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We all long to live the life of our dreams, and that life looks different on the outside for each and every one of us, but what it all boils down is to one thing. We all long to live a life of happiness. You can achieve happiness right here, right now. Here are a few of my tips for making that happen:

5 Tips for Living the Life You Desire

Do more of the things that make you happy.

Start doing more of the things you love and less of the things you think you should be doing, like laundry & dishes. There will always be laundry and dishes to do, but there’s only a finite time to do what makes you happy, like scrapbooking your family vacation.

Focus on the What, Not the How.

So many times we figure out what our dreams are, but then we get hung up because we don’t know how to achieve them. I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, you’re not supposed to know the how. That’s above our pay grade. When we focus on the what and do what we can with what we’ve got, little by little, day by day, the how will reveal itself.

Live with intention first.

Goals are great, but if you’re not careful, you can slip into a mindset of “I’ll be happy when…when I lose the weight — when I get that job — when I get the house — when I get a new (or different) spouse”. Goals are set in a future time, but intentions are a way of being right now, in this present moment whether you achieve your goals or not.

Don’t ask your dream to make you money and don’t ask your job to be your dream.

Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this in her book, Big Magic. We get frustrated in life when we begin to mix our dreams, the things we love to create with our jobs because we really long for the things we love to make us money so we can do what we love all the time. So, we think I love scrapbooking, so I need to find a way for scrapbooking to makes me money, but what happens is you put an unrealistic expectation on your dream. We demand something beyond what it’s capable of doing — make you money. In the beginning, your dream is not capable of supporting you. It’s unfair to ask your dreams to make you money.

Work your 9-5 with all the love and happiness and joy. If you hate your job, change your perspective, change your attitude, or find a job you can enjoy. Your job is there to support you so you can do more of the things that you love. They work together in tandem, not against each other.

Get so good, they can’t ignore you.

Even though I just said not to ask your dream to make you money, but if you get really good at something, you get to write your own ticket in life. It’s the people who get really, really good at what they do, that they get to call the shots in their life. They get to pick what they what to do in life and how much they make at doing it. So, if there is something that you love that you can envision making money doing, perfect! But the only way you can do it is by getting so good at it that people can’t ignore you.

Here’s the thing, it’s going to take a lot of work. Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000 hour rule in his book, Outliers, which is about how much time is needed to invest to get excellent at a skill, which is roughly about 10 years. Also, I’ve heard that if you spend one hour a day studying and practicing a certain skill or industry, you’ll know more than 70% of everyone in that field of work.

Bonus: Commit to the work.

Building the life of your dreams takes work, but work is a blessing.

In the 60 Day Challenge: Manifesting Abundance group that I lead, we have a commitment that we read to ourselves everyday and part of it reads,

“The work is hard, mundane, and messy.
I commit to the work.
It’s going to take a long time, a lifetime.
I commit to the work.”

You’ve got the potential to be a big player in this game called life, but you have to be willing to put in the work to make it happen. It’s so much fun when you set your vision to a life of happiness right here, right now is a fun journey. You will reap the beautiful rewards.