Episode 268- How To Design Your Intentional Life & Pursue What You Really Want

Unknown Speaker 0:00

Don't judge yourself for nutrients. We already get judged enough by other people for our dreams. Don't judge yourself, for what naturally comes out of you when you are asked to dream bigger for yourself. And also, don't be ashamed if you don't want what other people think you should want. Because if you simply just want the life you have now, but without certain things in it, that's fine too. Like you don't always have to go bigger or better, to have a good life. Minus 10 seconds.

Intro 0:33

Welcome to the journey to launch podcast with your host jameelah. So frogs as a money expert who rocks her talk, she helps brave juniors like you get out of debt, save, invest and build real wealth. Join her on the journey to launch to financial freedom in three to one.

Jamila Souffrant 1:00

If you want the episode show notes for this episode, go to journey to launch.com. Or click the description of wherever you're listening to this episode. In the show notes, you'll get the transcribed version of the conversation, the links that we mentioned and so much more. Also, whether you are in OG journey or are brand new to the podcast, I've created a free jumpstart guide to help you on your financial freedom journey. It includes the top episodes, so listen to stages to go through to reach financial freedom, resources, and so much more. You can go to journey to launch that comm slash jumpstart to get your guide right now. Okay, let's

Unknown Speaker 1:37

hop into the episode. Hey, hey, hey, journeyers Welcome to the journey to launch podcast, I'm going to be doing a solo episode. This week. I know if you are a listener of the podcast, some of you love my solo episodes. And if you're kind of expecting like a budget one on one, or how to invest, that's not going to be this episode. This is actually going to be more of a introspective, thought provoking episode for you. I hope it will be at least because while the basis of this show when I first started, it was all about how to reach goals like how to reach financial independence, how to quit your job. Basically, what that boils down to like the reason why I was pursuing those goals was because I wanted to live a complete life. I wanted to live a life that made me happy. And as I've gone on this path since starting this podcast and starting the journey years ago, I've definitely come to have a greater appreciation for not just like the money, the money obviously is important. And the goals are important, like the money goals are important. But that's not why we're doing what we're doing. That's not why you're necessarily listening to the podcast, it's the end result. It may be the driving force at first. But what's really keeping you on the path of what's really driving you to want to be debt free, or to learn how to invest is because you want freedom in your life. And you want to live a life that's untethered to what society is telling you to do. I know that's what I want, right? You want to live a complete life. And that could still mean working in a cubicle. If you love your job. I always say it's not about like hating your job and quitting. It's about having a life that you love and truly enjoy. And I think that's our birthright. I think that's something we all deserve. So, with this solo episode, I want to talk a bit about how we can make sure we are clear, or are at least putting our car in the right direction or our rocket in the right direction. When it comes to our life. What does that mean? What do we want from our life. So this whole episode is going to talk about that. Now, if you are listening and you hear anything that stands out, or you feel like was an aha moment for you, I'd love for you to share it with me on social media, I mostly hang out on Instagram at journey to launch so you can always tag me in your stories there. I'd love to see it and repost it and see what you're talking about. And of course, share this with your family and friends. If this is helping you it may help them. So I'm going to be sharing some exercises that I've come across since starting my financial independence journey. Some questions that have helped me that I've shared with past clients or people within the money launch club just like things in where I know I've shared this before with people and it helped them narrow down or at least get clear on what it is that they really want from their life. Because I know that at first at least For me, when I started, it was about reaching a numerical number. It was about investing and saving this much. It was about reaching financial independence in this amount of time. But really, the underlying driving force of that was I wanted freedom. I wanted to have options, I wanted to wake up, and not be tethered or obligated to something I did not love and or enjoy. And I find that most of our goals are money related goals, the numbers, while they are important, they are not the reason why we are doing it, wanting to become debt free one to invest more. On the other side of that is you want to you want freedom, you don't want someone being able to say that you owe them or that your money has to go somewhere where you don't want it to from your paycheck. Right? So this idea of freedom, this idea of living our lives, I think we need to work with that first, what does that look like for you, because it is going to look different for everyone. My idea of happiness and freedom is going to look different from yours. And the same way in which I say not everyone is meant to be an entrepreneur, the nine to five life is not so bad, if you enjoy what you do, and it brings value to you and to the world around you. So therefore, someone