493 | Design Your Extraordinary Life | Alan & Katie Donegan

25:32And I think from the outside looking in, I would totally agree with that. I'm curious what your thoughts are when you hear something like that. A mix of emotions. One of it's like, oh, she thinks I have an extraordinary life. and also like oh really like I'm just me like doing my thing and I think it helps me to not take for granted the awesome life that we built together and the cool stuff that we do because you you can normalize that because that's like that's our life now and then I forget that that isn't normal so it's a really nice reminder that we do do a lot of cool stuff and have cool lives.

26:11My instant reaction is what we're doing is not extraordinary. I just go and live on the beach in Mexico for a while and then I go somewhere else and I do something else and I just make it up. And so it doesn't feel that way to me because you kind of get used to it and you just do what you do. So I don't feel that extraordinary. I just feel like I'm out there living what I want to do. But I think that's the extraordinary bit is lots of people stop themselves from living the life they want to live, whereas we just live the life we want to live. So I guess that would be the extraordinary bit is we're just doing what we actually want to do.

26:48What a great segue to maybe talking a little bit about the exercise that we all did this morning. The exercise this morning was to come up with what you're moving towards. So your vision of life in these different areas that we came up with. And we gave some examples of what our visions of life would be in these different areas. And that's what we wanted you to come up with is your dream vision. So we had these areas of personal development and growth, of spirituality, of friends and family, of fun, adventure, and passion, of finances and money, which I'm sure if you're listening to this podcast, you want to improve the finances and the money area.

27:32And then come up with your vision. So for me, my vision in health is I want to wake up with a huge amount of energy. I want a muscular, strong body so that I can move pain-free and enjoy life. I want to hike a joy adventure and live my life fully. You'll probably remember there was a little asterisk that said, occasionally I will eat badly, but mostly my diet will support me. And so the exercise was, what is your vision for health and wellness? how do you know if that area of life is where you want it to be what's your vision for finances and i think the key thing that alan did there when he gave that example was show that we want it to be juicy so use the emotive language and the excitement in the vision to make it something that you actually want to move towards he could just have said i want to be fit and strong like okay great but it's not got the same energy and excitement around it of making it juicy.

28:31Right. And it's also supposed to be in the present tense, correct? So this is not, oh, I aspire to be. It's essentially you're writing it as if you're living that today. So really the exercises I saw it was look at these nine areas and we will have that in the show notes because it's hard to get a sense of them as we're just randomly spouting them off here, but we'll list the nine areas. And this is an exercise that each of you should undertake. And Alan and Katie will further go into this, but you're essentially sitting down and you're writing just like a little descriptive statement of what is the life I want to live into in each of these nine areas and write it as if you were living it today.

29:14That is the critical little piece that I think you otherwise might miss. So Alan, I'll let you jump in, but I really wanted to dial in on that because I think to me, that was the most critical piece that I personally would have missed. So the question, if I waved a magic wand and you woke up tomorrow morning realizing life was exactly how you wanted it to be, how would you know? What would you see, hear, think, feel? How would you know life was that way? Then you come up with a kind of sentence or two that describes the life you want. For finances, Katie and I have, we have five million pounds invested working for us, allowing us to spend freely and create magic moments for ourselves and others.

30:00Managing our money is fun. We have monthly finance meetings with incredible breakfast, and we love the freedom that financial discipline gives us. That was our vision of life. Then that gives you the thing to move towards, which was the whole purpose of this episode, is if you have something to move towards, you'll feel happy. You'll feel like you're making progress. You've got direction. Whereas if you are just running away from the job you hate, the life you don't like at the moment, and we have this expression we have, which is people think self-care is bubble baths and chocolate. It is not.

30:38Self-care is creating a life you don't want to run away from. That's true self-care. So build a life, a vision that you want to move towards, that will give you all of the energy to keep going. So that's the exercise. I think the other interesting thing in the example Alan gave is that some of that is actually already true and some isn't. So there's elements that are already working and we want to keep and then there's stuff to build on top of it as well. Yeah, because in a lot of ways, you listening to this and you in the audience already live an extraordinary life. So you can include stuff that already exists.

31:13Like in relationships, I include the person that's sitting next to me because I already have an extraordinary relationship in a lot of ways. and so you're allowed to have and want what you already have. So that's the exercise, is to have that vision in those different areas that pulls you towards a bright future. Might there be things that come up for people as they do this exercise? Every time. So you're going to come up with a vision and then somewhere in your brain, the monkey brain that Ginger was referring to is going to go, I could never do that. Or what if they judge me? Or some other thing.

