(330) 699-4673

Getting Started Intentionally Designing Your Life

In this video Margaret shows 5 easy steps to get started on intentionally designing your life.

 

Want to Know More about Self-Care and Stress Relief?

Get my free Self-Care Checklist.

A Checklist of 100 ways to Increase your Self-Care and Reduce Your Stress!

 

Transcript:

Hi I’m Margaret Briem. I’m probably best known for the coaching and training services I provide and two of my brands Live the Life You Love and Delicious Sexy Business Secrets. We are your best choice for support in navigating the course to intentional success. Dare to dream with Margaret Briem. We will get you there.

One of the questions I am most often asked when it comes to personal life is how do you get started intentionally designing your life. Most people find the idea of intentionally designing your life intriguing and overwhelming and they don’t know what to do to get started. They went through school, graduated high school, possibly went on to college, felt lucky to get a job, probably changed jobs a couple of times, and then settled into a position that they were comfortable with, and maintained a lifestyle that they got accustomed to and got comfortable with as well. But, most people haven’t really grown into their dreams of what they wanted to do with their life and really did not have an idea that they could intentionally design their life and have it to be what they wanted it to be, besides possibly choosing college when they were older, and maybe where they wanted to live, based on where they went to college. Most people don’t move very far from the college they attend.

There are some steps you can take to intentionally design your life that are not overwhelming, it just comes down to asking yourself a few simple questions.

1. The first thing you need to do in order to intentionally design your life is look carefully at where you spend your time, with who and why. Most people have been raised to be pleasers. The people they are usually spending their time with are family members, whether they like them or not, whether they get along with them or not, and then co-workers, again making it about pleasing. It’s not about who they enjoy spending time with, doing things they enjoy doing, or doing things they feel passionate about such as certain volunteer activities, causes, dedicating time and money to the causes they believe in. That is something you really need to look at and you need to consider that if you are pleasing others, what are you sacrificing? Are you sacrificing your own happiness? Are you sacrificing your time?

Time is one precious commodity that you can never regain. If you are stolen from or make a bad investment it is always possible that you can make a new investment or a new choice, or work diligently and regain what you lost. Time you can never regain, once it is gone, it’s gone. We all only have a limited time on this Earth and we don’t know how much it is. Really consider not spending time with situations that don’t bring you joy, or that are not required of you. Pleasing others is not required of you. Consider who you are spending time with and why you are spending time with them and start prioritizing what’s important to you and gradually make that change.

2. Step 2 is about being truly honest with yourself about who you are spending time with, which we already talked about a little bit, and who you would like to increase spending time with. In many cases people spend a lot of time with family and with co-workers and aren’t spending time developing friendships, life long lasting friendships that they enjoy and appreciate. They do a lot of things out of guilt and you need to figure out what things you are doing out of guilt and let that guilt go. Start strategizing, which sounds manipulative but it’s not, strategizing who you would like to spend more time with and increase your time with and who you would like to decrease your time with. While it sounds like it’s repeating what I just said, what we’re talking about here is defining the type of person who has similar values to you and has similar interests to you and surrounding yourself with people who are like minded and searching that out. Decrease the time you spend with people who you feel guilty if you don’t spend time with them and drain your energy and drain your joy. I am not taking about shirking family responsibility. I am talking about increasing the value of your life to yourself and how you prioritize to make your life more enjoyable, more of what you wanted, more delicious, more about who you want to be as opposed to who others want you to be.

3. Step 3 is to start taking better care of yourself. Most people will think this is about diet and exercise, and if that is true for you, that you need to worry about diet and exercise, or at least give some priority and attention to your diet and exercise, then, of course do that. I can’t speak about diet and exercise, because I have a weight problem and I have not yet made that a priority in my life. I can tell you that there is a great deal of things you can do for yourself to improve your self-care that have nothing to do with diet or exercise. I actually have a 100 point checklist and a majority of which is not diet and exercise that you can do to raise your self-care. Some of those things are as simple as taking great care of your car so that you know you can get from point A to point B without breaking down and so that you are not sitting in a filthy car so you are not feeling uncomfortable and stressed. Having a good reliable car that’s clean and well taken care of makes you feel well taken care of when you have to travel.

