Discover Three Unexpected Ways to Live a Dream Life
Who else wants to know their on the right path and reaching their true potential?
How do you really know if you're at peak 'potential'?
Everyone is different, but it doesn't take a rocket science to tell us that there are a few fundamentals that set us up for living our best life.
1) Health is the foundation.
I sat down a few days ago and had this amazing bacon-burger from a local restaurant. I'm a burger lover like the next carnivore! But, I maybe only eat a burger once a month. More when the hubby is barbecuing for me in the summer. Nonetheless, this burger was so good! Quality meat, great brioche bun, served with a side of just-salty-enough fries.
But for two days I felt bloated, heavy, thirsty, had brain fog, and felt overall very lethargic. When I felt like this way I could not show up in my work 100% to serve my customers or my team. My energy was low. I couldn't finish my to-do list. I couldn't come up with ideas to write this blog. And a run was out of the question!
Pantry Fuel was literally named after what food is supposed to do for our bodies - it FUELS us! And as I've learned from my own nutrition education and dietitians we work closely with, real whole food diets, like those we cater our meals to, support our wellbeing by providing essential macro and micronutrients - "essential" meaning we have to get them from our food.
It's easy to not eat well then to not understand how much better we could feel if we ate better. As soon as you start replacing processed, low nutrient-dense foods with real whole foods, you start to understand the power you have when you feel your best!
If we aren't fueling our bodies with real whole food meals, the potential in our lives start to diminish! Our lives pass us by and many times we don't even know it. We'll miss opportunities to play with our kids because we're too tired. We'll miss being creative because we're living in a world of brain fog. Our nervous system will shut down due to high inflammation and we'll be in pain. We'll never reach the potential life that is out there for us...
This dreadful life image can all change, just based on what's at the end of your fork (or not).
2) Financial stability (and freedom).
Ok. Now we're healthy. We're eating whole food (Pantry Fuel) meals and we're exercising 5X/week for at least 30 minutes. Sanitized high-five, friends!
What's next?
Financial stability doesn't mean you're able to take a vacation whenever you want or own any car you wish to wiz around in. That's not the type of lifestyle I'm a proponent of.
It's like what J.K. Rowlings, world's billionaire author said:
"I think you have a moral responsibility when you've been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently."
Being financially stable can come in many forms: a full-time day job, a hustle, a few hustles, working for yourself, working for others, employing a team, filling a need, providing your skills to others, etc.
There are many ways to become financially stable, but the quickest way to end that dream is to live beyond your means, your needs, become materialistic, and forget what J.K. Rowlings said.
Many of us purchase items we really don't need. I'm not a socialist, but I know for damn sure that my money could go towards something A LOT more useful right now than buying yet another houseplant. I love houseplants. :) Instead, I could just propagate the ones I have, be patient, and grow my own little babies.
If I had a million dollars, I could buy the brand new car or just get a reliable one and donate the remainder of the money to a charity or organization. BETTER YET, I could simply use the excess money for daily-bills to allow me the flexibility to give back to these charities and organizations through my own time.
Financial stability does something that everyone wants and is more valuable than any other asset in this world...Financial stability gives you the freedom of time.
What is one thing you can do today to get you a step closer to financial stability?
This doesn't necessarily mean increase your income or income streams. Usually, the easiest place to start is to ask:
- What can I eliminate from my current lifestyle? What expenses?
- How will minimizing expenses in my life be better for the environment?
- Where do I need to shift my mindset to be less materialistic?
- What areas in my life do I see where my money could be used in a more useful/helpful way?
3) Connection & Relationships.
It was really hard to narrow it down to "Three ways to Live a Dream Life", but we think these three things sum up a pretty darn good life!
I write "Connections" first. If we don't intentionally connect with people we meet throughout the day - at the coffee shop, at the meeting, party, in our lives - well, then we aren't building a base for having relationships and we're missing out on some really big opportunities as well.
When I think about 'networking', I have this shady picture of people asking phony questions about things they're not even interested in just to spark a conversation. I'm not one for small talk. I have a hard time, with what I like to call "surface people".
Surface people are what I would have called my husband before our third date...Hard to penetrate through his armor, doesn't like talking about feelings and when we do he resorts to some humorous joke (which I don't find funny), and until he trusted me he didn't want to get into values, beliefs, or any conversation alike.
I get it. He didn't trust me. The underlying issue for most people. But he also wasn't giving our connection a chance to open up to building a trusting relationship. It takes some give and take if we want to connect with people in order to build relationships - of any sort.
Connection can be found in so many ways! I tell my cross country girls team all the time - you do not have to be best friends. You don't have to like all the same things, but you are here because you want to be part of a team and you like cross country. Hopefully, you like running...That's what cross country is!
Sometimes the girls giggle, but I lay out the expectations up front. We are building a relationship based on a connection and sometimes there's only ONE connection - and that's OK. That is enough if you are designating that relationship for that connection.
Relationship building with partners and sometimes friends are more complicated. When I was young, I thought I needed to connect with my boyfriend on all the things! He needed to connect to my emotions and love tennis as much as I did. He needed to be my therapist, boyfriend, and friend or it wasn't going to work out!
Did you know in many tribes, the women rely on different matriarchs for different needs? One for birthing, one a wet nurse, another for teaching, and yet a different each day for cooking needs? It takes a village!!
Our relationships should be built on deep connections, but those relationships need only one or two DEEP connections to make it work. The many relationships we come across in our lifetime should leave a mark, but the person shouldn't feel like they need to fulfill all the needs for us. We must build many deeply connected relationships to have a fulfilling life.
And so now you are asked:
1) What is one thing you can you do today to build a more deeply-connected relationship with someone? Who?
2) Where can you make stronger your closest relationship in your life by dropping expectations? What expectations will you drop?
3) How can you connect with someone today that will fulfill a relationship you currently don't have based on a connection you'd like to share with someone?