How much money would it take for you to live your dream
One million? Ten million? A billion?
To be honest, it doesn’t take a lot of money; it takes dedication and vision.
I mean, I’ve traveled to 70 countries for the last 7 years and lived it up in some amazing places. I’ve cycled 6,500 km down the length of Africa, raced a Lamborghini in Las Vegas, went on helicopter rides over the Zambezi River, stayed in 5-star hotels, had numerous spa pampers, cruised the oceans on beautiful yachts and so much more.
I didn’t have millions when I did any of it.
Trust me, living your dream lifestyle doesn’t require a lot of money. It simply takes having a vision and going after it.
What is your dream lifestyle?
I challenge you to put it down in writing because most people don’t know the answer to this question.
Rather than focusing on what you don’t have, writing it down will help you focus on what you want to have in your life.
The law of attraction states, you attract into your lives whatever you’re focusing on.
So ask yourself, are you focusing on the lifestyle you truly want to live? Or are you focusing on the negative aspects of your present lifestyle?
If it’s the latter, I suggest you do the Perfect Day Exercise.
It’s a visualization technique that allows you to clearly state what your perfect day (in the future) would be like so that you can practically touch it, smell it, and feel it.
You’ve got to make it so real that there shouldn’t be any doubt in your mind that you’ll get there.
The Perfect Day exercise
I want you to take 30 minutes to write down your perfect day in the present tense.
Start with when you wake up and move through each hour of the day. Jot down thoughts and descriptions of what this ‘Perfect Day’ would be like.
- How would you spend it?
- With whom?
- Where would you be?
- Would you be working, playing or both?
- What does that smell, look and feel like?
Contemplate how a business fits into your perfect life.
- What kind of work do you do?
- Who are your customers?
- How much time would you spend in your business?
- What hours would you work, ideally?
Write it down in as much detail as you can.
The idea is to make this Perfect Day crystal clear to yourself, something more solid and concrete, rather than a dream.
If it helps, find pictures that capture how you see this Perfect Day. You can create a vision board like Morag did with her two dream boards.
The next step is to consider how you can create more of these perfect days in a month or a given week.
For example, if being by the ocean, eating fresh fruit and doing yoga for an hour is part of your perfect day, what’s stopping you from adding 20 minutes of yoga each day and taking a drive to the local swimming pool?
Sure, it’s not quite what you’ve dreamed of, but you’re getting closer to it.
Writing about your perfect day is very liberating, and it creates a sense of accomplishment. It’s as if you’re already on your way.
The reason why this works so well is writing stuff down makes it that much more real. As does adding visuals. What’s more, stating it in the present tense makes you far more likely to believe it.
Given that you are what you think, you can see how this starts to become a reality. And who doesn’t want to have more perfect days in their life?
It’s only after you can see clearly where you’re going, that you can plan your way to get there.
As Lewis Carroll wrote: If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.
Navigating your way to the dream lifestyle
We know from research on goal-setting that setting specific and challenging goals results in higher performance and you are more likely to achieve them faster.
The same is true for visualizations. When you visualize your dream lifestyle, the more specific you get about it, the more likely you are to start living that lifestyle.
My favorite way to visualize my dream lifestyle is the Perfect Day exercise, which I shared with you above. It’s the same exercise that I teach my Freedom Plan members before letting them start their journey to achieving more freedom.
Another popular visualization tactic is doing a dream board, and my friend Denise Duffield-Thomas, from Lucky Bitch, is a huge advocate. Denise is the money mindset mentor for the new wave of online female entrepreneurs. She’s the author of the best-selling books “Lucky Bitch” and “Get Rich, Lucky Bitch,” which give a fresh and funny road-map to create an outrageously successful life and business.
Oh, and she became a millionaire by the age of 35. So she does know a thing or two about living the millionaire lifestyle.
Check out the four ways she suggests to create your own dream board, to help you get excited about your future and achieve your goals faster.