Another way to make yourself feel well taken care of is to not answer the phone every time it rings. Phones are for our convenience. We pay our bills for our convenience and so when we have emergencies we can call 911 and get that taken care of. We aren’t a slave to our phone and we aren’t on call to every other person in the world. So if you put boundaries into when you answer your phone and when you return phone calls, you might find that your life is a little bit less stressful and you might feel less overwhelmed and less on demand. It is important, we all need boundaries, we all need downtime and we all need a private life.

4. The fourth step is to look at your stress and find ways to reduce it. Many people, well, all people have stress in their life whether they admit it or not. Some people handle a lot more stress better and some people can handle only a little bit of stress. What you need to do is learn how to manage your stress. I personally apparently can handle a lot of stress. I have a lot of kids, I own a business as you know, and I have a lot of things going on all the time.

Actually, in the process of adopting some of our kids, I had to take a psych eval, which at first I was very concerned about and don’t want to do. It turned out to be really a good thing because I learned a lot of things about myself, a lot of positive things about myself. One of those things is that I can handle a high amount of stress and I can juggle multiple things at one time, quiet easily, apparently compared to a lot of the population in the United States. I have also learned how to manage my stress, there are a few things I do.

One of the things I do to handle my stress, is that I have a Jacuzzi bath tub and I soak in that thing every night, unless I am traveling because it is not available to me. I sit in that thing every night and use it to release tension. I use the jets to massage my feet and my hands, to reduce the tension in my feet and my hands. I also meditate while I am in the bath tub and reflect on the things I need to reflect on, be it family, or business, or a social situation, whatever I need to reflect on. I use that time not only physically for myself, but mentally for myself as well.

The other thing you can do is meditate. It only takes about 15 minutes a day and I will explain more about that later.

The third thing you could do is bring music into your life that will help you to have more enjoyable moments. It can help you to increase your energy to make it easier to help you keep going during the day, or when you have a late night. The other thing it can do is help you to relax or go to sleep if you use a slower paced music or also nature sounds can help you to relax and go to sleep. Even if you are just reducing your stress, nature sounds or very calming relaxing music can help you with that as well.

Another thing you can do to reduce your stress is to really just be by yourself sometimes. Go for a walk, just go sit in a hotel room if you have a hard time getting away from your family, take travel. One of the reasons I travel for business and go to seminars is so that I can have some down time to recover. It makes me appreciate my family more. It makes me appreciate my home more. It makes me appreciate the comforts that I am used to more. On the other hand, the traveling, staying in a hotel room helps me have the downtime that I need to reflect on the things I need to reflect on. It gives me a little bit of personal space and a little bit of emotional space so I am not dealing with a whole lot of other people’s issues since we have a large family. I would highly recommend that as well.

A while back there was a parenting expert, they were the people who wrote the book about teaching your kids values. They had a large family and I saw an interview with the husband and wife together. One of the things the husband said was that because they had such a large family, and because she pretty much managed the family on her own, because he had a career and was gone, then he retired, was once a quarter he did send her away for a week in a hotel room. He and his oldest son managed the family, probably not as well as she did, but they managed the family and they managed to survive and they managed not to tear up the house too much, while she had a week to herself at the hotel with spa treatments, manicures and pedicures, room service and all those great things so she had some down time to rejuvenate, relax and recover. We all need that, so you need to choose to do that for yourself. It doesn’t have to be a week once a quarter. It could be just a couple of days, just a couple of nights in a hotel, with maybe a little bit of spa treatments and massage, and some room service with just some time to relax. This is a great mini vacation, mental health vacation for all adults, they need it.

5. My last tip, tip number five is to celebrate who you are more. You need to take time to reflect. Especially when you are starting on this journey to intentionally design your life, you need to reflect back on all the things you have achieved, and maybe even write them down, because that will help you to remember. Then you have to think about all the ways you didn’t celebrate who you are. Take time to do a little ritual or a little celebration or do some special thing for yourself to give you that pat on the back that you have never received from yourself. It is not about everybody else acknowledging you. It’s about you acknowledging you, and you need to do that. Celebrate who you are and appreciate who you are today, because that gives you the foundation to intentionally design your life to be exactly what you want it to be tomorrow.

I am Margaret Briem telling you that you can live the life you love. All you have to do is take that first step. What’s stopping you? Don’t you deserve to live the life you love? Until next time, take care.