Are you living the life you desire?
This is a question I often ask myself as I direct my actions.
I play all kinds of games with myself to figure out what I desire in life. Some of my favorite games include these:
- I ask myself the question, If I could have anything at this moment, what would I want? I like this question because it usually pinpoints your greatest need. As a young working mom, my answer was most often was sleep as I was super tired during those years.
- I also write a post named Dream Me and in the post I describe my dream life. That exercise also points out the elements of life that are most important to me and elements of life that are not so important.
- I also think about what's in my control and what's out of my control. We all know that we don't have all control over our lives, and those limitations we don't control create the framework of our lives.
As I consider my dream life today, I'm thinking about these questions and categories.
Relationships
Are the people in your life making your life a good life, and are you also positively contributing to the lives of those people in your life? Good relationships are essential to good living, and we will all define a good relationship in somewhat different ways. It's good to understand what a good relationship means to you and how you contribute to nurturing good relationships.
Endeavor
It's good to chart how you spend your time now and then to see if your investment in your endeavors is well-directed when it comes other living a good life. There can be times when we find ourselves putting a lot of time into endeavors that result in little satisfaction or not inline with our life goals or wishes. When I was a young teacher, I invested a lot of time into professional learning and development. That turned out to be a good investment with regard to professional satisfaction and earnings. The increased pay helped my family and the increased skill helped my students and me. It's good to assess whether your investments of time, money, and energy are well-connected to the good life you desire or not.
Dreams
I'm a big believer in seeking your dreams in life. I do believe that dreams can come true, yet I also understand that dreams rarely just spontaneously come true. To reach your dreams, you need to clearly define those dreams and then work for them. So a good place to start is to identify your dreams with as much detail as possible. I remember way back when a friend of my husband was very disappointed that she didn't have a partner. She knew what she wanted and she dramatically changed her life by moving to a new part of the country and changing her job. That change did result in her finding a partner that she later married and had a family with. Clearly her lifestyle before was a bit of a trap for her with regard to living a happy life, so she made a dramatic change in hopes of achieving her dreams.
It's fun to think about your life overall now and then with a focus on the life you're living and the life you desire. Then it can be fun to try out various paths in life in order to figure out who you are, what you want, and how to get there. Onward.
