Editor’s note: this is a guest post from Derek Johanson of Live Uncomfortably. I’ll be bringing you more guest articles from people with different voices who are designing and living their own ultimate lifestyles. Contact me to write one yourself.
Who’s shaping your life, your reality, your social and financial decisions? Is it your boss? Your friends? Your parents? Why don’t you design a life of your own? Something that fulfills you and not someone else.
The sad truth is that most of us design a life that is not ours – it’s society’s.
For most of my teens and into my early twenties I followed the mold. I went to college, started a career after school, and like many my age began to question the point of it all. I quickly realized I wasn’t living MY life. I was living someone else’s.
So I quit, packed a bag, and traveled. I did what I wanted to do everyday and I still am. Life is for me and life is beautiful.
No matter how old you are it’s not too late to start living your life for you. Here’s a quick guide to get you started.
Decide
The first step in designing a lifestyle that you want is to decide.
Decide what is important to you. Don’t think about your job or career, your house, college, anything else.
Think about what you want for yourself right now. Then start putting your time and money towards the things you truly want.
The problem is no one decides what they want to spend their time and money doing. They just blindly get on the spending train that soon leads them to debt and misery because they don’t really care about any of the crap they own.
Decide what’s important and throw as much of your resources as possible towards it.
Get Out Of Debt
Debt is slavery. I consider debt anything you are forced to pay back – like a loan. A mortgage is debt. I don’t care if you say it’s an investment. It’s a debt and it restricts mobility.
If you can afford a house outright buy it. If you want to live in the same house for 30 years then buy it.
The point is to stop. Think about what you really want with your life. That 2-3K a month mortgage will suck the life out of many, especially those in their 20′s.
Spend Less & Save More Money
Make more money or spend less money. One takes your labor while the other gives you time. What are you trying to do?
Don’t Chase The Jones’s
Screw what your friends and family are doing. Are they happy working for Verizon? If they are good for them but that’s not for you and you know it. You want to be a creator. You want to write, you want to paint, you want to run your own businesses.
They want new cars, houses, and clothes. If you’re reading this website I’ll bet you want experiences not things. Stop caring about possessions starting right now.
Only Listen To People Who Are Living Like You Want To Live
Don’t listen to people who are miserable and whose lives you don’t want. These people try to give you advice all the time and tell you things like, “Well it’s good you’re traveling while you’re young. You can’t do that when you’re older. You have to get a ‘real’ job at some point.”
Seek out your heroes and listen to them. Everyone else is a distraction.
Stick With It
It might take years and a lot of heartache to get where you want to be but you’ll be rewarded handsomely in the end. We’ll all look up to you and envy you.
It’s like having a great body.
At first it’s tough as hell. You have to workout consistently and eat right. Your friends will think you’re crazy or call you a robot for not eating pizza and drinking beer with them. Then, when your body is rock hard and dead sexy they’ll be envious and ask for your advice.
You can live whatever life you want as long as you’re not afraid. Afraid of what others think. Afraid of failing. Afraid of working hard and consciously towards something meaningful.
For more about Derek Johanson, check out his blog, Live Uncomfortably, subscribe to his feed or follow him on Twitter.
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photo by Tait Campbell
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16 comments add your own
You said it! First you must decide…..then you must act.
Ultimately it is all up to us, each of us for our own lives. We each must design our own lives, define our goals, and boldly tread the path that we choose! My wife and I are redesigning our approach to our life so that we can have the freedom to pursue life on our terms, not the terms of any one else.
Glad to hear it Sean.
Oddly enough I think deciding was the hardest part for me. Deciding that I was actually going to chase what I wanted. But once I did that, all my subsequent decisions (related to money & time) have been easy in comparison.
Well said Derek, well said. To me, the most important step is to actually make the decision to do whatever it is that you want to do. I always knew that I wanted to travel, but for a long time I was inhibited by the fact that I didn’t want to travel alone. I think I was too afraid to really get out there and be independent and figure things out for myself.
Once I made the decision that I would never travel anywhere if I was always waiting for someone to travel with, it opened a whole new world of possibilities. In the past few years I have traveled to many different places (mostly by myself) and it has always been fantastic. It is to the point now that I normally prefer to travel alone. Sometimes it’s just easier that way!
So yeah, making the decision to do something, be it travel, or study, or work, or redesign your life is the most important step (to me at least). After that you have to persevere and stick with it. It may be a long and bumpy road, and it may never get easy, but as long as you are striving to do what it is that you love to do, the payoffs will always be worth the effort.
Hi Graham. You make some great points about traveling alone. I happen to travel with my wife, so I can’t compare directly, but we always find an amazing community of fellow travelers when we’re on the road. We’ve met so many great friends that traveling starts to feel like home in a way. I can imagine the same sense of community exists for solo travelers. Thanks for sharing.
Preach on, Derek!
