How to Design Your Dream Life (in 7 Minutes)

so it is currently 11:15 p.m. I listened to this conversation on my way home from visiting my mom and grandma there was an interesting idea in it that I wanted to share with yall and it's a practical exercise that you can use to help design a life that you will truly love now this is a conversation on a somewhat obscure YouTube channel which is very good so you should subscribe to it by a chap called Michael kjan prorn who is the exf founder of skillshare who I think sold skillshare for a stupid amount of money

and he's interviewing a guy called Kevin dalstrom and Kevin dalstrom is a four times founder three times Chief marketing officer an investor in over 55 companies he also pursues rock climbing at an elite level all while prioritizing his family so I love learning from people that are succeeding across all fronts not just on the workfront and Michael says that Kevin dstr might be the most balanced person I've ever met and he says all of this is only possible because of his ideal end State exercise this ideal end State exercise apparently aligns your actions with your

desires and allows you to design a life that you never need to escape I've gone through this exercise with dozens of people like everybody from like college kids all the way up to literally like billionaire business people and I call it the ideal end State exercise and it's a very simple exercise but it's incredibly powerful literally you make a bulleted list of if you could have your ideal life what would it look like and you should be very specific around like what a day looks like like who you're around what you're doing how you're feeling

every time I've gone through this exercise with someone it really highlights the inconsistencies between what they say they want and their actions and often it's like pretty big inconsistencies right so the example that I like to use is let's say you're a young person and you just bought a fancy car right you bought a Porsche 9911 or something but on your list it doesn't say drive a fancy car well that beg the question are you being honest about what you really want or are your actions not aligning with what you want because the truth is

if driving a fancy car isn't on your list but you own one that's probably keeping you from doing the things you really want it's a very easy trap to fall into because often what happens is we kind of go with the flow like we listen to what society says is not really what we want we just sort of go along with it it only takes like an hour probably a hundred people come back to me and say wow this was such a powerful exercise and I actually did the exercise in the car I recorded it

on voice pel which is the app that me and my business partner are building where you essentially speak into the app and then it turns your stream of Consciousness into a rough first draft and so we're going to sort of do this exercise for me and then I'm going to kind of talk through it would really recommend you to actually do this ideal end State exercise so please do pause this video now uh if you would like to indulge this particular exercise which I think is actually really helpful so the ideal endstate exercise what is

the sort of life that you would design if you could design whatever life you wanted so this is the sort of stuff that I've written on my ideal end State like bullet point list freedom to do whatever work I want with whomever I want want and whenever I want four kids big family home open door policy friends and family always coming over two to three guest rooms private chef and housekeeper health is in amazing shape I gym whenever I feel like it I play sports every day with friends I go on long walks maybe do

yoga I have a deep loving intimate relationship with my future wife we do relationships and couples Retreats one to two times a year I travel whenever I want always flying business In First Class question mark private jet LOL Although that's like a radically different level of wealth than I currently am or I suspect will ever be uh but there are very very rich people I know who say that having a private jet is actually really nice because it gives you freedom of movement it means you can visit friends and family at a moment's notice and

it's just super cool but like I suspect that's why it's a question mark and that's why I've got a law there cuz it's like whatever I'd quite like to get a Porsche tyan that's my dream car at the moment I'd like to write books every few years whenever I want to explore an interesting question I have a writing buddy I have a low barrier to publishing and I'm not stressing out about marketing and performance of these books I have an office and co-working space which is walkable from home with a team that I work with

in real life and a YouTube and podcast Studio attached to the thing and an event space where uh students of my courses and people that I know and stuff can hang out we can do events and Live Events and things my friends are visiting all the time I organize an annual ski trip and surf trip and cruise maybe with friends and family where I organize and pay for everything that would be nice if I had enough money to do that I have regular music jam sessions with friends where we do singing and songwriting and producing

songs I continue filming videos but only when I feel like it like videos like this one which is probably why I'm filming this video cuz I'm like oh I feel like sharing this thing don't really care how this video is going to perform I'm sharing it in the hope that some people will do this exercise and find it interesting continue filming videos but only when I feel like it and have a business hold Co holding company with a portfolio of small profitable businesses that's making 10 million plus profit a year oh yeah I've also recently

taken the 10% pledge uh for the business and for my personal life which means that uh as a business we are donating 10% of our profits to uh effective Charities every year so that's a thing that's on the list and with a view to doing more philanthropy type stuff over time as I get older and also I'd really love to do Live Events I'm highly inspired by the sort of setup that people like Tony Robbins have and I just love the idea of um kind of Hosting like an productivity weekend seminar or doing like a

onean stage show sort of like jett's stage show meets Darren Brown where I combine like my interest in Magic and music and mentalism and mind reading with some like personal development D stuff that would be super cool to have a stage show like that and to develop it and build it and have a director for it and make it really sick and be able to tour around the world doing this sort of stage show so this is the sort of stuff that I came up with when I came across the exercise and I did the

exercise now I've done exercises like this in the past but I've never just done a what does your ideal life look like just straight up um other exercises I found really helpful for this are what does your ideal Tuesday look like and what does an idle Sunday look like but I just really like all of these sorts of journaling prompts that get at this question of what is the life you actually want what if you could design a life however you would like what would be in it and what wouldn't be in it and then

once you do an exercise like this essentially the idea is that you look at what your life is like currently and you look at this future ideal end state that you're trying to get to and you figure out okay cool are the actions I'm taking aligned with eventually getting me to this sort of place and if they're not like either it's worth changing the goal or the thing that you actually want or it's worth changing the actions that you're taking to potentially get there because if you're taking actions that are not getting you to the

goal you want then I don't know you're just shating yourself I reckon oh by the way in case youve not yet subscribed to Life notes you might like to it is a completely free weekly is email that I send and it contains the notes that I'm taking throughout life so notes from books that I've read podcasts I've listened to videos I've watched conversations I've had experiences I've had and I condense all that stuff into an email that I send to my subscribers once a week it is completely free if you think it's terrible you can

unsubscribe whenever you want there'll be a link down below so yeah that's it for this video pretty chill one I'd recommend listening to this podcast I'll put a link down below and if you do do this exercise I would love it if you would email me my email address is Ali ali.com I love getting emails from people in the audience especially when they're thoughtful and so if you've watched this video and you've done this excise either leave a comment down below um or drop me an email if you'd like to keep it private so yeah

it is now uh 11:32 and it's way past my bedtime but I hope it was useful that I shared this exercise and I hope that some some of you if you're watching this you might actually do the exercise and I hope it'll add value to your life in the same way that it has done for mine if you're interested in a more deeper dive on how to design your life you might like to check out this little three-part playlist over here somewhere this is a three set series of videos where you figure out roughly where

you want to go and where you are and goals and actions and plans and systems and stuff to get there um and people who have gone through that series have said that they' given them a lot of clarity on what they want to do with their life so thank you very much for watching and I'll see you next time bye-bye