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Defining Your Ideal Lifestyle – Part 3

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This is the third part of the “Defining Your Ideal Lifestyle” series.

If you haven’t already, check out Defining Your Ideal Lifestyle – Part 1 here, and Defining Your Ideal Lifestyle Part 2 here.

If you’ve been following along in the series, so far we have defined one or multiple ideal scenes for waking up in the morning and any number of morning rituals we’d like to have.

Next we’re going to move onto the next part…

Defining Your Ideal Lifestyle – Mornings

Now that we’ve defined how we’d like to wake up, and what we would like to do first thing after waking up with our morning ritual, it’s time to move onto the next section…

… the next section we’ll cover is our morning itself.

The “morning” section can really start and end at any time you want, but generally speaking it would be the time between finishing your morning ritual and lunch time.

Of course it’s your ideal lifestyle, so maybe you don’t eat lunch, or maybe you eat lunch pretty late, long after the morning is over, or maybe you eat it early.

It doesn’t really matter how you like to break things up – it’s totally up to you.

For the purposes of this exercise, we’re going to break down a typical day into these sections:

  1. Waking Up
  2. Morning Ritual
  3. Morning
  4. Lunch
  5. Afternoon
  6. Dinner
  7. Evening
  8. Evening Ritual
  9. Going to Sleep
  10. Sleep

Of course you’re welcome to change things around to fit your needs.

If you want to combine Morning / Lunch / Afternoon / Dinner / Evening , into just one section called “My Day”, feel free to do so.

If you feel like breaking things down differently than listed above, feel free to do so.

Assuming you’re following the the breakdown for you ideal lifestyle day as listed above, write down some ideal scenes you’d like to see yourself having for the morning segment.

What would you like to do in the mornings?

Do you find that you’re most productive in the mornings?

Is this the time when you really focus on your passions / work / productive activities?

Or do you find that you prefer to do other things like perhaps go to the gym, or run errands, or meet with certain people, or read books, or perhaps do some writing?

It’s totally up to you.

Write down one or two or several different scenarios for what you’d like to do in the mornings.

One of the things that I figured out after doing this a few times is that it’s good NOT to pack too much stuff in.

So many people get so stressed out because they try to CRAM so much stuff into their days.

Don’t make that mistake when designing your ideal lifestyle.

If you ENJOY doing a LOT of things, then feel free to pack your morning full of stuff, but don’t feel like you have to do ANYTHING really to enjoy your morning.

Maybe ONE of your scenarios could be to just sit and enjoy a quiet morning of solitude?

Or just chatting with someone you enjoy talking to?

Take some time and create some ideal scenarios you’d like to have during the morning segment of your day…

… and remember to have some fun with it!

Defining Your Ideal Lifestyle – Part 2

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This is the second part to the Defining Your Ideal Lifestyle post I wrote yesterday.

If you haven’t had a chance to read that one yet, I recommend going back and reading it before continuing on with this post.

In yesterday’s post we left off with getting crystal clear on what your ideal “Waking Up” scenario would be.

Today we’re going to move onto the next part.

Defining Your Ideal Lifestyle – Morning Ritual

The next step in the process is to get clear on what you would like your morning ritual to be.

You could have multiple morning rituals if you like, but let’s just start out with one to start.

What would you like your morning ritual to be?

Your morning ritual will be the time after you wake up but before you are fully engaged to take on the day.

Would you like to start your morning ritual with meditation?

How about breakfast with your spouse or your kids?

Would you prefer to take your dog for a walk?

How about a jog, or a workout or a hike?

Would you prefer to start it with one hour of martial arts training?

How about some time to read, or to compose music?

Or what about journaling or working on your dream book?

Spend some time now and write down on a piece of paper what your ideal lifestyle “morning ritual” would be.

Get creative, and remember that you can have as many of these as you want.

You’re not “locking in” anything or committing to anything.

You’re just doing this to paint a picture in your mind of ONE of the morning rituals that you might enjoy doing in your ideal lifestyle.