I totally agree that the hardest part can be making that decision to live differently. To this day I still have trouble explaining to people how I decided to start my first business back in college (quitting 5 jobs in the process), or how I more recently decided to take my current business international (by moving to a new country every four months). There’s a barrier that we’ve had installed by almost everyone we’ve ever listened to our entire lives…all we can hope is that the one or two who are willing to present that alternative idea are convincing enough to get us to notice and act.
Or we can stop hoping and be that person for others
Alternative ideas are so hard to come by, aren’t they Colin? And you’re right, they’re even harder to hear above the noise of common beliefs.
Nice. The truth is, “the system” doesn’t really want you to know what’s possible, that you can live fine without an assignment in the corporate grid space, that $800 a month for a studio apartment is a rip off, that temporary homelessness when you’re in the U.S. isn’t that big a deal, that you can solve most of your problems by booking a flight to Latin America, Australia, or Asia, that car ownership is the primary method the authorities use to track and categorize us, that you can live off earnings from your website in Mexico, &c. &c. Otherwise if we’re weren’t propagandized and kept in constant terror of falling off the US corporate gravy train, how would they keep us working? I’ve lived off $600 a month from my website in Mexico for a few months, and I know other sites of people who are doing the same thing were they beta on how to do it, so they’ll never get me back. Next month I’m gonna live in Nicaragua, then Argentina, and then the philippines, all over the next year. Your hypothetical Verizon stooge is never even gonna visit any of those places once.
dickr – I think sites like this one are going to open people’s eyes to possibilities that a location independent lifestyle allows.
You’re so right about the costs of living. I’m back in the USA right now, visiting family, missing $1.50 beers in Colombian bars.
Hi Derek,
How safe is it for a single woman to travel and stay in Columbia? I love traveling by myself. I have the freedom to change my plans, and I also have the freedom to stop for a while if I need to. I would love to know more about living in a different places inexpensively. I am glad to have found this web site.
Derek,
I think all the things you say about the real nature of life are true, but I’m not sure one can ascribe such intentionality to “the system”. That is, there isn’t some Borg-like System that “wants” to keep us down; there are an interlocking web of people and institutions, each with their own assumptions, incentives, and beliefs, and it’s really hard for any one actor to break out of that because those are mutually reinforcing. Just feel like thinking along the lines of “the system is trying to propagandize people and keep them in terror!!!” fuels anger that isn’t all that necessary.
I just recently started getting into lifestyle design, but it seems to me that once I move closer to the unconventional lifestyle that is right for me, I’d rather interact with conventional people in a spirit of love, or at worst pity, rather than anger.
I’ll keep it short and very sweet – this is a great article. Just throw in a few more actionable details next time. Keep it up, Derek.
Great tip, Kienan. I hope we can bring you more actionable details in future posts!
Wow, pretty epic post. Especially because the “no b.s.” part is really in there – nice and firm tone.
I love parts like “Don’t listen to people who are miserable and whose lives you don’t want. These people try to give you advice all the time and tell you things like, “Well it’s good you’re traveling while you’re young. You can’t do that when you’re older. You have to get a ‘real’ job at some point.”
Seek out your heroes and listen to them. Everyone else is a distraction.”
Someone in business once told me something similar. He said only to listen to self-made entrepreneurs who actually made the kind of money I wanted to make for a big project. Ignore the rest.
I don’t really agree on the mortgage deal. In some cases you can get a mortgage and rent it out and earn on it, when your away.
Last time I went travelling I spoke to a lot of people who said things like ‘it’s good to do this travelling thing before we get back to the real world’. I would just nod and smile while wondering what world they thought we were in right then!
Another one is people telling you to act responsibly. To whom exactly? Surely I am responsible for myself and no one else? For a lot of people acting ‘responsible’ and ‘grown-up’ is actually another way of saying ‘I’m doing what everyone else is doing, because I’m too lazy to think for myself’.
Regards things like a mortgage, it all depends on economy and deal you get at the time. I have a bunch of friends who bought houses between 2004 and 2008 because it was the responsible, grown-up thing to do, and it’s an investment right? Did any of them take 5 minutes to do some research and realize that we were in the biggest house price bubble in history, ever! And that is was all going to come crashing down at some point, course not that would have involved independent thought! Buying a house involves an opportunity cost as well.
That was one inspiring article. Makes me realize just how much of my life choices have been conditioned by others. Mediocrity describes most of my waking hours. I’ve bought into the ‘happiness by job security’ ideology and it is sickening to the soul. The biggest question that I really need to answer right now is, “What do I want?” Thanks for helping me see that I must begin to take that question seriously.
I think my favorite advice from this is:
“Seek out your heroes and listen to them. Everyone else is a distraction.”
That is fantastic advice for me, I need to work on this more. I have plenty of friends who think this side gig I’m pursuing is just a pipe dream. It’s easy to get into a funk and think “This will never work, everyone says it will not work, they must be right.” I have to consciously remind myself that following the crowd won’t get me ahead. Following the crowd is probably the worst thing I could do.
Great article!