Design your life in 2024
The Power of a Vision
When I was 19 I met someone who had just done a sprint triathlon. I thought this guy is the coolest of the cool. He speaks French, he's fit, plays football AND he’s just done a triathlon. This is a guy I can respect and admire. In fact, still a guy I respect and admire. He ended up as a church leader in Lille in France.
I don't think that this guy even knows what an impact he's had on my life, without even trying. He wasn't arrogant. He didn't go on and on about this triathlon he'd done (although he did wear his finisher t-shirt, otherwise I may never have known about it). He didn't even try to get me to do one. He just did his thing and that in itself inspired me to think about doing a triathlon. He'd planted in me a vision for my life. Why do I share this with you today? To my knowledge, him doing a triathlon didn't inspire anyone else. But just by doing something cool for himself, he had a deep impact on my life. If you think that you living your life isn't impacting anyone then just remember this anecdote. You have the power to inspire others simply doing cool stuff with your life.
This one moment of me finding out that this guy had done a triathlon continued to have an impact on my life for the best part of the next two decades. All he did was plant a seed in my mind. The next three years involved me going on and on about one day I was going to do a triathlon and proceeding to not doing anything about it. I was all talk and no walk. (in fact, I'd be in my 30s before I really started walking any walk!) I had this idea, but that’s all it was. I wasn’t prepared to do anything about it. It took my wife saying, either stop going on about it or just get on and do it. So we both booked our first sprint triathlon.
As soon as I’d booked my first triathlon, I did what we'd all do in that situation. I started researching training methods, iconic races, heroes of the sport and then I came across this race which seemed impossible. One that was so long that completing it would put you up there as an elite specimen of human being. A little known (at the time) race called Ironman. A 2.4 mile swim, followed by 112 miles on a bike and then immediately followed by the small matter of a marathon. 26.2 miles or running. And just like that, I knew what I wanted to do. One day, I would be an Ironman. One dream had led to another.
That was the big picture goal I had for my life. I didn’t know how I was going to do that. I only had a mountain bike and hated cycling. I also was not the biggest fan of running. I didn’t know when I was going to do it but I knew that one day I was going to become an Ironman. Spoiler alert. I did it. But it took me 13 years!
Have you got a vision for your life? If you look into the future, what do you want to have? What do you want to do? What do you want to be? Who will be there with you? If you haven’t done this yet, I would love to encourage you to spend some time thinking and dreaming and writing down what you would like your life to be like in 20 years. 20 years is a pretty long time. It’s as long as you’ll need to achieve pretty much anything you’d like to achieve. I said it last week, even if you don't know how you're going to get there, at least knowing where you want to get to, means you're not either wandering round aimlessly or worse still, not going anywhere.
Imagine the scene. It’s June 2043. You wake up with the sun shining in on your cheeks. You kiss your spouse good morning and open the curtains wide to look out over the mountainous expanse sprawling out into the distance. You grab your journal and go to make yourself a cup of coffee. Black, obviously, so that you can taste the richness of your morning brew. You’re not on holiday. You do actually have work to do but there’s no rush. You’re in charge. You spend some time, reading, scribing and pondering in quiet solitude. You get to your desk at 10 where you lose track of time because what you’re working on just is so meaningful that it puts you into a state of flow where you get so much in the zone that you hardly notice it’s 3pm and you need to grab something to eat. Nothing too heaving because you have a pickup game of basketball with your mates later. Then this evening, you’re hosting a relationship coaching and mentoring group for young couples in your community who want to share in your wisdom. There’ll be good food and wine and most of all, there will be fellowship. This is not a one off day in the midst of crazy hectic days. This is your everyday life. You do a version of that perfect day, every day. Let your mind wander to what would your ideal day be. And if you need more inspiration, head back to episode 19 entitled "What's stopping you from living your ideal day?"
You may have a vision of working in a career you love, serving people doing meaningful work that impacts the lives of those you interact with and others across the globe.
You may have a vision of a lifestyle where you can get up without an alarm clock. You can get some morning sunlight as you go for your daily hike in the countryside, followed by a healthy breakfast, time to read a book that touches your soul and feeds and nourishes you.
Your vision may be for a big house where you can gather all your children and grandchildren for family get togethers and enjoy relationships with your children, cooking for them and with them. Making music, playing games.
PUT MORE BIG VISION STUFF IN HERE
It doesn’t matter at this stage if you know how you’re going to do this. It doesn’t matter right now if you have no idea how you're going to get your ski chalet second home, or how are you going to earn £60,000 a year working four days a week six hours a day, or what alternative work you could be doing.
Having a vision for what you want to do in your life will keep you on track. It can serve as a measuring stick for the decisions you make. A question I’m constantly asking myself is what am I optimising for? This is usually enough to give me the right framework to answer questions about what choices are right for me to make. Over Christmas, I love watching the worlds, strongest man. it’s a tradition that’s gone back to my childhood. We always used to go to my Nain's house, my grandma on boxing day and that’s when Will strongest men would always be on so we’d get the radio times with highlight Will, strongest man and we were there for a few days usually, and we always watched every day, the heats and then the final. A classic Christmas tradition. So every Christmas I love watching the worlds strongest man.
