LifeShaping Starts With You – Small Steps To Get Closer To Your Dreams

Starting to shape and design your life in a way that will be fulfilling to you can be easy, really, even though it often seems not that simple to us. We all have fantasies and dreams, ideas of our future, of a risky adventure, of escaping our everyday routine for just a little while. Fantasizing is good, healthy even. It helps your mind to get into a relaxed state, to calm down, put away some stress or worries that you may have carried with you during the last couple of days, during the past work week. Do make time for yourself for some dreaming, with nothing else on your mind. Do it more often.

At the same time, it can be an immense effort to get from dreaming up something to getting active and working on the realization of those ideas. Have you heard yourself say, out loud or just to yourself, ah well, it’s just that idea that I had, nothing serious…, or, it’s not realistic anyways…? All those ideas and ‘ostentatious’ plans swirling around in the back of your mind – are they really meant to stay just there? Can you accept for yourself to never make a move to try setting some of those seemingly crazy ideas into action? To see how they play out in reality?Here’s the thing about getting back out of your mind and into “reality”:

One, it’s easier to be passive, to stay in your well-known comfort zone, to keep doing what you’ve been doing. It’s a habit, a routine, it brings some level of comfort in following known patterns.

Two, like this, you avoid confronting yourself with taking a decision. If you’re someone who has a hard time taking decisions, the notion of staying passive and letting things go their way all by themselves, without explicitly deciding for one or the other action, may feel familiar to you.

Three, if we think about changing something, for example in our job life, we easily assume that change must be big in order to be impactful, to really make a difference. So it means a lot of effort. At the same time, a major change in life like that – this can be quite scary. Quitting your permanent, safe job in order to go on a six-months-cruise or backpacking adventure? Saying goodbye to your possibly comfortable pay to face the insecure income and many yet unknown challenges of a solopreneur? It takes a lot of courage and trust in the outcome to take a step like this.

But designing and shaping your life in ways that make it more meaningful, more enjoyable, more worthwhile to you doesn’t necessarily mean you need to overhaul everything and start on a green field. I’d like to invite you to the idea that there lies great value in the simple, small things.

What are the things that you’re currently missing in your life? If you had more time available in each day, what would you like to use it for? Think about it, maybe take some notes, and see what is most important to you. When posed the question, “If you didn’t have to worry about money, what would you spend most of your time doing?” at the LifeShaping launch event, most invitees’ replies were surprisingly simple: use it for hobbies, spend it with family & friends, travel & discover something new. There were examples such as engaging in sports, reading, painting, learning to play an instrument, enjoying life, trying something new, but also helping others. Travelling and experiencing adventures were further recurring themes. What do you see?

None of these things necessarily require a major change in someone’s life – all we’d need is just some extra time. Of course, it depends on your individual situation. But overall, these ideas look like something that might be tackled through one or the other comparatively small adjustment. Did you ever consider if it could be worth it for you to check with your employer for the reduction of your work week by 4 or 5 hours? One less per day? Or to work Fridays half-day only, and blocking the newly gained time slot to invest into that hobby or relationship that you’ve been meaning to make more room for?

Think about it. There are plenty other levers that you might be able to pull to your advantage. Which ones do you see? What could be a possibility for you?

Embrace the small changes that lie within your reach – they may just have that kind of great impact you were looking for.

The LifeShaping Launch with an interactive Vernissage at the Munich Grundler Villa

Outlook: Do we need all the money we think we need? Or are societal norms and constructs getting the better of us? New blog post coming soon.