When I created The Off-Day Adventurer, my goal was to help others, other average, working-class people, make the most of their time off from work.
This was important to me because the majority of us spend our lives at a job of some sort. We define ourselves by our work. To an extent, that is ok. If you find your life’s work meaningful and you enjoy it, great.
But what if you don’t?
What if your job is just… a job. A way to make ends meet.
What if you live in such a way that you’re daily wishing your life away to retirement?
By creating the Off-Day Adventurer, I wanted people to look at me and say, “Jamie is a full-time nurse and she does it. Why can’t I?”
I wanted people to realize they did not have to work their lives away, postponing dream vacations or other adventures until they have more time, money, enter whatever excuse here…..
The sad reality is that we aren’t promised to make it to retirement. Or to next week. Or to tomorrow…
What then?
If we put it all off and never make it to that trip to Hawaii or to hike the Appalachian Trail, what’s the point?
The idea of taking more short vacations rather than one long vacation each year, of taking a random Thursday night and going to that restaurant that they’ve always wanted to try– That’s what it’s all about. What this blog is all about. (If you’re new here, welcome! You got me on a philosophical day! :P)
Seizing the day, every single day, so that when we arrive either at retirement or, the end of our lives, we will have squeezed every opportunity out of the time that has been given to us.
That’s the point.
Now, taking more vacations and having the foresight to take many “small retirements” along the way is, in fact, a mindset shift.
This is not the way we have previously been taught to think. Innovative thinker Tim Ferriss talks about this concept as he describes the idea of the “New Rich” in his book, The 4-Hour Work Week. The New Rich do not put off experiences until retirement. They also place more value on experiences than material things.
This is the Millionaire Mindset.
This concept, while mind-blowing if you’ve never thought about it before, aligned with my mindset more than previous schools of thought that lead us to think we need to work 9-5, Monday through Friday, and live for the weekends.
By doing this, we wish our already short lives away. We must break from this way of thinking.
I’ve become very interested in how those we consider the most successful people have escaped the hamster wheel of working until we die.
Obviously, some of those people were born into lavish lives and, well, that is out of our control.
But through reading books like The 4-Hour Work Week and Tools of Titans and listening to various podcasts that frequently address this topic, one starts to see that the most successful people have a handful of habits in common.
These habits build a lifestyle that ultimately allows them to build the life and experience they want, not a life and experience that just happens to them or worse, dictates them.
Now, you have to understand that this is not a “get rich quick” guide.
If so, I’d have a lot more commas in my bank account balance 😛
Quite the contrary. Instead, know that, many times, for change to happen, it is a result of the subconscious parts of our brain telling us to change course ever so slightly to see big changes down the road.
In all of my reading and research on the habits of millionaires, the New Rich, and in those who are the most successful, it is easy to quickly see trends.
Below I’ve constructed a quick guide to some of the habits you’ll see over and over when you start trying to break into the lives and minds of those who seemingly have it all.
In theory, if they’ve designed a life they love, through replication, why can we not do the same?
Establish a Morning Routine
Get Up Early
The first step to a morning routine is getting up a little earlier than you usually would.
Jocko Willink gets up around 4:30a every day. Jocko explains that everyone doesn’t have to get up THAT early, but get up 30 minutes earlier than you usually would. This helps develop discipline.
When asked how to have that discipline to get up early to start with, his answer is always something like, “Just do it. Just get up.”
I’m sure many would scoff at this response, but I have taken a lot of time to think about it because I was physically having trouble waking up early (before 5:00 am was my goal).
I would be startled out of my sleep so abruptly that I often felt drunk and unable to open my eyes.
This led me to often hit snooze and would require multiple alarms set 5 or so mins apart to give my brain enough time to wake up properly.
This was unacceptable and a waste of time in my eyes.
How could I just get up as Jocko suggested?
My Alarm Clock Experiment
I started using a progressive alarm clock app called Sleep Space. The app provides some noise while falling asleep, (white noise, thunderstorm, ocean wave. You pick.) then softer ambient white noise in the first stages of sleep.
The noise all but falls away until an hour or so before you want to wake up. At that time, the background noise begins again, very softly, crescendoing over time until the actual alarm needs to start.
If I set my alarm for 5:00 am, the noise will begin to really crescendo at 4:50 am.
Over the course of 10 minutes, the ambient noise grows louder and louder. I am usually awake about 3 minutes in (4:53 am) and will turn the alarm off and get up.
This blew my mind but was exactly what I needed to help my brain wake up in a way that worked for me.
Start Your Day Purposefully
Once you’re up, decide the few things that will help you start your day peacefully and purposefully. The world is going to come fast enough. Make the morning your sanctuary.
I personally recommend against social media or emails for the first hour or so if you can help it.
Instead, start by making your bed and make yourself a warm drink, perhaps coffee or tea. Then, journal (5-10 mins), meditate (even just 1-5 mins), stretch, take a cold shower, etc.
You’ll see the cold shower on a lot of millionaire’s morning routines, but it’s not something I’ve been able to talk myself into yet…
Find what works for you and makes you feel most ready to seize your day.
Then go seize it!
Consume Knowledge
Some of the world’s highest performers read a staggering number of books each year. Actor and comic Bryan Callen said, “The difference between the people you admire and everybody else is that the former are people who read.”
This is another habit I struggled with. I love to read but I’m slow at it.
I couldn’t figure out how people had so much time to read in the midst of all of the tasks they needed to accomplish in a day.
Then I had a realization.
I can’t carve out a lot of time to sit with a book, so I’ll listen as I do those tasks.
So, I started listening to podcasts as I folded the laundry.
Then, I started listening to audiobooks in the car.