I look at those guys and think, man, these are some big guys. Some of them are 185 kg, which is pretty heavy how many pounds is that 185×2.2, about 400lbs for my American listeners. And they are so strong. Obviously. They're competing at WSM! One of the iconic events is the vehicle pull, where they strap themselves to a truck or a lorry or a plane and pull it along a road in the quickest time possible. Last year the finalists had to pull a 25.5 ton bus for 25m. Absolutely incredible stuff. Everything these guys do is optimising for strength. Obviously. They’re trying to become the World’s Strongest Man. Their training, their diets, their psychology. Everything. I read The Stoltman Brother’s book Lifting and their diet is absolutely mad. They deplete their glucose stores so much during competition that their entire goal before the competitions is to pack their glucose stores to their absolute sweet spot so that they have enough energy to lift the crazy things they need to lift. Luke Stoltman says ‘sometimes I’d smash a few packets of skittles before breakfast’. Tom said “we eat for fuel—we’re not eating for quality. We’re eating to use it to be the most effective we can for lifting weights. If we just ate chicken, to get the same effect, you’re going to have to probably eat eight or nine chicken breasts. Why do that when you can just eat a burger and chips? But yeah, if you’re in our hotel rooms the week before comp, it’s just disgusting to witness that amount of food.”
They aren’t optimising for longevity and health. They are optimising for lifting heavy things. It might not be what we’re optimising for them, they’re eating according to their goals.
But they would be absolutely rubbish at gymnastics. That’s not what they’re optimising for.
It’s the same for us. When we have a lifestyle in mind that we want to live. We can start to make our choices align with our designed outcomes. If we know what we’re optimising for then we can make decisions based on that. If we're optimising for money, we'll make different choices to if we're optimising for lifestyle. If we're optimising for finding a spouse we may make different choice to if we're optimising for a career. I'm not saying you can't do both but be aware of the payoff. If you're constantly working late, you may not have the time or energy to go out and meet people, or maybe I'm showing my age thinking that people go places to need people?! If you're optimising for a career in television, you may make different choices than if you're optimising for a career as a surgeon. Get into the habit of asking yourself 'what am I optimising for?'
There's no right or wrong here but it has to be important to you. If it's not important to you, you'll always find a way of sabotaging yourself. I mentioned a couple of episodes ago that the biggest issue I've had with not reaching goals is setting goals that just don't mean all that much to me.
Step by step, you get to design your life.
You may have now, an incredible vision of what you your life could look like. This is important because it can give you an initial burst of motivation to make a change for that motivation will soon wane. Soon, you’ll have to start making a plan for how you’re going to start working towards that vision, but for now just enjoy the excitement and the possibility of the life that is ahead of you. Life to the Full if you will. but you do need to use that burst of motivation, that image of what you’d like your life to look like in order to start working towards that. Just by having a big picture vision of what your life might look like, your brain will start subconsciously spotting ideas working towards your goal, even when your conscious brain might not be. But you do need to get that ball rolling down the hill. Making a radical change like quitting your job is great, but many people aren’t really ready to do that with no plan to go to. If you are, amazing, go for it! But you don’t have to quit your job in order to start something new, a new habit, a new discipline, a new hobby, a new relationship. you can start today.
You can’t go from where you are today to where you want to be in 20 years by tomorrow. You won’t get there unless you start your journey but the most exciting part of your life’s endeavour is that there is joy in the progress. After all, the obstacle is the way. When I was a teacher, I barely had any time to pursue all the fun things I wanted to pursue, so I made small changes. I wanted to learn Italian, so I booked a holiday for my family to Italy and then spent just 1-2 hours every Monday night when my wife was in bed, learning Italian. It was just one change. Little did I know, that one change would be the first of many, which has led me to the Full Life I now live. I loved those Monday nights. A little moment of joy in a week of craziness. I tell you all this, simply to give you some ideas. Really, it’s all about you. What do you want to do more of in your life? I’d really encourage you not to rush on to the next podcast episode or the next thing to consume before really taking time to consider that question carefully, even talk things through with a friend. I am more guilty than most, when it comes to consuming content, books, podcasts, videos, without taking enough time to contemplate and to reflect and to put into action the things that I learn. So don't be like me. Don't listen and not do something with the wisdom and inspiration from today's podcast. Dream a big vision for what you want your life to look like. Take some time to consider and plan a little thing that will make your life better. For my wife, it's been taking up dancing again recently. For my mate, Andy, it's been feeling productive by getting a new journal and time blocking his morning work. By having a big vision and making one little change, you are starting the journey towards a life that you're designing.
I do hope you've felt inspired today to set a big vision for you life, I hope you've enjoyed the thought process and if you have, please share this episode with a friend. I was pleased to get contacted by someone recently who had a friend that shared the podcast with her so I'd love more of that going on so that more people can join us on life's journey to measure the most of our time here on earth. You'll be doing your bit for your friend by sharing!
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