Once you have visualized your dream lifestyle and solidified it in the form of a Perfect Day exercise or dream board, you are ready to embark on the journey of making your dream lifestyle a reality.
To start living the dream lifestyle, you need to do one thing first
You have to take the first step. You have to start.
It’s the single largest hurdle to overcome when you set out trying to make your dreams a reality. If you don’t take that first step, you will never succeed.
The reason most people do not take that first step is that they are afraid of failure. What if you try, but you don’t succeed?
Not taking any action is safe because if you don’t act, you can’t fail.
But that’s the kicker!
You can’t fail if you don’t act; but neither can you succeed.
Or as Denise would say, to win the lottery, you’ve got to buy a ticket first.
The action you take doesn’t have to be grand. In fact, the smaller it is, the easier it will be to commit to.
It could be as simple as
- Listening to entrepreneurship podcasts during your commute
- Creating a 1-page ‘coming soon’ website
- Implementing one tactic from the last business book or blog post you read
- Writing down 1-3 Most Important Actions (MIAs) that you want to take next week
- Creating a 1-page business plan to earn revenue from your idea
The truth is, your dream lifestyle isn’t going to magically appear in your life one day. You have to start taking consistent daily action toward manifesting it.
The Law Of Attraction, which we talked about, only works if you bridge your dreams and your reality by taking action.
If you’d like to learn more about the practical steps that can help you manifest your goals using the Law Of Attraction, check out Denise’s free 5-day Manifesting Challenge.
Are you truly ready to live your dream lifestyle?
No, this isn’t a trick question.
Sometimes, we only imagine what life will be like in the future. We compare our present life to the future one and imagine how much better everything will be.
However, we fail to take into account the work that it takes to get there. And the hardest part of that is getting your mindset to match your future vision.
When I first started Suitcase Entrepreneur, I could never have foreseen that I would be settling down one day.
Instead of living out of a suitcase all the time, I started by buying a couple of properties in New Zealand and Portugal that I can spend summers in, each year.
Then I went ahead and bought a lifestyle property in March 2017. It is a big house with 2.5 acres of land. More on that in this post and podcast: Changing Plans.
I still travel, but not as much as I used to. I went through months of deliberation and struggle to finally accept that I no longer wanted to keep traveling full-time.
It has been a huge mindset shift for me. But once I made the shift, things just started falling into place.
Denise also talks about how her mindset was preventing her from becoming a millionaire.
She had planned to become a millionaire by 30, but when she was nowhere close to it by 28, she started having serious doubts if she’d ever get there.
But she went out and did the hard work of getting her mindset right and manifested her millionaire status in the next five years.
When it comes to manifesting your goals and living your dream lifestyle, your mindset can be the difference between success and failure.
That’s why you need to keep working on your mindset every day.
It’s like going to the gym. You can’t just go for a few weeks and expect to stay fit for the rest of your life. You’ve got to make it a regular practice.
How to bridge the gap between ‘now’ and where you want to be
It might seem like you’ve got a long way to go before you can live your dream lifestyle.
Things might not work out exactly as you had planned, in spite of all your hard work. You might even have to go through a few setbacks before you get to where you want to be.
But don’t worry. It’s all preparing you to finally step into your dream lifestyle. It’s making you a stronger person, who will be ready for the new challenges and be confident in the ability to overcome them.
You can start bridging the gap between ‘now’ and the future by:
- Visualizing your goals/dreams with detail and clarity
- Taking consistent action toward achieving your dreams
- Working on your mindset to prepare yourself for the future
Your dream lifestyle is unique to you, and it’s your hard work that’s going to get you there.
However, you can make your life a little easier and get to your goals faster by following a simple system. A system that can help fulfill your dreams by leveraging the Law Of Attraction and turning it into practical action steps.
If you want to turn your craziest dreams into reality by leveraging the Law Of Attraction, check out the free 5-day Manifesting Challenge, by my friend, Denise.
Full Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. I am a proud affiliate partner of Denise Duffield-Thomas and may receive a commission in the future if you purchase one of the Lucky B programs.