31:48I'm not good at maths. I'm not good with money. I can't do that because whatever it is, it's going to come up. Your job is to write that down and then we'll tackle it later and then get back to focusing on what you want. As long as you keep focusing on what you want, if it's a real fear, we can deal with it. So if it's a real fear, like, I don't know, whatever it is, if I go on this hike up the mountain, I might get bitten by a snake and die. If it's a genuine fear, like I should genuinely be worried about snakes biting me because I don't know how to tell which ones are poisonous or not. That is a useful fear that will keep me alive.

32:25But the fear of being judged by delivering a podcast is not a useful fear because what's actually going to happen, no one listens to me. That's the worst it can be. That's not a useful fear. So keep the genuine fears because they will keep you alive and get rid of all the others and go back to focusing on what you want every single time. I love that word useful there to think about what is useful here. Yeah. I think the other key thing is to write it or think about it in the positive. So in the health and wellness example, it's not, I don't want my knees to hurt anymore and I don't want to be overweight and I don't want to be chubby and I don't want to feel like I don't have the energy to do things that I don't want to do.

33:04It's framing it in the positive. I want to feel loads of energy and feel like my body can do whatever I ask of it, whenever I ask of it. focusing on what it is that you want and the positive? People are very equipped to tell you what they don't want, which is away from motivation, which is exactly the opposite of what we're trying to get to, which is towards motivation. You ask someone what type of house they want, I guarantee most of the times they'll say, I don't want to live in a city, I don't want this, I don't want that, and they'll come out with a list of everything they don't want, which is focusing on what you don't want, which will bring it into existence.

33:42Thanks for listening to ChooseFI and for all your support of our mission here. The absolute best way to support ChooseFI is when you sign up for your next rewards credit card to use our cards page at choosefi.com slash cards. I keep this page constantly updated, so it should always be the top resource for you. Thanks for being part of our community and for your support. So that's the exercise. and since ChooseFI is the ultimate crowdsourced personal finance show, maybe we should hear from some of the people here today. I think one thing that was valuable for a lot of us this morning was when Katie and Alan gave us specific examples.

34:21And so maybe we could do something like, so we all had time to actually work on what are our vision statements. If we could get some people to maybe share in one of those categories, what are the one or two sentences that you came up with, thinking about all the things that we just talked about. It's in the present, and it's focusing on the positive, what you want and what you don't want. And then I think it would be wonderful to hear what it was like for you to do this exercise as well. All right. That sounds fantastic. Who wants to jump in? And you're allowed to say you hated it as well. You don't have to whitewash.

34:55All right. Welcome to ChooseFI. Why don't you introduce yourself? Sure. I'm Emily Rose, and I'm coming from Lakewood, Washington with my husband. Nice. Welcome. Thank you. So talk us through. You sat through this exercise this morning. I did, yes. And you just jumped out of your chair, two hands up to I want to be the first one. Talk to me. How did it impact you? So I want to say that I really appreciate that we were given these areas to focus on because, as Alan mentioned, if you ask a mediocre question, then you're going to get a mediocre answer. And I think that I've continuously done that to myself is to ask, well, what do I want?

35:36And then you just kind of get some vague answers. And this really helped me to narrow in those specific categories what I really envision for my life and for my future. And so I just really, really appreciate that you brought that to us today. And I think also it helped me to reflect on what is going really well. in my life right now and the things that I don't want to change or that I wouldn't change if I had an opportunity. And so even though I have things that I'm working towards and I have visions and goals for the future, for me, health and fitness needs to be improved upon. But I have other areas that I just absolutely love and I can continue to celebrate those areas and live the best life, my extraordinary life today, as I work towards those things that I want to be more positive.

36:29All right, Megan, welcome to Choose a Fine. Glad you're here. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I'm Megan. I'm from Durham, North Carolina. Nice. All right. So yeah, let's hear how this exercise impacted you. Sure. So what came up for me was actually some emotions. I kind of did it by myself. A lot of people broke into groups and talked through things in these groups, but I did it by myself because there was some emotions that came up for me. There were some deeper things that I want to work on that I'm not going to share right now. And I think part of it, I started realizing that there were dreams I didn't even know I had until I started doing the exercises.

37:08And so I really appreciate that. And I will share one. This is why I'm very nervous because one of the dreams I realized I had is to do what Ginger did, is be a podcast co-host on one of the podcasts that I really love. Juice By is, of course, one of them. But I'm nervous to say that because I've never done anything like that before. And so, yeah. And I didn't even know I had that dream until I was writing it down and talking about the personal finance business that I started on my own. And I was like, oh, this would be incredible to do. So, yeah. I'm probably really red right now. I was just going to say, I think one of the things that has a lot of value that Megan said was, I didn't realize until I actually took the time to think about it in a deliberate way.

37:55And that is so important because when we hear about an exercise like this, we don't usually actually do the exercise, right, when we're on the other end. So do the exercise and actually write it out and different things will come up for you than if you just sort of thought about it in your head. I think that's been probably the biggest key to Alan's success in his life is that he does the exercises. And he talked this morning about how he has this recurring phrase of the extraordinary belongs to those that create it. He heard it in that movie, The Big Shot. He wrote it down and then he set to work thinking, how am I going to implement this in my life?

