My Dream Life
Everyone has a dream life. A most ideal version of the future that they wish would come true. While everyone has a dream future, not everyone gets to live their dream future.
Lots of people don't get to live the most ideal version of their life. They instead have to settle for what they get in life, for their current situation in life.
There are even lots of people who so thoroughly believe that they don't even stand a chance at achieving their best possible future that they haven't given any serious thought to what a dream life would be. They couldn't even describe to a friend what they really want out of life.
Those people who haven't given themselves permission to dream can never reach their best life, because you can't reach something you aren't aiming for.
Well, I definitely want to live my dream life, my best life. So, the first step in that process is to dream. I need to think about what I want for my life. I have given this a lot of thought, maybe too much thought. I have spent a lot of time thinking about the future. But hopefully by writing it down and making it clear, I can get closer to achieving that future.
To really determine what you want your life to be, or what you want more of in your life, you should look at what it is that makes you happy. What experiences make you smile? What do you tend to look forward to?
If you can find those things in your life, you can try to turn those things up for your future.
For me, and for nearly everyone, one of those things that makes me consistently smile is travel. I really want to travel. I want to travel most of the time. I want to have the freedom of time and of money to be able to travel wherever I want whenever I want.
I see travel blogs and travel accounts on Instagram and I feel a longing for that.
I also really enjoy good food. I love going to restaurants. I love trying new foods and drinks. In my ideal future, I will be eating out at restaurants very often, like at least 5 times per week. I also think I would make healthier choices at restaurants if I were to go out more. When I only eat at restaurants occasionally, I feel like I should order something really tasty and something which I don't usually make for myself at home. That tends to be unhealthy food like burgers and steaks. If I knew that I'd be in a restaurant again very soon, I might be more inclined to order things like salads and wraps.
So, I would definitely be happier with my future life if I spent more time in restaurants.
I really enjoy taking my time in whatever I do. I hate feeling rushed. I hate feeling pressured to do things faster than I feel comfortable doing them. Things like work tend to make me feel rushed. So an ideal future would be very time-flexible, allowing me to work when I wanted to at a pace I liked.
I love to read, listen to podcasts, and watch TV and movies. I want to build into my future schedule lots of time to do those things. They might be unproductive in a conventional sense, but if you believe the purpose of life is to maximize happiness, and they bring you happiness, then it is sort of productive to do those things more.
I want to help people. Everyone feels good when they can feel like they've helped someone, and especially when you receive thanks for the help you've given. In whatever I do, I'd like to include some aspect of altruism or helping others to make my accomplishments more satisfying.
I want variety in my life, or at least the freedom to introduce variety into my life whenever I want it. I don't mind routine sometimes. It can feel good to know what is coming. The predictability can be comforting. But sometimes I get bored with the monotony of routine and just want to do something new. But because of responsibilities in life, such as work, I am often required to keep a certain schedule, and for years at a time.
Most of the things I've found I want in a future dream life aren't all that hard to achieve. They are just simple lifestyle choices. The things that make it hard are a lack of money and of time. Lacking total freedom in those two domains effectively limits how much of these things I can enjoy.
If I want to achieve my dream life, then, I must find a way to generate an income that doesn't hold me to a particular schedule. That can be accomplished with an arrangement as simple as remote work, telecommuting, or freelancing. With those sorts of work I would still need to spend lots of time doing work in order to make an income, but I would have the freedom to do that work when and where I wanted to do it. I could travel and still do my work. I could stay up all night doing work and sleep during the day. I could take mid-day breaks to go on a hike and make up for it later.
That would be easy enough, but doesn't free me up enough to enjoy constant travel or leisure. For that level of freedom I would need to find a way to generate income that totally disconnects time from money. Instead of a system where I get paid per hour I work, I need to get paid for my investments or assets.
I could invest in the stock market and collect dividends or harvest shares in order to get the income I'd need to live. I could start or buy a business with employees that do the work of the business so that I could just collect the profit. Those would both be totally satisfying and viable ways to achieve my desired lifestyle, but they both require lots of capital to invest upfront, which I lack. Money makes money, but it's kind of hard if you don't already have money.
So, I need to get some assets which make money, but which don't cost anything to acquire. If something doesn't cost money to acquire, it likely costs something in time and effort. The sorts of assets I'd be looking at would be intellectual property assets which would earn royalties or otherwise generate income over time.
I could produce music, write books, make art, make videos. Any of that stuff would be creating lasting assets which have the potential to create income. I would build my asset portfolio by building up a back-catalogue or body of work. These are all great options, and I might genuinely consider all of them, but I think the asset I'd most like to build is a blog.
