Who Chose Your Lifestyle?

Let me phrase that slightly differently – “did you create your lifestyle or did it develop the way it is because of someone else’s wishes?”

I was reading a post written by Sasha Xarrian from Outrageous Mastery (she’s been a real positive influence for me) in which she poses the following question:

Are you living your life because that is what you want or because someone else wanted it for you?

I talked about this at a top level in my Mummy State post a few weeks ago. Sasha’s question, however, made me think a little deeper.

Is this about personal development – choosing what you want for yourself – or does it go much, much deeper into our childhood?

Thinking back to my childhood and my early years at work I know that I was living my life according to someone else’s rules. I was doing what was expected of me rather than what I wanted. I wasn’t happy as a result!

People pay lip service to this, with comments like “do what you want – as long as you are happy”. But, as soon as you tell them what you are thinking of doing the objections and negatives start:

• “There’s no money in that”
• “That’s a dead end job”
• “You won’t enjoy that”
• “You have to think about the future”

Because we have little experience when just leaving school we tend to fall in line with the wishes of “society” and those we know best. Not, necessarily because we trust what they are saying but because we don’t know any different nor do we know for sure what we really want. At least most of us don’t.

Those people offering the advice aren’t trying to talk us out of what we want to do because of malice. No, unfortunately, they don’t know any better – they are just copying the example of those who went before. However, the question is “did / are they living the lifestyle they really wanted or are they themselves living according to someone else’s rules?”

It’s nobody’s fault – we just see life from our own perspectives which are ingrained through teachers and parents and our own experiences. So how are we to know any better?

The answer is to be free thinking. To challenge everything we know and work out for ourselves whether there is any basis to what we are told and the information / advice we are given. Or you could choose to live your life based on old wife’s tales and outdated strategies.

We live in an age when doing what we want has never been easier.

Most of us has access to credit – so money to start a business is not normally an issue

Technology and transport means we can work from where we want.

We are no longer tied to working where the “boss” set up the factory.

Yet, many of us still live by outdated values based around the way life used to be.

It’s time to take a real close look at our belief systems and make the changes we need to life the lifestyle we truly want and not the lifestyle created for us by someone else.

RELATED POSTS

I was doing my daily Stumble and came across a great post at Today Is That Day where Aaron Potts talks about successful people and the way they do things differently. He contends the really successful ignore the rules. Although I don’t totally agree with that,  without doubt  to be outrageously successful you have to  believe differently from the norm. Great post you should read.

Coincidentally, I just looked at today’s Mind Food quote and it is spot on with this theme:-

• The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.
  ~ Ben Stein

How To Say Goodbye To One Lifestyle

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