Your confidence, broken.

Self doubts at an all time high.

You were doing so well. You put in all your heart, you were willing to do what it takes.

But you weren’t prepared for the pain. You didn’t expect it to be so hard. You didn’t know shattered bones would be all-inclusive.

You cry.

You’re loosing hope.

The dark is getting closer, and its cold foggy arms have almost reached you. You reach out your hand, longing to embrace it. You want to give up, you yearn for the relief the numbness of going back to your old life will give you. You want to forget.

Shame is burning inside you. Who are you to reach so high, dream so big? They will say they always knew you wouldn’t make it, nodding in comprehension and with a precocious look in their eyes. “You just got too big for your britches. Now come back to our side. We don’t have passion and fulfillment, but we can offer you flattened-out feelings, and comforting certainty. Your life will become predictable again.

You get up. You lift your head and look them in the eye, grasping the floating darkness behind them. You make a small step. They look at you, waiting. Nodding approval.

Your heart strikes. Your soul is aching.

You take a deep breath.

And you run.

You run away from the darkness, the approval, the certainty. Because you’ve heard your heart whisper “I believe in you”.

And that was enough for you to realize that there is a glimmer of hope waiting for you if you just turn around and open your eyes to it.

You’re here once again, at the starting line.

Plan B: Try again.

Let’s rewind a bit.  

This trip was everything but planned. When I heard that two of my Mastermind ladies were going to Chris Guillebeau’s The End Of The World Party in Norway, I bought a ticket on a whim, because it would be the first chance for us to meet face-to-face. That was four weeks before I landed in Oslo. I bought a cheap Ryan Air ticket two weeks later, and we booked the Airbnb place three days before I left. Talk about spontaneous.

Yet up until the minute I sat in that airplane, I wasn’t sure if I’d really be going. It seemed so unreal to take a trip to Norway, a country I had never been to before, just to meet up with two friends I knew from the internet (you know what they tell you about meeting up with dangerous internet people) to go to a party. Not necessarily something I usually do.

In the end I went because I yearned to expand my comfort zone and make room for some adventure in my life. And I couldn’t be happier that I did. The conversations I had with my two friends in our lovely Ikea styled apartment were incredible, filled with laughter, joy and deep, deep insights. I’ve learned more about myself and life in these few days with my friends than I have in countless hours of self-study that I’ve gone through this year.

Some of the ideas have caused me to make some drastic changes in the way I go about my everydays, as well as the direction I’m going into. The lessons I learned are just too good keep to myself. That’s why I’m sharing the ones that had the biggest impact on me with you today. Maybe they’ll touch your life as much as they have mine.

10 Lessons Learned on a Trip to the End of the World 

1. This moment is all we have. Time is fleeting, always. One moment you’re talking to your girlfriends and next thing you know you’re sitting at the airport, trying to get your head around the subtle sadness that comes with saying goodbye. This moment is all we have. So we might as well experience it while it’s there. [tweet]

2. Feeling good is the primary intention. [tweet] Got this from the brilliant Danielle Laporte. Everything we do can be explained by our desire to experience happiness. We want to feel good. So why not stop going on achievement detour and focus on creating our desired good feelings now?

3. Detach your self-worth from what you’re doing. Your to-do list doesn’t make you a better person. Self-worth is about loving who you are, taking a glimpse at your soul and honoring whatever you find. Self-love means understanding that you are enough.

4. “Because I want to” is an excellent reason for doing something. [tweet]

5. Searching for happiness in achievements only leads to misery. [tweet] It doesn’t make sense to live life as a series of achievements, because what we search for in our goals is usually plain old happiness  The problem: We suffer our way through to make our goals happen and lose our ability to stay in the moment on the way. That means no happiness in the pursuit of the goal and no happiness when we succeed. Ouch.

6. Focusing on creating happiness now vs. through future achievements brings fulfillment. [tweet]

7. When people give you advice it’s rarely ever personal. [tweet] When someone has strong opinions about what you should be doing with your life, it’s often because he wishes he would have acted differently when he was in a similar situation way back when. It doesn’t mean what he suggests is the right thing for you to do. And only you can tell the difference.

8. Other people care less about what you do than you think. [tweet] Most of the pressure and expectations we project onto ourselves are our very own, even when we strongly believe we must act a certain way to please other people. We think they expect us to be/do/have {insert something scary}. We don’t want to let them down so we work towards being/doing/having what we think they expect from us. Truth is: They don’t really care what you do all that much. And if they’re your loved ones, the last thing they want is for you to kill yourself over perceived expectations.

9. Doing what other people tell you to do is exhausting. [tweet] Valuing other people’s opinion more than your own is hard work, even though it seemingly allows you to shut off your brain and take the easy route. Your intuition knows what you’re doing and it will keep bugging you until you start to make use of your own judgement again.

10. No one knows what’s right for you. Except for you. [tweet]

And as a bonus:

11. I love Norwegian cake. It’s like German cake, just with more berries and whipped cream.

Taking the trip was a big catalyst for me and one of the reasons I was able to go from unhappy to happy Iris again. Right now I’m implementing these lessons and I can already tell that they’re making the biggest difference. Though the trip is over and it will probably take a while until I get to eat Norwegian cake again, these insights and memories will stay with me for, well, hopefully forever.

Now I want to hear from you: Have you ever taken a life changing trip? When have you done something out of your comfort zone that has lead to profound changes in your life?  