38:37It could have just been a passing thought of like, oh, cool quote, which most of us probably do. but one of the biggest keys to his success is that he will do the exercises he will think about what he's heard and figure out how to implement it normally that same day I remember one time we were on our way to running a rebel business school and he heard something on the podcast he thought well that'd be great for our audience let me think about how to give that to the people that are attending the course today and he did that that same day like that is such a key to success that I wanted to share with you.

39:10There should be no barrier. You just make it happen. And then I had one more thought for Megan and for everyone here is if when you're doing this, emotion comes up, there is a question to ask. You know, I love a good question. The question is, what do I have to believe to feel this way? So sometimes you get scared, you get nervous, you feel overwhelmed, whatever it is. What do I have to believe to feel this way? And that's the question that uncovers the story that we tell ourselves to create the emotion or the feeling. Then we can look at it and go, is it a real story? Is it a real fear? Is it a useful fear?

39:49Is it something else? But what's the story? So if you're ever doing an exercise like this, that's the question to have in your back pocket for the moment some emotion feeling comes up. What do I have to believe to feel this way. Yeah. And I also love how this is really both very present looking and forward looking at the same time, which Emily Rose brought this up a minute ago, just so beautifully, which is I realized things are pretty good today in certain aspects. And I think a lot of times many of us focus on the negative. I think that is just kind of part of the human condition. And it's fun and it's worthwhile to look at, hey, what's going great today?

40:33And that's really cool. And I think, Megan, like you're saying, it can be very emotional, both A, realizing there are a lot of aspects of my life that are going wonderfully. And hey, maybe there are some things that I didn't even know that I aspired to. And that is really cool and just clarifying to open your mind to something, right? And that, I think to me, is what's so impactful about this particular exercise is, Alan stole the words right out of my mouth, there are no barriers here. This is the lowest barrier to entry exercise I've ever seen. It doesn't take much. It's literally those nine different categories that we're gonna have listed in the show notes and you just sit down and you dream, what do I want my life to look like?

41:16And that's really, really cool. And Megan, thank you so much for sharing. I think it's really helpful. Before I leave, though, I just want to mention to the audience, though, the reason why I came up with dreams that I didn't even know I had is because you guys said be unreasonable. Because I was at first going to do something much smaller. And I was like, oh, I can be unreasonable and reach for something bigger. And that's where it came from. So I just wanted to mention that so that the audience had that. Yeah. Also, my Fitbit is thinking I'm exercising right now.

41:55Michael, come on up. All right, Michael, welcome to Choose a Vi. It's good to see you. I met you at Economy a couple of weeks ago, so it's nice to have you second time meeting here in just a couple of weeks. So you were the one I referenced earlier, and I'm curious how this particular exercise impacted you. Well, Brad, this particular exercise impacted me with what I came here with an obstacle wise for this weekend to come to an answer on, which for me during this exercise specifically, it was for the love and relationships part. I wrote for mine. It was, I wake up knowing whether or not I want kids and know that I am taking advantage of opportunities to meet someone whom I would want to be in a long-term relationship with.

42:48And if that isn't meant to be, that I'm okay with that going through the rest of my life single. So for me, it's about not settling, just to have company. So just being very confident and content with myself. And that's the fascinating bit, is the confident and content with myself. I only know this because I did it for many years, Michael. all I wanted was a partner, someone I was with. And it was almost like there was a hole in my life until someone else came into it. And then I realized that if I just work on myself and become confident and comfortable, and I develop myself, then the dream person will appear and hang out with me.

43:35But you almost have to let go of that idea and just work on yourself. And then the magic happens which is really annoying the way the universe does that not a big fan of it but it does then when you just work on yourself you create that energy that attracts the person confidence and authenticity are probably the two most attractive things so if you have that then you will attract whatever you want into your life i appreciate that for me it was also realizing that But I was trying to find external things to fix internal problems. I got that quote from a book that I've been reading called The Daily Stoic.

44:22And that book has been very helpful for me. But I've seen in my own life and with others who have looked for external things to fix internal things. And even if they get there, there's that unfortunate realization that this is not what's going to make me happy and continuously making me happy. It starts with myself. That was the most important thing I learned.

44:55Yeah, that's absolutely beautiful, Michael. Thank you so much for sharing. Eric, welcome to the show. Thanks. It's great to be here. I'm having a blast. Yeah, good to hear. All right, so tell us why you just raised your hand and wanted to jump up here. How did this exercise impact you this morning? Yeah, I wanted to just share it because it's a pretty profound impact that it had on me. And one of the things I really noticed going through it, and we're going to tackle that tomorrow, was how these stories we tell ourselves try to shut down what we're dreaming. And for instance, for adventure and fun and passion, I just want to have that.

