Think about where you are in life right at this moment. How does it compare with your dreams? You may have let go of a few life goals over the years, as "real life" took over and made grand gestures seem like impractical fantasies. But no matter where you are on your life's journey, it's not too late to reclaim your dreams and achieve the life you've always wanted! It's absolutely possible to design your own lifestyle instead of just allowing circumstance to dictate your daily routine.
How to Succeed in 12 Months: Creating a Life You Love is your ultimate guide to turning your dreams into reality. Author Serena Star-Leonard is living the dream herself, having practiced what she preaches. In the book, she shares the secrets behind figuring out the steps that will get you the life you've always wanted, and taking those steps in leaps and bounds. It's not a get-rich-quick scheme, but a one-year plan to stepping out of your rut and into your most fulfilling life. Star-Leonard provides a roadmap to:
Breaking your dreams into small, actionable steps
Eliminating excuses and gaining confidence
Prioritizing your goals for better planning
Designing your lifestyle around your interests
Whether you've been looking for a way to work closer to your dreams, or are just looking for a way out of the rat race, Star-Leonard is your guide to make big things happen. How to Succeed in 12 Months: Creating a Life You Love is the key that opens the door to a more fabulous version of your life.
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The concept of lifestyle design has been around for decades, but it became a global phenomenon following the success of Timothy Ferriss’s book The 4-Hour Workweek.
Lifestyle design is the art of creating a fulfilling lifestyle now, rather than waiting for retirement or some unexpected windfall.
Lifestyle design does not look the same for any two people, or even for any two different stages of life. Some people have a passion they can fulfil for their entire lives. Other people discover new passions over and over throughout their lives.
Right now my lifestyle is designed to enable me to travel long-term and have time to immerse myself in whatever project I am currently inspired by. In a couple of years my dream lifestyle will most likely be different because I will want to spend my time with the children I would like to have.
The starting block is the life you are living right now. This is the foundation upon which you can design the life you choose to live. Like me, not many people will start designing their dream lives on a blank canvas. The majority of us have pre-existing responsibilities (such as children, family, debts or a business) and things that we like, dislike or are profoundly passionate about.
How we design our lives is based on our passions and responsibilities. The life you design could involve:
quitting a job to start a business
creating an alternative income, enabling you to spend more time with your children/family
working from home or in other countries
working less
travelling more
committing your time/life to making a difference
scoring your dream job or changing career
going full-time with your hobby
starting community projects
living sustainably and/or off the grid.
The options are endless.
A life of freedom
My experience of living a life I’ve designed is a recent achievement.
I am writing this from a gorgeous apartment in Bolivia, with views across the city to snow-capped mountains. My husband and I have been travelling for more than one and a half years. About six months into our trip I realised that I was used to this lifestyle. I now accept that visiting amazing places and meeting inspiring people is my everyday life. It feels normal to wake up each day and decide what we are going to do, be it going to the beach, visiting a ruin, learning something new, working on one of the many projects we are involved in, or writing a blog or book!
We have designed our life to fulfil our passions and goals. We are not afraid to have big goals. We accept that we may succeed or fail, but we give each of them our best shot.
Although this life is normal now, I still pinch myself occasionally because this lifestyle seemed impossible for most of my life. I say seemed impossible because once we took a series of actions towards achieving our goal, it all became very possible.
At many times in the past I had been resigned to how things were, even when a lot of things sucked, such as:
long commutes to work sitting in traffic
working long hours for my employer
being scared to leave my job
when I did leave my job, spending a few years working long hours, seven days a week on my businesses
having huge debts
earning very little and having no financial security
being single and lonely
failing at many things I tried
not looking after my health.
You can see why getting used to my new life of love, travel and adventure is pretty thrilling!
It wasn’t easy getting here, however. I have worked very hard and invested a lot of time and energy on projects, goals, businesses and charities — learning and trying, over and over again. I have worn myself out at times trying to figure out how to free myself from the shackles of the life I had, in order to live a life I love.
The problem was that I didn’t know it was freedom that I was looking for. In hindsight, it is obvious and I can see that it didn’t need to be so hard to figure out.
Freedom mindset
It is very easy to understand and adopt a sense of freedom when you have been travelling for as long as we have. But the mindset is possible whether you travel or not. It is something you can cultivate even if you are bedridden, or have never left the country you were born in. The experience of freedom comes when you realise that you call the shots in your life. There are many situations where you may not feel this to be true, where you may feel trapped or constrained. But you do have choices, whether you can see them or not. They may not necessarily be choices that you like all the time, but they are choices nonetheless.
Sadly, we are not taught how to develop our freedom mindset at the schools that most of us attend. Although many people aspire to live with this mindset, most people believe in some way that it is something possible for other people, but not possible for them. This is not true. It is possible to create freedom in your life by simply realising that you are free. You are able to do fantastic and exciting things with your life.
The problem for many people is that with freedom comes great responsibility. To be free you must accept that you are responsible for your life — that you are creating it, whether you realise it or not. Many people blame their parents, boss, partner, kids, health, the government or anything or anyone else for how unhappy and unsatisfied they are. The fundamental flaw in blaming others is that you are giving others an invisible hold over you. You are giving away your power to be free.
Don’t get me wrong, things will happen to you that are outside your control; many tragic and wonderful things will probably happen in your lifetime that you have no control over.
But you do control your reactions to these things. You do control how you view and act in the world around you, and the situations you are faced with. This is how you create your world; this is where your true freedom lies.
Creating a freedom mindset is something that you can do, and for most people it means a dramatic change in how you see the world. The self-help industry is enormous because there are millions of people out there looking for more out of life and wanting to learn the elusive secret of how to be truly happy, fulfilled and free.
In my experience there is a shortcut. The quickest way to create a life of freedom and fulfilment is to be bold and work hard to do what it takes to fulfil your dreams now, even if they seem impossible.
Throughout this book I am going to share with you stories of real, everyday people who had a moment of clarity and decided to take life into their own hands. They were people just like you, with lives just like yours. Each one of them reached a point where they saw they had to take action to make their dreams a reality, even if their dreams seemed impossible and they had no idea how to make them happen.
I hope you take inspiration from their stories when you embark on your own life-changing adventure. I begin with Lee’s story.
Case study: a late start in the music industry
Lee Safar has always had a passion for music. She played instruments from a young age and found she had a natural talent. She was brought up to be a good girl who followed the rules, so when she left school she was devastated to learn that her family’s cultural beliefs did not align with her dreams to be a musician. At 17 Lee gave up music and followed a mainstream path of university and then senior jobs in the corporate world.
After repressing her dream for more than a decade, Lee one day realised she had to make a change because her life had to be about music. Music was her passion and she could no longer hide, blaming her parents for not allowing her to pursue her dream. She realised she was responsible for her life and how it would turn out.
Lee got into action and booked a singing coach. She learned to play the guitar and the piano and took the opportunity to do open-microphone nights and gigs around Sydney. She started writing songs and eventually quit her corporate job to work part-time as a barista so that she would have more time for her music.
Lee takes every opportunity to speak to people in the industry and learn as much as she can. She has recorded two EPs and a full album. She feels alive because she owns every decision she makes and, for the fi...