PS: Want proof I was in Norway? Check out Chris’ special broadcast from the end of the world and see if you can find my face in one of the pictures.

Should. Should. Should.

How do you feel when you say “I should really start exercising more.” or “I guess I need to manage my time better.”? Amazing? Excited? Or more like… blah? Cause that’s how I feel.

When I tell myself that I should do something, that something immediately gets less exciting. The energy shifts. And if that something was nothing that I cared too much about in the first place, especially if I feel like I should be doing it because of other people’s expectations, it feels even worse. It weighs me down, drains my energy and makes me wanna hide under a blanket and scream “screw you stupid world of obligations” at my laptop/door/random stranger.

Stop shoulding all over yourself.

In essence, saying should makes us feel like shit. So will you stop shoulding all over yourself, please?

Just because you acknowledge the fact that you should do something doesn’t make you more responsible or more productive. It doesn’t get things done for you. All it does is drain your feelings.

One of the main reasons I was so unhappy these past months (read Unhappiness 101 to get the full story), was because I did things I thought I should be doing. Wanna have a peak into my mind? This was on replay for months: I should really have this business thing figured out by now. I should probably start reading more so I can learn more stuff faster. I should probably finish my first major because I’m already halfway through it and people will think I’m a failure if I don’t.

Screw. That.

Thoughts like these were driving me crazy. Whether I acted on them or not, reminding myself of things I thought I should be doing generally made me feel like a loser who never accomplishes anything. And because I was feeling like a worthless idiot, I stopped trusting my own brain and intuition. I consumed all kinds of advice to figure out what I should be doing to turn me into a capable human being again. All that did was add more shoulds to my life, which led to me feeling even more crappy and guilty.

My guess is that some of you can relate to that. Now why on earth do we allow all these shoulds to come into our lives if they generally make us feel like a bad, lazy person? Why would we want to keep doing something that makes us feel like crap?

Why we keep shoulding all over ourselves

There’s a psychological trick at play. We somehow feel like telling ourselves all the things we should be doing is a responsible thing to do. At least we know that we should be exercising more, that means it’s not so bad that we don’t do it, because we at least feel guilty about it. Makes us a better person, right? No. It doesn’t. It makes us an unhappy, grumpy, guilt driven person. Does that sound beneficial? Because it isn’t.

In my case, I constantly reminded myself about all the things I should be doing or I should have accomplished by, well, yesterday. I felt guilty about not crossing things off my to-do list, not making enough money, or looking like a professional blogger. I kept thinking about all these shoulds because I thought that would make me a more responsible person. Turns out that made me feel less than ideal on a daily basis. And that in turn made me super unproductive. Feeling like crap most of the time is the surest way to for me to be unmotivated, unfocused and procrastinating.

Here’s what I figured out: Acknowledging what you should be doing doesn’t make you any more productive/responsible/accomplished. It also doesn’t get things done for us. And most importantly, it doesn’t contribute to our happiness.

Acknowledging what we should be doing doesn’t make us a better person in any way. [tweet]

I was able to stop shoulding all over myself a few weeks back. I feel good on a daily basis again. I’m excited and eager to get up when I wake up in the morning (my personal measurement of happiness). And guess what: Feeling good helps me show up as the high version of myself that I need to be to do my writing, work on my business and coach people effectively. I’m getting a lot more done these days. And I’m an estimated 27384,92% happier than when I was should-addicted. 

How was I able to kick the shoulds and expectations? Well, my friend, while I was getting off the should train, I somewhat accidentally developed a process to figure out which shoulds made sense and and which ones deserved to be kicked out of my life. I eloquently call it the “Do I Really Need to Do This?” Decision Matrix.

So whenever you catch yourself saying “I should” or “I need to”, feel free to pause and go through these steps (adjust as needed. Don’t feel like this is the only way it should be done

How to deal with the shoulds in your life

1. Is this your should? Do you really believe that you need to do this or was this something that you feel you should do to please loved ones or fulfill expectations? Ask yourself: Who’s voice is this? Your daddy’s? Your best friend’s? Is it the girl who bullied you in 7th grade? If it’s not yours truly, check to see if this applies to your life now. Which leads us to the next step:

2. Make it more sexy. To get 100% sure whether or not you really need to do something, replace the word should with want or something similar that expresses a desire: “I want to get a degree in business.”, “I would love to work harder”, “I want to read that bestselling book”. Got it? Now the big question is:

3. What’s your belly saying? How does it feel to say you actually want to do this thing? Does it feel true to you? If your intuition doesn’t get along well with this want/should it might be a good idea to drop the should right now. Hot potato style. Really, this is the critical deciding factor. If it doesn’t feel right in your gut, I highly recommend you don’t do it. This has become one of the guiding principles for me and I can see each day how big of a difference it makes in my life (more on that in a later post).

If you’re belly is saying “yes” to whatever it is you want to do, awesome. There’s only one more thing we wanna do before we greenlight it:

4. Now or never. Do you really want to do this right now? Or does it just feel urgent because you decided that you should have achieved financial independence/the toned butt/the book deal by now? Be careful with self-proclaimed deadlines and expectations. Oftentimes they stress us out way more than they help us focus and get things done. If you’re belly said yes to your want and you decide that now is a good time to go after it, congratulations. You have just made an important decision to commit yourself to doing it (if committing to it doesn’t feel right, well, dump it).