The point with this exercise is to show your mind that your CURRENT morning ritual is NOT the only one that you can manifest.

For example, perhaps your current morning ritual is to drag you butt out of bed, shower, slap on some clothes and grab a granola bar on the way out the door and then battle traffic for an hour to get into the office.

That may very well be your reality right now, but it doesn’t always have to be that way.

Imagine that it could be different…

… and write down what your imagination would like to see.

If you feel inspired, leave a comment below describing your ideal lifestyle morning ritual.

Defining Your Ideal Lifestyle – Part 1

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One of the first steps towards living the life you want is getting clear on what you actually want.

A few years ago I sat down and put together a detailed description of the lifestyle that I wanted.

It definitely wasn’t easy.

Knowing what the heck you want from your life seems easy, but it’s actually pretty hard to figure out.

Most of us find it difficult to commit to what we want.

One of the little tricks I learned that helped me out is to just focus on small tiny fragments of time instead of trying to figure out everything all at once.

So, it today’s blog post we’ll start with defining the very first part of your ideal lifestyle.

Defining Your Ideal Lifestyle – Waking Up

When you’re living your ideal lifestyle, what will it look like for you to wake up?

Imagine that you’re already living your ideal life and you’re now opening your eyes from sleeping…

… describe what that’s like…

Here are some questions that might help you out…

What type of bed are you sleeping on?  Is it a single, double, queen or king sized?

What does the mattress feel like?

What do the covers feel like?

What do the sheets feel like?

What’s the temperature in the room?

Approximately what time is it?

How were you woken up?  Was it an alarm clock?  Did your spouse wake you up?  Did you dog or cat wake you up?  Did your kids wake you up?  Did you just wake yourself up?

What do you see when you open your eyes?  Is it a wall, a mirror, a lamp, a window, the ceiling, the sky, what do you see?

Is there someone else in the bed with you?

How does your body feel?

What are some of your first thoughts when you wake up?

Start with this…

Get a piece of paper out, and just write down the answers to these questions or think of your own questions and describe what would be your ideal lifestyle for waking up in the morning.

You may have several different scenarios, and that’s fine.

Write them all down.

This is the starting point for defining your perfect.

Once you’ve written this down, leave a comment below and describe some parts of what waking up looks like to you in your ideal lifestyle. 🙂

How to Stop Manifesting Needless Struggle in Your Life

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One of the sneakiest little “mind viruses” that MANY people suffer from is the addiction to manifesting needless struggle in their lives.

To some degree we all suffer from this.

Some people more than others.

I know I’ve done this to myself many times in the past, and it wasn’t until I became aware of what I was doing to myself that I finally stopped manifesting this pointless, needless need for struggle.

Let me explain what I mean by this.

Have you ever been at a party with a bunch of friends you haven’t seen for a while, just catching up on what’s new with people, and someone asks someone about a trip they went on recently…

… and then that person says something along the lines of “Oh-ma-Gawd, did you hear what happened to us?!” …

… and then they proceed to tell a tale that sounds a little bit like this…

“Okay, so you won’t believe what happened.  Here we were, on our first trip to Mexico.  It all started when on our way to the airport George realized that he had forgotten his passport, and we were already half way to the airport, so we had to turn around and head all the way back.

But then, as we’re heading back home, we catch a flat tire so we have to pull over to change the tire – right?  And THEN, we realize that the spare tire in the back is FLAT as well!

So then, we start freaking out, and then George starts flagging down cars as they’re driving by, to see if we could catch a ride with someone, while I’m on the phone trying to reach anyone to see if someone could help us out – but nobody was available because everyone was at work.

So then George finally flags down this car and the guy agrees to give him a ride home and back for $50!  So he catches a ride with this guy, goes home, grabs his passport, and also the spare tire from MY car which was parked in the drive way.

He heads back TO the car, where I’m waiting for him, with all these people staring at us on the side of the road.  I was so embarrassed!

Then, George gets dropped off, we throw the spare on the car, and we proceed to the airport, but now instead of being 3 hours early for our flight, we’ve got 15 minutes before the flight leaves…”

… and as they’re telling you this story about their trip, the craziness continues!

