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LIFESTYLE DESIGN, MENTAL MASTERY, VISION
7 August 2023 | Lauren Monty
Do This To Completely Reinvent Your Life In 3 Months (And Beyond)
Do you ever feel like your life has no meaning?
Like you're just going through the motions day in and day out?
Then find yourself going to bed at night asking "What's the point?"
You're not alone.
Most of the population has subscribed to a lifestyle they don't want.
We’ve got mental, physical and emotional issues at epidemic proportions and I believe it all comes down to feeling like our lives don’t matter.
In this letter we’re going to talk about 3 key elements and ONE simple practice that can line up to help you completely reinvent your life in 3 months and beyond...
VISION - FOCUS - DISCIPLINE
We need to know what we’re working towards (Vision).
Be able to keep ourselves facing our true north
without getting distracted (Focus).
And direct our behaviour to move us towards
our desired outcomes (Discipline).
But the thing that’s really going to supercharge our ability to weather the storm of inner and outer resistance that comes when we create massive change in our personal lives - is WHY.
So, before we get into the specifics, we first need to understand the power of purpose.
THE POWER OF PURPOSE
Many of us are spending our precious time on earth striving after things that don’t matter because we either don’t feel there’s another option or we’re not aware that the things we’re striving for don’t really matter to us.
You go into any busy city and you see a sea of people just going through the motions of life, their days are filled with busy-ness without any real sense of meaning or direction.
“Being busy does not always mean real work.
The object of all work is production or accomplishment and
to either of these ends there must be forethought, system,
planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration.
Seeming to do is not doing.”
- Thomas A Edison
It’s a level of consciousness that isn’t willing to look in the mirror and face the less than comfortable truths about how one is living their life
I know, because I’ve been there…
When I left high school I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
All I knew was that I didn’t want to continue down the path of formal education.
I had zero interest in going to university to study something I didn’t care about, just to get a piece of paper that qualified me for a job I didn’t want.
So I got a job in a callcentre.
My thinking was that I’d work there for a while, because it was pretty good money, and save to go travelling overseas.
But I got trapped…
Before I knew it, I was unintentionally climbing the corporate ladder, going from role to role, with bigger pay-cheques and more responsibility.
By the age of 24, I was the General Manager & Learning and Development Manager of a multi-million dollar call centre earning $150K per year.
On paper I was crushing it.
I had the massive income, big-shot job title, fancy townhouse in Sydney, brand new car… I’d built up the lifestyle to go with the pay-cheque...
The only problem was, I was completely miserable.
I was partying all the time, drinking, taking copious amounts of drugs and trying to distract myself from the fact that I was deeply dissatisfied with my life.
On the outside I looked like I was thriving, but on the inside I felt like my soul was being crushed, one client schmoozing at a time.
Deep down I knew that living for a pay-cheque, working 9-5 doing something I didn’t care about, to earn money to buy things I didn’t need, to try and fill the void of living out of alignment with my values - was not how I wanted to live my life.
It took an emotionally abusive boss to push me to the point where the pain of staying put far outweighed the fear of throwing it all in.
So I quit my job, walked away from a 6-year career and started a 10-year journey of trying to answer the question:
"Is this really how life is meant to be?
Surely there's more to life than this."
“The best day of your life is the one on which you decide
your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on,
rely on, or blame. The gift is yours – it is an amazing journey – and
you alone are responsible for the quality of it.
This is the day your life really begins.”
- Bob Moawad
We’re part of a system that (up until now) has sold us the idea of a linear life path with only one possible trajectory.
With the expansion of the internet and advancements in technology, that way of life (like much of the old tech we used to think of as ‘state of the art’) is now becoming obsolete.
What most people can’t see is that right now we have an unparalleled opportunity to completely rewrite the foundation of modern society and make our lives revolve around the things we actually care about.
But in order to do so, we need to be able to zoom out and see how our lives can be in service to this new way of living.
There's a growing body of research into so many different areas that all point to the life giving benefits of having a sense of purpose and meaning in our lives:
Our health improves
We’re less stressed
Creativity increases
Our relationships deepen
We have more energy to pursue the things we truly want in life.
“Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress.
Working hard for something we love is called passion.”
- Simon Sinek
The nature of humans is to contribute.
We are tribal, community centric beings who have a primal drive to help those around us.
When we feel like what we’re doing doesn’t matter, that it’s not contributing to something that is for the greater good, we carry an innate sense of deep dissatisfaction.
Our behaviour then starts to reflect that dissatisfaction.
“We are wired as meaning-makers. If we cannot find positive
sources of meaning, we often gravitate to negative ones,
amplifying our social, emotional, and physical concerns.”
Brett Steenbarger - PhD Psychology
Another big problem that takes us away from being goal directed and having the drive to find a larger purpose in life is that we’re too f@cking comfortable.
“Indeed, as Viktor Frankl argued — based in part on
what he had observed first-hand — experiencing adversity
might actually contribute to the development of a purpose in life.”
- John Templeton Foundation research paper
We’ve allowed ourselves to become distracted by seeking comfort instead of challenge and adversity and as Plato said: “Necessity is the mother of invention”… when the need for something becomes essential, you are forced to find ways of getting or achieving it.
Living in a society where everything is essentially handed to us on a silver platter means our basic survival needs of food, water and shelter are met.
Our modern Western society puts that on steroids.
Comfort and consumption have overtaken basic needs.
Which means, if we want to thrive, instead of just survive, we have to work harder to find deeper drivers to push ourselves to keep growing and expanding.
We need to intentionally seek out challenge and adversity.