The ”Do I Really Need to Do this?” decision matrix

Phew. Nice little process, eh? I wanted to make sure that it’s easy to understand it, so I got a little creative and created a simple graphic for you. Enjoy

Ain’t it super pretty?  

How my new relationship to should has changed my life

I’ve got into the habit of inspecting every should that comes my way using this process. This has lead to me taking on a whole lot less stuff, which freed up a lot of my time (I even quit a side job of mine, because I realized it was out of alignment with what I truly want to do). I was able to let go of a lot of my own crazy expectations about what I should have accomplished by now. I also care less about what other people think I should be doing. I can tell you, treating shoulds this way has kicked up my happiness level a few notches, if not many.

If you’re feeling off track right now, or if your to-do list is killing you, I’d love for you to have a look at all the shoulds in your life. You can use the above matrix if you’re feeling it.

Let us know how it goes in the comments below. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on shoulds and other people’s expectations. Any experiences you want to share?

 Does that sound like the description of a happiness blogger? Because it is. It describes my situation, the one I’ve been in for most of this year.

I know how easy it is to fall into the trap of thinking that your favorite bloggers, your superheros are always happy. They’re living their dreams after all, right? I want to share this part of my story with you today to debunk this happiness myth and show you that I, we, are all human. We suffer just as much. And we make newbie mistakes. All the time.

Here’s my story:

Big ambitions, hard work and hating your life 

Our story begins in the first week of January. I mapped out my goals for the year, feeling excited and ambitious  Here are some of my most important goals:

• Start a life coaching business
• Become financially independent
• Straight A’s in my first semester of psychology

I was excited about what was to come and convinced that this would be the best year of my life. I was ready to work hard and determined to reach my goals.

So I went to work. And I worked. And worked. And worked.

Until I looked up from my laptop one day and realized I wasn’t happy. I was feeling overwhelmed, burned out even. This wasn’t what I wanted my life to look like, working all day, unable to relax in the evenings. My life started feeling like a giant to-do list. Something was off. Being the serious life coach that I am, I decided to do something about it. I knew stuff about happiness after all. I’m writing a blog about it. I could figure this out.

So I did my research. I talked to coaches, friends, mentors, my mom and random internet people. I experimented with new habits, affirmations, time management, journaling exercises, you name it. I did so much. As time went on things got better, but deep down, I still didn’t feel alright. At this point I had been bugging people with “my overwhelm issue” for months, and I started feeling embarrassed when my friends asked me how I was and all I could say was “Stress. Lots of stress. But I’m not feeling too overwhelmed anymore. So it’s good. I’m good.”

I didn’t get it.

Why was I still unhappy? 

Why oh why? I had searched for advice, implemented it, reflected on it. Done so many things. And still. The feeling remained. I tried telling myself that it was not that big of a deal, that I just needed to push trough it and get on with my life.

But every morning when I woke up there was this nagging voice inside of me:

• Your life feels like a giant to-do list. For god’s sake, we need some time off!
• This can’t be right. Unhappiness is not the reason you’ve started this journey. You wanted to be happier and now look at yourself, all you do is push yourself, work hard and feel guilty about not doing enough.
• IF YOU DON’T START LISTENING TO ME RIGHT NOW I WILL MAKE YOU CRY DURING DINNER TONIGHT! Stop running away from your feelings!

You might expect that I got to my senses and took my inner voice seriously. Na. I went on for weeks, numbing the voice with more and more work and sophisticated talks about my feelings so I could pretend I was listening to them while I wasn’t. I resisted. It persisted. 

The surest way to unhappiness: Don’t trust your feelings 

But after a while I slowly started to let my guards down. I allowed myself little spaces where I did listen to my feelings. I’d cry in front of the mirror for an hour and feel so relieved. I went straight back to beating myself up the next morning, but these small moments of feeling my feelings and listening to what I really wanted added up. Over the course of a few weeks, I started to understand where the voice was coming from and what it wanted to tell me.

You see, I had been doing things for months to make the overwhelm and unhappiness go away. The only thing I hadn’t done was to listen to my intuition. I couldn’t allow myself to simply sit and be with my feelings. I was too scared of what they might tell me. What if my intuition was so fed up with this lifestyle that it wanted me to quit and throw away everything I had worked so hard for? What if -gasp- this idea of living a life you love was a big hoax and not achievable for me? It took me 4 months to muster up the courage to face my feelings and listen to what they had been whispering to me all along.

Here’s what I learned from listening to my intuition. It showed me that I had basically been following a “Unhappiness 101″ script all these months. Today I want to share my unhappiness expert knowledge with you so you can check in and see if any of this sounds a bit too familiar to your own life.

Unhappiness 101 

Attaching your self-worth to your to-do list. This is a big one. I only allowed myself to be happy (or more accurately, not unhappy) when I got things done. If I had an unproductive day I felt like a loser. Though the reality is that your character, your personality, what makes you YOU doesn’t have anything to do with your to-do list. You’re awesome because you’re you, not because you’ve been able to cross 12 items off your list today. Sure, getting things done aka what we do with our life is important, but if your self-worth is attached to it you loose no matter what you do.