All kinds of weird shit manifests, like the plane loses a wheel, the luggage gets lost, security requests a strip search, some lady at the airport spills her coffee on their luggage, aliens invade earth, World War III begins…

… and 45 minutes later the story finally ends with the people surviving the ordeal and making it home in one piece…

Have you ever heard one of these stories?

Have you ever TOLD one of these stories to people?

Do you know what I’m talking about?

For some people, every DAY is one of these crazy stories where all kinds of weird shit happens to them that is just totally out of this world, and in the end they always end up victorious!

They emerge as the HERO of the day, not letting life take them down!

And each time this happens, they LOVE telling everyone their newest “STORY”.

You want to know my latest story?

I’ll tell you.

I went out for dinner with my wife today.  We went to a restaurant, had a nice meal, then went to the mall where I found the exact shirts I was looking for and got a $20 discount without asking for it.

Then on the way home I realized I had to get gas, found a gas station really easily, got gas at a good price, and stopped for ice cream at Menchies and it was delicious.

The End!

THAT is how life SHOULD BE – simple, and in the effortless FLOW of the Universe.

THOSE are the stories you should be telling, and THOSE are the stories you should be applauding…

… not all the stories of STRUGGLE and “Oh Ma Gawd you won’t believe ALL the things that went wrong for me today” type of stories.

The more stories of struggle you tell everyone, the MORE struggle you manifest in your life.

The reason why is because you’re addicted to the feeling of being this self-created HERO in your stories of struggle.

You manifest all kinds of stupid unnecessary shit in your life, just so that you can find crazy ways to overcome it, and so that later you can tell everyone who’s willing to listen what a HERO you are for overcoming that crap.

We’ve all done it.

I know I’ve done it in the past.

Once I became aware of this, however, I started to realize that I don’t NEED that anymore.

I don’t NEED to be this “Hero” who first manifested a bunch of stupid shit, just so that later he could overcome it and “save the day” in my own life.

It’s SO MUCH more fun living life in the flow of ease and simplicity and without the need for constant struggle.

Pause for a moment and think about the last time you got together with some friends at a party or some get-together.

Was there someone there who told a story of great struggle and how they overcame it?

BINGO!  That’s the example I’m referring to!

Maybe it was even YOU!

If you were the one telling your story of recent struggle, guess what you were doing while telling the story?

You were sending a message out to the Universe basically saying “Universe, I want you to send me MORE of this struggle that I recently had.  I want you to send me more and more struggle so that I can find ways to overcome it and so that I can keep telling these crazy stories to my friends and so that I can keep looking like a HERO in front of them.  Send more struggle!  Send more struggle!”

THAT is what you’re communicating to the Universe.

And by the Law of Attraction THAT is exactly what you’re going to manifest more of…. because its the LAW!

You cannot be telling your stories of struggle and woe, and swimming around in that vibration of struggle in your imagination as you tell the story, and NOT manifest more struggle.

You also can’t be listening to people tell their stories of struggle and engrossing yourself in their stories without attracting a little bit more struggle into your life as well.

This is why it’s important to try to stay away from that kind of drama and struggle.

It’s totally fine to listen to someone’s INSPIRING story where they share some initial struggles they may have gone through in their life when that same story is then filled with 90% – 95% POSITIVE and INSPIRING things that happened to them after that.

A story like that will HELP you in your life because while you’re listening to it, you’ll be engrossing yourself in the vibration of INSPIRATION and POSITIVITY 90% – 95% of the time.

But if the stories you’re listening to and telling people are 90% – 95% filled with nothing but struggle, you’re just going to manifest MORE of that struggle in your life.

Try this…

… try going on a “Struggle Story Fast” for 90 days…

… for the next 90 days, make a commitment to yourself to NOT LISTEN to people telling you stories of struggle…

… the minute you hear someone start telling you a story of struggle, about the crazy weird stuff that happened to them recently, just interrupt them and find a way to get out of that situation…

… and also, for the next 90 days don’t TELL any stories of struggle yourself either…

Crazy stuff MAY happen to you.  You may go through some struggles that you manifested.  And that’s okay.

