How to Create Your Future Dream Life (8 moves)

Creating your dream life is awesome. I mean, life is an epic adventure and this is one of the best rides you can take. So this post lays out some super practical tips to effectively create your future.

Just remember, be sure to put aside any preconceived notions of what’s possible or what’s improbable. And set down any self limiting beliefs, doubts or fears from past failures or stumblings.

They no longer serve us here.

These tips are the exact things I did (and continue to do daily) to start creating and reaching my future dream life.

So without further ado, let’s get it.

1. Get Clarity (get super detailed)

This is a fairly obvious starting point. But before anything else, we should probably know what it is we want (and why). But it’s so much more than just defining a goal.

I mean, yes, having basic clarity and defining main goals is important. But we can do better. We can take things further.

We can get exceptionally detailed.

The idea here is to create an image in your mind of your future life that's so clear, every single detail of that life is vividly imagined.

This includes everything from what you see, what you smell, what you hear and everything in between.

For example, let’s say my dream life is to own a home in LA and to be a successful creator and musician.

That’s fine, but the fun part is imagining what that future life will actually look like and be like.

So, I can close my eyes and see the color of my counters, the coffee stains on an old wooden table next to my slightly worn – but still new – couch.

I can see the early morning sun casting shadows across my computer screen.

I can feel the cotton sweatpants and loose casual loose-fitting shirt I’m wearing as the smell and sound of fresh coffee is brewing in the next room.

I can see the California hills outside my big front bay window.

And here’s the cool part.

Around 90% of these details from this perfect “future” life, I can look around and enjoy right now, in this moment.

I don’t need to wait.

And this segues us perfectly to the second powerful move on this list.

2. Start Doing What You Can Right Now

If you’ve done step one, chances are you’ll realize that a lot of the details you wrote down you can start straight away.

That’s the power of getting extremely detailed and clear on our vision.

It’s a liberating feeling knowing that so much of our future life is actually right in our hands right now.

Embracing our future adopting the finer details of our dream life immediately is a powerful step forward.

(Plus, this will go a long way in adopting the next tip).

So write down each and every detail of your future life:

• What clothes are you wearing?

• What hairstyle do you have?

• How do you act

• What’s your daily routine look like?

From here, you can simply start doing what you can from that list.

We’re essentially stepping into our future dream life before it technically happens. We’re embracing it before it’s realized.

Often, we have a lot more control over the smaller details of life than we realize. But these nuances add up.

And over time, you’ll get closer and closer to realizing the full image of your future.

But there’s one last piece of this puzzle we need to have.

Our emotions.

3. Emotionally Embrace Your Future

We need to feel our future life, and it needs to be visceral.

We should strive to emotionally connect with our dream life, as if we’re already living it.

I suppose this is the ultimate secret: to create your dream life, start by emotionally embracing and living your future life before it actually happens.

So, what would your dream life feel like?

What emotions would you feel? Pivot towards gratitude and happiness. Embrace excitement and just have fun method acting your future life as if it were actually happening right now.

Some days are easier than others, and it can feel strange to do this at first.

But with practice, commitment and belief, I promise you’ll start thinking, acting and feeling differently.

You’ll start feeling like you’re already living your future life.

This is incredibly empowering. And it’s a nice shortcut hack I like to employ in my own life.

4. Think Different (what would future you do?)

Often, our imagined future life includes a slightly different version of our current self.

Our future self may act, behave and think differently. Our future self knows more or feels differently, and subsequently behaves in a way that reflects that.

But why wait to become this person? Why not start thinking like them right now?

This is a powerful hack that brings you closer to your future life. And it just requires one simple question:

What would your future self do and how would they act in this moment?

It’s such a simple thought exercise, but it quickly and impactfully shifts our perspectives and framework on things.

It’s also a great way to boost motivation, develop discipline and practice embracing our future life before it technically arrives.

And the cool part about this is we’re literally changing our brains and rewiring it with new neural pathways, beliefs and thinking patterns.

Here’s the punchline, we can change and become whoever we want, whenever we want. It may take some rewiring and some uncomfortable effort.

But either way, this is exciting news.

5. Work Backwards + Take Micro Actions

Working backwards is incredibly effective. It’s also called reverse engineering, and it’s something leaders, engineers and successful people do all the time.

We can reverse engineer many things, but for our purpose, we want to deconstruct our goals.

The reason is pretty straightforward too. Big goals are awesome, but they can feel unrealistic, far and overwhelming.

But, breaking them down into smaller steps and micro goals completely eliminates those issues.

So here’s my basic framework for working backwards to create my future life:

• Clearly identify my macro goal(s) (i.e., #1 of this list)

• Break down each macro goal into prerequisite micro goals

• Break down each micro goals into nano goals and daily tasks

Once we’ve broken our future life down into manageable, shorter-term micro goals and actionable daily nano tasks, we can do the next step.

And this next move is one of the most important things for creating our dream life: take consistent daily action.

It’s not sexy, and it’s nothing groundbreaking, but we need input for output.

Luckily, with our larger goals broken down into more manageable steps, this part of the process should feel way easier now.

So let’s move onto one of my favorite tips for staying motivated (so we can actually take that consistent daily action that’s needed).

6. Stack the Deck In Your Favor

Stacking the cards in our favor is one of the best things we can do for ourselves.

It’s hard enough trying to reach audacious goals, but throw in an unhelpful environment and external factors that are limiting, well then, I suppose all bets are off.

Let’s just say it’s much harder to get where we’re going if our current environment isn’t supporting us.

Luckily, we have some pretty key control over many things. Depending on your situation, some of these changes may be easier than others.

But if you can even take back control of a few elements, then you’ll be starting to stack the deck for your success.

Here are three key  areas I like to pay the most attention to:

• Your inner circle

• Who do you spend time with? Are they aligned with your future, goals and values?

• Your outer circle

• Who do you listen to and what content are you consuming?

• Your environment

• Is your external environment motivating? Are the sights, sounds, smells and designs around you inspiring?

7. Stay Open to Change

Life, success and reaching goals are all dynamic.

So we should approach these things for what they are: living, breathing, ever-evolving things.

Of course, there’s a delicate balance knowing when it’s time to double down and focus and when it’s time to pivot.

This can require patience, introspection, experience and time.

But getting into the habit of self awareness and staying open to change, interests and values is powerful.

For example, you may think you want to be a successful head of marketing at a startup company, but in your journey, you may find yourself gravitating towards the nonprofit sector and securing grants or funds.

Maybe you find it more fulfilling.

Either way, this is how we connect the dots and reach serendipity.

So pay attention to your mood, intuition, focus and passion. There’s an art to all this, but at the end of the day, there’s only one thing that really matters…

Are you having fun?

8. Have Fun

Of course, discipline and consistency will be instrumental in our progress and success. But there’s something else that’s critical.

Having fun.

I’m a firm believer that life’s purpose is to experience new, awesome sh*t and to have fun. Luckily, there’s a lot of fun things we can do.

So, of course there will be boring parts and “meh” kind of days. And this one reason why I always try to cultivate an adventure mindset in life – it can turn tension into adventure.

But the point is this: just check in with yourself every once in a while to make sure you’re still inspired and having fun.

Because at the end of the day, this is what really matters in creating your future dream life.

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