7 steps to help you sack your boss and
achieve your dream lifestyle
Free professional lifestyle planning for Baby Boomers
Over many years of helping people change their careers and their lives I have found these seven steps are the keys to living a fulfilling life at any stage of life.
But it is even more important when the next stage of life is the one where you have so many choices, and where you can finally achieve the lifestyle that is tailor-made for you!
People often spend months, even years, planning a dream holiday that they will take when they finish their current working life, but they don’t plan for how they are going to create the dream life that they want. Then they wonder why they are worried about the future and, when they leave work, retirement soon becomes a disappointment!
The problem is they got what they planned for - the great holiday - but failed to plan for a lifestyle that would fulfil them for the next twenty to thirty years.
You have the power to create the future lifestyle that will satisfy you and your partner, and will keep on satisfying you when the novelty of not working has worn off. You can design a fulfilling lifestyle by incorporating all the aspects of life that matter to you. Take the time to get it right and your reward will be a contented future.
The key elements to creating the lifestyle you desire and having the freedom and future that you have dreamt of are:
- Planning – Yes there is some thinking involved!
- Personal purpose – People die when they don’t have a purpose
- Building an additional income stream to fund your dreams. This might become closely linked to your purpose
- Mutual goals – Working together to achieve shared goals
- Communication – Real listening and honest communication
- Good health and wellbeing – Without good health many dreams become difficult to achieve
- Relationships – Having the right people around you makes life so much more fun.
1. PLANNING
Planning a fulfilling future is actually easier for one person than for a couple. We all know that just because two individuals are sharing their lives, it does not mean they necessarily want to do the same things, have the same priorities, or even the same level of determination to plan for the future. This places extra strain on any relationship, no matter how good, and changing your lifestyle as you move into a different phase of life can be a difficult time for any couple.
Do you:
- Desire to do the things you want to do, but know that compromise is necessary because you and your partner have different interests?
- Wonder how your relationship with your partner will change when you are no longer working? A holiday together may be lovely but what about 24/7 companionship? Not too sure?
Planning to meet the needs and wishes of two people is quite challenging and usually requires some help. I have found that structured activities have assisted my clients to come to mutual understandings rather than to blows! You each need to consider your strengths and skills, your passions and interests, your dreams and wishes, the significant relationships in your life, your preferred environments and activities and many other practical issues. After each partner considers these issues for themselves they can then share their thoughts and listen to the thoughts of the other partner. Some common needs and wants will emerge. Some differences will also emerge. How you deal with the differences will be a test for your communication skills.
Financial planning is a whole separate topic, one that is beyond the scope of this article. However by planning your future lifestyle thoroughly, you reduce the risk of making financial decisions that can turn out to be costly mistakes, such as moving to another area which doesn’t really meet your needs. Taking the time to plan this phase of your life is wise financially, so that all of your hard-earned money is used productively to enable you to have the best quality and best suited future lifestyle.
2. PERSONAL PURPOSE
People need purpose, a reason to get out of bed and a reason to be motivated. Without purpose the human spirit tends to wither a little, but with purpose people can achieve great things. Not having a purpose in your life is a significant health hazard!
Having a purpose has been found to be the common element between cultures that have outstanding longevity, so if you want a long and fulfilling life it is essential that you have a purpose.
If you design your lifestyle to incorporate your passions, your interests and your values then you will build purpose into your life. As lovely as it can be to completely relax at times, perhaps blob mindlessly in front of the television, this is not an all-day everyday option if you have chosen to live the next phase of your life actively engaged in a lifestyle planned by you, for you.
Through the process of planning your lifestyle for the next phase of life, your purpose will emerge. This purpose needs to be strong enough to give you a sense of delight and anticipation; not a purpose of duty and obligation but a purpose of self-fulfilment. Sometimes purpose comes from the creation of a business that will subsidise the life you have planned.
3. FREEDOM FROM FINANCIAL CONCERNS - BUILDING AN ADDITIONAL INCOME STREAM THAT IS PERFECT FOR YOU.
You’ve worked hard all your life. You’ve invested, saved, contributed to superannuation and generally did what you could to ensure a secure retirement. It is bad timing for us all that the global economy, in a very short time, depleted much of the value of our investments and they will take a while to regain their previous value. But, in true Baby Boomer style, we can’t let this beat us!