Searching for happiness in achievements. “If I only push through this and work hard now until I have my first client/get the degree/earn x amount of money then I will be able to relax/be present/take care of my health, but right now, I just can’t. If I only work a little harder and things will be alright.” Translation: Now’s not the time to be happy. I will be happy once I achieve x. Guess what: If we don’t focus on our happiness now and live in the future, it’s gonna be really hard to focus on the now once the big day has arrived. Science shows that achievements have a rather low influence on our happiness levels. We’ll get a short high when we make the big sale, marry our boyfriend or hold that bachelor’s degree in our hands, but only a few days after our happiness levels are back to normal. So if we search for happiness in achievements, we’re pretty much screwed.

Valuing other people’s opinions more than your intuition. I made the mistake of handing over my mind to all kinds of experts, coaches and friends. I started valuing other people’s ideas on how things should be done and how my life should be lived more than my own ideas. No wonder that little voice in my head went insane! I stopped trusting my intuition and generally believed other people more than I did my own, beautiful belly intelligence. Surest way to unhappiness. 

Never enough mindset. There’s not enough time. I don’t have enough money. If we live in a constant scarcity mindset, it’s no wonder that we’re having a hard time being present and letting happiness take over. After all, who has time for that? Right. For more on this subject read Too Much to Do Too Little Time: How to Get Off The Hamster Wheel.

Beating yourself up Mohammed Ali style. I didn’t get everything done today, I’m a failure. SLAP. I need to work harder to prove to people that I’m serious about this. SLAPSLAP. I’m a total jerk. Everyone else is doing so much better than me. BAAM. Beating ourselves up when we fail to live up to our expectations comes natural for most of us, yet it’s one of the most destructive things we can do to our self-worth and trust. And no, it doesn’t make us a better person or more productive. Punishing ourselves is never the right option to choose. I was a black belt ninja master at beating myself up for just about everything. Didn’t finish that blog post? Total failure. Didn’t reply to every email in my inbox? Lazy buns. Behind on the project because I took some time to rest and read today? Selfish bitch. Ouch. How about we get more used to the C word in these situations? Yup. C.O.M.P.A.S.S.I.O.N. She’s a gentle life saver when you feel less than fabulous. Once I got into the habit of forgiving myself for not crossing item 34 off my to-do list. I did not only feel better about myself, I also stopped resisting work so much. Hence my inspiration and creativity stop over at my place more often. Which is why I’m able to write this blog post today.

Are you excited when you wake up in the morning? 

This has proven to be the litmus test for me when it comes to figuring out my happiness level. If I wake up excited more often than not, I know I’m on the right track. But when I find myself dreading to wake up and get to work in the morning, that’s a clear sign that something is off.

So why don’t you take this quick litmus test and have a look at your happiness level: Are you waking up excited most of the time? If not, are you following any of the Unhappiness 101 rules above? Let us know in the comments below.

What would you do if I gave you a simple (and fun!) exercise that could set you up on your path to living the life of your dreams?

Would you  be up for it?

I thought so.

If you’re unsure why living the life of your dreams is something you might want to consider, read our last post that explains why living your dreams makes life meaningful. Hint: It’s the only way to live before you die.

So if you’re game, keep reading to find out what this exercise is all about and what it can do for you.

But first let me ask you a question:

What’s the very first step to living your dreams? 

That’s an easy one, right? In order to live your dreams you must first understand what your dreams are.

If you don’t know what the life of your dreams looks like you can’t take any targeted action towards it.

Let’s make this a golden rule:

In order to live our dreams we need to know our dreams.

Got it? Awesome. Let’s move on and find out how you can get to know your dreams a little better.

How to find your dreams 

Today, we’re going to use a special tool to get a taste of the life of your dreams. You see, the life of your dreams is not some boring concept or idea. It’s a vision that excites you, sets you on fire and motivates you more than anything else. 

That’s why we’re going to use visualization as a tool to connect to your dream vision.

That’s right, we’re going to visualize. There’s a whole  lot of science and hype around the power of visualization and guess what, it’s true. Now pull down your eyebrow and let me explain what visualization is and why visualization is a great way to find out what you’re dreaming about.

What is visualization?

Visualization basically means that you consciously imagine yourself being, doing or having something. There’s a difference between conscious and unconscious visualization. You’re already familiar with unconscious visualization: It’s what you do when you picture yourself chilling with your mates on Saturday night. Even when you’re thinking about yourself walking into the grocery store to pick up some shower gel, you’re visualizing.

In these cases you’re not using visualization as a conscious tool. That’s why it doesn’t have any big effect on your life. Conscious visualization on the other hand can have a huge impact on your life. When you consciously focus your mind to think about a certain situation, you’re allowing your whole brain to add to the conversation and bring up things that you might not be consciously aware of. That’s how we’re going to use it today. We want your mind to focus on what you dream about and bring it to your attention.

So now that we know why we want to live the life of our dreams and understand that visualization is a buddy that will help us find our dreams, let’s get down to the practice.

How to visualize like a pro 

By now you understand that knowing your dreams is the first step to living your dreams. You also get that visualization is not some woo woo BS and that it’s going to be your partner in crime in uncovering your dreams.

By the way, even if you think you already know your dreams I suggest you take the time to do this exercise anyways. I do it regularly and it always gets me back on track and super focused.

Ready?

Let’s get physical. Or shall I say, visual? 

Step 1: Prepare for fuzzy feelings 

It’s a lot harder to visualize in a crowded cafeteria than it is to do so in the peaceful quiet of your own home. Unless you’re a tibetan monk who’s able to focus no matter what’s going on around him, I suggest you go somewhere quiet. Also you might  not wanna be starred at by your coworkers when you’re sitting there with your eyes closed and a smile on your face that makes you look like you’re high.

