Two years ago we returned from a year-long backpacking trip throughout Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala, Canada, and Colombia and were faced with a bit of a conundrum – how did we really want our lives to be? We’ve spent the last two years working on that and now we are going to share with you our tips to help you to start living life on your own terms.
Note from the author: This article has been written by me from my experience. I may recommend & provide links to products & services that I have used & may make commission from such links. This commission helps cover the costs of running this website & will be at no extra cost to you. Anything that I am recommend is from my personal experience & belief that it is worth using. Happy reading!
Living Life On Your Own Terms – What Does This Look Like For You?
The first step to building your dream life is to visualise it; remember if you have dreamt it, it exists. For us, this meant looking at what we really love to do and building more of that into our everyday. We love to adventure, hiking being one of our favourite ways to explore, so when thinking about our dream life hiking, nature and time outdoors was an integral part of our dream.
Below – sharing our hiking inspiration with the followers of Rei.
Start Living Life On Your Own Terms – Prioritise What’s Important
Going into a new decade, never before has life been so hectic and overwhelming for us all. With so much going on it’s vital to really think about what’s most important and set priorities accordingly.
Before we went on our big backpacking trip together our lives were very much taken up with work and time socialising with friends and family. Our friends and family are very important to us, however, it has meant that we’ve had to look at how we spend our time with them and adjust that to suit our new lifestyle.
We have swapped big nights out for big hikes, regular and steady income for self-employment and a permanent home base for our tiny home on wheels. We have done all of this as it means that we get to work and adventure from wherever we choose and instead of living for the expectations of others we are living life on our own terms – happy and free.
It’s Your Life – Learn What To Say No To
Saying no is something that most struggle with but saying yes to everything can put major stress and strain on a person. As well as prioritising, saying no is crucial in achieving goals and steering you towards your dream life.
We are not saying that you should never do things that you don’t feel like doing, as doing so is just a part of life, what we are saying is that you shouldn’t feel guilty for saying no to things that are not meant for you. Living life on our terms has very much meant that we say no to a lot of things that we maybe would have said yes to before but the result of that is that we now have more room for the things that mean the most to us both.
A book that has really helped us is —> The Power Of A Positive No. <—
Don’t Feel Guilty
Society has a way of making us feel as though we should be living a certain way. The way we see it, what is most important is living in a way that is connected to your true purpose and your true authentic self – your soul.
As long as we are not harming others we see no bad in continuing to live life on our terms. We got married in June and around that, a lot of expectation was projected our way, married to some people means ‘settling down’ with a mortgage and children.
Married to us means a lifetime of adventure together, for that is what makes us both happy and that is how we want and have chosen our married life to be.
Opinions And Advice
Have you ever been absolutely buzzing about an idea, only for someone to completely burst your bubble with their opinion? We’ve probably all been there, there is a fine line between unwanted opinion and welcomed advice. For example, you are reading this blog post which is filled with our opinions and perception based on our own experiences – you have chosen to open it and read it but that does not mean that you have to follow all or even any of the advice that we are giving you.
Living life on our own terms in the way that we do means that we get a lot of questions, advice thrown our way and sometimes unwanted opinions. Whilst we appreciate that people’s intentions are good what we have learned is to understand that we have the option to take on someone’s opinion/advice or not and guess what? So do you!
Plan Living Life On Your Own Terms
We love to remain flexible and spontaneous but what we have found in building our dream life is that quite a lot of planning has been required. For us living outside of ‘the norm’ has meant a lot of changes. This has resulted in tough decisions being made, leaving some security behind and taking a big leap to live location independently.
There are resources and tools to help with almost everything nowadays, researching alternatives and figuring out what will help you will be of huge benefit when transitioning from your old life to your new one.
We both write regularly to help in mapping out our dreams, we’d recommend using a Journal to help with this.
Take Small Steps
In September we spoke to an audience at Borderless Live on ‘Living Life On Your Own Terms’ – one of the questions we were asked by Han Meets World was “If you could give one piece of advice to help others to start living life on their own terms, what would it be?” …. our answer was simply to visualise what your dream life looks like and to start by taking even the smallest of steps to get there.
For example, you want to start a travel blog but you have a full-time job – look at how much time you can dedicate to it per week and allocate that time to it. You might want to like we have pack up everything you own and drive off into the mountains in your tiny home on wheels, we can tell you that this didn’t happen in an instant for us, there were a lot of steps for us to get there.
Maybe our —> DREAM PLANNER <— can help you.
Living Life On Your Own Terms – Find Your Balance
It is said that your new life may cost you your old one and in some ways, this is very much true. Deciding to do things differently may mean that you lose some things along the way however, a lot can be gained from that too.
This really goes back to prioritising what is important and finding your balance in making the time for that. Balance can be a funny thing and one that we have admittedly struggled with. We have both found that not only setting priorities but reassessing them has helped us massively in living and working on the road. It’s all very much been about going with the ebbs and flows.
Did you know that we share inspiration and tips to help creatives run a digital business through our coaching services with SoulMadic.
Come Meet Us And Talk Living Life On Your Own Terms!
Whether you have started your journey to your dream life or are just starting out we hope that you have found this post useful – in a couple of week’s time we are going to be talking all about ‘How To Start Life As A Digital Nomad’ at Destinations London with Wanderlust Magazine alongside The Silver Nomad and SAF Coaching.
If you would like to come and see us at Destinations, London we will be on the Travel Smarter Stage at 14.45 on Saturday 1st February. Using our unique discount code DESTAD you will gain admission for two adults for free paying only a box office fee of £1.50.
--> Free tickets to see us at Destinations, London <– USE CODE – DESTAD
**Ticket offer for advance bookings only, a maximum of two tickets per order, then a standard advance ticket price of £11 per adult applies. The advance box office closes 30th January 2020.**
We would love to see you at the London show so please drop us an email [email protected] if you can make it. If you have any questions about living life on your own terms we are always happy to answer so please leave us a comment or get in touch.
Freedom filled wishes,
Kelly and Adam x