Even if this financial setback had not occurred, many of our generation were not attracted to the “stop work and do nothing constructive” style of retirement. For the last few years the over 50’s trend of working on your own terms, earning additional income, and following your own unique path have been the subject of many newspaper and magazine articles. The current global economy will provide additional incentive to many of our generation to investigate new models of living life during what used to be called “retirement” but is now more a period of renewal for many Baby Boomers.
Does supplementing your future income appeal to you? Having an economic purpose in your life, even though you have “retired” from your previous work?
We live in very interesting times, with technology making it possible to run businesses from home, to reach global markets, and to tap into the successful strategies and wisdom of mentors around the world. Everyday people are now able to use their skills, their experience and their talents to create legitimate, professional businesses using the power of the internet to reach their customers.
Why would you consider an internet-based business? Over 25% of the world’s population is connected to the internet and over $200 billion of goods and services were sold through the internet in 2008. It is therefore the world’s largest marketplace, and a marketplace that never sleeps. It is also the easiest form of business to set up, with no overheads, very little investment and low risk. There are some amazing ways that you can start right now to develop an income stream which will help your retirement become much more comfortable financially, as well as being really interesting.
But whilst there are some very professional people online who can teach you the skills you need to create a small or large additional income stream through your endeavours, there are also a lot of sharks. Beware the “Big Promises, Little Help” companies. They promise you the world but what they share with you is not enough to give you the knowledge you need, and just try getting an answer through their email Help service! Also beware the “Bright Shiny Objects”! Once you start looking for opportunities to create a business using the internet you will find many very exciting sounding ideas, however many of them sparkle and attract but completely lack substance. It is very useful, and saves time and money, if you can follow recommendations and only deal with companies which will deliver what they say they will deliver to you, and which really share genuine money-making models that you can follow.
There are many online money-making strategies that you can learn about, but choosing the strategy that will best suit you is fundamental to your success. I've seen people waste a lot of money on learning about ways to make money that may have been good for other people, but were just wrong for their needs, wants and skills.
Consider this diagram. If you recognise the  skills and experience that you have, and acknowledge your passions and interests, then you can build these factors into your money making ventures. Design the lifestyle that is going to suit both you and your partner, with a business that involves your skills and passions, and it is starting to sound like a pretty great way of life!
My wish for you is that you reach that “sweet spot” in the middle of the diagram, the spot where your skills and experience, your passions and interests and your ideal lifestyle meet.
Once you have designed the lifestyle you want, all you need to do is learn about the strategies you can use, and decide which will best suit you in the life you have designed.
So how are people making good money, whilst building genuine and ethical businesses using the power of the internet? Here is a summary of a few of the business models that are highly successful. For each of these models there are “real” people making “real” money all over the world and each can enable you to build a legitimate and highly profitable business which suits your lifestyle design and enables you to enhance your income.
Whatever your experience or your interests, there are other people in the world who are seeking what you have to share. The trick is to tailor your experience or interests to tap into a specific niche market, what the industry calls an “inch wide mile deep” niche, and sell your knowledge and experience to those who need it. You can also sell ebooks about things that you have no knowledge of, but that’s a whole other part of the story.
The internet is a vast information network and the best way to share good information is through referrals. Affiliate programs work in this way. One website refers their clients to another website where they believe the products or services may be of benefit to the client. Some internet businesses use affiliate programs as an added extra within their business, while others base their entire business on affiliate relationships and make amazing money doing so.
No, eBay is not just the contemporary version of a garage sale, useful for off-loading the household junk. Large and very profitable businesses operate using Ebay as their “shopfront” – No shop leases and rentals, no set hours and no need to be involved in packing and posting the products. eBay is the # 1 retail site in the world and 1.3 Million people now make their full time or part time living on eBay. It has over 233 Million registered users spending up to $141 Million a day. eBay sellers worldwide turn over nearly $100,000 every minute!