who's working in a cubicle, versus someone who is doing their own thing and has their own job can be equally happy in their own lives. So the idea is you have to figure out what is going to work for you not look at someone else's life, and else's Instagram, or what they're saying works. And adopt that lifestyle, it really takes some deep introspective pneus is that a word? To figure out what it is that you truly want. And you know, I gotta say, it's hard, because we've been programmed a lot by our family, people who really mean well, for us, our parents, you know, sometimes I see myself doing it with my own kids, meaning we want the best for them, they want the best for us. So they told us things that we should strive for what we should see as a good life for what we should aim to be. And we forget what it is that makes, that makes us happy. And especially if you're older. So I always look at my kids. And I'm just like, even when they're not listening to me, and they're doing their own thing. I'm like you really got this figured out. And I know as you get older life is just gonna squash it out of you. And I don't want that, right, I don't want their dreams to be killed. But I know that with society, as you get older with maturity growing up in the system, it does become inevitable that you forget kind of the root of who you are. And so it's going to take time, it's going to take some thought work, it's going to take prayer, it's going to take mindfulness to figure out what it is that you want for your life. Because you can say let's say you do reach financial independence, you do reach your number, you get debt free. And you have financially on paper, what it's supposed to mean that you're successful. But if you haven't worked out all the details in your life, right, like what truly makes you happy, that stuff won't matter. And I've spoken to and I know people who have things on paper that make them look successful, and they're still not happy because of all the other things like their interpersonal relationships, their relationships with their family members, what they do for their work, what they do on a day to day basis, they don't understand the things that make them happy. So if you're listening to this, and you are still on your journey to financial freedom, you still got debt you're paying off, you're still investing, doing that work to get you to where you need to be. I think it's more important now than ever, that you figure out where it is that you are pointing that rocket ship of yours. What are you aiming towards. So what I'm going to share with you today, I hope helps you do that. So you may need a pen and paper, you may need to come back to this a few times. I know for me when I first heard of these questions and these exercises, it's not something that I could do in a day honestly, it was something I had to keep coming back to. I had to think and sit, you know, in a quiet space to figure out my true thoughts around the answers. So I'm going to share some things with you that I hope will help you figure out what you want your life to be. It's life planning, because we could talk about financial planning and that's important, but I think we need to start with life planning and then work our financial plan around that. So the first thing I'm going to share with you is an exercise that actually heard on another podcast. Debbie Millman. She was on Tim Ferriss podcast. I believe that episode was 214 how to design a life with Debbie Millman and I will link that in the episode show notes. I when I first heard this podcast episode, by the way, I loved it. I immediately loved Debbie Millman. And who and also has her own podcast called design matters, which is brilliant. By the way, if you are a creative, and I believe all of us are creatives, it's a great podcast to listen to, because you get to really hear how other people who are thought leaders, people who have done great work, how they come to be in Debbie X amazing, brilliant questions. But in the podcast with Tim Ferriss, Debbie was talking about her own life. One of the things she mentioned was, she had this exercise because she was a student of Milton Glaser, who is a celebrated graphic designer. And by the way, who a minute is also a celebrated graphic designer. But she was a student of Milton Glaser, and he had this 10 year exercise that she had her do. And so she would have her students also do, basically, I'm gonna paraphrase what she said on Tim Ferriss podcast, because it's a brilliant exercise that can really help you figure out the fabric of your life, like not what the fabric of your life looks like, which is great, but what it feels like. And you'll get to realize more, but if you haven't heard this yet, when I started reading it, she basically has her students write down what a day in their life would look like 10 years from now, you know, we've heard this before was like, Oh, tell me what you want in 10 years. And you kind of have like, I want this this this like checklist. This is actually just one day in your life from right now when you're listening to this podcast, what you want it to look like. So I'm going to paraphrase what she said, I'm going to change the dates a bit, because when the episode first aired, it was like in the winter of 2017, I believe. So since we're in spring of 2022. If you're listening to this in real time, I'm going to change it up a bit. So essentially, she says, let's say it's spring of 2030 to 10 years from now. What does your life look like? What are you doing? Where are you living? Who are you living with? Do you have pets? What kind of house are you in? Is it an apartment? Are you in the city? Are you in the country? What is your furniture look like? What is your bed? Like?

