What is Life Design?
Design conjures up an idea of some intentionality, of consciously placing your attention on something that you want to create. Just like you wouldn’t build a house without plans, why build a life without some conscious thought as to how you want it to work out or why live in a house that someone else designed to continue that metaphor.
Most people go through life without a clear plan, and then they complain when things don’t work out for them. So they might go through school, university, job or maybe they work in their parents business and they don’t really have any conscious thought nor take the time to sit down and really decide what it is they want to have in life; where they want to go; who they want to become and/or what they want to do.
So I really wanted to open up this topic and open up this podcast to talk to you about this and the importance of having a plan for your life and actually designing something that you can be proud of, that you can look forward to, that you can get excited about and that you can wake up each day and feel inspired that you are creating something that you designed.
Life may not be exactly as you originally designed it, just like if you designed a house when the architect or the builder comes in and needs to make some adjustments on the fly, that’s very much like living life.
We know that things come up – challenges we have to face, and we’re constantly shifting and pivoting. But if you don’t really have an idea of what your life is going to look like, then how can you really be unhappy with how your life is turning out? And many people are unhappy with how their life is turning out. They complain about their situation. They complain about the things that they’ve got in life, but they don’t really have an idea of what they actually do want.
In the words of the great Jim Rohn (America’s foremost business leader and speaker) “If you don’t have a plan for your life, you’ll become part of someone else’s plan and guess what they have planned for you? Not much.
And this is so true, because wherever you are in life, whether it be in business, in work, in relationships, if you don’t have an idea of where you want to go and how you’re going to get there, then all you are going to be is part of someone else’s idea about how they want to get somewhere or who they want to be.
So having some intention about your life and the direction of your life is really the first step.
It’s about declaring what you want.
We live in an amazing world where we have all this opportunity, certainly for those people living in the developed world, we have an amazing opportunity to create what we want in our lives. Yet the majority of people set no intention. They set no foundation, they set no vision for what they want to create. They just go with the flow and most of this comes from indoctrination and something that is called domestication of humans, where people set rules for living and rules for life.
And as a society, we collectively follow these rules and the societal norms, and it differs from place to place. But we follow these societal norms and these rules and this indoctrination through school and our parents and society and religion and a whole range of things that we’re exposed to, and people just move along until something happens, where they finally take the opportunity to take stock to say, you know what? I’m actually not happy, I’m actually going to start to take responsibility.
About six or so years ago was a pivotal moment in my life where things weren’t going the way that I really wanted them to. And rather than be in victim mentality and victim mode and complain and worry and struggle through, luckily enough, through my own conscious effort, I was able to come across some wisdom and some knowledge through personal development and really understand that it was 100% my responsibility to create the life that I wanted to have.
I encourage you to sit down and actually give yourself some space and some time and sit in the silence and be quiet and listen to that inner voice.
Maybe you’ve never actually sat down and listened to that inner voice. Or maybe you haven’t wanted to listen to the inner voice because it’s constantly giving you negative feedback. But I encourage you to sit down and get quiet and listen to that inner voice and ask yourself the question with no limits. No limits!
Say, what do I want to do? And what do I want to have? And who do I want to be in my life?
And once you’ve done that, then you can start setting the foundation through goal setting and understanding your values and aligning your values with that intention and the goals and about where you want to go and understanding your why is a big part of this too.
So if we go back to the analogy or the metaphor about building a house with plans, if you went to see an architect and you said, “look, I want to build a house. I want to design a house. The architect is not going to say to you, okay, fine. Leave it to me. If you said, I just want to design a house, they’re not going to say, leave it to us, and we’ll come up with something and we’ll get back to you.
They’re going to ask you, what sort of house do you want to design? How many rooms does it have? What sort of layout do you want to have? What’s the feeling like? Why do you want to design your own house? Why do you want to live there? What materials are you interested in?
They’re going to be really conscious of asking you to give them more information about personalizing that design so that they understand more about who you are so they can design a house for you, and one that you’re going to be happy with.
So understanding your why, understanding what it is that you get inspired by and excited by and look at how you can actually incorporate that into the things that you want to have and do in your life. It’s critical to sit down quietly.
Maybe this is something that you’ve never done before, in which case, it’s even more important.
And I’m actually really excited for you, because if you’ve never done this before, then it may actually be a difficult thing to do because you may be so caught up in your current circumstance in your current situation and the environment in which you live and the people in whom you hang around that your entire reality is based on everything that you know and understand. But, if you can just sit in silence and try to remove any limits or any biases towards what you’ve seen and how you think things should be and open up your mind… Dream big!
Just create a vision, create some kind of intention towards living an amazing life.
I’m not talking about designing a mediocre life or designing an average life.
What I’m talking about is sitting down and understanding, through intention and really declaring what you want to have and be and do, that would constitute an extraordinary life. Okay?
A thriving life!
Mary Oliver said, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
I don’t want to get into any cosmology or philosophy in this particular episode but think about it. You have one precious life here on this planet, one life and one life only. And that time is going to disappear whether you live an amazing life or an average life, or whether you do something that you love or something that you don’t enjoy. So take some precious time in your life today.
Carve out some time in your schedule to sit down for 15 minutes – 30 minutes and really think “what do I want to do? what do I want to have? who do I want to be?”
Similar to building a house or designing a house, no doubt the architect will ask you to give them an idea about the different rooms, you need to specify the materials, you need to talk to them about the cabinets, you need to talk about the flooring, roofing, windows, all those things. So living life by design is going to include all areas of your life that you want to set an intention around.
This will include relationships, this will include work or business. I will talk later about goal setting and what I call the wheel of life, but you are going to look at relationships, but you’re going to look at work, your business, you’re going to look at health and fitness and all these areas of your life, so, sit down quietly, have a think about it, set some intentions as the starting point for designing a life that you want to live.
Here are your takeaways
- If you don’t design your life then you’re leaving it up to chance. Maybe you’re not getting what you want in life, but the reason you’re not getting what you want in life is because you’re not clear on what you want.
- Secondly, a well-designed life gives focus and purpose, something to look forward to, just like a well-designed house is something to look forward to when you come home each day. A well-designed life will give you focus and an understanding of the activities that you want to be focusing on each and every day.
- Thirdly, I encourage you, don’t let your past prevent you from creating an amazing plan for your future. Don’t let your current circumstances or your past life, the things that happened up to this point in time, prevent you from creating an amazing plan for your future because you have the unlimited possibility within you to create something amazing, but it’s up to you.
You have the choice to live your life by design rather than by default.