Your choice doesn’t make you a bad person either.
Attacking other people’s lifestyles is a terrible decision.
It has become common. There’s a lot of people on social media who are angry and are attacking lifestyles and the people who select different ones. This is ridiculous.
Focus on the lifestyle you want to choose for yourself rather than attack other people’s lifestyles and believe that only one type of lifestyle is good (a shallow form of hell).
Entrepreneurs are not all evil capitalist monkeys. (Steve Jobs was a genius and a terrible human being all in the same sentence.) Not everybody who enjoys self-help is a terrible human being. Not everything about politics is bad. Not all things about money make you entitled, privileged, or selfish.
The purpose of your life is to consciously choose a lifestyle that works for you.
This might seem odd. Why would the purpose of your life be to choose a lifestyle and not something more grandiose or full of stoic wisdom like a meaning for your life?
The reason is because the concept of a lifestyle determines everything that follows. Lifestyle is a container to put your ideas about life in and find a way to thrive.
Your lifestyle is made up of:
- Your beliefs
- The work you choose to do
- Your hobbies
- Who you spend time with
- How you see the world
- How you earn a living
- Whether you start a business or not
- Where you choose to live
- Your family life
- The balance between work vs. playtime
My lifestyle looks like this: time to do whatever I want, very little possessions, plenty of travel, a positive outlook on the world, grueling hard work, writing about life/self improvement/personal finance/business, one romantic relationship, a piece of sh*t Honda Civic, good friends, great classic hits, no mental illness, and a lot of love and respect towards other people.
You can’t copy and paste my lifestyle and be happy.
A lifestyle is a formula.
See Other People’s Lifestyle as Inspiration for Your Own
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all lifestyle, even though that’s what is often preached by self improvement gods.
You can do and be anything you want. You can do you and not apologize for it. Rather than tear apart other people’s lifestyles, which solves nothing, you can become a lifestyle scientist. You can read about other people’s lifestyles as inspiration for your own.
You can take what works from one person’s lifestyle and discard the rest.
Types of lifestyles:
- Becoming an entrepreneur
- Get a good education and get a good job
- Make money online
- Minimalist vs. Consumer
- A life of kindness and working for not-for-profits
- Create a side hustle or be a passive income badass
- A life lived on social media where you document what happens to you
- The everything is broken and the world is burning. State problems. Say the world is coming to an end. Give into chaos. Think money or business is evil. That’s all a lifestyle too.
Lifestyle Design Works
You spend time designing your dream home or designing and executing on a piece of art. Why couldn’t you design your life?
Lifestyle design is where you don’t let your circumstances determine your lifestyle. Lifestyle design is where you set goals towards the lifestyle you want. The key is to be happy with the lifestyle you currently have in the process, so you’re not forever chasing rainbows that lead towards a lifestyle you never get time to enjoy.
Designing your life is a back-of-the-envelope task. It will constantly change. You will design your life to be one way and then as the plan unfolds you will decide that certain parts need to change.
Lifestyle design isn’t a 5 year plan corporate slide deck that assumes a black swan event like a health crisis will never happen.
Lifestyle design can be as simple as writing down how you want to earn a living, what your hobbies will be, how you’ll spend your money, who you will spend your time with, what you will believe, how you will act, where you will live, and how much time you dedicate towards your family.
Rough estimates are fine because lifestyle design isn’t an exact science.
You Can Choose a “Hybrid Lifestyle”
My lifestyle is what I call a Hybrid Lifestyle. I work a 9–5 job and am a part-time entrepreneur who loves to write.
I have taken three traditional lifestyles and combined them. Society tells us these three lifestyles can’t go together but I’ve chosen to edit that part out. You too can choose a hybrid lifestyle that defies the norms.
The key to lifestyle design is to remove “absolutes” to be happy. For example, I’m vegan and sometimes eat dairy to be a badass.
It pays to question your lifestyle regularly and break the rules. A lifestyle is a blueprint, not an absolute piece of perfect art that can never ever change.
Final Thought
Lifestyles create a lot of arguments. Move on from arguments and choose the lifestyle which suits you. Shaming people for the lifestyle they choose doesn’t help anybody. You do you.
I empower you to create your lifestyle as soon as possible. Otherwise somebody else, typically a corporation with a well-known logo, will do it for you — or even a bad boss who needs you to be a slave so they can buy their lifestyle off the luxury shelves of Monaco while high-fiving James Bond.
The purpose of your life is to design your lifestyle how you want, so you can be happy and find meaning in your life.
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Aussie Blogger with 100M+ views — Writer for CNBC & Business Insider. Inspiring the world through Personal Development and Entrepreneurship. www.timdenning.com
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