Work-Life Innovation |

Ever thought you’d like to be doing something different? Ever dreamed about that high paid job with all the prestige, with the nice car and the big house? Ever contemplated going on a river boat ride down the Zambezi, or a hike through the Andean mountains? Ever wondered what it would feel like to swim with dolphins off the Florida Keys? Ever [insert personal dream here]? Are you doing anything about it? No? Then I suggest that what you’re doing instead is what you really want to do.

There’s a phrase that goes: you are what you do every day. What I am suggesting here is what you want to do is what you do every day. Sounds crazy I know but hear me out. Let’s be honest, for the most part we have all chosen to be where we are in our work and lives. Nobody held a gun to our heads, and even if they had, we could still have chosen the bullet! But no, we are where we are because of the choices we have made. If we are unhappy with our position in life no one is to blame but ourselves. What we do every day we have in a very real sense chosen to do. Even if that choice was the lesser of two evils, we have still freely chosen it. Luckily though, we are free to choose again.

You stack shelves for living or you clean the sewers or you’re doing a PhD or you work for a large corporation. You chose that, but you are free to choose something else at any time. If you do decide to change your situation then all you need is time and planning to make it happen. If you don’t do the planning, then ultimately you don’t really want it. And this brings us to the crucial point: what most of us don’t accept is that planning is part of the experience of what we want.

For example, you say you want to do X, but every day you do nothing related to X, then you don’t really want to do X. If instead, every day you do Y, then Y must be what you want to do (the alternative is that you’re insane and you deliberately do what you don’t want to do out of sheer perversity). If there is something you do every day, or every week or with any kind of regularity at all that relates to something you really want to do then, yes, I would say that you really want to do it - in fact, I would say that you are already doing it! Climbing mount Everest doesn’t begin with your foot touching the dirt of base camp. It begins months (perhaps years) before in the planning and preparation. Somebody engaging in that planning is, in a sense, already doing Everest.

Having dreams is one thing, doing anything about them is something else entirely. If you are not actively planning how to satisfy any of your dreams then you don’t really want them, do you? If you want to go on an Italian wine tasting tour but instead end up going to work every day for the next six months without making any plans for the trip then let’s face it, you don’t really want it. What you really must want to do is to go to work every day. If you do want to go on that trip you can start planning it today and by doing so you have already begun your Italian adventure!

This brings me to a quote by Thoreau:

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man [or woman] to elevate his [or her] life by conscious endeavour.

That’s you he’s talking about.

Which, in turn, brings me to dreamlining:

Dreamlining is a simple way to start planning the achievement of your dreams, in terms of finances and time. You can use it to start planning how to do what you really want to do (as well as having what you want to have, and being who you want to be for that matter). It works by getting you to dream about the short to medium term (say 6 months), and helps you calculate how much these dreams will cost using a couple of smart techniques. Click on the link above to get instructions and the free chart and start engaging in some conscious endeavour to make things happen. By doing so, you will have already started living your dreams.

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