Whose life are you living, really...?

A Sense of Wonder + A Dash of Inspiration

Ask a kid what they wanna be when they grow up and you’ll get wild answers.

• “I’m going to be a fireman!”

• “I’ll be a princess!”

• “I wanna be a dinosaur!” (me too, kid)

• “Movie star!”

• “Supreme ruler of the galaxy!” (Okay, that might be me)

You can see the excitement on their faces when they begin to think about it!

And then, there’s adults…

The unfortunate truth is that most of them will lose that kind of excitement for their lives and their futures. They stop dreaming big, they settle for less than they’d like, they have discarded dreams, and worst of all…

…they let others push them into a life that’s not theirs!

What about you?

Why We Stop Living Our Own Lives

Have you ever had a dream…

… but never started because you were afraid of what others might think?

• Your parents.

• Your friends.

• Your partner.

• Steviepantz69 on Instagram.

• Dave from accounting.

If so…. you’ve stopped living YOUR life!

You’re now living according to what you believe others will find “acceptable” and that others are comfortable with. You squash your own dreams and goals in order to fit in with other people.

Maybe you did the same study as your parents did.

Maybe you feel pressured to take over the family business, though you hate it.

Maybe you don’t pursue your dream job, because it’s not “cool”.

Maybe you fear what others will say when you start your YouTube channel.

You’d be living a LIE!

It’s time to take back your life by returning to what matters to YOU!

The Power of Self Awareness

You’ll hear me talk about self awareness a lot.

Because it’s a super power!

Firstly, there’s a question I would like you to ask:

If you’re in a place where you can safely do this, I’d like you to close your eyes for a moment. Picture yourself when you were a child and full of dreams. Imagine having a conversation with yourself for a couple of minutes.

You can ask questions like:

• Would he/she be proud of who you’ve become?

  Why, or why not?

• Ask your former self about their dreams and goals.

• What advice would your former self give you?

• What advice would you give your former self when it comes to achieving their dreams and goals? Are you following that advice yourself?

• What would you do differently starting NOW to make yourself (both past, present AND future) proud?

Go ahead and have that chat with yourself now (this email will wait for you).

Done that? Awesome!
Or maybe not, I can’t tell.

Here’s the reason I want you to try this thought experiment though:

You already know what to do, consciously or subconsciously.

But then life happens.

Social pressure happens

Insecurities happen.

Fears happen.

Trying to impress other people happens.

Because of these reasons and other reasons, your good intentions might fall to the side. You do things to please others. Your own dreams get put aside. You hold off on taking action. And you disconnect from your TRUE life!

The life you COULD be living!

This thought experiment helps you reconnect with forgotten dreams!

(Note: Today’s action steps includes 3 questions for further introspection)

Taking Your Life Back!

This one’s for you if you realized you’re off track.

How can you start living YOUR life again?

In order to get to a point where you can do that, you need to make a shift away from needing external validation to getting more internal validation.

The first thing is core values:

• In other words, what do you stand for?

• What do you absolutely not fuck with?

• What is truly important to you?

• What traits do you find most valuable in yourself and others?

Once you start defining these (yes, it’s a hard question), you can start to create clear boundaries around yourself, those around you and your future in life.

For example:

If you’re a vegan, you wouldn’t care if a meat lover (like myself) were to tell you that your way of eating and living is stupid. Their values clash with yours and because you woulnd’t want to be like them, why take their advice seriously?

Spoiler alert: You shouldn’t!

If you decide fitness is a core value of yours, would you really care what aunt Marge, who’s 220 pounds, has to say about your way of living?

HELL NO!

Do you see the power of defining what matters to you?

As soon as you get crystal clear on this, you can disregard a lot of the advice and pressure that tries to steer you in 17 different (mostly wrong) directions! You can start living in alignment with the values that matter to YOU!

Note: Today’s recommended video goes way deeper into this.

If you don’t yet have a clear idea of your values, it’s a must-watch for you!

Audio Lesson: The ONLY 2 Ways to Break Habits

We all have “good” and “bad” habits.

The difference between the two labels is our judgment of how good a habit is for us long term. But in reality ALL habits are good habits in the short term!

How come?

That’s what I’ll cover in today’s short audio lesson:

Before you can be effective in breaking your bad habits, you first need to understand their true nature. Until you do that, you’ll keep spinning your wheels.

Defining Your Core Values

If you want to live YOUR authentic life, you first need to identify what really matters to you. You can then build yourself and your life around these core values. They will then act as a shield against influences from others.

Today’s Exercise for Getting Clarity

Today’s action section is introspection!

Damn, Eminem would be proud of my mad rhymz!

Anyway, there are 3 questions I’d like you to write down and sit with. Take some time to gather your thoughts on these questions and then answer them in as much detail as you can.

1. “What would I be doing with my life if I gave zero fucks about the opinion of anyone except myself?“
   

2. “How do I want to be remembered after I’m gone? At my current pace, will that happen?
   

3. “How would myself from 20 years into the future react if he/she saw how I’m going through life today? What advice would he/she give me to improve my life and live more authentically?

For answering these, it can be useful to use reverse engineering:

Imagine that you already have your dream life and write down as clearly as you can what that dream life looks like. Let go of all fears, objections and “I can’t”s from your mind for just a moment.

Once you have the end goal in mind, you can look for places where you’re being inconsistent with that vision for the future.