Publicly Working Towards My Dreams in Real-Time

#DrawingMyDreamMap

I don’t presume to know how to get the most out of life better than anyone else. However, I do believe myself to be uniquely qualified to figure out my own life (because it’s my own 🤷‍♂️).

I’m publishing this series for a few reasons

a) doing so will help me be more accountable for organizing my thoughts and

b) this approach I’m taking is something I’ve been developing myself for myself. I didn’t get it from a book. It came from my own head, synthesized from my experiences and learnings. I want to work on the details in real-time here so that you may follow along and, on the off chance that you see any parallels with your own life, perhaps my perspective may serve you (even if it’s just a sense of camaraderie, knowing you’re not alone).

Thanks for stopping by. ✌ & 💜.

Latest Posts…

• How I’m Making an Impact on The World 🥊2021.11.28
  Everyone is the protagonist in their story. If we all interacted respectfully with the NPCs in our lives, the world would be a better place. Life is not a video game where we try to make the NPCs look silly. This is the real world. I want to make a positive impact on the world. That sounds really intimidating and I can think of wayyy more reasons I’ll be a failure in that pursuit than a success. Disney Little John Disney Robin Hood GIFfrom Disney Little John GIFs But if I just allow myself to believe for a moment… …
• My Health Strategy ✔️2021.11.23
  I want to be healthy today and for the rest of my life, but my current strategy is “don’t worry about it until it’s a problem.” That’s a terrible strategy. What am I going to change?
• How I Perfected My Calendar 📆2021.11.15
  The problem is, I can’t find a schedule that works for me. They’re either too restrictive, too much work to maintain or pointless because I don’t do what they say. I haven’t thrown out my calendar. Instead, I’ve found a solution that’s both helpful AND freeing!
• My Financial Strategy 💰2021.11.12
  My current [honest] strategy in a sentence would be “treading water and crossing my fingers that I live until retirement…” which is objectively terrible. I want to be rich. If I put on my nerd hat I might say I want to “remove money as a limiting constraint” so when I spend money I don’t have to think about it 🤓. Yeah…so that’s not revolutionary. Everyone wants to be rich. What am I going to do differently? Let me start by establishing what I think it means to be rich. A year ago I’d have said, “to be rich is
• How to Draw a Dream Map: The Pieces 🏷️2021.11.07
  What are the bridges, rivers, lakes and roads that make up my Dream Map? Live the dream! Use a Dream Map to get there. But where to start? The Dream Map operates the same way as a regular map, establishing a bridge between the abstract and reality. There are places, roads, and other symbols on the map; information that you see every day organized in a way to help you get where you want to go. Symbols that together take the real, concrete world and portray it neatly on the page. If the real world is put together with roads,
• 10 Beliefs That Make The Dream Map Work 📚2021.11.05
  If I can’t possibly know what life will throw at me, and possess zero foresight into the future with 100% certainty, what can I do to prepare myself for the inevitable adversity that will stand in my way as I begin on this journey? The Dream Map is the biggest project I’ll ever take on. Its scope is my life, after all. It is at once all consuming, yet depends on razor sharp focus for me to get where I want to go. It is as much a minefield as it is a maze that I must carefully navigate. While
• What on Earth is a Dream Map? 🌏2021.11.01
  I have agency over my life. I cannot predict the future, I can only influence it. I control the inputs to my life and affect the outputs. A Dream Map is a mental model that helps me to orient my daily life in the direction of my dreams. It is a heuristic that informs my day-to-day decision making, clearly linking how my actions today influence me towards my dreams. Building out and executing a Dream Map takes work. I have to figure out what my dreams are, I have to define strategies to get there and the tactics that go
• What Does Success Mean to me? 🤩2021.10.31
  Will I Know it When I See It? Merriam-Webster defines success as “the fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame.” The problem I have with this definition is that it’s hogwash…It does not give any latitude for forging your own path. My definition of success is intensely personal and clearer now than ever before. It hasn’t always been that way. For years I borrowed the conventional definition of success that floats out there in pop culture, put my name on it and called it my own. It looked something like fame 🤩, fortune 🤑, and happiness 🤪. It’s
• Why I’m Forging my Own Path to Success 🔨2021.10.28
  It’s not just acting with intention. It’s acting with intention on steroids after a bunch of mushrooms, unleashing my creativity, passions, purposes and wishes onto the canvas of my life to do what I can to shape it towards my dreams. I’ve made it this far without a Dream Map. What went wrong? Or what didn’t go right-enough? I’ve written previously about how I have a pretty good life, but aspire towards something greater. And, that’s despite living my life without the details of my Dream Map sorted. Anyone who’s been alive can tell you that without a map you
• Mapping Out The Life I (Really) Want 🛶2021.10.27
  … and willing it into existence What’s the problem? It’s certainly not that I don’t know what I want out of life. I want it all, happiness, riches, social status and the like. I don’t think myself uncommon in that regard. The problem is that despite a decade toiling away in corporate America, I’m not materially closer to that reality. Days go by and I lose a lot of energy to entropy, that is, heat that’s lost to the universe. Time and attention I’ll never get back. Whenever I consider moving closer to what I want out of life I