What exactly you want out of life it's a simple question
That's sometimes not so simple to answer but it's worth
Trying it's worth it to make an effort because the alternative is just letting somebody else decide for you which often leads to mediocrity
I'm still very much in the process of figuring things out for myself
I highly suspect that will forever be the case. So I can't pretend to have all the answers
However, this is something that I'm really passionate about
And so I thought I would share what I've learned so far and kind of how I approach
Answering this question. I believe we've never been more in need of intentionality in our lives than right
Now there are just more
Distractions more BS calling for the attention of your monkey brain than ever before the answer to all this I think is design to use
the word design as a verb is to do or plan something with a specific purpose or intention in mind very
Few things in our 21st century world happen by accident in reality
They happen by design architecture requires design software requires design
Society requires design and so too does the way you approach your life?
Life style design for me is about distinguishing what matters to you and what does not as specifically as possible
This focus on what matters to you is really important because I'm not here to tell you that you can have it all you cannot
Nobody does and the people that try to sell you that idea usually want your money
The thing is having it. All shouldn't even be the goal in the first place again
I think it should be having and doing the things that have the most importance to you and
mediocrity should be defined not as having less, but rather as
Playing by somebody else's rules I get increasingly asked. How do I do what I do? How do I travel the world?
How do I Commission murals
You know, how do I make all this happen and I'm trying my best to be as transparent about things as possible
So I wanted to talk about my process my mentality and my thoughts on the topic of lifestyle design
Let's first talk about what this process looks like for starters. This is not a one-time deal
You know, I figure out what I want to do
And I know for the rest of my life sort of thing. It is really messy
These are difficult questions to answer and in fact
The answers are going to change depending on where you are in life in an emotional sense
spiritually
You know all these things these changes are going to happen many times throughout all of our lives and that's okay
I think that's a part of being human
I'm going through a transition in my own right now because I think my priorities are shifting and
I got a little bit off track for a while
The life that I wanted to live is not the same one that I wanted ten months or five years ago
and so I've kind of had to go back to the drawing board and
think about the changes that I need to make I think it's really
important but words to the experience and for me at least this has often felt like I'm
Blindly feeling my way around in a dark room
Looking for the door or the switch to a lamp so I can see a little bit better. I'm bumping into stuff
I'm stubbing my toe repeatedly this is because at best I only really have a vague idea of what I want to go
This is the truth
It might seem like people out there have it all figured out based on you know
What they put out there their presentation their image, but that is simply not the case. Nobody has it figured out
I remember this being explained to me brilliantly a few years ago
imagine you're trying to go from point A to point B or point A is where you're starting out and point B is where you
Think you want to go instead of looking like a linear straight line. Your progress is going to look something like this. I
Would add that you're learning as you go and maybe halfway through the process you realize you don't even want to go to point B
you actually want to go to point C, which is over here and
Now you're going somewhere that you didn't even consider when you start this is one of the most magical and also often
Frustrating things about life. I have found that having a North Star can help tremendously. In fact, I have two a
professional and a personal
Overarching goal that I worked towards and that helped orient me. So here's how I did it
I sat down with a pen and paper and
Thought to myself where do I want to be ten years from now I have said in the past and I'm not a huge fan
Of very long term goals because I find that it's very difficult. It's almost impossible to predict where I'll be
geographically, emotionally
spiritually six months from now
Much less a decade. That's still true
however
I have come to realize that it helps it helps to have something bigger to be working towards
That's something needed to be specific to me, of course, but also malleable enough to weather the test of time
Here's what I wrote for myself
My personal goal is to develop my understanding of who I am and honor it in one word self compassion
I think that will make me a better person and my professional goal is to realize my potential and storytelling
These two goals for me both lead towards the same thing, which is to deepen my experiences as a human being
I know that's a it's a very abstract thing to say
But I don't know how else to word it. Whenever I'm lost, confused, knocked off balance; I can close my eyes and
Boom I'm right back there again. I may not know what to do
But at least I know which direction I need to be facing and that makes a world of difference
And by the way, the wording doesn't have to be perfect, you know
So just don't get caught up on that. Now, how exactly do you find your north star? Well, there are no real rules here
So I can't just give you the answer, but I can share what has worked for me
Of course a prerequisite to absolutely everything here is having a support system of some kind
And I've been lucky enough to always have at least a couple people in my life that keep me on track
That is not trivial and I cannot skip over that
I think I might have to make a video on how to find the right people
But that is a separate topic
Beyond that, I think you have to really get to know yourself a little bit more and you can do that in two main
ways, in my opinion, I give them two really broad terms which are input and reflection input for me is
consuming new information to expand your worldview
You know basically opening new doors so that can look like reading a book
Watching a video listening to a podcast a conversation with somebody but you cannot learn everything from others
so sometimes that just means
experimenting
Throwing yourself into new experiences and seeing how you react reflection for me is not about new information
in fact, it's kind of in a way the opposite which is to turn stimulus way down and
Look inwards. So for me that looks like meditation
journalling time alone
reflection is about processing information and it's about
taking time to piece things together connect dots
That kind of thing
I have found it extremely helpful to get as centered as possible and reflect on the things that I find myself naturally
Gravitating towards what did I do as a little kid before I even knew what I was doing. I
Remember, I used to invent languages that would have words that couldn't translate to English
That's a massive clue right there language clearly has something to do with what makes me tick
This is a huge insight if you think about it
Because it's a window into seeing what naturally comes out of you before you apply pressure and expectations
Which are things that we deal with as adults, right?
