Life Design
Why Do You Want a Designed Life?
You’re working hard in your career during these middle years. But what are you working for?
For many people, retirement is a goalpost that many people are working towards with trepidation. When prospective retirees list their biggest concerns about retirement, topping the list are poor health and financial worries. However, research shows that actual retirees are most disappointed in retirement with alienation, followed by health.
By alienation, they are referring to being lonely and cut off from former colleagues, groups, and organizations and feeling behind the times. Many also miss the satisfaction they received from performing their job and having a day-to-day routine and goals. This is particularly an issue for those who have moved away from their nuclear family to live abroad either temporarily or permanently.
Rather than float along with a life that’s decent, only to be disappointed in retirement, it’s time to focus your time and energy on your ideal life and create your own world.
I discovered that the most sustainable plans were those where the process itself focused less on the location specifics and more on the people and what needed to happen in their lives, first. As I worked with more clients in various financial and lifestyle situations, I noticed they were struggling with solving the issues of portability. There was the assumption that our financial assets must move with us. I had to reconcile that against the fact that a lot of times they simply can’t.
Clients were coming to me for help in moving their financial assets and I was feeling compelled to ask them why. When they tried to answer my question, it became clear that they really wanted help with tactics, yet I could see that wasn’t where the real value was. We had to understand the need first.
Once we worked out the “why” we focused on the “how” by bringing the location-specific opportunities and issues into the planning process.
This is why Life + Wealth Achievement Formula® starts with life design. Life design is both challenging and fun. Once you know how you want to live, the tactics to get there become much easier and clearer.
This makes sense when you understand that location-specific opportunities and issues are tactical. Building our future based on tactics is backward because we don’t account for changes in the economy and in our lives.
When we don’t account for lifestyle, family, or economic changes, the missteps are frustrating, expensive, and hard to rebound from. Instead of spending our time focused on the activities that produce 20% of the result we want, we should spend our time focused on the 20% that produces 80% of the result we really want.
We’re going to walk through the fundamentals of life design and exercises that can help you in starting your own plan.
As an additional resource, I’ve also created a free guide to teach you how to live, work, and play anywhere in the world. Download the guide and then get started on the fundamentals of life design.
The fundamentals of Life Design:
- Taking a life inventory
- What is your vision?
- Creating goals to get you there
- How to align ideas and vision with your partner
Up next: Taking Life Inventory