How I’m Working On Living My Dream Life
March 1, 2008 | In Mindset |
The phrase “living your dream life” is one I hear in a lot of circumstances. Most people don’t live their dream life, but what would it really take to do so? Would it be impossible, or perhaps hard, but easier than we think?
Photo by neon.love
For the past several days, I’ve been thinking about what it would really take to live my dream life. My dream life includes being a volunteer teacher, but it also includes being healthy - physically healthy, financially healthy, and relationship healthy.
Physical Health
Physical health is the foundation of the other areas. This may be cliche, but it is truth. In order to really do what we want to do, we can’t have our health holding us back. I’m sure everyone can think of someone, either someone they know, or someone they’ve heard about through the media, who has overcome tremendous physical challenges to achieve what we only dream of. And for a lot, if not most of us, our physical challenges aren’t nearly as dire as limb loss, cancer, or lack of one of the five senses.
For me, I’m challenged, like many in the developed world, by excess weight. I’m also challenged by lack of fitness and clinical depression. These challenges aren’t impossible to overcome, but they are difficult.
I’m sure everyone has something they want to improve about their physical health. Eating a better array of healthy foods, exercising more regularly, taking vitamins, flossing every day, cutting out caffeine, and decreasing sugar consumption are all steps that may be part of your plan for increased physical health. Again, these things may not be easy, but we all know they are part of living our dream life as a healthy, happy person.
Financial Health
Wouldn’t life be better off if we all won the lottery? I can think of a list of things I would do with even just one million dollars in winnings, let alone hundreds of millions of dollars. But, let’s face it - the chances of this happening are very slim.
So, can we truly be financially healthy? There are people who do it, so it must be possible. Just to be clear, by “financially healthy,” I mean living well with our means, being debt free, and knowing that we can weather a major financial crises, such as loss of a job, or temporary disability.
While there are many tips for reaching financial health, the main ones that I see over and over again are: don’t spend more than you earn, don’t buy on credit, and get out of debt as soon as possible. In addition, financial security may come with having adequate insurance, either in the form provided by an insurance company, or in the form of funds in savings.
As for me, I’m far from financially healthy at the moment. Eventually I want to reach the point where I don’t have to rely on traditional employment for my income, but before I get there I must overcome unemployment and debt.
So, in order to reach a better state of financial health, I must find a job, learn to distinguish wants from needs in order to stop increasing debt, and work to pay off my debt as quickly as possible. For you, financial health may mean increasing your income, decreasing your spending, or both. It may involve soul searching to determine priorities in spending.
In the end, financial health can be approached through the same general ways for all of us, but each situation is individual and must be achieved with regards to your particular circumstances. What works for me will probably work for you, but it may not.
Relationship Health
This term of health may be controversial. Everyone has relationships in their life, if only with themselves. I believe that the quality of these relationships is a major component of living a dream life.
Obviously, not everyone we meet will warrant having any kind of meaningful relationship with. However, if you look at the relationships in your life, can you say that every one that is meaningful is healthy? If so, I would love to have some tips in the comments. However, if, like me, you know that some of your relationships could use work, then you probably see what I mean by they are essential to living a dream life.
I would say, overall, that my relationships are good. My relationship with my husband is great, as is my relationship with my parents and my brother and his family. However, I have two other friends in my life that I consider very dear to me. They were both members of my wedding party, only a year and a half ago. They both live only two miles from me, one in a apartment complex, and the other in a housing development right behind the apartment complex. Given that I could walk to spend time with them in under an hour, or drive in five minutes, I can’t say I have an excuse for not keeping in touch with them.
In this modern day, when just about everyone has e-mail and cell phones, do you find yourself not keeping in contact with your friends either? This past week, I decided to stop letting time pass without contacting them. Turns out one of these friends is in the hospital. As soon as I found out which hospital, my husband and I went to see him and spent over an hour keeping him company. The other friend we are meeting for breakfast on Saturday morning.
How hard would it be to get in contact with a friend of yours? Maybe your friend doesn’t answer e-mails - I lost a friend because e-mails and voice mails were not returned - but they probably do. Most of us send e-mail all day long - what’s one more to a friend?
I believe that relationship health means knowing that everyone who matters to you knows it and continues to know it on an ongoing basis. This means keeping in touch and doing your part for the relationship. Often, we get busy and forget, but it is important.
Do you have a list of people you could call in the middle of the night if something happened, even if it was just a flat tire on the highway? My list is short, but solid; I hope you are motivated to make yours solid as well.
The Next Few Days
I’ve asked a lot of questions with this post, and raised a lot of ideas for how we can improve the health of our lives and get that much closer to living our dream life. Many of these ideas require further exploration, which I will be doing over the next several days.
So, I hope you will return to check out my other posts. In the meantime, I welcome your thoughts and suggestions in the comments below.
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Hi Cathy,
Physical and relationship health are pretty good with me. Financial is the challenge. At the moment I am seeing whether blogging can help with this challenge.
Looking forward to your future posts.
I have it in my head that my financial health is the worst of all three. However, when I’m being truly honest with myself, physical health is the worst. This is really for two reasons: 1. the health problems are more serious, and 2. I’m doing a better job on the financial health portion.
Like you, I expect that my blog will eventually be able to assist with my financial health. It will be a few months still, but I’ll get there.