Unknown Speaker 12:30

What are your sheets? Like? What kind of clothes do you wear? What kind of hair do you have? Tell me about your significant other? Do you have children? Do you have a car? Do you have a boat? Talk about your career? What do you want? What are you reading? What are you making? What excites you? What's your health like, and write this day? This one day, 10 years from now? So one day in the spring of 2032? What does your whole day look like? Start from the minute you wake up, brush your teeth, have your coffee or tea all the way through until you talk yourself in at night. What does that day like for you? Dream big dream without any fear. Write it all down. You don't have to share it with anyone other than yourself. Put your whole heart into it and write like there is no tomorrow. Right? like your life depends on it. Because it does, and read it once a year and see what happens. It's magic. So Debbie says this in Tim Ferriss podcasts, and I love how she gives kind of like the prompts the detailed prompts that we should be thinking about. Because oftentimes if someone says, oh, just tell me about your day, like well, I wake up and you know, I get coffee, and then I drive to work. But there's so many things right? Like, in your life, there's so many things that happen from the time you wake up, if you are present, right? Like, even before you put your feet on the floor to get out of bed. You may hear birds chirping, or there may be the sounds of your kids playing or laughing or in my case screaming. But we know in our real lives, that they're all these little things, these threads, these threads of fabric that complete the pattern. And so when we're thinking about our future life that we want, how detailed can we get? And so I love this exercise. I think it's really brilliant to sit down and take the time to do and I would love for you to do this. Because you know, we're not talking about money here. I mean, of course like if you say you want to wake up and you have a yacht that's fine, but I don't want you to think about like, necessarily, I just bought this yacht for a million dollars. I want you to think about the life you want. And dream big dream big. You don't have to run a yacht, you know, you don't have to want to wake up in Dubai, but maybe you do. That's fine too, really, without any judgment, from yourself, this is important. Don't judge yourself for your dreams, we already get judged enough by other people for our dreams, don't judge yourself, for what naturally comes out of you when you are asked to dream bigger for yourself. And also, don't be ashamed if you don't want what other people think you should want. Because if you simply just want the life you have now, but without certain things in it, that's fine too. Like, you don't always have to go bigger, or quote unquote, better to have a good life. So this is what I mean, when it comes to understanding what it is that you want, not what other people are telling you, you should want. I think it's really important. Because if you can come to a place a real honest Day in the Life 10 years from now, and something that you feel good about. And that is the end goal for at least 10 years out, you can then design your finances around that. But let's start there. And I also think your 10 year plan can change, who's to say, you can write this plan now. And in two years, think of something else I want to add to it, or change it completely, that's fine, too. If you're like me, sometimes you don't even want to start things unless you know what's final. And therefore you don't start things because you're like, well, that's might not be the last iteration. So I don't want to start yet. But it's okay, start with where you are now with the best information you have, with your desires as of today. If they change down the line, that's fine. You'll figure it out then too. But I think this is a really great exercise to figure out the kind of life you want to have. And I'd love for you to do it. So if you do actually do it, let me know. And again, you don't have to share it with anyone, you don't have to share it with me or social media. But I'd love to see or know if you are actually going to follow through with this exercise. So that was the Debbie Millman slash Milton replacer 10 your exercise. Now the other exercise I wanted to share with you that I thought was a wonderful way to plan your life is from George kinder. So it's called George kinders. Three questions his life planning questions. At George kinder. He's Harvard educated, but he revolutionized financial advice for more than 35 years, because he thought more about life planning and incorporating that into financial planning. He founded the Kinder Institute of life planning. And he teaches financial advisors to really look at a client's entire life and goals and then creating a financial plan after that. And it may sound like the financial planners should be doing that. But you know, if you talk to a lot of financial planners, or some you know, I'm not trying to say they're all like this, but sometimes they're just looking at the money. And what I like about my financial planners is we went through these questions. It was about what do I want my life to look like? Not just like, How much money do I want to have? But what do you want your life to be? So he came up with these three questions that you can ask yourself. And then from these answers, you can start to build a financial plan. So I'm going to read the questions. And you can write these down. I'll also put these in Episode show notes or link out to where you can see these questions. And then you can answer them. Now again, don't expect to be able to answer these all in one shot in two seconds. You may have to come back to it, you may have to think about it. But here we go. Here's the first question that you ask yourself, I want you to imagine that you are financially secure, that you have enough money to take care of your needs now and in the future. The question is, how would you live your life? Would you change anything? Let yourself go. Don't hold back on your dreams. So if you did have all the money you needed right now, today, what would you be doing? What would you change? Don't hold that go all out. So that's question one. That's coming from a place of you have no limits. Live your life in a way in which money is not a barrier for you. Okay, question two, you're back in your current financial situation. Your doctor tells you that you have five to 10 years to live and you'll feel fine up to the end. Would you change your life And if so, how would you change it? So think about that you can, you know, you can noodle on it a little bit, I'll give you like, five seconds. But I really want you to come back and actually, like, sit down and write these answers out for yourself. But, yes, you only have five to 10 years left to live, you'll feel fine. So you're not necessarily nothing physically changes about you. But what would you change today, and moving forward about your life? And what will be different? If you knew you only had five to 10 years to live?