45:32I want to find adventure in things that are simple, regardless of cost and time and effort and planning. And it all sounded great. And immediately in my head, it started going, you can't do that because it may cost too much or the people may not enjoy it or it may just not be fun. And so that was a big impact. And so I'm looking forward for tomorrow to see how that did that. But the other thing that hit me when we were doing that is thinking back when we were going to dinner and Katie was leading us to dinner and we were just going through the hotel lobby and we could have gone straight to the restaurant but instead she turned to the right went outside led us outside and back into the restaurant which was just a fun little adventure is unexpected it was nice it was welcome it was free so I genuinely thought that was the way to go

46:25but that shows you can find adventure in anything it's like oh an adventure Exactly. We'll say that to each other all the time. Me and Anna will be like, oh, this is an adventure. It's just the way that you approach the same thing. You could have thought to yourself, oh, why are we going this way? This is the wrong way. Doesn't she know it's just over there? Can I give you a secret? Yes. If you want to feel adventure, start humming or whistling the theme tune to Indiana Jones as you do anything. You just have to go, da-da-da-da, da-da-da. And then suddenly you feel like you're on an adventure.

46:57and I repeat this so many times for myself I think it's never the thing that is the issue it's the way we think about the thing so if we just change our thinking a walk outside the wrong direction becomes an adventure if we just hum a song before we record the podcast it feels like an adventure so you can just change your thinking with tiny little tricks and hacks in your brain So yeah, get the theme tune to Indiana Jones on your phone and play it the next time you go out in the morning and see how it feels differently. I love that because I think what Alan is saying is if adventure feels too big, we can think of it as can I bring some lightness maybe to my life.

47:43But Eric, I see you brought your notebook up and I'm wondering if that means you might be comfortable sharing one of your vision statements with us. Sure, I would. I almost kind of did with the fun, venture, and passion, but I could do the health and wellness one, which is, I have an eating and exercise pattern that supports and optimizes health and wellness so that I am never, ever limited by physical or energy limitations. And my pants never hurt me. Is that British pants or American pants? Yes. Your pants should never hurt your body or your feelings. So that's a good goal. That's awesome, Ginger.

48:26Eric, thank you so much for being here. Cool.

48:34Viola, welcome to Choose a Fi. Thanks for being here. It's nice to meet you. Nice to meet you all too. Very excited to be here. I know this exercise brought up a lot. And I remembered Ellen and Katie saying to note particular stories and beliefs. and they are actually quite heavy because I'm sitting in front of this microphone, a wheelchair user, and my husband and I took a big risk to come out here and spend a lot of money and be a part of this. And it's rather the same way that they talked about this event, which was to have an FI event in the most unlikely FI city. And I hate to admit, but people like us, Dan and I, I just have a lot of challenges, I would say, to choose FI because of various reasons.

49:27But we are very fortunate because we have lots of things in our lives that allowed us to get to a place like this. But I think about people like ourselves. And we even work on a YouTube channel called The Gingiest. And we've tried to help people with disabilities to improve their quality of life. But it's difficult. And it's not as straightforward of a path. It's not as simple of a path. So it was a bold exercise. I'm glad that we did it. And we want to continue doing it. But I want to know, how can we help others like us to pursue something like this, make it a little bit easier for them as well?

50:15I asked that for you guys. No, I love that. It's a great question. My first thought is there are real limitations, and then there are limitations in our brains. And sometimes we get confused between the two, and sometimes we're not. Sometimes they're real, sometimes they're not. And if you'll allow me, this is a slightly different one, but it kind of becomes real. For British people, they always complain about the weather. It is always gray and rainy. It's not, because summer does exist for two weeks. You just don't know which two weeks is going to turn up. And people always say you can't change the weather.

50:52And I always agreed with that. You just have to be happy no matter the weather. And I still believe that. And then later on, I realized you can't change the weather, but you can change city or you can change location or you can change other things. And I think some of the limitations that exist, we maybe have not found the way to change them yet. But maybe there is a way to come up with an idea, a thing that would help us to live even more of the life we want to live. And it's always an incremental thing. So your question actually was, how do we help more people to live the life? And you were specifically asking for...

51:32Like myself. Like yourself. Yeah. For me, it's the same for everyone. How do we free you to live a bit more of your life? How do we free them to live a bit more of the life? How do we free someone to do whatever it is they want to do? Like if you dreamed of climbing a mountain, I'd be like, right, we have some limitations, but let's work out how to do this. I don't know. How many men do we need? How many women do we need? How many sleds? How many dogs? I don't know. What resources do we need to make your dream come true? And I don't care what your dream is or what anyone's dream is. I'd be like, how can I make that happen for you?

