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Alex Morton
Alex Morton

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Designing the Life You Want to Live

This post was originally published on June 9, 2020 on my blog.

Something's been on my mind for a while that I'd love to share here. It's been an idea that's been simmering in my head for the past few weeks (maybe month or two, who really knows where our ideas come from or when they arrive?).

It's the idea that if we're not currently living the lives that we want to live in the future, then we need to make changes now to be able to live the types of lives we want to.

Now, I'm not talking about wanting to be extremely wealthy in the future future, and then acting as though you are now and consequently spending exorbitant amounts of money as a result. In my humble opinion, that's actually not a great (or sustainable) idea.

What I'm talking about mostly has to do with our own habits, beliefs, and systems of both work- and home-life.

For example, in the not-so-distant past, I would work myself to the absolute bone every single day without rest. If you've been reading along with me for any amount of time, then you may know that I've been rather focused on having time for working hard and also having designated time for resting and taking intentional breaks from said work.

One example of how I see it: if I want to be a conscious and fully-present parent to a child one day, I need to pay attention to how conscious and fully present I am now, each and every day of my present life.

I can't keep going on, entertaining my workaholism and can't-stop-won't-stop mentality now if I don't want that to be my reality in six, twelve, eighteen plus months from now.

The thing is - we don't just wake up one day totally different from how we've been our whole lives. We really have to work to change those habits and life systems.

We may think we'll "grow up" as the years go on, but I think our current habits actually tend to get further and further ingrained - and thus more difficult to change - as the years pass us by.

So for me, those designated times of rest and breaks from working are kind of revolutionary.

I'm not doing it each day for its own sake, but rather I'm consciously designing the very life I hope to be leading in which I don't need to make these very intentional efforts since I will have already built the foundations for them by living that way today and tomorrow and so on.

Thanks for reading! Now let's be friends over on Twitter >>

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