Your Dream Life is Yours to Pursue

Running faster doesn’t get you anywhere if you’re headed in the wrong direction.

What do you really want?

I am 27 years old now. When I look back at my life, it’s more or less the same as the ones of most of the other people my age. I went through kindergarten, primary school, and high school, did some traveling afterward, and then started university. I had a couple of summer jobs so I could make money on the side and afford a vacation or a new pair of sneakers here and there.

I didn’t do all of this because I opted for it — but it’s not that I didn’t want to do it, either. I did it because it’s the thing you do. It’s an easy path to choose and walk.

Why? Because it is what pretty much everyone else does and there are a lot of incentives on the way that encourage you to keep going. If you can sit your butt down in school and study hard, you get good grades. Now you can go to high school and get even more of them! Yay. After high school, everyone congratulates you because now you can go to university and that sets you up for a nice job with good pay and then you’ll finally be able to afford all the things you desire and do all the things you want to do.

Every step brings you closer to your dreams.

Except that you have no idea what these dreams actually are.

If you are like most people, you have never taken a step back and thought about what it is that you really want in life. Ok, let me rephrase that. You have never thought about it without first freeing yourself from the expectations of society and the corridor it puts you into. You have never stopped to consider if there was another way. You just walked down the path that was laid out in front of you because it’s convenient and will get you where you want to get, right?

Well, maybe it will. But to know if the path you’re taking in life really leads you to your destination, you have to know what that destination is in the first place.

The Paradox of Overchoice

Look, I’m not calling you a sheep or saying that we’re all sleepers who have to wake up and that the government is trying to keep us down and occupied with working our 9 to 5s.

Most people who talk about this subject tell you that you have to “break out” of the shackles that occupy you and keep you stuck. That you have to ditch the 9 to 5 life and break the cycle. They also have tons of fancy ideas about how to do that. Start an online business. Buy a piece of land, raise some chicken, and become self-sustainable. Or travel the world for ten years and become an influencer who lives on nothing but good vibes and occasional fellatio from the hot chicks you see on Instagram. They tell you that this is the only way to achieve true fulfillment and happiness and that if you don’t break out of society’s chains, you’ll regret everything you ever did on your deathbed and die embittered and miserable.

Let me tell you something: That’s a big, steaming pile of bullshit.

There is nothing wrong with walking the path well-trodden and going after the things everyone else wants. Your own house, wife or husband, two kids, secured job and a 401k retirement fund. Most people go that route and it turns out most people are pretty happy with it.

The problem is that it’s easy to get sucked into the rat race and chase something without ever thinking about if it is what you want in the first place.

Today’s world is filled with endless opportunities. You have many more choices today than people forty years ago had.

Unfortunately, there is something that psychologists call choice overload — more choices than you can process. You have so many opportunities and possibilities that your brain gives you a big, fat Error message and refuses to work through all of it. That means you’re choosing the default option more often, simply because it’s convenient. And in your case, the default option is to take the classic route and do what everyone else does. They seem to be happy, so why shouldn’t you?

In other words, you never stop to ask yourself if the route you’re going down is taking you where you want to get — because you have no idea where you want to get in the first place.

The most important step to living the life of your dreams then isn’t to look for shortcuts along this route, to walk it faster, or to get up earlier than everyone else so you can get a head start in the race. No.

It’s stopping and thinking about where you want to get. As long and as hard as you can.

The biggest mistake you can make if you want to live your dream life is that you never get clear about what that life looks like to you.

The crucial word here is you. You have to become clear about what you want out of life. Not what society tells you, not what your parents or friends tell you, not what you have read in some lifestyle magazine or seen on someone else’s Instagram account. No. You have to ask yourself what you want to get out of life.

Look at the big picture

I want you to stop everything you are doing for a second. Lose all momentum. Come to a complete halt. Then, take a step back and ask yourself: What kind of life do I want to live?

It’s not an easy question to answer — because the answer might make you very uncomfortable. Your ego will make you lie to yourself because it is afraid of the pain an honest answer will cause. You might uncover that you have been going down the wrong route altogether for many years like I did. And that hurts like nothing else.

Nevertheless, if you want to live the life of your dreams, that is what you have to do. You have to ask yourself what it is that you want.

For me, the answer included many things. Being able to work from anywhere I want so I wouldn’t have to compromise my job, family, and the city I wanted to live in. Starting my own business because there aren’t many things that I despise more than someone else telling me what to do. Obtaining financial freedom and independency so I didn’t have to slave away until I’m 70. Finding my purpose in life, so I had something to strive for. Becoming a good human being and developing my personality and myself. Finding a woman whose lifestyle aligns with mine and whom I can have a long-lasting relationship with. Get a dog.

Your dream life might look very different from mine. Nevertheless, you have to start at the big picture and work your way down from there. And if you arrive at the conclusion that you want to have a 9 to 5, live in the suburbs, have two kids, and enjoy the perks of a Netflix subscription, alright. If you value security, low maintenance, and a steady, proven way of life without much chance of it derailing, then this is your way to go. Nothing wrong with that.

The important thing is that you are honest with yourself about what you want from your life — and if the path you’re currently walking will get you there.

It’s Your Life, Nobody Else’s

Your life will fly by, so make sure you’re the pilot.

— Rob Liano

In the end, you have to live your own life. No one is going to live it for you. You have responsibility for it. You have to make the decisions.

It is up to you what you do with. It is up to you if you go down the path of the many, the path of the few, or create your own path altogether.

In the end, you can’t blame anyone else for the way your life turned out to be. No one is going to own it but you. So why would you let someone else take the wheel instead of deciding for yourself?

Now that you know how to figure out where you want to get, we can talk about the how. Because wherever your life takes you, you have to keep your balance.

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