52:11And I think it's always coming from that question of possibility and how, rather than judging it going, Viola could never do that. I'm like, maybe she could. Maybe she could inspire more people to do it. Maybe she would start a mountain climbing team. I don't know. And it might be really challenging, but I genuinely believe like nothing's impossible. and I don't see someone in a wheelchair I see a human being that could do anything so let's figure out what you want and work out how to do it and that's the same whether you have a wheelchair or not whether you've hurt your leg I don't care what it is it's the same what's your dream and let's figure it out they're just limitations that we can work out how to get around past over I just want to help you do whatever you want to do did that answer your question at all or did I completely dodge it?

53:05No, that was helpful. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here, by the way. Really appreciate it. All right, Rob, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. Hey, how's it going? I'm Rob. I'm from San Diego and I'm here in my hometown of Las Vegas. So I was really excited to be here with you guys at my hometown. All right. What did you think of the exercise? So I really enjoyed the exercise coming into it. I guess I didn't read a ton about the event, but I knew I was really excited to see an event with all of you guys here in Las Vegas. I love coming here and visiting my friends and family anyway.

53:41So I'm in immediately when I saw the email. And when I got here, my expectation having not read everything is, oh, it's just going to be all about how to pursue financial independence and choose FI and all the things that I love about this community. I thought it was really cool that it was about the whole balanced life and not just the goals in one particular area. And I really particularly enjoyed the magic wand because it let you sit down by yourself or in a group and not have any limitations and think big and design something in all of those areas for an amazing life. And I guess that made me think, hey, I've been focusing really on two of those areas the last couple of years.

54:17And I've kind of not thought about the other ones. And why is that? Why shouldn't I focus on all of them at the same time? And so I really enjoyed that part of it. Was there anything surprising that came up for you? I wouldn't say surprising, but I would say I haven't really reflected as much on how to make improvements in all of those areas as I have specifically on the finances and asset allocation. And health and fitness has been a big goal for the last year. So I'm with a trainer and I'm watching my diet, but those other areas I've kind of not spent a lot of time on. Alan, I'm curious to you actually.

54:51So there are nine of these categories, And I think if someone is trying to, so they're sitting down, they're doing the exercise and they're coming up with this, this vision statement, if you will, for the nine, but it's hard. It's hard to work on nine things at once. Right. And I think people, because again, this show exists to help people feel confident taking action. And anytime I see friction or potential overwhelm, I like to try to get in front of it. how does someone approach wow i have nine aspects of my life that i need to work on like how would they think that do you prioritize is there a way that that you work through that or would advise someone who's undertaking this exercise like rob is talking about these two he's focused on these two and now he's realizing okay there are more but how does he attack the nine in some sequential order?

55:43How does it work? So my favorite expression is you can do everything, just not all at once. And I think anytime people get overwhelmed, as they set themselves a huge list, they are going to improve every area of my life. And you just can't do it all at once. And it's okay to do a little bit on health and fitness. And it's almost as if with financial independence, you set up your auto contributions, you had an entire episode about the boring middle, it's the boring middle because you've put it on autopilot and it's working once you've done that you then look at health and fitness and you set up some systems and you train x times a week and you sort out your diet and you learn to love salad and whatever it is and then all of a sudden health and fitness is moving in the right direction then you can go with friends and family okay let me set up a weekly thing where we have dinner together or we do this or i cook pizza and everyone comes round.

56:36Maybe that's against the health one. You make salad. But does that make sense? You can do a little bit on one, set it up so it's working well, and then work on the next. You can do everything, just not all at once. And Rob's sitting in front of me. I have no idea how old you are, Rob. 40? I'm 45. 45. Exactly the same age as me. You've probably got three decades more, maybe three and a half. Depends how you look after yourself. I think Rob was hoping... Yikes.

57:11I'm just going to throw it out there that my grandparents lived to 99 and they're late 80s. And so I'm hoping for that too. Okay. So you're looking for like four and a half more. At least. You only gave both Rob and yourself up to like 75, 80. I'm not the maths expert at the table. But what I was trying to say was even if it was three decades, you can do a lot in three decades. or four decades, you can do a huge amount. But people try and do everything in one year. And the expression I have is everyone overestimates what they can do in a year, but they underestimate what they can do in a decade.

57:49So just go easy on yourself and do a little bit on one area. And then you can relax and it's set up and you can do some more. You could do five different careers and missions. You could create all these different things. you could have seven more lives if you got at it in the next 45 years. I would love to do that over the next 60 years. 60? This is getting more ambitious by the second. I love it. Hey, Elon Musk, hopefully he'll come up with something. Alan, I thought you were going in a drastically different direction. I thought you were telling him, you're almost dead. So think about what you want to do, which also can be motivating.

