Get A Jump On Living Your Dream Life…Before You Even Get There!

Today, I want to talk to you about living your dream life before you even get there. I'm going to explain what that means, and I'll tell you the main reason our dreams don't come true and why we don't achieve our goals. Then I'm going to leave you with three steps to start practicing what it will feel like once you achieve that dream life.

Let me start by telling you about my friend Peter. He's thinking about retiring, so he's going through the steps and considering his options. He's asking himself strong questions like:

"Am I ready to retire? What will I do once I'm retired? Should I keep working part-time? If I do want to work part-time, do I even want to do this, or do I want to do something completely different?"

Basically, he's performing due diligence before he makes this leap, and he's asking the big "What now?" question for the next phase of his life.

This, of course, is what Easy Aging® is all about: figuring out the next steps, figuring out what makes you feel good or bad or indifferent. You need to understand how you feel about certain things. It's about diving in and doing the detail work. It's about getting your hands dirty and most importantly, it's about creating the space that you need to figure it all out.

I'm pointing this out because so many people don't take the time to do this. Why don't they? Because honestly, it's hard work. It's worthwhile work, of course, but it's not a simple "1, 2, 3, presto!" kind of thing.

Many people spend more time planning their vacations than they do planning the rest of their lives. So if you're ready to start living your dream life and get a little taste of what it's going to be like, here are three steps you can take immediately.

1. Get crystal clear on what you want

Think about it, narrow it down to even the smallest details. Write it, draw it, feel it. Talk to yourself in the mirror. Do whatever you have to do to visualize it and to get that picture crystal clear.

Take those details and create a mental picture of what your dream life looks like. What does your perfect day look like? Get your clarity so solid that you feel it in your body, heart and mind. Because when you start getting that clarity into every cell in your body, things are going to start happening.

2. Apply the details to your real life now

For example, if your dream version of yourself gets up at 5 a.m. to get through an amazing, fulfilling morning routine but you're currently getting up at 9:30 or 10 a.m., you clearly need to make an adjustment.

Your thoughts and your behavior aren't congruent, and this is quite confusing for your brain. A lack of congruency means one of two things: either you aren't serious about your dream or you're unclear on the details of your dream.

Either way, go back to number one until you can get crystal clear on how waking at 5 a.m. will contribute to your dream life. Ask yourself detailed questions.

• Were you just randomly picking a number, or are you sure 5 a.m. is the magic number to make everything fall into place?
• What exactly is going on at 5 a.m.? Could it be 6 a.m. instead?
• Can you still get your morning routine completed if you start at six instead of five?

Detailed questions will help you clear things up and start applying these small details to your life right now.

For the record, I'm the perfect example of what a lack of congruency looks like. In my dream life, I say I'm enjoying creativity on a regular basis but what am I doing to live that out? Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. I was doing absolutely nothing to make my thoughts and my behavior congruent, so this confused my brain.

My brain tossed the idea around for a while, then it said, "Oh, please! She's not serious about this!"

When I became aware that I was having this incongruency, I found my sketchbook and pencils and made a commitment to myself to draw five minutes a day, two or three times a week. This small step helps me start understanding what things are going to be feeling like when I'm "living the dream."

3. Build your confidence on a monthly or quarterly basis

This may require a little more planning or saving up to do. For example, if your dream life includes having a personal chef, get your friends together and hire a chef to come to your home once a month or every six weeks.

If your dream life includes staying at expensive hotels and getting pampered with a facial or massage, save up your money and make a reservation to do that once a quarter.

If your dream is to live in a beautiful house in a particular neighborhood, drive through the neighborhood and act like you're looking for the house that you're going to buy. Look at the details of the house. Do you like the color? Do you like the roof? Do you like the front door? Maybe you could switch it out. What about those hedges?

Think about all these little details. The more you do this, the deeper you are going to ground that dream in your heart, mind and spirit, and that's the goal.

Once you know how it feels, you can start calling on these feelings and experiences again and again.

You want your dream to start feeling real, even normal. This is your new normal.

The getting up at five or having the personal chef or staying at the expensive hotels or living in a certain neighborhood. This can actually be your new normal. You just have to give the details some thought and start applying them to your life, along with bite-sized nuggets of action.

Take one fun-sized action to get started and play with it for a while to see how it feels. Is it going in the right direction? Do you want to pull back and go to the left instead of the right? It's your dream, so you get to choose.

Doing these three steps will help you start living your dream life right now, before you even get there. Happy dreaming, Easy Ager!

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