Unknown Speaker 20:34

Alright, question number three. You imagine that your doctor tells you you just have one day to live? You look back on your life? And what did you fail to experience? Who is the person that you did not become? And what did you neglect to do? So I'm going to read that one again. Because when I first heard this, when I was first asked this question, I was like, Oh, that's very deep. Question number three is, imagine that your doctor tells you that you just have one day to live. You look back on your life and x, what did you fail to experience? Who is the person that you did not become? And what did you neglect to do? Those are the three questions when I was doing some research, for this episode are just like kind of making sure I was quoting all the sources. One of the things that apparently comes up for people like overall, is when they think about like, what's important to them. A lot of times what comes up when you answer these questions, especially the last question for kinders. Three questions, is what people really tend to pull out that matters or themes at least are family and relationship, values and spirit. Creativity. So when he when he asked, what is it that you didn't get to do? It's kind of like, what didn't you get to create? Because you were maybe no, too afraid or too limited? And you didn't get to do it? Community and environment? So those were the common themes around the answer to the questions in terms of what people said that they didn't do enough of or they felt they wanted to change, family and relationship, values and spirit, creativity, community and environment. I don't see anything about money here, you know, like earning more money. This is why I mean, it's so important to start here, first start within, because if we can figure out the answers to these questions, okay. And, you know, I gotta admit, I don't want to say figure out like, I know for me, because sometimes I don't I don't always know the answers right away to these questions. I didn't know the answers to some of these questions. It took me a while. But knowing the question was still more than half the battle, just like, again with kids. For me, it's more important that they ask questions, even if they don't get the answer. Because sometimes asking the question gets you closer to somewhat of an answer, it gets you to ask better questions. And so I'm not expecting that after you turn this podcast episode off, everything's figured out, I did these exercises, life is great. Now I can go on and annihilate my financial goals. That's not what life is. That's not what this journey is. But what I hope that this helps you do is ask yourself better questions. And you challenge maybe the life that you thought you wanted, or you stand firm and the life you created for yourself. I think it's just important that we don't only chase the money goals. It's not just only Chase, but we realize that that is fleeting, that after our baseline level of supplying our needs, right, like I always have to say like After we have finished applying our needs of shelter and food and safety, there becomes another level of what we do with our money, and what we do with our time and energy. And when we can become clearer, doesn't have to be super clear, but less foggy on things when we know maybe not we don't always know what we want, but we know what we don't want.

Unknown Speaker 24:35

That helps us have more fruitful, happy, joyful lives, and not without pain. Not without things going wrong. But it allows us to self correct, get back up and realize what we're actually doing this all for. So that was my Thought episode for this week. I really hope you enjoyed it shorter than most episodes, but I hope that this gave you something some fuel. And again, if you want any of the show notes, so I'm gonna link out the Debbie Millman episode on Tim Ferriss podcast, I'm going to link to the three planning questions, and any other resources I can find for you, if that's going to be helpful for you to find the episode shownotes wherever you're listening to this, just click More, and it should have a link for you to go to my website Journey to launch.com. And you'll be able to see the show notes for this episode with the links. As always, I love if you are taking any action from this, to share it with me, tag me on social media, I'm at journey to launch. By the way, one of the things that I know is in my life plan is more time off more time for thinking and exploring and creating, but now not always, like creating like a physical tangible thing. Because honestly, like sometimes I find myself what looks like I'm wasting time because I'm kind of like moving really slow. And I find myself in rabbit holes even on social media. And people will say oh, that's like a waste of time. But I find myself like going into certain like reading about certain things or being inspired by something which sparks a thought, which sparks an idea for something that I write down. And like, to me that's creating, like, it's not necessarily like I created a podcast, or I created a whole blog post or a book. But it's like using my creative juices, right. And so my life plan involves more time for that. And it's something that I'm trying to do more of trying to make more space for myself to do doing less work. And maybe, you know, not the work that feels hard, necessarily, like I don't mind doing that work, because it's writing this book that I'm writing this year, feels hard, but more of doing work that feels aligned. And so that's kind of like what I'm focusing on this year. So I'd love to know from you. What comes up from this again, tag me at journey to launch with any of your thoughts and share it with a family member or friend.

Jamila Souffrant 27:29

Don't forget, you can get the episode show notes for this episode by going to journey to launch.com. Or click the description of wherever you're listening to this. And you can still grab your jumpstart guide for free to help you on your journey to financial freedom by going to journey to launch.com/jumpstart. If you want to support me and the podcast and love the free content and information that you get here, here are four ways that you can support me in the show. One, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, whether that's Apple podcasts, that purple app on your phone, your Android device, YouTube, Spotify, wherever it is that you happen to listen, just subscribe so you are not missing an episode. And if you're happening to listen to this and Apple podcasts, rate review and subscribe there. I appreciate and read every single review number to follow me on my social media accounts. I'm at journey to launch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And I love love love interacting with journeys. They're three support and check out the sponsors of this show. If you hear something that interests you, sponsors are the main ways we keep the podcast lights on here. So show them some love for supporting you, girl for and last but not least, share this episode this podcast with a friend or family member or co worker so that we can spread the message of Journey to launch. Alright, that's it until next week, keep on journeying journeyers