Do you care so passionately about something that you’d give up everything to chase after it?

Would you sacrifice the creature comforts of your everyday life or challenge the strength of a relationship?  Could you walk away from a stable career, even if it meant losing the assurance of a steady paycheck?  In the blink of an eye, could you turn your back on life as you now know it to risk turning it into one that dreams are made of?

Most people wouldn’t.

Not because they can’t but because it’s hard.  So many things could go wrong.  It’s far more reasonable (and safe) to stay the course with the life we’ve already created for ourselves.  Life-altering change isn’t something most of us actively seek out.  It’s one of those things that smacks us in the face when we least expect it.

Someone we love dies.  We discover that our partner has been unfaithful.  Maybe we lose our job without warning.

When these things happen, we have a decision to make; either we ignore the problems or we rise to the occasion and turn tragedy into triumph.  But why should we wait for our lives to be flipped head over heals before we become active participants in our destiny?  Why slog through yet another day ignoring our dreams and suffocating our passions.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

The Rulebook of Life doesn’t exist and you don’t need permission from anyone to live life on your own terms.  There’s no reason to spend the rest of your time here on Earth doing something that doesn’t bring you satisfaction or give your life meaning. 

It may not seem like it, but each day we have a choice to make.  Either we can put the right shoe on before the left, just as we always do, and live a repeat of yesterday or we can wake up and make magic happen.

“But I don’t really have a choice and besides, change isn’t practical.”

You do have a choice.  We all do.  The door to life isn’t locked, you just need to give it a little push and it will swing wide open.  No one else can do that for you.  And maybe change isn’t practical, but tell me, what practical person ever influenced history?  It’s the people who took risks and had big dreams that changed the world…will you be one of them?

These are your days, make the most of them.

There are times when I get down on myself, when I feel like I haven’t accomplished enough in my 28 years of life on Earth.  I question whether I am making the right decisions, if I couldn’t be doing something else…something better.  And when I begin to doubt myself in this way, I feel like throwing everything I have right out the window and starting over from scratch.  Nothing would be spared.  I’d sell my Stuff and move to some exotic place, leaving behind all of my friends and family.

It would be my rebirth.

I could be anyone I wanted to be, anywhere I decided to settle and spend my time with whomever I chose.  I could make new friends and experience a life beyond my imagination.  Sometimes I find myself dreaming about the different places I could be…at this very moment.  Maybe I’d be running through Central Park or wandering the Great Wall.  I think about the type of person I could be.  Maybe I’d be a  wealthy clothing designer in Milan or a homeless transient wandering through the most beautiful places nature has to offer.  I could be this, I could do that, I could be there….but I’m not, thrice.

I dream of all the things I’m not, in the process forgetting all that I am and how good my life actually is.  I have a home, copious amounts of food on the table, nice clothes to wear and a girlfriend who shares my passion for travel and puts up with my (many) idiosyncracies.  I have everything I could ask for, I know it, and still I have moments when I want more, different, better.  I am consumed by thoughts of what I’m not and all that I don’t have.

Life’s forbidden fruits lure my mind into feeling this way, into the feeling that all that I am isn’t good enough.  Into the feeling that happiness is ”out there.”  All the beautiful places calling to me like a siren’s song, the smooth skin and plump lips of a beautiful woman across the room tempting me, the “promise” of a more satisfying life with more money.  All these things seductively asking me, “Is your life good enough?”  I feel like a child with my face pressed tightly against the display window of a candy store, looking into a world that isn’t mine.

And suddenly my perfect life doesn’t seem so perfect anymore.

As I imagine myself in that other, better life, I try to envision how that life would play out.  Would living somewhere else really make me happy?  I suppose it’s possible.  I am happier today than I was a year ago when I moved away from my hometown.  I wonder if a supermodel girlfriend would be any better than the girlfriend I already have.  It might be fun for a while but in the long run, I don’t know that things would really be that different.  Besides, Erin is beautiful and we get along great with each other.  Would new friends make life more interesting?  Maybe.  The friends I have now are really cool but more friends is never a bad thing.

Then what is the answer to these problems?

This is one of the fundamental issues with self-improvement; where to draw the line and accept the life you already have.  To know when good enough actually is good enough.  If we’re always seeking improvement in our lives, ultimately we will realize that there is no upper-limit.  There will always be more, different and better.  And someday we might find that we threw away a perfectly good life in our quest for an even better one.

There must be a point when we say to ourselves, “Yeah, that’s really nice but I’m happy just where I am.”

That point needs to come before we ruin the lives we already have.  We should improve our lives but within reason and rationality.  There is no reason to destroy a good life in our quest for greatness.  Real improvement comes from building from the foundation you’ve already established.  Improve the relationships, strengthen the bonds, improve your character, change your life for the better but without casting aside everything you’ve worked so hard for already.

As for that world that isn’t ours?  Maybe it isn’t ours for a reason…we just don’t know what the reason is and maybe we aren’t supposed to.