Take a pen and a few sheets of paper or your journal with you.

Step 2: Say hi to your dreams 

Close your eyes. Take a few deep breathes and center in to this moment. Picture yourself in five years. Everything you’ve done has worked out perfectly. Total success. What does your life look like?

The goal is to envision yourself living this life in as much detail as possible.

And, as Tim Brownson likes to say: ”See what you’d see, hear what you’d hear and feel what you’d feel, and allow any tastes or smells associated with the event to be present too”. We wanna get really connected to our dream vision.

If what you see doesn’t excite you: Dream BIGGER. Think about this: If you dreamed in terms of your potential instead of your current capabilities, how would it change the dream?

Also, do your best not to judge or censor yourself. Whatever comes up is awesome. As long as it excites you it’s all good. Don’t worry about your dream being realistic, in fact it’s a very good sign if it seems quite unrealistic.

If you need some more inspiration to get your inner movie theater going, it’s a good idea to spend some time thinking on these questions:

What will you be doing?

Where will you be working? Will you be working?

Who will you spend your time with?

Where will you travel?

Where will you live?

How will you behave?

What will you look like?

What do you do on a daily basis?

What will an ideal day in your life look like? An ideal week? An ideal month? An ideal year?

Step 3: Write it down 

Feeling inspired? Awesome. Now we want to capture the scene you’ve just seen in your head. Writing it down will help you remember the details and also make it feel more real.

Write everything down that you saw in your visualization. Attempt to answer the questions listed above. When you feel like you have an exciting and quite complete picture of your dream future, put your pen away, take a few deep breathes and read through it again. How does it feel?

If you start smiling, your heart starts racing and you can’t help but be in awe of the picture you’ve drawn, then you’ve probably hit on a vision that has the potential to become your personal dream vision. Your big 5 year plan.

Wait, what?

Step 4: Commit 

Surprise surprise, we didn’t just do this exercise for the warm fuzzy feelings in your belly, but because we want to know what you really want out of life. When we set out to create an extraordinary life, we need to know what the destination looks like before we can calibrate our compass and create a road map.

And once we know what that life looks like, there’s one important thing we need to do right now: Commit to making your dreams a reality. Yes, even the big “unrealistic” ones.

Does this scare you a bit? Do you think it’s impossible to live the life you’ve just envisioned? Is it just… too BIG?

Fear not, my dear. All big achievers and role models have started out in the same place that you are in right now. They experienced the same doubts, fears and insecurities. What made them different from all the others was that they decided to do it anyways. They were committed to make their vision a reality.

Do you think Einstein was like “Yeah, maybe I’ll understand this relativity thing one day, but I don’t wanna work on it now ’cause I don’t have a guarantee that I’ll actually find it…” Do you think Beyoncé wanted to give this music thing a try or was she fiercely committed to being a singer?

The first step we all need to take is to commit to our dreams. If you’re not serious about living your dreams you can just crawl back into that boring cave you came from and stay there for the rest of your life.

So what do you think I’m going to ask you to do right now?

That’s right.

Here’s your homework:

1. Do the exercise and have fun with it. Go crazy. Paint a vision of your dream life that excites you so much you’d want to get to work right now. If your five year vision just seems too big, then do a visualization on your one year vision. It works the same way, but maybe it won’t scare you as much. Change the exercise up so it fits your own needs. But do. this. exercise. No excuses allowed.

2. Commit. Do whatever you need to do to make the commitment serious. Buy yourself a promise ring, meditate on it or simply say out loud “I’m committed to making my dreams a reality and won’t settle for a life that’s below my vision.” That’s how I did it and it works like a charm.

3. In the comments below, tell me a snippet of your own dream life. What’s the best part about it? And then let me know: Are you committed to making your dreams a reality? When you’re done, share this article with one person that really needs to start living their dreams. Just one friend. I want to see as many people as possible commit to their dreams, ok? Thank you.

Thanks to my ninja friend Izzy for inspiring me to dive into the concept of five year dreams. 

image credit

What do you think is the number one regret of the dying?

That they didn’t work harder? Fulfill somebody else’s expectations? Or that they made more money?

Of course that’s not what they regret.

Read on to learn about what people really regret before they die and how you can use this knowledge to make sure you live a meaningful life.

The most common regret people have on their deathbeds 

Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse, cared for the dying in the last three to 12 weeks of life for several years. Though you might not expect it, working in an environment were death was always present taught her a lot about life.

One thing she was particularly interested in was what her patients regretted now that their life was almost over. The answers were so fascinating that she made them into a book called “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying“.

The most commonly named regret:

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” 

“This was the most common regret of all.”, Bronnie says “When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. “

“Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.“

Wow.

If not living our dreams is the most common regret of the dying, then why do we spend so much time trying to build a life around money, status and the expectations of others? 

It doesn’t make sense. The only thing that does is to dare living our dreams.

How to give your life meaning: Live your dreams 

If you’re anything like me, reading about what people regret on their deathbed makes you think about the way you’re currently living your life. It makes me want to go out there and live BIG, do the things I’ve always wanted to do not just on occasion, but to build a lifestyle around it.

So I can live a life that matters.