This blog is my asset that I am working to build up. If I think of the articles I write as the product I produce, then I just need to work really hard at creating my business's output and I will eventually have a sizable asset which will be able to create passive income for me. Passive income is income that I continue to make from something I only had to create once, which totally disconnects the amount of money I make from the time I spent on the work. I can build something once and get paid forever.
I want to build up this blog so that it generates significant traffic, and with that traffic I want to be able to offer products that I create for sale. I could also recommend other people's products to my readers and make money through affiliate marketing. The way to increase my readership and website traffic, and therefore my earning potential from this blog, is to create lots more content.
Whenever I see a blog which is successful and which is earning it's author an income, it always has at least 100 articles written. Which makes sense. Lots of blog posts means lots of opportunities for people to find your blog. Lots of written work means a greater chance that you are writing about something that someone is searching for. If I want to achieve my dreams and my dream life, I need to write lots of blog posts and build up this blog so that it ranks well in Google.
I consider that portion Phase One of my dream life.
If I can create an asset that makes me money even while I'm not working, that would earn me the time and money freedom necessary to pursue all of the things that I love doing and which consistently make me happy.
But you should never be done striving for more in life. The pursuit of your goals bring great pleasure and satisfaction. My Phase Two would involve investing the money I've made from this blog into physical businesses with employees. Whether those businesses be in manufacturing, merchandising and retail, consulting services, or some other way to create value, I want to continue creating things in this world after my blog.
I don't want to buy into a franchise business. I want to start something from nothing.
I want to find something that is lacking in a given geographical area and build a business which fills that need.
I really want to be a serial entrepreneur. I want to get good at building up brands to the point where they are at least locally recognizable and sustainable, then move on to the creation of another brand.
One business that I'd love to create would be a coffee shop and bookstore combo. Obviously that is not a new idea. That business has been built countless times before, but I think it would be fun.
There is really no limits to the businesses I'd like to create. I want to build as many as possible.
Phase Two is all about investing my earnings from the blog into physical businesses which would require more startup capital than I would have had without the blog, and to further diversify my sources of income. Instead of relying on blogging income, I would then have income from lots of businesses. At that point I would hope to have more money than any reasonable person could spend.
That would be when I'd transition my attention to Phase Three.
Phase Three involves social good. I want to do things which help other people and society in general.
One way I really want to do this is by FDI or Foreign Direct Investment in poorer nations around the world. I want to take my money to poor countries and build businesses and wealth generation engines there in the hopes that the prosperity will spread throughout the region. I would also want to invest in the creation or improvement of infrastructure, such as roads, electricity, and internet.
I would also like to undertake philanthropic projects. I want to build things that communities need but which they cannot afford to build on their own. Stuff like parks, community centers, and auditoriums. I want to build the spaces that can bring people together.
I would also like to work on building up the supply of things people consider essential. Things only cost money because they are scarce. Scarcity requires a system of distribution that decides who gets and who doesn't when there isn't enough. Setting a price and charging money for things does a good job at that. But if things were so abundantly available, the supply was so huge that everyone could have all they want and there would still be more left over, then there would be no need to charge anything. Or the cost would be so low that it wouldn't be burdensome for anyone.
I want to increase the sustainable supply of all essentials to that point, to a point beyond a need for price and cost. For example, consider food. There is abundant variety in the types of food available. And people pay for what they want. You could consider the variety a premium option. But people die of starvation, which should be able to be totally avoided. I would like to produce some food item in such great supply that it can be given away for free. Any person who is hungry could just have that food, and in effect, starvation could be totally eliminated.
I think something like salad greens produced in vertical indoor farms would have the potential to be produced in such abundant supply. Once the farm structure is constructed, the UV lights could be powered by renewable energy produced on-site, the salad greens continue to grow after being harvested, and the entire process could be mechanized so that labor costs would be very small. Salad greens are incredibly nutritious and would be a great food for people who are starving.
The salad greens could be made available totally free or for so little money that everyone could eat salad greens regardless of their financial situation.
I'd like to do that same thing with things like electricity, internet, and transportation.
These dreams are getting to be exceptionally lofty, and so some of the finer detail will be worked out if I get closer, but generally this is what I'd like to accomplish. I think that a person with a lot of money and a selfless desire to help others could vastly improve the world and society.
What I've described would be an exceptional life. It would be huge. I am almost certain I will never get to or accomplish Phase Three, but the pursuit of these goals is worthwhile in itself.
If nothing else, I will be blissfully happy if I can get this blog to earn a full-time living so that I can live with minimal stress and the freedom to enjoy each moment as I wish.