But you don’t need to TELL stories about it afterwards.

Just get through it, write about it in your journal if you want to, but then don’t tell anyone else about your struggles.

Stop trying to impress people with your stories of struggles and how you are this HERO who overcomes all the odds.

YOU’RE the one manifesting the struggle in your life because we all manifest 100% of everything in our reality, so all struggle is self-manifested.

So if that’s true, what kind of HERO do you really think you’re convincing people that you are by telling your stories of struggle?

Everyone you THINK you’re impressing with your HERO stories is just thinking “You manifested that yourself in your life you idiot!” … so they’re not impressed anyways.

Just for the next 90 days, don’t tell any stories like these.

Instead, start telling stories of EASE and SIMPLICITY and manifesting FLOW in your life.

Tell those stories to yourself, and if anyone asks you how things are going, tell them your stories of ease.

Most likely they probably won’t be too interested, as most people PREFER to listen to stories of “weird shit” and “drama” and “holy crap you won’t believe what happened to me”, but that’s okay…

… you don’t need your life to be a source of drama like that…

If you want drama, go see a movie or something. 🙂

Try this out for 90 days and notice how things in your life start to shift.

You may start to notice very quickly that things start to flow for you much more easily and with more simplicity.

It really is magical if that is what you CHOOSE to CREATE in your life.

The Dream Building Hack That Will Stop You From Self-Sabotaging Your Success

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Everyone knows that achieving success in life starts with a dream.

It doesn’t matter what kind of dreams we have, it just matters that we DO have dreams.

Without dreams life becomes empty, boring, depressing and hopeless.

One piece of advice that has been highlighted to me from my mentors in the last few years especially, is for me to get more clear on my dreams and to DREAM BIG.

I enjoy dream building and setting goals and such, but I have to admit that until recently I never took the process of dreaming big very seriously.

Most often I would just kind of think about and dream about the next step in my life, not something HUGE and massive out there.

Meaning, I have mostly been operating out of a short term 3-6 months or maybe 1 year time frame when it comes to my goals and dreams.

However, I recently discovered a flaw to this method of short-term dream building and I’m now starting to see the value of dreaming MUCH bigger than that.

How Subconscious Dream Building Can Sabotage Your Success

When I recently re-launched my TabletopGamer.com Blog, I didn’t really sit down to map out a long-term vision / dream for that project.

I simply re-launched that Blog, and I set some short-term goals for the next few months and I kind of figured that I would just figure things out along the way.

I didn’t really see the point of sitting down and DREAMING BIG when it comes to that Blog / Business I’m running in the tabletop gaming niche.

I know what short-term goals I’ve got and I’ve been working towards those, but I didn’t take the time to sit down and consider the long term.

What I didn’t realize though is that at the subconscious level, my mind had actually started to create a long-term vision of what my business / blog would look like, in that niche market, if I was to continue to be more and more successful with it.

It’s almost as if when we don’t consciously CREATE A VISION / BIG DREAM, our subconscious mind fills in that void with it’s own vision / big dream.

Now you might be thinking – “What’s wrong with that?  If our subconscious mind is already automatically dreaming big on our behalf, why waste our time on it?”

Well, here’s the challenge with it…

You see, when our subconscious mind creates a long-term vision or “Big Dream” for a project we’re working on, it does so by compiling data from the external world and it essentially creates a vision based on an amalgamation of various visions and dreams that OTHER people in a specific niche have had.

For example, in the tabletop gaming niche there are about a dozen entrepreneurs who I have been following and watching videos from and reading blog posts from in that niche market.

This group of dozen or so entrepreneurs have built fairly successful businesses within that niche.

What I didn’t realize is that unconsciously my mind took the setup and structure of all these different businesses and kind of created a “BIG DREAM” for me based on a mish-mash of their business models.

