Lately I've been asked, more than once, what would my ideal life look like ...
I was asked to describe it today. I was quite lost. How many people know how to answer that question? 'If it could really happen, how would your ideal life look?' And so I stumbled and bumbled around, wanting to be nice, to be gentle ... but no, there was no nice gentleness allowed.
What would my ideal life look like?!
And it's interesting, to me, because I've quietly been working through Danielle LaPorte's book, The Fire Starter Sessions ... in lieu of having colleagues and friends wandering in and out of conversations with me. I live an oddly isolated life here in Antwerp. Maybe I even create some of the isolation myself, needing so much space to write and make photographs. To think. To read enough books. And to maintain the family and home we have here.
Danielle almost beats me over the head with her repetitive, direct questions regarding my professional life. Initially she set off a protective response in me ... protective, resistant perhaps.
How much money would you like to be making? Earned a tentative I would love to simply make some money ... became I would love to be financially independent.
Her questions focus you down on your business, your self, and your needs. The last question on her recent worksheet, as follows, was another invitation to dream.
So ... what would you like to do with your life and career? (Money is no object. Dream.)
This morning, a similar question, different requirement. Tell me how your ideal home life would look. Dream. And we're talking 'ideal', if it could be as you wish it to be.
I think I'm getting it. We need to go in the direction of our dreams. In fact, Henry David Thoreau tells us to Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
And as we step out, we increase the quality and satisfaction in our lives and so influence the lives of those people around us too. We're here to live our lives and become the best we can be during that time. To do the 'right thing', to be eaten up by guilt for not doing so, to conform to the outline of today's 'ideal citizen' ... often these things don't respect who we are. It seems a bit like a wing-clipping to me.
So here I am, writing a book, spinning a web of planned future actions that will spark financial independence. I'm having some off-the-wall ideas that just may work. All this simply because people are inviting/demanding that I dream my ideal worlds, both privately and in business, into reality.
I have no idea how it will go but let's see it.