As a matter of fact, this is what Bright Little Socks is all about. I’m here to support you in living your dreams so you can create a life that has meaning to you. One that you’re passionate about. I do this not only because I believe that this is the only way to live, I do this because I believe that happy people will change the world, and helping you live a life you love is how I play my part in it.

Now what’s the first step to living your dreams? It’s to find your dream. If you don’t know what your biggest dreams are, which is the case for most of us when we’re just starting out, you cannot take the steps necessary to create a life you love

That’s why I’m creating a series about finding your dream to help you take the very first step it takes to live a meaningful life.

Over the coming weeks I’m going to share with you my best knowledge and lessons learned about everything you need to know to identify your own big dream.

It’s gonna be fun.

In the mean time, I want you to leave a comment and answer this one simple question:  

Do you believe that living your dreams is vital to live a fulfilled life?

If yes, leave a comment telling me why you think it’s so important and what you’re currently doing to make sure you’re getting closer to your dreams.

If no, tell me more. Why do you think living your dreams doesn’t matter? Do you think it’s complete BS? Leave me a comment, I’d love to hear all about it.

Also, on a side note:

I’m still putting this content together right now. So, if you have any specific questions about finding your dreams, leave a comment asking your question, and I may be able to work it into this series.

***
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When I asked you what you were struggling with last week, the most commonly named problem  was all about feeling of not having enough time and the wish to be more productive. The second problem you were facing had to do with finding your way in life and knowing how to turn your vision into a reality. 

First off I want to thank each and everyone of you that has answered my question and shared a part of your life with me. I feel humbled and so excited to have all you amazing people in our community.

I take your answers very seriously and will do my best to help you with your struggles in the coming weeks and months. As you know my goal here at Bright Little Socks is to inspire, motivate and empower as many people as possible to start living their dreams. Because I believe that step by step, person by person we can make the world a better place.

Today we’re going to address the problem of time management. Ever feel like there is never enough time? This is something a lot of us struggle with, me included.

I’m going to tell you a personal story and share the lessons I learned from saying no to one of the biggest opportunities in my life.

Ready? Let’s jump right in.

Our relationship to time 

Let’s kick this off with a quote that talks about our relationship to time:

“For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next one is “I don’t have enough time.” … We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of… Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds are racing with a litany of what we did, or didn’t get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack…” -Lynne Twist in “The Soul Of Money”

Boom.

This quote adequately sums up how many of us relate to time. We feel like we’re in a rat race with a never ending to-do list. No matter what we do, it never seems to be enough because there’s always the next day and the next item that we need to get done.

Does that sound familiar? I know I’ve been struggling with this in the past. To be honest, I am still struggling with this.

Let me tell you a little story to about how I was trapped in the “never enough time” mindset and what I did to escape it.

My personal story about what’s been going on between Mr. Time & me

A couple weeks ago my college semester was about to end and I had an incredible amount of work to do. On top of that I was working hard on the blog and at my job.

That’s when I was offered a scholarship at an online coaching school in exchange for me working as their coaching assistant. I was super excited! I had been thinking about the best way to improving my skills as a coach, and attending a coaching school had been one of my favorite options. This opportunity seemed perfect, because it would help me to grow as a coach without going into debt to pay for education.

I was confident that I would be able to fit the coaching school and the added coaching job into my already crammed schedule. I thought all I had to do was work harder or smarter. I would be able to handle it and if not… well, I could not let this opportunity pass me by. I would make it possible, no matter what it would cost me.

What I didn’t put into account was that I was already feeling more and more exhausted. I was tired, unable to focus and generally felt rushed and unable to relax on most days.

But I didn’t want to see it. I denied how I felt because I thought that I had no choice but to push through it and make things work. I needed this education.

So I tried to push myself even harder and told myself that it was not a big deal. But truth is that it was. I was burning myself out. 

The bitter truth: Sometimes you can’t do it all now 

Even though I resisted this realization with every cell of my body, I had to accept that I had too many projects going on. I had to cut back and do less.

Now I don’t know about you, but even though doing less sounded so appealing, I felt like there was no way for me to do so.  It scared the bejesus out of me. Everything on my list seemed important. How could I possibly do less when I felt like I needed to do more? 

It took me weeks to accept that I had to indeed do less, simply because I couldn’t do it all. It wasn’t because I was lazy, ineffective or unproductive, it just wasn’t possible.

So I made one of the hardest decisions I’ve made in my life: I let go of the coaching school. My gut was telling me that it wasn’t right for me. Even though I tried to convince myself and listed every possible reason that I needed to grab the opportunity, I had to see that it wouldn’t serve me in the end. It was not just my crammed schedule that spoke against it, most of all it was that little voice that kept telling me that I needed to focus my attention on other things. I had been ignoring this voice for quite some time, but when I allowed it to speak up, it became so loud that I couldn’t ignore it any more. And I’m glad I couldn’t.

A few weeks have passed since I made the call to turn down the opportunity. How do I feel about it now? I don’t regret it. When I made the decision it immediately felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

Today I’m going to share the golden nuggets and survival lessons that I learned from making this decision so you don’t have to burn yourself out like I did. You don’t only get Iris-proven strategies and ideas, there’s also a lot of wisdom I learned from my mentors, coaches and supporters that I reached out to searching for help.

How to get off the hamster wheel: 5 Things you can do right now 

Listen to yourself. The first step to change is always to acknowledge what’s here now. Allow yourself to listen to your emotions and feelings and see if they’re telling you that you need a change. Don’t ignore your feelings like I did, it will only make you get sick (mentally and maybe even physically).  You need to know that you’re not okay in order to know that you need to change and what you need to change. And remember, It’s okay not to be okay.

