Design your ideal life

In times like this, where fear can hold our lives back, we should seize the opportunities we have to learn, grow and be prepared for what life will be once this crisis will be over because it will! As Tony Robbins said: “In every crisis lies opportunity. People who are successful are not lucky; they are just prepared for opportunities that come their way. Anticipation is power.”. This is what prompted me to publish this post that Mrs. NN wrote earlier this year as we went through our yearly goal settings exercise. We hope it can provide you with some inspiration and encourage you to do an exercise you might never do otherwise. As always, please let us know what you think by leaving a comment in our comments section.

I used to roll my eyes at the questions: what is your 5-year plan? Where do you see yourself in 10 years? These questions were often asked in the context of work and honestly, I wasn’t super excited to see myself still going to my 9-5 (which was more like a 7-7) but hopefully with a bigger title and paycheck. Well, there’s a lot more to life than work and it’s actually very important to stop and clearly define what you want in life in 5 years, 10 years and beyond. If you aren’t intentional with your path, you may end up making decisions by default and find yourself living someone else’s ideal life rather than one on your own terms. This is a process we had to go through ourselves before we embarked on our ideal nomadic life and is a process that we make an effort to revisit every year. In fact, we spent the entire New Year’s day going through the details of our vision for 2020 and beyond.

The real and important question is: if you could design your ideal life without any limitations, what would that look like?

Mrs. Nomad Numbers

This question sounds simple enough but because our minds are not trained to think without limitations, you may find yourself struggling to answer this! Don’t worry, that’s normal and we went through this challenge ourselves. Here are some steps to help guide you to this answer:

1 – Let go of constraints and limitations

Now the initial reaction will often be to start adding constraints, you might not even realize you are doing this because they are so deeply ingrained. The biggest limitation is often financial but if you assume money is taken care of, then what would life look like? Here are some more detailed questions to get the juices flowing:

In your ideal lifestyle:

• Would you be working if you didn’t need the income? If so, what kind of work would you be doing? How many hours per week?
• Who are you spending time with? How frequently are you seeing them?
• What are you doing with your free time?
• What city and country do you live in? Is it the same place all year round?
• How many weeks per year do you travel?
• What impact would you like to make?
• Make sure you cover aspects in health, personal and career that are important to you.

What constraints or limitations are you currently living with?

For us, the answers were no, we would not be working corporate jobs if we didn’t need the income. We would spend quality time with family and friends for 1-2 months per year on each side (California and France). We would spend our free time exploring the world, working on passion projects and personal development. There are too many wonderful places in the world that we want to see and live in so we would like to be nomadic all year round. We want to make an impact and serve the world in some way and we are currently trying to figure out what this looks like. One way is to help others on their own journey to design their ideal life.

2 – Identify what is truly your desire versus someone else’s

It takes some self-reflection to isolate the parts that are truly your desires and no one else’s. I grew up believing that the American dream was to build a successful career, own a house then a vacation house, drive a nice car, start a family and go on all-inclusive 2-week vacations to Hawaii every year. And of course, retirement happens at 65 so you need to find a career that you are happy with pursuing for 40+ years. But was that my dream or my parent’s dream for me or society’s dream? One way to help isolate the parts that are truly your dream is to pretend that no one else would know about it. Would you still want a nice car if no one would know about it but you? Or was the whole point to make someone proud or to be perceived as successful?

3 – Be crystal clear on your vision

Ok, now we start getting into steps to make your ideal life a reality. You may be tempted to start adding in some limitations and compromises but don’t! You simply need to be crystal clear on your ideal life and the more details you know, the better. It’s difficult to make things happen when you’re unsure about what you want. That doesn’t mean that your vision needs to be set in stone and can never change, people change.

You know how sometimes you never noticed something and then someone makes you aware of it and then all of a sudden you see it everywhere? For example, someone mentions that Patagonia puff jackets seem to be really popular and you’ve never seen them but then all of a sudden, every other person seems to be wearing a Patagonia puff jacket! That’s what happens when your mind focuses on something. When you become clear on your vision, suddenly you will notice opportunities, role models and solutions all around you.

4 – Create a 10-year vision, a 5-year vision, and 1-year goals

There’s a reason people ask this question at work, it’s very practical. Now that you have your ideal life thought through, what does that look like in 10 years?

From there, what does your life need to look like in 5 years so that you can be where you want to be in 10 years?

Now here’s where things get really real, what do you need to accomplish this year to get to your 5-year vision? It’s like a New Year’s resolution but so much more intentional than wanting to lose 10 pounds. If your current work situation does not match your 5-year-vision work situation, what steps do you need to take this year to make it happen? If your financial situation does not match up, what steps do you need to take this year?

To use a fun example, in my 10-year vision I am fluent in French and can write blog posts and give talks in French. In my 5 year vision, I am fully conversational in French and have meaningful conversations with my in-laws. My 2020 goal is to be able to have basic French conversations and I will have ‘French Fridays’ with Mr. NN to practice every week.

5 – Focus + Massive Action

Ok, this phrase I stole from the mastermind life coach himself Tony Robbins so you know it is legit! Knowing your ideal life is such a big piece of the puzzle, not many people get that far so give yourself a ton of credit for that. However, nothing can happen without massive action! The combination of the focus + massive action is what is needed to make your ideal life a reality.

Don’t forget to enjoy the journey while you are designing your ideal life. 

We hope you find this process for designing your ideal life helpful. We are personal development fans and absorb all sorts of content on this topic so here’s some additional inspiration if you’d like to dig deeper:

• Lavendaire
  • How to Make a Vision Board + Current Me vs Future Me
• Oprah Winfrey
  • Creating an extraordinary quality of life w/ Tony Robbins
• Tony Robbins

• Books
  • Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
• Ted Talks
  • Bill Burnett: Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett
  • Steve Jobs: How to live before you die