Creating Your Dream Life | The First Step
Let's get intentional.
Everyone wants to be living their dream life, but if someone was to stop and ask you what that entails, could you answer? And not just some airy fairy response about having a fun job and a loving family and lots of money in the bank. I mean specifics.
The first thing you need to do before you can expect your life to pan out just so is to define exactly what you want.
I started doing this about four years ago and every single January, without fail, I review it and make any necessary updates. Sometimes I make huge changes to my dream state in certain areas, but more often than not I’m making small tweaks.
So how to go about starting?
Break it down into categories
It’s much easier to focus on specific areas and by doing it this way, you’ll see if you have any conflicting desires. If you do, you’ll want to dedicate some energy to resolving those conflicts and figuring out what you want to prioritise.
Getting this clarity is so important, so even if you never review this ‘dream state document’, it will be such a valuable exercise.
Below I’ve listed the categories I use. Some may not resonate with you, and you might have other areas that deserve your focus. Use these as a guide.
Relationships
Health
Career
Money
Spirituality
Travel and hobbies
Home
Other material things
I’ll dive into each of those in detail a bit further down the post, so keep reading.
Write it as though you’re already living it
Instead of writing, “I want to find my dream home” you would write “I am living in my dream home”. This helps you get into the right frame of mind and once you start believing it’s possible, it truly becomes possible.
We’ll go more into limiting beliefs another day, but for now, just trust me on this.
Get specific
You’ve all heard about SMART goals and while this is so much more than just goal setting, the specific part really matters.
You don’t want to just write “I’m working in my dream job”. You want to think about and write down everything you can picture about that job.
If you’re still figuring out the specifics, that’s fine. You might write something like “I own my own business which has a huge impact on peoples’ lives. I work from home two days per week and in a co-working space one day per week where I work alongside people who inspire me. I make $150k per year from this job.”
See the difference?
Let’s deep dive into the categories
Relationships
I like to break this down even further and write about my relationship with:
My partner
My kids
My family and in-laws
My friends
Partner
I focus on life quite generally and the qualities I want to be steady throughout my life. For example, I write about the kind of open and honest communication I want to have with my partner, but I also write about shorter term desires such as getting engaged (something I got to tick off four years ago) and getting married (something I’m hoping to tick off in 2026).
Kids
When it comes to my kids, I talk about the kind of mother I want to be to my babies, but I also focus on what I want our relationship to look like when they go off to school, when they move out of home and when they start their own families.
My family and in-laws
Again I focus on both short term and long term desires for what I want my relationship to look like with my parents, my siblings and in-laws. Unlike my partner and kids, these relationships take a lot more work as there are so many and it’s impossible to prioritise everyone all of the time, so reviewing this each year helps me to see if I’m letting any one relationship slip.
My friends
Here, I think about my current friendships but I also focus on friendships I want to build. For example, when I bought my house and knew my kids would go to the local primary school, I decided I wanted to make lots of friends in the community so that became a focus.
Health
Without your health, what have you really got. I’m usually focused on my physical health and my mental health, though my mental health also gets covered in the spirituality section. It’s absolutely ok to have some crossover and repetition.
I focus on getting my autoimmune conditions into remission, the kind of food I want to fuel my body with, the kind of exercise I want to do for physical and mental health and the kind of relationship I have with my body.
Career
This might be as specific as naming a job title and a company you want to work for, but it might also just be the kind of work you want to do and the kind of impact you want to have on your community.
I also like to think about how many hours I’d like to work per week, where I work (e.g. office, co-working space, home office/studio), who I work with and what kind of money I earn from this career.
If you have a side hustle that you want to turn into a part time job, you could also focus on that in this section.
Money
I seperate this out from career because I like to have multiple sources of income. I’ll include the money I make from my job again in this section, but I’ll also focus on other ways I’d like to make money. Maybe you want to buy shares, invest in property, start making money from a hobby - this is the section where you get specific about all of that.
Spirituality
This is a new focus area for me. For some people this might be faith or religion. I’m not religious but over the past few years I’ve come to believe in some sort of higher power - I refer to it as the universe - and I have certain practices such as meditating and journalling that help me to feel like I am working with, rather than against, the universe.
Because it’s new for me, I don’t get super specific here as I know my practice is evolving. Currently, I have something along the lines of “I have a daily practice that keeps me spiritually aligned. I am consistent with this most of the time which means if I drop it when life gets chaotic - sickness, travel, etc - I still feel aligned. I’m always excited to get back on track with it because I know how much better I feel when I’m in touch with my spirituality.”
Travel and hobbies
Travel is one of my big passions and something I want to do with my family so I name it specifically, but yours could be anything you love doing.
I write about where I want to go, who I want to go with, when I want to go and anything else that feels important when I’m in the moment.
Home
I originally broke this area out as my partner and I had been trying to buy a house in our dream location for years and the market was getting worse and worse. I was able to tick that off last year but I decided this is still an important focus area for me as it’s where I spend so much time.
I am planning on renovating in the future so this is my focus, but yours might be as simple as keeping a decluttered home, or filling it with friends and objects that bring you joy.
Other material things
If there are really specific material things I want but I know I’m not going to go out and buy them in the next week or two, I write them here.
You don’t want to waste time writing down every little thing you want like a new moisturiser, but big ticket items such as a new sofa or an expensive coat might go in this section. You never know, the universe might just send you whatever you write down.
Until next time,
A