58:28I have used that technique, but I didn't feel Rob needed it. Rob, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you guys very much. I don't want to die. Shannon, thank you for being here. Thank you. My name is Shannon and I actually live here in Las Vegas. So welcome everybody. I hope you're having a great time. And I just wanted to kind of compound on what you were talking about with Rob and some of the subjects that came up prior to the exercise. And a lot of it had to do about happiness. And some of it was don't wait to be happy. So we don't have to fix everything in this chart to be happy. It was also progress equals happiness.

59:07So while you're working on all these steps, you can be happy. You don't have to wait to reach all these goals. And I thought that was great. And you also said a goal is for direction, not to achieve and to have fun doing it in the process. So that gave me a lot of inspiration as we went through this because it wasn't like, I have to achieve all these things to be happy. Be happy while you're working towards these things and enjoy the process while you're doing it. So I want to thank you for that. I love that, Shannon. That's fantastic. And I had a fascinating example of that in the break. There's a guy here called Jeff, and his goal was to have the best burger in all 50 states.

59:43What a wonderful mission. He went out and did the mission, and then he was disappointed when it ended. It took him about three years and then he was disappointed when it was ending. And that makes me think like he had the goal, but the enjoyment was actually in doing the goal, not in achieving the goal. Then he decided now I can have the best burger in each country. So now he's got 200 countries to visit. Hopefully that'll keep him going for the rest of his days. But the goal is not necessarily there, like you said, for achievement. Don't get it done because then it's over. Enjoy doing it. Take longer.

1:00:22Have more fun. Everyone's trying to rush through their to-do list to get to the end. I'm like, can we take longer, please? Can I enjoy the process of doing it, doing the to-do list? The to-do list is fun. It's not something to get out the way with. So I'm really glad you brought that up, Shannon. Thank you. Thank you for coming.

1:00:45i just noticed that we didn't talk about the wheel of life tool and a lot of people had mentioned it so the wheel of life tool that everyone's been talking about is actually a spreadsheet that katie created we love a good spreadsheet in the fi world and you put a score in your mind next to each area of life so you might go health and wellness i'm doing eight finance is not so good right now it's an expensive time so maybe that's a three friends and family like i love my friends i love my family i'm doing well that's an eight or a nine love and relationship and you get these scores and then if you can imagine it lays them out in a circle and if you've got all eights or nines it's a fairly good circle and imagine driving on that wheel of life.

1:01:33If it were all eights and nines, it would be quite smooth sailing. But then let's also imagine on that wheel of life, you had a two in one area. It looks a bit like Pac-Man, not a wheel. And as you were driving along, you'd be like, kadunk, kadunk, kadunk. And it's not smooth driving. So if your health has suffered, life is on hard mode. You're struggling and you're kind of rocking along. So the idea is to look at your life holistically and see which elements are going well. And that exercise was slightly different from what we're talking about here, because that was what we call the current reality.

1:02:10So how is your life currently in those different areas? And then the exercise we're talking about on the podcast now is how would you like your life to be in those areas? So the areas are just a tool to make sure that you cover all the different aspects of your life, because we are kind of predisposed to focus on one or two, like Rob said, and remembering that there are more other aspects that we might be neglecting. So Casey, thanks for coming up here and reminding us to talk about this particular exercise. So we'd love to hear your takeaways from that. Yeah. So to start off, the homework assignment was to use the Wheel of Life tool to figure out what your current state is.

1:02:47And over lunch, we were sharing our visions. And one of the big things that we were talking about was how that current state changes from day to day, hour to hour based off how we were feeling in the moments. So mine, for example, was a little bit more Pac-Man with a larger mouth on one side because it was all just how I feel about myself and health and wellness and taking care of that kind of the mental, physical side, how that affects the rest of it. And somebody else in our group mentioned how theirs was like a breathing heart. It's big and full. And then a couple days later, weeks later, when they're stressed and tired, it goes down to a smaller wheel of twos or threes.

1:03:35And we were kind of diving into what is actually causing you to feel those changes. And it really comes down to your mindset, your health, exercise, eating right, and kind of focusing in on that. And so I kind of wanted to just share what my vision was, because I know as we were going through this process, Alan and I got a bit emotional kind of sharing my story. And so mine focuses on, I wake up each day excited and energized to take an adventure with my kids and only complete four hours of meaningful work every day. My hardest part is working too hard and being not enough. So over-motivated to work and fulfill all of the other portions of the circle.

1:04:28And so by creating a vision statement that minimizes one of those biggest focuses and making it more meaningful and impactful, allows me to focus on the other areas. Thanks. Thank you, Casey. Thank you, Casey.

1:04:46and please play the indiana jones theme tune for your kids next time you're going on an adventure together and see how they react yeah we have a an adventure area where we can do the whole rock thing and it's cool and yeah i think the big takeaway for me from what casey said was you have to give yourself a little bit of grace and you have to be okay with the fact that maybe I can't do it all. Maybe my best life doesn't look like doing it all and that I'm actually harming my best life or myself by trying to be everything to everybody. And I think one of the things that I've realized from my own life is even if directionally, my life is amazing.