Meaning, if we don’t paint a picture for our subconscious mind of what we want our success to look like, it will kind of make up it’s own definition for what success will look like in a specific niche.

As an example, most of the people who are running successful businesses within the tabletop gaming niche market have offices with staff / employees.

So unconsciously my mind created this “Dream” inside my mind where it was thinking that MY DREAM was to one day have a big office with staff / employees.

In reality though, that is NOT what I desire to do with my Blog / Business in the tabletop gaming niche.

I really enjoy being able to work from home, so I don’t really WANT to be running and managing an office full of employees.

However, because I didn’t specifically sit down and think about that and get clear on it (until a few days ago) – it seems that my subconscious mind kind of just created it’s own “BIG DREAM” which didn’t really match what I wanted.

Think of it this way… imagine if you grew up with a bunch of friends who started training at a gym and then later on ended up competing in body building competitions…

… now imagine you starting a workout program just to lose some weight and to put on some muscle and build strength…

… without really realizing it, your subconscious mind might be creating an unconscious “Big Dream” for you where if you continue to work out, you’ll eventually end up becoming a professional bodybuilding who competes just like your friends did…

Now, there is nothing wrong with that if you WANT to become a professional bodybuilder, but what if you don’t?

What if you have zero desire and actually DETEST the idea of competing as a bodybuilder professionally?

If that is the case, what can happen is that one part of your mind (your subconscious) may have this unconscious dream of you becoming a body builder if you keep working out, and another part of your mind (your conscious mind) may have decided that it would never want to do something like that.

A situation like this creates a mental-battle within your mind.

One part of you is excited about working out and getting in shape, and doesn’t want to have anything to do with professional bodybuilding…

… and another part of your mind is thinking that if you keep going to the gym, you’ll eventually become a professional bodybuilder.

So what happens in situations like these?

Self-sabotage!

You end up missing your workouts, you stop going to the gym, and you don’t even know why.

Well, one of the reasons why you might be self-sabotaging yourself is because a part of you is SCARED of achieving success in this field of your life because it thinks that it will lead to you having to do something that you don’t really want to do.

In the same way, when I started building my tabletop gaming blog, I realized that a part of my mind was staring to think that IF I become very successful with my blog in that niche market, I’ll eventually get to the point where I will *HAVE* to open up my own office or start running a tabletop gaming store or something like that.

Why?

Because in the absence of creating your own BIG DREAM, your subconscious mind will just create it’s own, and the BIG DREAM your subconscious mind creates will most likely not motivate you and it could even be sabotaging you!

This is why it’s SO IMPORTANT to sit down and to get clear on what your big dream is in your life and in your business.

When you get clear on that, your subconscious mind will start to attract resources, people and circumstances into your life to help you achieve YOUR DREAM.

If you don’t get clear on it though, your subconscious mind will attract resources, people and circumstances into your life to help IT achieve the dream that IT created for you, and chances are that dream will NOT be what you want exactly, and so you’ll constantly be fighting against your subconscious mind.

The Solution

The solution to this is to actually sit down and to DREAM BIG.

Try to imagine your blog, or your business, or your life becoming ultra successful in various stages of growth.

For example, if you just started your own business, imagine what it will be like when you’re making your first $500/month…

… and then what it will be like to be making $2500/month…

… and then what it will be like to be making $5000/month and $10,000/month and $25,000/month…

… and then what it will be like to be making $50,000/month and $100,000/month with your business…

… and then what it will be like to be making $250,000/month and $500,000/month and $1M/month with your business…

… and think about what it will be like to have 1 customer, 10 customers, 100 customers, 1000 customers or 10,000 customers in your business…

… basically just SCALE UP your business model from where it is now to much, much, much bigger numbers and visualize how you will want your business to work on this large scale…

If you create a BIG DREAM for yourself, and you write it down and you constantly refer to it, it will stop your subconscious mind from going out there and trying to create it’s own “Big Dream” from some kind of mish-mash of other people’s dreams.

You’ll be WAY more motivated to focus on taking the next step towards achieving YOUR dream.

Try it out.