Understand your mindset. Most people don’t like to hear it, but your mind has more control over how you feel and how you perceive your reality than you realize. When you’re in the “never-enough” mindset and believe that there is not enough time in the day guess what, that’s exactly what you’ll experience.

So take the time to understand your own relationship with time and your beliefs about it. See if some of them are working against you rather than for you. Common misconceptions  about time (that I had as well) include thinking that there’s never enough time in the day or the belief that we will achieve happiness and calmness only when we have achieved a certain goal and must power through it now. Those are perfect examples of beliefs that are not serving you well at all.

Then when you’re ready, it might be time to…

Reframe it. When you discover a belief that is not serving you, it’s best to replace it with a new, more empowering belief. The easiest way to do that is to find a mantra that will help you shift from a feeling of scarcity to a feeling of ‘enough’. I know mantras freak some people out. Relax. It doesn’t have to be woo woo. It can be as easy as telling yourself “No matter how much I get done today, it’s enough.” That one is especially good if you tend to tie your self-worth to how busy you are, like me.

When we develop a mindset that says that there is enough time, and that we are enough everything feels lighter. It’s as if a giant weight has been lifted from our shoulders. We’re able to see more clearly. We can fully engage in the task at hand and now that what we’re doing is enough. We don’t have to worry about all the other things we should be doing right now.

We can breathe.

Suddenly we realize that we could indeed…

Do less. This is the part that freaks almost every one out. “But Iris, I can’t do less! I’m already behind on my tasks!” I hear ya. It was the same for me. Do you think I was ready to let go of the coaching school just like that? I resisted it in every possible way. I found excuses on why I needed to keep it and how it would all work out.

But no. Sometimes you need to do less.

And guess what? Contrary to our first reaction, doing less actually helps us be more productive. How? It eases our mind and takes away a lot of the stress and pressure an overwhelming to-do list likes to trigger. We’re better able to focus and fully engage in the task at hand, rather than worrying about all the things we need to get done.

Of course you can’t just cut back on everything. There are certain areas where you need to…

Do more. We often feel burnt out because we’re doing to much of the wrong things and not putting enough emphasis on the right things. What are the right things you ask? Everything that helps you unplug, recharge and enjoy the journey. In a word: Self-care. Again, contrary to what we might think, spending more time replenishing our energy reservoirs often helps us get more done. When we spend less time working and add in small rituals of self-care, it helps with our concentration, focus and the energy we have available to perform each day. 

What I need you to do now 

If you feel trapped in an endless cycle of doing every day feels like a struggle. There’s no time to breathe, to sip some tea, or to read a good book.

I encourage you to look up from your messy to-do list and ask yourself whether or not it makes you feel good. And if you feel like you need it, pick one strategy from the list above and apply today. See if you can be courageous and listen to yourself, take time to understand why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling and then do less of the things that drain your energy and more of those that replenish it.

What my experience with the coaching school opportunity taught me is that in the end, is that it’s not so much about the time we have available. It’s more about how we balance the time we spend working and the time we spend taking care of ourselves, and the mindset we bring to the things we do.

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I want this site to be as helpful as possible for you. That’s why I’m asking you one small but important question today:

What are you struggling with when it comes to creating a life you love? 

Leave me a comment below. Even if it’s just something small, don’t hesitate. The more I know about you and your situation, the more I can create things that are of value to you and our community.

I’ll read and reply to every comment. Because you, my readers, mean the world to me.

PS: If you don’t feel comfortable commenting publicly, just shoot me an email to iris [at] brightlittlesocks dot com

Hey, you. Yeah you.

You know what?

My generation will change the world. We will be the first to create a world that makes sense.

I know, I know.

Our parents probably said the same thing. 

But things are different now. We are different.

We haven’t grown up in the same restricting society that our parents grew up in.

We grew up in peace, we had more freedom than any other generation before us.  And this gives us a luxury that our parents didn’t have. It gives us the courage to imagine a different world.

We can see more there’s more to life than a job, marriage and retirement.  We dream about all the possibilities waiting for us out there. It gives us the courage to not only dream for ourselves, but for others too. We envision what the world could look like. A world that makes sense.

Our generation is well aware of the state of the world we live in. We know it’s broken. Just like every generation we have the best intentions to fix it. What makes us different from all the others, is that we will take action. Now is the time.

The world doesn’t make sense

If you think the world is okay the way it is, just watch the news tonight.

Skinny models, fat people at Mc Donald’s, cheap quality fashion items made to only last one season, child labor in clothing factories to produce said items, people from Africa stranding on European beaches, the throw-away culture in the West, wars, divorces, unemployment, burn out, dictatorships, global economic crisis, inflation …

I hope this list didn’t make you click the X button on the upper right. I know, it’s frustrating. It’s easy to think that this is how it’s supposed to be. That this is somewhat of a natural state. Problems, absurdity and destruction no matter where you look.

But what if…

What if this all comes down to us believing that it has to be this way. What if the world is what it is only because we believe it can’t be any different, act in a way that affirms that, see the negative results of humanity’s behaviors  believe there’s no way out, act in alignment with that….

See, when you believe that there is no way to end child labor in clothing factories you’re most likely to give up any rebellion and start buying at the bad stores too, because you feel like your choice doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

Our world needs a global mind shift, followed by some massive action.