Now, if I have any time at all where I do not need to be concentrating on a task, I’m listening to a book or podcast. I even listen to some while working out. Find what works for you.
My favorite podcasts include
Books I’m currently listening to:
Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss (linked above)
The Iliad by Homer
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Health
Have you ever been faced with a life-altering diagnosis? If so, you know how the world seems to stop as you try to wrap your head around navigating a huge health dilemma.
If you haven’t, pick something really awful and pretend the doctor just told you that you have THAT.
Whether this thing was preventable or not, any person would likely think, “I should have done XYZ a long time ago and maybe this wouldn’t have happened…”
Let this be a wake-up call.
You can’t design the life of your dreams if you’re having to put your life on hold to face a huge health detour.
Do the things you can do NOW so that you don’t have to waste life, time, and money on doctor’s visits and medical bills.
Take Control of Your Diet
Think of food as fuel.
This might mean not constantly eating what makes your tastebuds the happiest. In my world, that means I can’t constantly eat pizza, ice cream, and cheeseburgers.
But if you follow a healthy diet most of the time, you can “treat yourself” to those things you really love once in a while.
Another important mental adjustment means considering the word “diet” to mean what you eat every day: “My diet consists of…”
Rather than something you “go on”: “I’ve gained weight. I need to go on a diet.”
This mental shift will help you gain consistency and stick with a method of eating mindfully all the time.
Tim Ferriss recommends the Slow Carb Diet and covers it extensively in his book The 4-Hour Body.
A plus to this diet is that it incorporates a cheat day every week.
I follow a mostly Mediterranean diet with some cheat days here and there 🙂 Talk to your healthcare provider and see what works for you.
Exert Yourself Physically
Incorporating exercise into your week is one of the best methods of stress relief and will actually give you more energy.
If cardio is your form of stress relief, that’s fine. If you want to lose extra pounds, strength training is your friend.
You can do all the cardio in the world, but strength training with weights is going to give you the results you want faster.
Also, consistency, consistency, consistency.
You don’t have to be incredibly strong or lift heavy weight. Do what you can do and be consistent about it.
Meditation & Mindfulness
Of the extraordinary people interviewed in Tools of Titans and on The Tim Ferriss Show, 80% of them use some form of meditation in their daily routine.
Many of them use their morning time to journal and sit quietly.
Those interviewed who don’t formally meditate use music or other practices that resemble meditation.
So, there is something to be said for finding a way to help quiet one’s “monkey mind.” Meditation is known for increasing productivity, decreasing anxiety, decreasing depression, etc., etc.
According to Ten Percent Happier, meditating for even just one minute each day–being mindful for just ONE minute–has its benefits.
Apps to help you with meditation:
Journaling
I also like using Penzu for morning journaling. Most people recommend writing in a journal, but I’ve always liked typing because I can’t write as quickly as my brain thinks lol. Penzu is a free online journal that I’ve used for several years now.
Manifesting
Lastly, I need to mention manifesting as many of the world’s highest performers talk about using some form of this.
I feel like manifesting has become a sort of trendy word that people throw around, but the idea is more based in psychology than spirituality as many people may think.
As I mentioned earlier in the post, as you start to think about what you want your life to look like, your subconscious will help you to make microscopic adjustments to get to that goal.
This is the essence of manifesting.
To get you started and excited about the concept, I recommend watching “The Secret.” It can come across as a little hokey at first, but it really has had a huge impact on my life. Allow me to explain.
First, enter vision boards:
I got started with manifesting after I learned about Vision Boards while watching The Secret (based on the book, same title, about the Law of Attraction) on Netflix.
As crazy as it sounds, I simply made a board on Pinterest and started pinning all the things I wanted.
I was living in Atlanta at the time but had several dreams I was chasing. I wanted to join the Navy Nurse Corps and I wanted to move to San Diego.
I pinned photos of apartments in Little Italy San Diego. I pinned vintage photos of Navy nurses. I even wrote my name on a decorative chalkboard in my apartment with the rank Lieutenant in front of it.
Fast forward two years later:
I moved to San Diego and lived a block away from the apartment whose photo I had pinned on my board.
That same year, I was accepted into the Navy Nurse Corps. I served 5 years on active duty and left active duty as an O-3, Lieutenant.
Now, those things OBVIOUSLY took some work on my part. It took me about 5 months to put together a package for the Navy. I moved to California as a travel nurse and lived an hour outside of LA for three months before moving to my dream apartment in San Diego.
BUT I had put those desires into the universe and through conscious and subconscious decisions, I ended up right where I wanted to be.
There are so many ways of manifesting apart from actually making a board.
Other methods include writing out goals either in a notebook or in a structured way with prompts such as in a Passion Planner.
I recently watched a video that recommended writing out your goal 15x per day. However crazy that sounds, I’ve started doing it.
Whatever manifesting looks like for you, find a way to do it. Find a way to purposefully express what you want.
The universe is conspiring to give it to you.
Food for Thought
I know this post is very different from my typical posts on restaurants and hotels, but I hope if NOTHING ELSE it has made you stop and think, “What do I want most out of my life?”
When you start asking yourself that question and listening to the answers your subconscious is listening, too.
Incorporating some daily habits is just one step in the direction of building a life you’ve always dreamed of.
Hopefully, that means building a life that you enjoy NOW and not one that we put off until (fill in excuse here).
I want you to consider DAILY that we don’t live forever. You might not even live to see your retirement.
If that is the case, what are you doing with this one beautiful life that was given to you??
I’ll leave you with one more quote to ponder:
“Every person has two lives. And the second starts when we realize we have just one.”
Now, go get after it.
Other recent posts to check out:
How to Get Started with DSLR Photography (on a Budget)
Why Chateau Elan Is The Getaway You’ve Been Needing
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