Live the Way You Want by Designing Your Lifestyle

Yesterday, I told you the one thing I wanted to tell people before I die and that was to live a life truest to yourself.

That's a lie.

Actually, there are a ton of things I want to tell you before I die.

They include the so many things I have learned over the past couple months in my self studying of personal development, changing the mindset, and attaining things that the majority of people find impossible to attain, like getting rich, starting up a business, being able to work from any location in the world, being able to spend and balance time between work, family, friends, and self.

After learning about many of these things, I now look at the world differently. Now, every time I go outside, I look at people and observe them, how they're living their lives. And I wonder if each and every one of them are living their lives to the fullest. If each of them truly do want to be in the exact situation and state they are in at the moment.

Most likely, only 1% of those people are living their lives to the fullest, and that's sad.

So that's why I want to help you open your mind to the possibilities of the world and your life. I want you to feel the transformation I felt when my eyes opened to a whole new world of opportunities and a fulfilling life.

With that, let's talk about designing your own life.

Lifestyle Design

In Corbett Barr's words, lifestyle design is about "designing your life instead of letting society design it for you," and I completely agree with him. Lifestyle design is about making your life the way you want it instead of following what everyone else is doing. 

Society's way of living life involves going to college (and graduating), getting a job, working the "9 to 5" job hours, paying bills, working again, paying bills again, and so on, in a routine that lasts for years until you reach your retirement age, where you move to an island to live the last remaining moments of your life. 

Timothy Ferriss is the one who first vocalized lifestyle design in his book The 4-Hour Workweek. 

In this particular "New Rich" lifestyle, one would need to...

Create and build enough passive income to support the desired lifestyle. 

If your desired lifestyle is to live extravagantly with lot's of sports cars, mansions, and swimming pools, you'd need to build a large enough income to support that. On the other hand, if you desire to live modestly with only a nice, small apartment and a dog, you'd only need to build a small passive income with that. 

The key word here is passive. The main source of income for most people is earned income, in which one actively works at a job to receive wages, salary, tips, commissions, and/or bonuses. 

The problem with earned income is that the person working for it needs to trade his or her time for money. This is a problem, because there is a limited number of hours a person can work per day. Thus, the person is limited in his or her earned income. 

Of course, there are other ways to increase that income, through higher education, promotions, bonuses, but eventually, there will come a point where you can no longer increase that sort of income. Also, the highest paying job would be an anesthesiologist with a top salary of $400,000. But even attaining that type of job requires at least a decade of higher education and thousands of dollars on education expenses. Then, when you finally get that type of income, you will be spending the majority of your life paying off those student loans. 

So the best type of income to go for is passive income which includes

• Rent from properties
• Dividends and interest from owning securities, such as stock and bonds
• Royalties from publishing a book or licensing a patent
• Creating and owning a business

To live the "New Rich" way, as Tim Ferriss would say, you would need to build up enough passive income to support the type of lifestyle you want. In building up passive income, you are supporting your desired lifestyle without having to work.

The most popular way to create passive income is to create a business, most particularly, an internet business. There are a number of reasons why people prefer internet business over the other many ways to create passive income.

• You can start with little money to investment. Rental properties require thousands, and income from securities require hundreds of thousands before you can start to see a return. All while an internet business only requires a few dollars per month to set up a website.
• You'll see a return faster. Rental properties and securities need ample time, usually months and years, before you can see a nice return on your investment. On the other hand, you can see multiple internet businesses maturing in as little as 1 month.

A nice resource to go to for learning about passive income online is Pat Flynn at smartpassiveincome.com.

But Is It For You?

Is creating a business for you? Does the idea of living an extravagant life without having to work seem unethical to you? This may or may not resonate with you, but the thing you should remember is that you always have a choice. You can choose to see it as unethical or you can choose to see it as a way out towards freedom. 

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.