If your sole purpose is to get through the week.
Make it to the weekend.
Get paid.
Spend 2 days catching up on life stuff while trying to find time to do something you actually enjoy before going back to work Monday morning to do it all again…
You’re going to run into all sorts of problems.
Emotionally, mentally, physically.
“Health defined as the absence of illness or disease does not
do justice to what it means to be well and thriving”
- Carol D Ryff
Most people settle for a life that's so much less than optimal:
This is NOT NORMAL.
It’s a symptom of us wasting our days doing work that brings us zero sense of meaning or fulfilment.
“People with a purpose in life are less likely to experience conflict
when making health-related decisions and are more likely to
self-regulate when making these decisions and consequently
experience better (mental) health outcomes”
If you’re someone who struggles to look after your health, for example, maybe it’s not as simple as you think…
We tend to look at our behaviours individually.
“I need to eat better”
“I need to exercise more”
“I need to get more sleep”
But if there’s an underlying sense of existential angst, a deeper part of you that responds with “What’s the point?"...
Attempting to purely change your behaviours becomes an uphill battle.
When we answer the underlying question instead, we’re saying to ourselves:
THIS is the point.
THIS is why I’m choosing to eat better.
THIS is why I’m prioritising the gym over the couch.
THIS is why I’m getting up early.
The combination of purpose (why) and vision (what) gives you a guiding force in life that you genuinely feel connected to, and that has the power to completely rewrite the operating system of your life.
VISION, FOCUS & DISCIPLINE
THE TRIPLE THREAT THAT CHANGES THE GAME
If you want to completely reinvent your life, the combination of these three things is essential.
We live in the most distracted time in human history.
“…on social media… there are 147,000 photos uploaded,
54,000 shared links, and 317,000 status updates on Facebook
every minute; more than 95 million posts shared on Instagram
every day; and one billion hours of content watched on
YouTube daily…”
- Brendan Kane, Hook Point
And that’s just in the online world…
Add to that the daily demands of life.
Your job.
Your relationships.
Life admin.
Household chores.
Food prep.
Grocery shopping.
(The list goes on.)
And we can see how it’s so easy for our deepest desires and dreams to fall by the wayside.
The two biggest challenges for most millennials are
FOCUS & DISCIPLINE
Not only are we incredibly distracted, we’ve also grown up in the age of instant gratification.
We grew up in the generation where ‘everyone gets a medal just for showing up’.
We were told we could ‘be/do/have whatever we want’, without being taught the hard lesson that in order to do so, we have to put in the necessary hard work.
We never learned the life-giving benefits of self-discipline.
The thing is… Self-discipline is the antidote to the virus of distraction.
Think of it as personal mind control.
Developing discipline means you have the ability to direct your mind, which in turn gives you more conscious control over your own habits and behaviours.
If you want to dive deeper into understanding discipline, check out THIS video or read THIS article.
We need all 3 to keep ourselves moving towards the things we actually want.
The problem with most popular information about creating a vision for your life is it doesn’t address the distraction problem.
Just HAVING a vision isn’t enough.
In fact, it can make things worse if we don’t see ourselves actively moving towards that vision.
We end up getting frustrated, depressed and losing faith in ourselves because we know we could be doing better.
If our attention is being pulled in so many different directions every day - do you really think spending 20 minutes once a month thinking about what you actually want for your life is going to move the needle?
It’s not.
If you really want to make massive shifts in your life, you need to not only have a vision, you need to anchor it so deeply into your consciousness that it’s programmed into you.
You need it to be the front and centre of your life.
You need it to be your main focus.
You need it to be the filter you run everything through.
That’s how it can have the power to restructure your entire life.
DO THIS TO COMPLETELY REINVENT YOUR LIFE
IN 3 MONTHS AND BEYOND
Everyday for the next 3 months, start or end your day spending a minimum of 10 minutes writing out your vision for your life in the present tense - as though it is already your reality.
That’s it.
This one thing can completely transform your entire life.
It seems too simple, right?
But it has so many layers…
First - it’s important to note that you handwrite your vision.
Not typing on a computer, tablet or phone.
Not speaking it out loud.
Writing it down with pen and paper.
According to a study by Dr. Karin James at Indiana University:
"The brain activity associated with handwriting increases the formation of more robust neural pathways, enhancing memory and learning."
The act of writing by hand is more likely to increase how quickly your vision becomes imprinted into your consciousness.
We’re basically hacking the system of your brain to prompt it to focus on your vision.
The daily anchoring of what you really want, what you’re actively choosing to move towards, your WHY, will improve your ability to stay focused on activities that align with that direction.
The more you focus on what you want, the more you will naturally start to question how you’re spending your time, your daily habits and behaviours, and what you’re giving your energy to.
It becomes a filter for your life.
The repetition of the daily practice also builds discipline.
A lot of us have a warped perspective when it comes to repetition, because we associate it with boredom.
But repetition is key to building anything.
It’s about reframing how you view it:
My final note is to highlight the importance of writing in present tense.
When you write it as though it’s already so, you are owning the identity of the person who is already living your vision.
You’ll start to adopt that identity on a deep level, which will further shape your daily choices.
You’re convincing yourself on a daily basis that you are that person.
We are capable of so much more than we know.
I believe we all have the ability to create a way of life for ourselves that gives us life instead of draining it, but like I’ve said many times - that doesn’t come without sacrifice.
Commit to this practice for 3 months and see how your life transforms.
Show yourself what you’re capable of.
That’s it from me.
I’ll leave you with this quote from Steven Kotler:
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive.
Because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.”
- Monty
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