Whether you’re feeling stuck in your current lifestyle or just looking for some inspiration to help you achieve your dreams, this episode is for you. Let’s get started on creating your dream lifestyle!
In this episode you’ll learn:
- The importance of defining your dream lifestyle
- Why having a clear picture of what you want is crucial.
- Setting realistic goals and taking purposeful action towards achieving them.
- Creating healthy habits that support your dream lifestyle
- Staying flexible and adaptable as your goals and aspirations may change over time.
Download the free Perfect Day Exercise Template
Transcript
Hey there, I’ve got five brilliant tips for you today to start living your dream lifestyle. If that sounds too good to be true, then stick with me. I’m Natalie Sisson, the host of the Life Pilot podcast, where we’re all about turning your dreams into reality one day at a time.
Is this gonna take work? Sure, but it’s gonna be the best investment you have ever made in yourself and your life. And every single other person around you is gonna benefit when you start living a life that you have designed and truly wish to be living. Because we don’t need to be living a version of any other life than the one that we want yet every single day I see people just going through the motion.
Getting up doing the thing and not paying any attention to how they truly feel about that or what they really, really desire. It’s as if some people have given up on what is truly important to them and what’s possible for them to have. And here on this podcast, we ain’t taken any of that. We are going after the life that we want.
Why? because you will just be the best possible version of yourself. You will be so much happier, you’ll be able to achieve all these awesome things that you’ve always had in the back of your mind, or maybe on an amazing bucket list or a vision board that’s, you know, you need to dust off because I wanna make this happen for you.
And I’ve got the tools and the know-how and the experience and the examples, and basically the motivation to help you do this. So if you need some support along the, I’m your girl and this is the place to be. And today the five tips that I wanna talk to you about are all pretty straightforward, but they do sort of have to go in order for you to make it happen.
Now, if you listen to my very first episode of the Life Pilot podcast, it was all about why you’re not living the life you want. And I talked about the perfect day exercise. Just brilliant, and I’m so excited if you have tried it out. If you have not listened to that episode, head to life pilot.co/001
There is a free download of the perfect day exercise in there. I encourage you wholeheartedly to grab it. Take half an hour out of your day and write up your perfect day because that is tip number one to living your dream lifestyle. And that tip is define your dream lifestyle. Now, in this perfect day exercise, I was literally just getting you to define your perfect day.
That is who you wanna hang out with, what you’d be doing, how you wanna feel, all those things for that day. But imagine if you could extend this out across your entire lifetime.
Tip 1: Get clarity on your dream lifestyle
So this tip is all about being really clear on what’s the work that you wanna be doing? Do you wanna have your own? Do you want to have a certain type of job?
Who do you wanna hang out with? Like within your current friendship circle? Are those the people that light you up, motivate you and inspire you, or do you feel you’ve got some negative nancies in there or some. What do you feel? You’ve got some energy vampires in there who are literally sucking the living daylight out of you, and you’re not creating enough space for you and your dreams and your hopes and desires.
So who do you wanna surround yourself with? Who do you aspire to be like? Who do you want to be with? How do you wanna show up in the world? What is your health like? What are your relationships like? If you get really, really clear on these things, then you are going to define your dream lifestyle, and it’s so much easier to have a plan and a really clear vision of what your dream life looks like in order to go to step two.
Tip two: Set realistic goals.
Now, if you are here and you’re like, Natalie, I absolutely love goals. I set them all the time. I kick ass. Brilliant. Stay tuned. If you are more of an intentional person, like I intend to be this way, but I don’t like setting all these smart goals, they really piss me off or annoy me.
Also, stick with me a goal. Yes, it needs to be measurable and definable. You can’t just say, I wanna be five kilos lighter this year. Probably not really gonna motivate you. often behind a goal is an intention that is far more powerful for you. So if you don’t like setting goals, set an intention. I am going to be the healthiest version of myself.
I’m gonna be the most energized version of myself. And with that intention, you automatically can start to see how you are going to. Prioritize exercise, eat more healthy, just make room for movement in your life. Surround yourself with healthier people. Maybe sign up for sports or activities that get you moving and actually make this intention a truth for you.