We all have our ideas of what the “perfect life” would be like but often the images in our mind are a far cry from the reality we are living.  If you were able to travel back in time and ask a younger version of yourself if this is the future they’d choose for themselves, what would their answer be?  Twenty years ago, could you have envisioned the life you have today?  Is it everything you’d imagined or have your dreams evaporated into thin air?

Chances are, the life you are living today is nothing like the life you expected to have.  You sold your ideals for a dollar bill.  Why?  “Because that’s just what adults do.” We have to make a living to pay the bills.  There’s food to buy and television to watch.  How are we supposed to save the world when we’re up to our eyeballs in debt?  The mortgage isn’t going to pay for itself, is it?

“It is what it is.” There’s no time for dreams.  Dreams don’t pay the bills or put food on the table.  Our younger selves didn’t understand what it meant to be adults.  We have obligations now and we’ve built our lives around some idea of what it means to be a “responsible adult” in today’s world.  What we ended up with is a career that steals our time and energy, a mortgage that drains our income and debt from all the Stuff we bought to furnish and decorate our home.  We have many thousands of dollars in Student Loans and a couple of cars to pay for.  Oh yeah, and the credit cards…

It looks like being an adult isn’t all that we’ve been led to believe.  All of our lives we’ve been told that adults are “responsible”, implying that it’s somehow more virtuous to fall in line and follow the leader than it is to follow our youthful ambitions.  The “responsible” thing to do is find a job, get married and have children, buy a house and a couple of cars, then keep your nose to the grindstone until it’s finally time to retire.  When that day does come, we hope that our health will last long enough to enjoy the life of our dreams; the life we’ve been waiting our whole life to live.

And what has it all amounted to?  A garage full of Stuff we never really needed in the first place, kids that seem to resent our very existence unless we’re buying them something, a spouse that we barely seem to know anymore and a huge house we aren’t able to enjoy because we are at the office earning a paycheck to pay the mortgage.

Sure, we have all the Stuff we could ever imagine.  We drive nice cars and wear nice clothes.  Our home is decorated like a magazine cover and on the weekends we are able to relax with a cold beer in the backyard.  On the surface things seem wonderful.  A little deeper though and things don’t look as good anymore.

What are we sacrificing to create this image of the “perfect” life?  Our time, our energy, our sanity?  If the average person starts working fresh out of college at the age of 22 and retires at 67, that’s 45 years of life sold for a dollar bill.  We’re trading our life to fill our garage with junk, for a heap of metal to take us to a job so that we can pay for that same heap of metal.

What if there were a different way?  What if you didn’t have to spend your entire life working?  Would you do it?  If you knew that in 10 years you could be financially able to walk away from your job with enough money to pay for all your expenses, would you have the ambition to make it happen?

There is a way, it is possible!  The only problem – of course there’s a problem – is that to get there, you have to minimize your spending and save.  “But that’s Un-American!” Our entire lives we’ve been told to “get out there and boost the economy.”  After the attacks on September 11 we were told to go shopping as a way to stand up against terrorism.  Does that mean we’re supporting terrorism by saving money?  Of course not!

What I’m talking about isn’t a new concept.  It isn’t impossible.  It’s been done before and it’ll be done again.  And not just by a few outliers but by many thousands of people.  Will you be one of them???

What’s the secret?

Live Frugally: Cut your expenses to the bone.  Anything that doesn’t offer real value to your life is out.  That might mean going without a contracted cell phone, cable television, TiVo or Netflix.  Find alternatives or other ways to occupy your time.  It may seem impossible now but you can live without these things.

Get Out of Debt: You can’t be financially independent when you’re in debt.  Get out, get out, get out! By adopting a frugal lifestyle, the extra money you’re able to save can be applied towards eliminating your debt.  After you’ve saved up enough money to cover six months of living expenses, every penny should be thrown at your debt.

Save: Once you’ve paid off the last of your debt it’s time to save like never before.  It may take you a few years, maybe even ten or 15, to save enough money to become financially independent but that’s better than 45 years!

Invest: This is where the magic is!  With the money you’ve saved, you can invest it into conservative investment vehicles which will pay you interest in fixed intervals over a specific length of time.  If you’ve saved and invested enough, this interest will cover all of your monthly expenses.  Now your money is working for you, not the other way around!

If you’d like to learn more about the process outlined above, I recommend checking out the book Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez.

“They must be drug dealers.  How else could they possibly afford to live the way they do?”

On the outside, my life might seem glamorous, the life of a drug dealer, full of money and expensive trips around the world.  In the last year I spent a week in the Las Vegas area, went on a month long road trip on the west coast and returned to California a month later to camp in Yosemite, went cruising around the Caribbean and last week was spent visiting a friend in Germany.  In two months I will be visiting Iceland and a month later I will spend two weeks in Kauai, Hawaii.

Most people only ever dream of traveling to the extent that I am able and some speculate that such a lifestyle can only be attained through illegal means, such as dealing drugs.  What many people ignore are the sacrifices I make in my daily life in order to afford to live the way I do.  If you want to live like a drug dealer, I can show you exactly how I am able to do it, no drugs necessary.

