifestyle design means, simply, that you are adapting your lifestyle to meet your needs and to be closer to what it needs to be to make you happy.

All too often, we allow our careers to dictate our entire lives. That is to say that our wealth is defined by our income from our job. We live wherever our employment is located. And we fit our ‘free hours’ in around our working hours.

Our happiness ends up entirely dictated to us by our work!

And as you can probably guess, I’m about to tell you that this is not what your life should be like!

This is where lifestyle design comes in and means working backward. Instead of choosing a job and thinking about how that’s going to impact your lifestyle, instead you think of the lifestyle you want and then find the job to make that happen.

The ultimate example of this is to work online. When you work online, you can work from anywhere. You can work any time that suits you and you can do any job that you like as well. This is complete freedom. Now you can choose to put in the hours you need to earnt he funds you require and you can use the rest of the time to do whatever you like!

But what if working online isn’t an option?

In that case, you might surprise yourself by what is the best answer. For example, it might transpire that you are actually better off working as a dustbin collector. That way, you’ll work for only a few hours a day and you’ll have long evenings to yourself.

If your goal is to be a family man or woman, then maybe working as a teacher is the perfect answer? That way, you’ll come home roughly when school finishes and you’ll have the holidays off to spend with your kids.

If you want to travel, then find a job that sends you around the world, or that lets you work remotely.

Likewise, lifestyle design can mean other things. It might mean cutting down on the time you spend commuting by moving closer to work. It might mean moving closer to friends so you can spend more time with them.

It’s simple: think of what you really want out of life and then make the changes necessary. Stop letting work dictate who you’re going to be and how you’re going to spend your time. Not unless work happens to be your driving passion.