Live your dream

Knowing your dream and living it. This is the whole purpose behind simplifying your life. By knowing your dream, you have a powerful motivator to make changes in your life. By starting to have pieces of your dream, your life takes on a joy that makes the sacrifices of simplicity worth it.

This is where the simplicity work gets exciting. Without your dream, my suggestions for simplicity might be just empty directives. You are arranging your life and clearing out its clutter so that your dream can have room to live.

What does your heart desire? What do you truly want to do? Your dream may be to work in a certain profession or live in a particular place. Or your dream might involve simple things: to have more time to work in your garden, spend more time with family or friends, or have time for walks or to read books.

The first step in living your dream is to discover and express it. Brainstorm your dream by quickly answering hypothetical questions and examining the pattern they reveal.

What would you do with your life if...

• You won $15 million?       
• You won $5,000 a week for life?
• You lost your present job?
• You had a disability that prevented you from walking?
• You had six months to live?

These questions should force you to look behind what you might assume to be your dream. For example, you might assume that your dream is to have lots of money. But what do you want from that money? What do you want to do with your time? With whom do you want to spend your time?

Generate more dream ideas by looking at your priorities and past.

• What has been the work or lifestyle that you have chosen to return to again and again?
• What do you routinely say that you will do "someday"?
• What life change or way of life are you putting off?
• Would you be willing to live with very little money and pursue a dream? 
• Would you rather work in a job that means nothing to you in order to have all kinds of material comforts?
• Are you willing to live in the world, in the moment?
• Do you seek to build a cocoon that meets all your needs?
• What could you imagine getting up in the morning for?
• What could you imagine being in your life so that when you go to bed every night, you think, "I can hardly wait for tomorrow!"?
• If your dream involves creative or performing arts, would you be willing to live frugally to follow your passion?
• If your dream is travel, would you be willing to get a job involving travel?

The answers to these questions should reveal to you more about what you want to do. What are you are willing to sacrifice? How you are willing to live in order to follow your dream?