Some successful businesses are based on what is effectively the creation of billboard websites which direct you to other business’s products and services. The purpose of these websites is not to inform or entertain you, although there will be information there. Their real purpose is to link you to the products and services which relate to keywords you used to search the internet. To make money with Adsense you don’t even need to have your own products.
If your expertise is best shared as small regular packets of information, a membership site may be your best model to use. A good membership site delivers outstanding information in eclasses, each based around one aspect of the overall topic. The benefit to the client is that they can incorporate the expertise you are sharing in small regular sessions, internalising the information and insights as the eclasses continue.
4. MUTUAL GOALS
Businesses usually create mission statements in an attempt to focus everyone on their common direction and mutual goals. How much more important is it for a couple to have shared goals that they are working towards!
As you rediscover one another through the lifestyle planning process, your mutual goals will start to emerge. This creates a very powerful bond, a way of focussing your attention towards the things that you wish to achieve together rather than your differences and idiosyncrasies. After all, if you are going to spend the next 20 to 30 years together it is definitely preferable if you are heading in the same direction!
5. COMMUNICATION
Couples designing their lifestyle find that relationship issues and the need to compromise plans, without losing each person’s own needs and wants in the process, are really important.
Many couples, even happy well-suited couples, get into poor communication habits over many years together. These habits can prevent you from really hearing what your partner is saying. They can also stop you from openly expressing your wants and needs. By working through a planned and sequenced approach to your lifestyle planning you are assisted by the structure of the activities. Well structured activities help each of you draw out your deeper desires and commit them to paper, then share them. This removes some of the emotion from the discussion and creates an environment of mutual sharing that is well beyond your usual level of everyday communication.
The commitment to working through this process will challenge some of your old communication habits, revitalising and strengthening your communication whilst moving towards a well-designed lifestyle for your future.
6. GOOD HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
It seems that whenever the media focuses on planning for retirement they consider either financial planning or maintaining your good health and vitality. Many of our health woes are lifestyle related, but sadly many are also a factor of genetics and misfortune so we can’t necessarily ensure that we will all have good health throughout all the rest of our years.
However through building the ingredients for good health and fitness into your lifestyle plan you are increasing the probabilities of being healthy and strong and having an overall sense of wellbeing. Ensure that your plan includes the things you already like doing, or think you will like to do. If you create a healthy lifestyle plan that is not realistic for you, one that feels like deprivation and imposed discipline, we both know what will happen to that plan! A realistic healthy lifestyle plan is an essential part of your future lifestyle planning.
7. RELATIONSHIPS
Having supportive sustaining relationships with other people is always important, but relationships with friends and extended family often suffer from neglect when you are very busy during the career years of your life.
When you are planning a fulfilling lifestyle for your future years it is important that you consider the relationships which will be part of your life. For many people this will involve three categories:
Who are the family and friends who you really want to have as part of your future life? How can you nurture these relationships, whether in person or at a distance?
- Non-negotiable relationships
There may be people in your life with whom you have to maintain a relationship, even though it may not be what you would choose. Are there ways you can make these relationships more acceptable and more comfortable in your life?
New people will come into your life, so you need to create opportunities to meet the sort of people that enhance your life, people with mutual interests or those whose company you will enjoy. What can you build into your lifestyle which will increase the chances of widening your network of satisfying relationships?
The Easiest Way
You have the power to create the lifestyle you want for your future. It will take time. It will take commitment and communication. But the security of knowing you have done all you can to ensure that the next phase of your life is rich and fulfilling makes it all worthwhile.
If all of the above seems just too hard, there is an easier way. For just $49 per month you get access to our coaching program to guide you in detail every step of the way. Plus you get access to us via email and phone to answer your questions, make suggestions, and point you in the right direction, that is professional Coaching available to you as part of the program. To find out more about what the coaching program covers, please click here.
Good luck!
While I am happy to receive email queries, I can’t guarantee that I am able to get back to you immediately. However if you decide to join this mentoring program you get access to myself or one of my team of professional Coaches. I look forward to helping you to design a future lifestyle that will bring you much fulfilment and be highly profitable.
Kind regards,
Jenni Proctor
Would you like some one-on-one hand-holding by Jenni or one of her team?
Click here to find out how to register for our coaching program for just $49AUD per month. |
|