1:05:29By any objective measure, my life is amazing. But that doesn't mean that I don't have bad days. I have them all the time. I'm grumpy. I'm miserable. It happens. And that's okay. And I think also there's some aspect of maybe a negativity bias where I'll, again, objectively look at my week and I've gone to the gym four times and I've went in the sauna and I hung out with my family and I recorded a podcast that's getting listened to by potentially hundreds of thousands of people. By any objective measure, my life is wonderful. But that doesn't mean my lived experience is wonderful every second. And I think you have to come to the understanding that that is just part of the reality of the human experience.

1:06:15And if you think that it's unicorns and rainbows all the time, you're going to be slapped upside the head in essence, right? And realize this is just not how life works. And I think giving ourselves that little bit of grace is really critically important. And Casey, thank you for sharing. All right, Minerva, come on up. So hi, my name is Minerva. I'm from Los Angeles, California. So Katie mentioned about there are things that we can have now, like it's okay to love your job. I don't personally like mine, but.

1:06:53However. But it would be okay. But it would be okay. But there has been a dream of mine that I've had for some time. I love Sedona, Arizona. It is what I consider, quote unquote, my soul city. And it has been my dream to own a house there. So for physical environment, which is one of the nine life areas, I wrote, I wake up in my house in Sedona, Arizona and sit in the patio while I watch the sunrise against the red rocks. while sipping my chamomile tea. And I like totally envisioned that. I've been there many times. I go there maybe two to three times a year to decompress because I have a very stressful job, which is why I don't like it.

1:07:35But I totally envisioned that. And I just want to say thank you because I keep telling myself like, I can't afford to do that. I'm a single parent and I have a big shovel, but it's scary. And you know, Katie and I, you and I had a conversation last night and you were like, what's holding you back from retirement? I found out yesterday that I pretty much have FI'd. And I was like, really? I have? Like, it was very surprising. But I want to allow myself to have these dreams, you know? And I think this exercise has really helped me see that. I was like, kind of to piggyback on what Rob said, like, you know, you're still caught up in like the money, the number, right?

1:08:16The FI number that you forget to dream about other things and what life can really be like. So thank you for giving us that opportunity.

1:08:29I just wanted to add one tiny bit to that, which is I almost want to reach out into the audience and ordain everyone and give them permission to live the life they want to live. Because the only people stopping us from living the life to live is ourselves. So if you're listening to write this right now, you don't need my permission, but I'm going to give it to you anyway. You have permission to create the life you want to live and the world will be a happier place if you do it. Devin, welcome. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. My name is Devin. I'm a 22 year old college student from Minnesota.

1:09:08and I actually have a question for you guys. So a lot of the conversations that are happening this morning, some people were saying they felt a lot of anxiety about completing this exercise and I feel like a lot of listeners at home probably have the same thing and I feel like that's probably stemming from the fact that in order to pursue an extraordinary life, you have to have a growth mindset and switch from a fixed mindset and that requires radical accountability of yourself that you can do whatever you want and then your outcomes are your responsibility. But at the same time, that's a lot of pressure.

1:09:42And how do you recommend that people overcome that to believe that they can actually achieve what they set out to achieve and make it so that they can be okay with the fact that yes, it is my responsibility, but I'm okay with that. I think one of the components of that is to surround yourself with people that are doing the same thing. And I think that's why a lot of people came to this weekend is to be around that energy and that uplifting energy. And of course, the danger is you have that energy when you're here and then you go home and you're like, oh, Monday morning, okay, now what? But we've got to come up with ways to keep that energy going between us and coming regularly to events like this, checking in, making sure you stay in contact with the people that are here and that are cheering you on to succeed.

1:10:26Like a lot of people probably don't have that in their lives that people think you're weird or you want to live this extraordinary life. What's that about, strange people? but it's staying in contact and being around that energy and somehow bringing that energy for yourself as well we have the proof that it is possible to create the life you want i pretty much don't care what it is you want to do there are people who have built big businesses built theme parks someone's gone to the moon someone's climbed the mountain before whatever it is you want to do it's probably already been done so we have the proof you can do it devon what else do you need?

1:11:04That was a genuine question. This is a live podcast. It's interactive. I guess just to believe that you are able to do it, like have that internal locus of control and go out and make the change in your life. I'm at the fortune position of being the youngest person here. I'm 22 years old. So I have my big takeaway is that I can build whatever life I want to. I'm starting early enough. And that's not a limitation to people starting later in life. Even if you are later in life you can still build the life you want you just have to take action and move towards that life you have to visualize who you want to be and then take steps to get there because you're not going to get there unless you make changes i give you maybe five decades

1:11:52oh my god good call back yeah devon i think it's such an insightful question and i think why we've focused at choose a vi on these one percent wins it's because when you look at it in totality a wholesale change of my life in nine aspects. It's overwhelming. And I think what most humans do, and certainly what I do when I'm faced with something overwhelming is I just ignore, I run away, I get scared, and I wind up not doing it. But I've found in my own life, and with the countless number of people who've listened to the show, that taking these tiny little actions are just like these little votes that you're giving yourself of like, I really am that person.