Lots of people don't get to live the most ideal version of their life. They instead have to settle for what they get in life, for their current situation in life.
There are even lots of people who so thoroughly believe that they don't even stand a chance at achieving their best possible future that they haven't given any serious thought to what a dream life would be. They couldn't even describe to a friend what they really want out of life.
Those people who haven't given themselves permission to dream can never reach their best life, because you can't reach something you aren't aiming for.
Well, I definitely want to live my dream life, my best life. So, the first step in that process is to dream. I need to think about what I want for my life. I have given this a lot of thought, maybe too much thought. I have spent a lot of time thinking about the future. But hopefully by writing it down and making it clear, I can get closer to achieving that future.
Picturing My Dream Life
To really determine what you want your life to be, or what you want more of in your life, you should look at what it is that makes you happy. What experiences make you smile? What do you tend to look forward to?
If you can find those things in your life, you can try to turn those things up for your future.
For me, and for nearly everyone, one of those things that makes me consistently smile is travel. I really want to travel. I want to travel most of the time. I want to have the freedom of time and of money to be able to travel wherever I want whenever I want.
I see travel blogs and travel accounts on Instagram and I feel a longing for that.
I also really enjoy good food. I love going to restaurants. I love trying new foods and drinks. In my ideal future, I will be eating out at restaurants very often, like at least 5 times per week. I also think I would make healthier choices at restaurants if I were to go out more. When I only eat at restaurants occasionally, I feel like I should order something really tasty and something which I don't usually make for myself at home. That tends to be unhealthy food like burgers and steaks. If I knew that I'd be in a restaurant again very soon, I might be more inclined to order things like salads and wraps.
So, I would definitely be happier with my future life if I spent more time in restaurants.
I really enjoy taking my time in whatever I do. I hate feeling rushed. I hate feeling pressured to do things faster than I feel comfortable doing them. Things like work tend to make me feel rushed. So an ideal future would be very time-flexible, allowing me to work when I wanted to at a pace I liked.
I love to read, listen to podcasts, and watch TV and movies. I want to build into my future schedule lots of time to do those things. They might be unproductive in a conventional sense, but if you believe the purpose of life is to maximize happiness, and they bring you happiness, then it is sort of productive to do those things more.
I want to help people. Everyone feels good when they can feel like they've helped someone, and especially when you receive thanks for the help you've given. In whatever I do, I'd like to include some aspect of altruism or helping others to make my accomplishments more satisfying.
I want variety in my life, or at least the freedom to introduce variety into my life whenever I want it. I don't mind routine sometimes. It can feel good to know what is coming. The predictability can be comforting. But sometimes I get bored with the monotony of routine and just want to do something new. But because of responsibilities in life, such as work, I am often required to keep a certain schedule, and for years at a time.
Lifestyle Design
Most of the things I've found I want in a future dream life aren't all that hard to achieve. They are just simple lifestyle choices. The things that make it hard are a lack of money and of time. Lacking total freedom in those two domains effectively limits how much of these things I can enjoy.
If I want to achieve my dream life, then, I must find a way to generate an income that doesn't hold me to a particular schedule. That can be accomplished with an arrangement as simple as remote work, telecommuting, or freelancing. With those sorts of work I would still need to spend lots of time doing work in order to make an income, but I would have the freedom to do that work when and where I wanted to do it. I could travel and still do my work. I could stay up all night doing work and sleep during the day. I could take mid-day breaks to go on a hike and make up for it later.
That would be easy enough, but doesn't free me up enough to enjoy constant travel or leisure. For that level of freedom I would need to find a way to generate income that totally disconnects time from money. Instead of a system where I get paid per hour I work, I need to get paid for my investments or assets.
Making Money With Assets
I could invest in the stock market and collect dividends or harvest shares in order to get the income I'd need to live. I could start or buy a business with employees that do the work of the business so that I could just collect the profit. Those would both be totally satisfying and viable ways to achieve my desired lifestyle, but they both require lots of capital to invest upfront, which I lack. Money makes money, but it's kind of hard if you don't already have money.
So, I need to get some assets which make money, but which don't cost anything to acquire. If something doesn't cost money to acquire, it likely costs something in time and effort. The sorts of assets I'd be looking at would be intellectual property assets which would earn royalties or otherwise generate income over time.
I could produce music, write books, make art, make videos. Any of that stuff would be creating lasting assets which have the potential to create income. I would build my asset portfolio by building up a back-catalogue or body of work. These are all great options, and I might genuinely consider all of them, but I think the asset I'd most like to build is a blog.
