Are You Living The Life You Planned?
Jamie just turned 45. She and her husband, Robert (47), are expats with Robert’s company and are just starting their second year of a second three-year term. They are based in Spain, but Robert is in the oil and gas industry and travels often to Portugal, the UK, and occasional trips into the Baltics and the western republics of the former Soviet Union. With their two children, Emily (12), and Austin (9), they are dealing with school fees, music, and sports, while still trying to save for college and beyond for their kids.
From the outside looking in, Robert and Jamie are living a life of luxury — an exotic adventure of family trips, a beautiful home, social events, and household help. Something that is beyond the average American Dream. They should feel grateful, happy, or fulfilled, right? Yet there are too many days that neither one of them feels as excited, productive or fulfilled as they thought they would.
Default, Decent, or Designed
After twenty-five years of working with private clients, fifteen years of financial and life coaching, and studying different aspects of psychology, I’ve noticed that people tend to live one of three types of life and lifestyle: Default, Decent and Designed. We are all in one of those three lives today, and we can choose to keep it, adjust it, or change it altogether.
The Default Life
Many people live their lives in the past or in the expectations of others. Aspects of this life can be traced to cultural or familial imprints. Because they’ve let other people or the past dictate who they are, their identities are trapped in a set of beliefs about what is possible.
Their experience in life — their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are restricted. They may feel tethered to where they are or cornered into a certain way of being: complete with labels, assumptions, and expectations that may be false. If we feel like we cannot leave this life, we may feel resentment toward the causes of this life.
How does someone end up in a Default Life?
From birth, we are enticed with rewards and punishment to do what others — our parents, teachers, employers, friends, lovers, bosses, clients, customers, and even society and our government — want us to do. The end result is that we adapt and assimilate so much that our actions and desires start to fall in line with external rewards.
Over time, we accept this into our routines and reality. It can become a lens through which we see the world and as long as we receive the rewards — such as attention, money, and care — being in this life has a lot going for it.
At some point in our lives, we have all probably lived this life and because of it we may have felt controlled or locked-in, restless to leave. Some people refer to this existence as being in a cage. Some of us find our way out when something happens that shows us the reality of the life we’re living and the life we could have. We then break the cage and consciously choose a new self-image and life and do the (sometimes hard) work of sculpting it into reality.
The Decent Life
For many of us, life is not as dire as the Default Life. Through work, dedication, and fortunate circumstances, many of us live what I call the Decent Life. We’ve followed a similar path to independence, opportunity, and some level of freedom. We have spouses/partners, one or more kids or causes, or all.
We may own a home and possibly a rental property or two. We are thankful for our lives. We know we’ve made some tradeoffs — a few more hours at the office away from the family, or we’ve put the career on hold to raise the family, or perhaps we’ve opted for a less adventurous life — but we knew what we were getting into…for the most part.
Then one day, someone asks you how you’re doing. As you reply with your upbeat, well-crafted answer, you wonder if you’re being totally honest.
Are you happy or have you made too many trade-offs?
Is this the life you dreamed of and the goals you wanted to achieve?
Are you more fun than the life you’re living?
Is this what you really wanted?
Are you living your life or someone else’s?
Often our brain responds to these types of questions with regret. This isn’t the same type of cage as the Default Life, we can start to feel trapped in the Decent Life.
Although this may be a comfortable life, we can start to feel restless and wonder: How did I end up here?
When I met Jamie and Robert, they were living the Decent Life. When they set out on their adventure to live in the UK, they had talked about a number of dreams, that Jamie was starting to worry were just fantasy.
Robert was making great money as a corporate executive but the stress of the job was taking its toll on him. Robert’s drive to succeed often came at the expense of his health. Jamie had a viable online business that she was hoping to grow but was feeling pulled between her role as a mom and the time she needs to take her business seriously.
While the Default Life feels scary and limited by external conditions, the Decent Life can feel stale and limited by its own success.
There is a similarity between these two lives; desire for something more: freedom, choice, parity, connection, authenticity.
Ultimately, what is missing from both is a life of our design.
The Designed Life
In the Designed Life, we create our own world. We are not on cruise control. We’re on a journey, focusing attention where we want it focused for the life we want to live. This doesn’t mean perfect balance in each area of life, but it does mean being deliberate about where we focus our time and energy. This also means focusing our money, our time, and our energy helping others in a way that best supports and inspires us.
It might seem like the Designed Life is a destination, one where those living it have no obstacles or challenges. But that would be a misunderstanding. When we’re designing, we understand that we, and thus our life, are a work in progress. We still have highs and lows, but overall, we take the time to check-in, to reflect, to vision, to create goals and plans to achieve those goals and we adjust as needed.
The Designed Life usually calls to us after we’ve done what we were supposed to do, become who we thought we were supposed to become, and lived as we thought we were supposed to live.
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re not living the Designed Life. You’re searching for answers; much like Robert and Jamie were.
Whether you realize it or not, your career or your spouse’s career has probably been central to your life decisions. Like many, you may have been or still are immersed in your work. There are lists of things to do and goals to achieve. You may pride yourself on doing these things well.
But what is it that you want to do? What would a Designed Life look like for you? In the next sections, I’ll share with you how Robert and Jamie created their Designed Life and the steps you can take to start your own.
Read next: Why your money needs a global plan.