Another way to hone in on what is important to you is again sitting down and making a list of priorities
Take a moment and ask yourself,
"What can I not live without" I've said this before but writing these things down
Allows you to see it and it allows you to take stock. There's no wrong answer
So just throw it all out there
Once you have these two North Stars, you can really build them out and expand on these ideas
So what does develop my understanding of who I am and honor it look like?
I'm not gonna cover everything because you can really go crazy with this but one of the things that I wrote down was to speak
with my hands, that's one manifestation of what this means to me and it's also
One of the main reasons why I move to Italy I am very much generalizing here
But culturally people tend to express themselves physically, you know, their words are matched by their body language
I thought that was a stereotype, but it is not. Okay
It is very much the case here
So I'm obviously making a little bit of a metaphorical interpretation here
But I want to be able to put myself out there
Without so many filters and the truth is I am not there yet, you know
I'm not at a place where I can be radically honest at all times. It means honoring the kid in me
Right there
I take a lot of inspiration from people like Massimo Bottura who is a very famous chef here in Italy
He's kind of a crazy guy, but he also strikes me as somebody who doesn't edit themselves
They did a chef's table episode on him for the record
My favorite show of all time. I get a lot of inspiration for my b-roll from that show. So now you know
One of the manifestations of
Better storytelling for me is to expose myself to as many cultures and ways of life around the world as I can
But that currently looks like for me right now is to live in different countries for at least a few months at a time
I'm calling this slow travel. It's a lot more cost-effective and I just like things better this way
I think I realized that when I found
The more traditional form of backpack or tourist style travel to be exhausting and unenjoyable
doing things this way gives me the opportunity to
Sink deeper into the way of life make connections peel back the layers and you know take time to observe now
Let's take a step back here doing what I'm currently doing around
The world is not something that felt possible even just one year ago
I didn't even know that travel and languages were important to me until I
Traveled to Spain for the first time when I was 14 years old
it was the first time that I had ever traveled without my family and it
Completely opened my eyes to a new way of seeing the world
It was a different kind of trip
The kid that went is not the same person that I am today
And so what was impossible for him is possible for me for the record that was eight years ago
And so it took me the better part of an entire decade to get to where I am
I find it extremely helpful to adopt a mentality of
iterations Who I am
how I live the things that are important to me are all continually evolving as they should be for all of us and
At a certain point you reach a level where?
Your current reality looks nothing like the realities that you knew before
It's kind of like the rules change the things that I want to accomplish today
May not be possible. Right? But if I plant the seeds today, they might be possible tomorrow
So again, what does this look like in a practical sense?
And I think you really have to build a life around the things that you're after
Whatever it is that you wrote down is your new guidebook?
So treat it like it's sacred. And again, if you don't know what you want keep trying stuff
I stumbled completely by accident on the things that are important to me and
I I just think that none of us are born with this information. We're all in dark rooms stumbling around from there
I place my resources into the things that felt like they were bringing me closer to where I wanted to go and there's definitely an
Unsexy side to all of this that never makes it out to social media
I would go months and months without spending a cent on things like alcohol
Clothing dating not eating out not going to the movie theater not buying a car
It really is working toward something because you believe in it and not at all because it's working
I mean look at the Adsense that I generated over the last four years on YouTube when you're making
Twenty nine cents a day. It can very quickly start to feel like you're just never going to make it
There's one last thing. I'd like to add in my search for mental clarity
I have found that treating things like experiments or little games that you're playing can really take the pressure off
I know this is kind of heavy stuff that we're talking about here
But ultimately if it isn't enjoyable in some sense, you're just not going to stick with it
You're playing the long game, you know, I mean, this is this is your life. I
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The link is also going to be in the description. Thank you for watching and I'll see you soon