The problem:

We’ve all been conditioned to accept defeat and acknowledge that the horrible state of the world is a given that we can’t change.

Now who would be brave and foolish enough to challenge the status quo and think differently? 

The youth.

That’s why I believe it’s on us to make the first step. Our parents, our teachers, the postman, everyone that has passed 30 has probably already been disillusioned and is too conditioned to be able to make even the slightest rebellious and unconventional change.

But we, the young people, the college students, the high school dreamers, the ones that haven’t given up searching for a meaning in all this, we can change. In fact we desperately long to.

I believe that my generation is full of potential rebels. My purpose is to wake them up and show them how they can live like they mean it and change the world.

So what I ask you to do today is to take one tiny action. I don’t care how old you are, whether you feel rebellious or have watched the spark die inside you. I want you to pass this article on to one person that needs to hear this message. If everyone shares it with just one person, that’s already a small mindshift revolution.

Remember:

We are all potential rebels. It’s upon us to make the world we envision a reality. [Click to tweet]

Hey, Potential Rebel.  

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Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Howard Thurman 

You have this big project you want to start. It will change your life. Well, maybe it will. You don’t know yet because you’ve never done anything like it before. But it seems that the only way to find out is to give it a shot and see what happens.

The problem is, even thinking about taking some real action towards your goal scares the crap outta you. It’s as if you were a child again, lying in the dark waiting for the monster to crawl out your closet. You’re terrified.

Yet there is this feeling in your gut that tells you that this might be an awesome adventure and lead to opportunities that you don’t even dare to dream about at this point.

Here’s the thing: You’ll never be a bestselling author if you don’t write that first book. You’ll never land your dream job if you don’t do the soul searching to figure out what you want.  And in my case, you’ll never make a living from your blog if you don’t start blogging. Simple, eh?

But how on earth could little you dare to do something so bold, so big and so  effin’ scary? 

“This is too big for me”

That’s exactly what was going on in my head when I had decided to start a blog last spring. I wanted to write a blog that matters, that changes the world and allows me to make a living doing what I love.

This project scared the crap outta me.

Who was I, the broke 20 year old college student, to dare say I wanted to change the world? What if no one would care about what I have to say? And how on earth should I be able to deal with all those technical HTML weirdness that comes with blogging?

All I had was a burning desire to write about the topics that fascinated me most: “lifestyle design” (create a life on your terms) and “personal development” (grow as a person to live your best life) and world change.

Yeah, those were vague ideas at best. So…

If we’ve never done anything like it before, how dare we think we can make this work?

How can we be so foolish to even take the first step?

These kind of doubts arise naturally when you decide to do something meaningful. They have stopped countless people before you. 

I don’t want you to be one of them.

Your dream is worthwhile  it’s bold, brilliant and innocent. Taking the first steps and then sticking to it is hard, but you and your dream deserve it.

I’ve learned a thing or two about starting big scary projects as I launched Bright Little Socks. Today I’ll be sharing with you the key lessons I learned so you can go out there and create something meaningful.

The 5 essential steps to starting any meaningful project

• Do you really want this? Sometimes it’s easy to think that we want to do big bold thing x because we know it would make our daddy proud. The thing is, if you don’t really want this yourself, you’re going to burn out pretty quickly. We don’t want that. So take a moment (and grab my best friend, Mr. Journal) to reflect on your WHY behind starting this project. 

• Don’t reinvent the wheel.It’s unnecessary and takes even more blood, sweat and tears than needed. No matter how out of space your idea is, there’s probably someone who has done something similar before. Find the person who has done what you dream about and see if she has a process you can follow. If not, ask amazon’s book section.When I got serious about starting a blog that matters, I bought a course on the exact topic by the expert in the blogging industry Corbett Barr. All I did was follow his action plans because I knew they would inevitably lead me to launching a decent blog. Bottom line: You don’t have to do this all on your own. Find someone you can model and do it.
• Limit the time you spend in research phase. Maybe you’ve escaped into books and blogs to learn everything you can about your topic to be as prepared as possible. The problem is that most of us never stop preparing. Spend two weeks researching, find someone whose process you can model and then get to work.
  
• Set deadlines and tell people. It took me two months after I had setup my blog domain to finally commit to a launch date. Deadlines are scary things because they somehow make the project seem more real which can cause panic attacks. Needless to say I had to push back the launch date twice, but without the deadline, I’d probably still be talking about launching my blog someday. Also tell 3 people you trust what you’re about to do, and of course tell the people you want to get advice from (only take advice from people who have done it before). This will give you a sense of accountability.
• Just do it. There’s no shortcut that allows you to skip this step. You’ll feel scared no matter how prepared you are. You don’t need to have it all figured out at the beginning. Clarity comes through action, not from thought. Get that? So take the first step, no matter how small it is. Then take the next one. If you fall behind and let the project slide, accept it and get back to work. 

When I launched my blog on October 9th 2012 I was terrified. I had to take about 3746 deep breathes before I found the courage to remove the maintenance plugin and reveal it to the world. And guess what happened? Not that much. Then slowly people started noticing. I got my first comments, my first email from a subscriber and I could start to see where this project could be going.

Finally launching a project often feels like the end of the journey, but it’s really just the beginning.

You don’t need to have it all figured out. Clarity comes through action. So go take the first step. [tweet this]