877. 3 Ways We Have Created Our Dream Life (That You Can Do Too!)
26 Apr 2022 · 19 min
Lori and Chris Harder share three practices that shaped their life: make outlandish plans and repeat them daily, get advice from high-achievers instead of normal people, and make investments that stretch you financially. They own homes in Arizona, California, and Wisconsin.
Chapters
Everyone who is living some kind of dream life, they had to first disappoint people close to them, knowing that they were going to be able to revive those relationships when they finally saw the fruit of what it was you were trying to plant and then grow and create.
And we're back with another episode of He Said, she Said.
We're actually sitting in our hotel room in Newport. Just woke up looking at the ocean.
I am actually staring directly at the ocean right now.
How happy are you?
I'm so happy.
I mean, put it on a scale for me, 1 to 10. 11, probably 12. 12 even. Beaming.
Beaming. I feel like a different person. We talk a lot about this, that I really do think there are certain places for certain people, just as in where you are actually meant to be planted. And truly, for me, it is by the water, in a lot of greenery, is where I just feel my soul expand. I get all of the ideas, I get all of the energy. I just feel so at peace. And I don't know if I can say that I feel totally at peace sitting at this table right now because.
There is a lot of room service all over it.
Room service from last night. So I'm like smelling residual, you know.
French fries, Caesar dressing.
Caesar dressing.
So last night we went and we stopped at our Newport home here. It has no furniture in it. So if you're like, wait, why are they at a hotel if they have a Newport home? All the furniture is being set up and delivered today. So we stopped at the Newport home and took a walk around our neighborhood. And we were reflecting on how we've built an absolute dream life. But our version of what a dream life is, right. Everyone else's version is different. And for context, I mean, we haven't talked a lot about our third home, but we bought a incredible legacy lake home in Wisconsin that we're also going to go spend a couple months at this summer. And, you know, we're now created a situation where we get to have Arizona as a home base where family is. Have our California home so we can get as much California as we want and also still, you know, go back to that lake life and our roots that we love in Wisconsin and three gorgeous, gorgeous places. And the reason I describe it to you like that is, I guess, number one, we wanted to remind you that your absurd, crazy, outlandish dream life is available to you. Don't listen to the evidence around you. And we're actually going to give you three ways that we've created this dream life. But aside from Those three things, we wanted this to be a reminder that. To stop listening to the evidence around you and to go seek the evidence to support the fact that, yeah, the craziest of dream lifes is available to you. Because we're just two regular kids from the Midwest.
If you want a dream life, you have to stop surrounding yourself and listening to normal people's advice.
That's number one.
So you have to have outlandish plans. And we've always made outlandish plans. That's number one. And making outlandish plans has always taken us a couple of years to get there. Sometimes it's a year, sometimes it's three. But that's pretty much the range that we have found that when we make those plans, we tend to. Sometimes we hit them, sometimes we hit a little below them. Sometimes we're just shocked at the way that it even went. But honestly, for us, we make those outlandish plans and we keep them alive every day. So what are we doing to keep them alive every day? We talk about them every single day on our walk. And I just want to keep. I want to put in there Chris kind of what we do to keep that alive. I know that We've shared the Power 9 with you. We do three gratitudes, three excited abouts, and three manifests. And I can honestly say right now that we are doing a lot of the same manifests every single day. We're outlandish, we're outlandish, but we've been here before and we've done outlandish things before and we've accomplished them. So that's what we have to keep going back to, is realizing everything that you guys have done in your life, you have had leaps in there that you have to use as proof and know that if you've done one big leap, your leaps are going to get exponentially bigger with each one. It's just how it works. You're going to be able to go further, reflecting back on that and improving it to yourself. I believe the other day we went on a walk where I was like, okay, I need proof. I need proof. I gotta look at all the proof of the things that I've done in my life. I need proof of why I know that light pink is gonna be successful. And I just went back through my life and looked at all of the proof of the things, the small things, the big things that I had done that seemed crazy to the old me or that seemed crazy to the people around me. But just going back real quick to who you're surrounded by. If you're gonna have outlandish plans, you're gonna have to also be listening to people who also have similar plans and be surrounding yourself with those people who have similar plans. And don't think it's crazy. Like right now, Chris, we're just like listening to a couple books over and over again that make us feel like it's normal to have these big money goals and these big money jumps.
So I wanna clean this up for them a little bit. Cause you kind of blended one and two there a little. I'm just very linear. And so number one was make outlandish plans. It'll take you a couple years or longer to get there, but keep them in your sights. And that's what Laurie was talking about. We talk about it every day. We speak it in life every day. Three years ago, on a Wednesday, say, hey, I want to have three homes in these three locations. And have the schedule. And then, you know, not do anything about it. We've been talking about that every single freaking day to each other, to ourselves, you name it. So the first one is make outlandish plans and keep them in your sights. The second one, Lori was really starting to allude to there, and that is go against normal advice. And to do that, you're gonna have to seek out abnormal people who have achieved abnormal results in order to create abnormal results in your life. And a lot of times the term abnormal might have a negative connotation, but in this case, it's a very positive one. It's normal to struggle. It's normal to get by. It's normal to have a so so life. It's normal to have one home. It's normal to have financial stress. It's normal to maybe not be your healthiest self. Abnormal is to be really fit, really wealthy. To have as many homes as you want to live in, all the places you want to take, as many trips as you want to give to, as much to charity as you want to do crazy things that people would say, hey, that's not very smart, but you just want to do it. That's taking abnormal advice from abnormal people. And that's what we've always done. We've sought those people out.