So goals and intentions work. Both really well together, depending on the type of person you are. Choose your poison. Choose the method that best works for you. And I’ll be talking a lot about goal setting and intention setting in this podcast as we go on, but for now it’s about creating a goal and working backwards from that.
So here’s a good example. I competed in a half Iron Man, or as I like to call it, half Iron Woman, , back in December of 2019. So this was right before the pandemic started and I had never done anything like that before. So I started training for triathlons about a year and a half before that, and I started.
Super small. I’m talking,, 500 meter swim, two K run kind of thing, and then maybe a 5K bike because I knew that for me to do a half Ironman, which by the way is a pretty lengthy swim. Let me get the distances right. It’s a 1.5 K swim. It was a 90 K bike and it was a half marathon. 21 Ks, right?
Took forever . But had I just gone, I’m gonna do a half Iron Man, I couldn’t have said, I’m gonna do that tomorrow. Right? I needed to give myself this big goal as to why that was important to me and for me, the Half Iron Man and even the Iron Man is kind of this iconic race that people of all ages, shapes, and sizes do at random times in their life to prove a point to themselves that they’re capable of going on this monumental, epic journey.
That is one of the hardest things you can do physically and. and what I probably just said there was a key to it. The journey was actually the best part of it, not the race on the end of the day, not that event. Sure, that was the pinnacle of it, but the journey of getting there was the most important thing.
I had to visualize and set the goal that I was going to be a half Iron man participant, and then I had to work backwards from there as to what was logical with the fitness level that I was at at the time. Now I’ve always been into health and fitness. I’ve always played sports. Half Iron Man is something else.
So I started out with these small triathlons and I have photos of myself and video of myself on the first splashing dash that I ever did, and I had just the reddest face ever. I looked freaking exhausted. I was sweaty as I barely made it through the swim, and the run was so short and I just, I literally looked like I limped home and I look at those photos going, oh my gosh, how did you even get to this other side of the Half Iron Man?
But I stuck with it and I got a trainer. I started eating better foods to fuel my body. I started signing up for races so that I would stay committed and on track. Those races were small. They were like sprint triathlons, which again is pretty short. And that I could actually make the distance of a 500 meter swim, 20km bike, and 5km run, and, and kept increasing these things and training more on the bike, going for swims, having a schedule.
Every single day I was doing something towards helping me get towards triathlons and sure I had days where I just was like too tired and I didn’t wanna get outta bed or I ate shitty food, um, or I just didn’t keep up with the training. But in general, I was 95% of the time consistent with that goal of heading towards the Half Iron Man.
Of course, I signed up for the Half Iron Man, probably about. Seven months in advance cuz then I was committed, right? I had money on the line, I had the date in there. It made it more real and I continued to surround myself with other people who were training for it. Or just make friends that we could meet up at the pool or go on a run together, or go on a cycle event together.
And eventually I got there so that by the time that event came up, I felt like I was capable of doing it. Buggar was, I got sick 10 days before it, so I couldn’t do that last little bit of training, but I still made it on the day. The swim was glorious. It was in Lake Taupo here in New Zealand. Crystal clear waters, flat as, just loved it.
And then got on the bike and that was just not fun. It was a big headwind and it just felt like I slogged it out for hours and hours, which I pretty much did. And then onto the half marathon, which is around the lake like three times back and forth on this run. And it was hard. I’m not gonna lie. There were.
Women who were older than me passing me going, keep going hun. And I was like, how do they look so fresh and fit like I am dying here. But I had a lovely support crew there, posters and cheering, and every time I ran past them, they were there to help out and just give me that motivation and energy. And I finished the dam Iron Man or Half Iron Man, and I did a cartwheel over the lion and I collapsed, and I felt so proud of myself for getting there and wondered why on earth I chose that as a goal, just as an fyi, as a reflection on it, I.
I’m not gonna do that again. But it was an amazing, epic event that I had an intention and goal for it, and then I worked backwards from to make it happen. And sure there were other things that fell to the wayside, why that was my big goal. But I still was able to keep up with putting energy into my relationships, into my business, to travel and to lifestyle and to impact and all those things.
So the point was I had a goal and then I worked backwards from it. Which also ties into
Tip 3: Take action.