1:12:44I really can affect change in my own life and I can move forward and I can keep doing this. And then you start having this expansive mindset of, well, I'm looking for little ways to make my life better because I've already proved to myself that I can, I can do it. I can make a little change no matter how small it is. But then you just start feeling confident. You feel good about yourself. You feel that, hey, I really truly can do this. It's not some other they, right? There's always these complaints like, oh, whatever, grumble, grumble, like the government, the taxes, the whomever. We can come up with any excuse we want that this they is impacting us.

1:13:24But like you said, if you can change that to an internal locus of control and truly believe it, then the sky is the limit, especially as a 22-year-old who has found the fight community, has traveled across the country to join us here. it's extraordinary it's truly extraordinary i mean you've taken so many you wrote me an email last week that it was one that jumped off the page to me just as it was and then you said you were coming here so i actually literally i have it saved in my inbox because i'm like that is just an extraordinary thing and the list of actions that you've taken already i think aside from being you're a sergeant in the army right like you you've done an extraordinary list of things And I think you've proven to yourself, whether you believe it or not, whether you know it or not, you've already done an amazing list.

1:14:15And now with an exercise like this, you can say, all right, look, these are the nine areas of my life that I can work on. And like Alan said, I think it's a cool way of approaching it because, again, we don't want to get overwhelmed, right? If you say, oh, man, I've got to change nine things about my life. Like, how could I ever do that? But focus on one. Get it to, it doesn't have to be perfect. I think we often get bogged down in, man, it's not worth attacking unless I can get it perfect. And I would reject that wholly. And I think Alan clearly said that, that you get one area to a comfortable point.

1:14:53Okay. Then maybe you set that aside and you work on the next area. And I think you'll find some synergy between, not to use stupid corporate techno babble, but some synergy between these areas of life. and again that vote in your favor every time you take one of these actions it's a vote in your favor so there was a very long-winded way of saying like man you're already on such an incredible track and I think I love that you set this question up both for yourself but really for the community at large of how do you not get bogged down in in the they right like that external locus of control and really bring it inside and I think and I'd like to believe that people here in the Choose A Vite community, realize that it's one action at a time.

1:15:36So again, thank you for such a wonderful question. To add to what Brad said, the thing that I've realized over the years is the extraordinary is rooted in the mundane. What I mean by that is having extraordinary energy is by eating the right food, having more broccoli. Sounds boring, but it's a simple action. You go to the gym, it's a simple action. Building a business is about making phone calls and doing this and sending emails. Every extraordinary thing you build in your life is rooted in mundane daily actions. So get excited about eating broccoli, get excited about doing the simple things and never underestimate those simple things compounding the 1 % changes.

1:16:20And it's almost like we're trained to think I need to do this big thing to be really big and successful. It's never true. Do the basics really well every day. And I'm sure your training has probably taught you that. If you do the basics really well every day, you will build a phenomenal life. But it never feels like enough because you're like, I'm just doing the simple stuff. I'm here to tell you it is enough. You do those basics, you do the mundane things really well. It's unbelievable what that unlocks. So the extraordinary is rooted in mundane. Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the Chooseify community.

1:16:58If you haven't already, the best ways to get involved are first, subscribe to the podcast. So you're listening to this on a podcast player, just hit subscribe. And then subscribe to my weekly newsletter. I actually sit down every Monday and write this by hand. And I send it out Tuesday morning. So just head over to chooseify.com slash subscribe. And it's really, really easy to get on the newsletter list right there. And I would greatly appreciate it. It's the best way to get in touch with me. You can actually just hit reply to any of those emails and it comes directly to my inbox. So that's the way that I keep a pulse of the community and how we keep this, the ultimate crowdsource personal finance show.

1:17:37And finally, if you're looking to join an in real life community, we have Chooseify local groups in 300 plus cities all around the world. So head to chooseify.com slash local and you'll find a list of all of those cities in 20 plus countries all across the world. and if you're just getting started with FI or you have a family member or a friend who you think would be interested, two easy ways. Choose a FI episode 100 is kind of our welcome to the FI community and even though it's a couple years old at this point, it still stands up and it's a really great just starting point to get an understanding of what is financial independence, what are we doing here, why are we looking to live a more intentional life where we save money and use it as a springboard to live a better life And then Choose a Vi created a Financial Independence 101 course that's entirely free.

1:18:27Just head to choosefi.com slash fi101. And again, thanks for listening.