This blog is my asset that I am working to build up. If I think of the articles I write as the product I produce, then I just need to work really hard at creating my business's output and I will eventually have a sizable asset which will be able to create passive income for me. Passive income is income that I continue to make from something I only had to create once, which totally disconnects the amount of money I make from the time I spent on the work. I can build something once and get paid forever.
I want to build up this blog so that it generates significant traffic, and with that traffic I want to be able to offer products that I create for sale. I could also recommend other people's products to my readers and make money through affiliate marketing. The way to increase my readership and website traffic, and therefore my earning potential from this blog, is to create lots more content.
Whenever I see a blog which is successful and which is earning it's author an income, it always has at least 100 articles written. Which makes sense. Lots of blog posts means lots of opportunities for people to find your blog. Lots of written work means a greater chance that you are writing about something that someone is searching for. If I want to achieve my dreams and my dream life, I need to write lots of blog posts and build up this blog so that it ranks well in Google.
I consider that portion Phase One of my dream life.
If I can create an asset that makes me money even while I'm not working, that would earn me the time and money freedom necessary to pursue all of the things that I love doing and which consistently make me happy.
Phase Two
But you should never be done striving for more in life. The pursuit of your goals bring great pleasure and satisfaction. My Phase Two would involve investing the money I've made from this blog into physical businesses with employees. Whether those businesses be in manufacturing, merchandising and retail, consulting services, or some other way to create value, I want to continue creating things in this world after my blog.
I don't want to buy into a franchise business. I want to start something from nothing.
I want to find something that is lacking in a given geographical area and build a business which fills that need.
I really want to be a serial entrepreneur. I want to get good at building up brands to the point where they are at least locally recognizable and sustainable, then move on to the creation of another brand.
One business that I'd love to create would be a coffee shop and bookstore combo. Obviously that is not a new idea. That business has been built countless times before, but I think it would be fun.
There is really no limits to the businesses I'd like to create. I want to build as many as possible.
Phase Two is all about investing my earnings from the blog into physical businesses which would require more startup capital than I would have had without the blog, and to further diversify my sources of income. Instead of relying on blogging income, I would then have income from lots of businesses. At that point I would hope to have more money than any reasonable person could spend.
Phase Three
That would be when I'd transition my attention to Phase Three.
Phase Three involves social good. I want to do things which help other people and society in general.
One way I really want to do this is by FDI or Foreign Direct Investment in poorer nations around the world. I want to take my money to poor countries and build businesses and wealth generation engines there in the hopes that the prosperity will spread throughout the region. I would also want to invest in the creation or improvement of infrastructure, such as roads, electricity, and internet.
I would also like to undertake philanthropic projects. I want to build things that communities need but which they cannot afford to build on their own. Stuff like parks, community centers, and auditoriums. I want to build the spaces that can bring people together.
I would also like to work on building up the supply of things people consider essential. Things only cost money because they are scarce. Scarcity requires a system of distribution that decides who gets and who doesn't when there isn't enough. Setting a price and charging money for things does a good job at that. But if things were so abundantly available, the supply was so huge that everyone could have all they want and there would still be more left over, then there would be no need to charge anything. Or the cost would be so low that it wouldn't be burdensome for anyone.
I want to increase the sustainable supply of all essentials to that point, to a point beyond a need for price and cost. For example, consider food. There is abundant variety in the types of food available. And people pay for what they want. You could consider the variety a premium option. But people die of starvation, which should be able to be totally avoided. I would like to produce some food item in such great supply that it can be given away for free. Any person who is hungry could just have that food, and in effect, starvation could be totally eliminated.
I think something like salad greens produced in vertical indoor farms would have the potential to be produced in such abundant supply. Once the farm structure is constructed, the UV lights could be powered by renewable energy produced on-site, the salad greens continue to grow after being harvested, and the entire process could be mechanized so that labor costs would be very small. Salad greens are incredibly nutritious and would be a great food for people who are starving.
The salad greens could be made available totally free or for so little money that everyone could eat salad greens regardless of their financial situation.
I'd like to do that same thing with things like electricity, internet, and transportation.
These dreams are getting to be exceptionally lofty, and so some of the finer detail will be worked out if I get closer, but generally this is what I'd like to accomplish. I think that a person with a lot of money and a selfless desire to help others could vastly improve the world and society.
What I've described would be an exceptional life. It would be huge. I am almost certain I will never get to or accomplish Phase Three, but the pursuit of these goals is worthwhile in itself.
If nothing else, I will be blissfully happy if I can get this blog to earn a full-time living so that I can live with minimal stress and the freedom to enjoy each moment as I wish.
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