Which I kind of just discussed. I apologize. That was tip two and three together. But yeah, you can’t just have these goals and then just post them up on a wall and go, that’s great. You have to take action and you literally have to, you know, get outta bed and make these commitments to yourself.
You have to schedule things into your calendar. You have to make agreements and appointments with others to hold you to it. You can get an accountability buddy, if that helps. It certainly helps. By the way, it’s probably one of the keys to doing anything major in life is having people to support you. and it also takes you getting out of your comfort zone.
I was getting outta my comfort zone every single day of training. I really was. Cause I was always extending my times or pushing to do something faster or trying something different in my training technique. and it absolutely leveled me up on every single aspect of my life, not just in training. My mental capacity was better, my motivation was better, my competitiveness, everything.
My relationships were better because in every facet of my life I was breaking new boundaries and it just improved me across all the levels. So just gonna say, if you ever wanna do something like that for a personal pursuit, it can affect other areas of your life massively in ways that you don’t. . And the fourth is to
Tip Four: Create healthy habits
You again, yes, you have to take action, but if you can create rituals and habits to make this a thing, it’s gonna be so much easier for you to go after. So for me, I had a calendar. I would always do my swim training first thing in the morning. I would often do my cycling in the late afternoon and runs, at various times.
But I had everything. As a habit that was inbuilt. So post-training, I’d have the right food. I’d make sure I was getting enough sleep. I would be reading resources and books and watching videos about things to keep me on track and keep me motivated. One of my favorite audio books that I was listening to at the time was Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins.
Man, that guy just inspired me. I’d be out on an 8km training run and he was talking about a hundred mile run that he’d completed and I was just like so excited too. I would stay out running longer cuz I loved the audio book so much. But it was one of the tools to get me through some of those longer trainings was listening to this motivational guy talk about his experience as a Navy Seal and doing all these crazy pursuits.
So do whatever it takes, have those habits and rituals and it will feel so much easier for you to achieve your goals and intentions and the final tip?
Tip 5: Stay flexible and adaptive.
Life happens, shit happens. Things get in the way. There were plenty of times, I didn’t actually get sick very much throughout my training, but there were holidays or events or things that came up that derailed me a little bit, and I just had to get back on track and I didn’t.
Berate myself for it. I didn’t, you know, criticize myself that I wasn’t doing as much. I just, I really felt into how my energy levels were, what things were coming up. If I had a launch in my business at the time, I would go a little bit easier on the training, trying not to be superwoman, do it all. And so you just have to be flexible and adaptable, and you have to adjust your goals and sometimes even your timelines to make sure that they’re still fitting in with you living a great life.
It would have been no fun if my training was always a drag, if I hated every minute of. , if I hated every minute of it, it would’ve made it pointless to go after that big dream, right? It just, why? Why do something that you absolutely hate? I’m not talking about when times are tough or maybe things aren’t as enjoyable as they possibly could be all the time.
But if you’re really hating something, why have you said it as a goal? Um, so again, I would ask you to. Think about the things that you have on your radar for this year and beyond, and do they still make sense to you? Are they still relevant? Do they still light you up as things that are gonna give you so much more beauty and value and impact in your life?
And if not, just delete them. It totally up to you to do what you want with your life. So if something that you were going after and you’ve told everybody about publicly and announced is now no longer. a thing that even lights your fire. You have the ability and choice to cut it out of your life and not go after it.
Just make sure it’s not something because it felt a bit hard and out of your comfort zone. You don’t wanna do it. Make sure it’s a really, like this is a no decision or this is a hell yes decision. So those are the five tips. Once again. Define your dream life. Step two, create a goal or goals and intentions to make that happen.
Step three, take action. Goals are great, but you actually gotta make them actionable. Take . Tip four. Create healthy habits to make that just so much more doable. And five, stay adaptable and flexible because. We’re humans, and at the end of the day, life can sometimes throw us curve balls even when we think we’re on track.
I hope that those five tips were useful. We’re gonna be going into so much more depth across so many of these things, giving you tools and advice and templates and resources that are gonna help you to create your dream life. every single day, starting from today. But these were the five tips for today. I hope they helped you out.
Let me know what you thought of this episode and what you think of this podcast so far.
And remember. To go after the life that you truly want.
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