Rule 1) You Can Have Anything but You Can’t Have Everything.  When we are kids our parents tell us that we can grow up to be anything we want to be.  It is true.  With enough hard work, we can become anything that we want to be but we can’t become everything we want to be.  You can have anything you want in life, for me this is travel, but you can’t have everything.  You have to make a choice.  Do you want to travel or do you want to drive a sexy sports car?

Rule 2) Stop Paying Attention to Others.  We only see what other people want us to see.  People do not want us to know that they can’t really afford exotic vacations, expensive designer clothes, luxury automobiles, dinner at exclusive restaurants and drinks after work.  Our society believes that being rich means looking rich.  We spend our money trying to keep up appearances, all the while completely undermining our financial stability.  Being rich and having money has nothing to do with what you drive or the clothes you wear.  Ignore other people and focus on your own financial situation and on your dreams.

Rule 3) Stay Out of Debt.  If you are in debt, get out.  When you are always paying for the past, you are unable to focus on today or the future.  Since beginning this website I have eliminated my credit card debt and paid off my car loan.  Now I am able to apply that money towards doing other things in my life, such as travel.  Debt holds you hostage.  You become a slave to your lenders and you spend your days working for the banks and credit card companies.  The money you earn does not belong to you and until you eliminate your debt, you are not in control of your life.

Rule 4) Stop Buying Shit You Don’t Need.  Really.  If you want to live life like a drug dealer, you can’t spend all of your money on stupid shit that brings no value to your life.  My money is spent on plane tickets and hotel rooms, the things that I value and bring enjoyment to my life.  I do not spend money on media, cigarettes, alcohol, clothing, etc.  I live minimally and only try to spend my money on the things that I need.  Stop buying shit you don’t need and you will have money to spend on the things that you want to do in your life.

Rule 5) Make Life a Priority.  Stop thinking about all of the things that you want to do in life and make them happen.  It took me a long time to stop making excuses.  There is always a reason not to do something and so long as you continue to use these excuses as justification for not pursuing your desires, your life will never change or improve.  If you want something in life, you can’t expect for it to happen to you, you must make it happen.  You have to be aggressive and punch life in the face!

The rules of living life like a drug dealer are simple, totally legal and can work for anyone.  You don’t need to earn a lot of money to live a great life.  You just need to be smart with the money you earn and prioritize the things that are important to you.  Once you begin to follow these simple rules and apply them to your life, you can be certain that your life will begin to take shape in exactly the way you have envisioned in your mind.

Half the time I’m not even sure what I am going to eat for dinner.  How am I ever to figure out where my life will be in one year or even five years?  Looking back over the past five years of my life, I wouldn’t have been able to predict that my life would be where it is today.  Five years ago I was broke, working at a low paying retail job that I absolutely hated.  I was floating bad checks to pay my bills and had no intention of changing.  I started working after graduating and had no desire to continue my education.  I was on a dead end path to a meaningless existence.

Things have changed since then.  I have eliminated my consumer debts and have money in the bank.  I am a year and a half away from graduating college with a Bachelor Degree in Environmental Science.  I am focused on succeeding at everything I do and am doing so.  Last semester I earned a place on the Dean’s List and was elected Vice President of a student environmental organization.  My life is a stark contrast from what it used to be.

Without capturing my desire and chasing after my ambitions my life would not be where it is today.  No doubt I could still be working the same retail job if I hadn’t made a conscious decision to quit.  I could still be broke if I hadn’t made a decision to change.  I might not have gone to college had I decided that a Diploma was good enough for me.  Without taking an active role in my own life, I may not have found myself living the life I am today.  For better, or worse, my life is a culmination of every choice and decision I have ever made.

Five years ago looks very different from today and I have no doubt that five years from now will look even more different than life today.  Then again, without goals, my life might look exactly the same as it does today.

So, what do I have planned for my life over the next five years?

In a year and a half, I will have earned my Bachelor Degree.  I have every intention of continuing my education in pursuit of a Master’s Degree.  The University of Minnesota offers a Peace Corps Master’s International program in Natural Resource Science & Management, which I will enroll in.  I will spend one year taking classes then two years volunteering with the Peace Corps before I return home to complete my Master’s Program.  Following this route will allow me to accomplish 3 of my personal life goals; 63) Attend college in another state, 116) Earn my Master’s Degree and 107) Join the Peace Corps.

By this time I will be about 5 years into my future and I have no intention of giving up here.

For a while I have known that the plan outlined above is what I want out of my life but had no idea where to go from there.  Recently, I have come to a conclusion.  My ambitions in this life do not consist of punching a time clock, yet I need to earn a living.  My desire is to live a life of meaning, one where my actions directly impact the world in a positive way.  I wish to control my own destiny and create my own reality.  With these guidelines in mind, I have decided that the best option might be for me to begin a non-profit organization to help improve the quality of life for people in developing nations, primarily in Central and South America.  Exactly what or where or how have yet to be determined but I expect much of this to be figured out while serving in the Peace Corps.

That is my five year plan.  Creating this map will help guide me to my goals.

What is your five year plan?