I think it's easy to look at our life and be like, well, it seems like everyone in their life is really supportive. Except we have gone through some major challenges with our family and with friends. And I wanna share this because I think that it's really important to know what actually happens when you go against what a family pattern is or what is normal in your life? And what. When we decided to move to California from Minnesota, we had our family tell us that our priorities were all wrong and that we were not putting our family first and that it was a bad decision, that we were losing ourselves. We were losing ourselves. We were getting caught up in this lifestyle. We were getting caught up in the California lifestyle and the flash and the money and all of the things. And that does not feel good. That actually feels quite terrible when your character is being attacked like that.
And that's where most people pause and stop.
That's where most people pause and stop. And the thing is, is that you are the one who is blessed with the bigger seeing the bigger picture, especially if you have this vision for your overall life. And the thing that they couldn't see that felt even more hurtful was that we were moving out there to get bigger opportunities so that we could eventually get enough money to help change. Change their life and to create a legacy lifestyle for our whole family where we could be on boats, on the water, on lake homes, and be spending really quality time together in the places that we wanted with the people that we wanted, doing the activities that we wanted. And we were not able to do that yet. Nope, we did not have that lifestyle at all. People were still really struggling.
We didn't have the money to take care of family.
No. No money to take care of people. And so we had to hold tight to that vision. We had to actually be in those conversations and attempt to not take it personal. Even though we did, we got really hurt. At some point. Some of it flared up into a pretty bad fight where for a while there we were like, look, they're just not going to understand. They're going to have to be upset with us. We're going to have to learn to get over whatever it is that they are thinking, and we're going to have to focus on our goals. And that's what we really had to do. And it was not easy knowing that our family was not happy with us and that our friends were judging us. We had people telling us that we were getting caught up in the. I remember some people in particular were telling us that we were getting caught up in the California lifestyle. I'm like, what does this mean? Like, this is what I've wanted my whole life.
Well, the point is, the people who are in your life by default, they're not gonna see your vision. They're not gonna understand the size of it. They're not gonna necessarily be able to See the long term why behind, why you wanna do something. And you need to know that that happens to everybody. Everyone who has, quote, made it, everyone who is living some kind of dream life. They had to first disappoint people close to them, knowing that they were going to be able to revive those relationships when they finally saw the fruit of what it was you were trying to plant and then grow and create. Now everyone's happy. Now everybody gets to be taken care of. Now we get to spend more time with family and the friends that we want to spend time with than we ever did before. But we had to be able to go through the rough part, to be able to create the wealth and the time and the freedom and all that stuff to be able to actually do that.
When you have people who say whatever you're doing or your dream is changing you, you know you've changed, you're acting different, you need this now, you need that now. Whatever it is that's making you feel bad that they're saying yes. There were moments that I, you know, went into a completely different self. Like the self that I have always wanted to be. I had different priorities, I, I had different wants, I had different desires, I had different levels of what I wanted in my life. And I think that feeling bad about becoming the person that you are always meant to be is gonna be a choice that you have to choose to let that go and know that it's okay that you now have different standards that you are holding for yourself. It's okay if you didn't like the person that you were that they want you to be again. It's okay if you acknowledge that they actually just want you to be at a family event and be miserable. It's okay to understand that misery loves company and to let it go and find other ways to be spending time with them.
And I also want to clarify, so many of our friends and our family have been very supportive of a lot of things that we've done throughout life as well. But it's important that you, the listener, know that there's going to be periods where they don't understand the vision and you're not going to get there if you give in. So number two was we've gone against normal advice from normal people and sought out abnormal advice from abnormal people to support our abnormal life goals. Number three then is that we've always made investments that stretch us. And by investments, I mean starting way back from enrolling into self development events that stretched us financially to buy that ticket and then enrolling in mentors that stretched us to invest with that mentor and then investing in true investment opportunities. Whether it was homes, whether it has been, you know, crazy crypto things, whether it's been companies, whether it's been all the other things that, hey, some of them fail and turn out to be flops. And there's beautiful lessons in those investments, too. Like, there's actually value in every investment, whether it pays you tenfold or not. But then some of them absolutely pop. And that's where you get to the next level or you get to that next level financial win. And both are equally important, right? When you invest in yourself and you bring yourself to a next level, or when you invest in your finances, you bring your finances to a next level, you need investments in both of those categories that stretch you. So when we've made these investments, I think the disempowering thought for most people out there is, well, I'll make those once I have the money. I'll make those once it feels smart. I'll make those once it seems responsible. You have to make investments that stretch you when it feels irresponsible. And I know that sounds like bad advice, but I don't know how else to describe it.
You know, I think of it as, do you enter a marathon after you know that you could run a marathon 10 times over? No, you don't. You literally enter a marathon and. And you start the training for it after you put your money down and saying, I'm deciding to become the person who could run this. And that is literally the exact way that we have always done it. It is a decision. We don't just say, oh, we're going to make this investment. Let's start stretching. We literally talk about it and say, if we're going to do this, this is where we have decided to level up. What does this mean? Who do we need to become? How does our lifestyle have to change? What sacrifices do we have to make? Like, this is not a joke. This is not like, yeah, let's give it a whirl. It is. Who do we need to become to make this thing work? Well, we'd have to do this, this, this and this. And that is going to be a rough ride for a while. That is going to be really challenging. That is going to challenge our brains. That's going to make us feel this way. That's probably going to make us want to fight about this. So how do we negate that? And how do we plan for what is coming? How do we put the plans in Place that will make us become these people. And then how do we keep our sights set on this and remind ourselves why we wanted to do this, to make sure that it is, you know, remembering why it's so worth it for us.
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Yeah. So those are the three ways that, like, tangible ways, you know, aside from the canned, boring advice, well, we worked harder or we did this. Like, of course, those are things, just prerequisites to get in the game. But those are really the three reasons. The three ways that we've built such a crazy dream life is, number one, we made outlandish plans, knowing it was going to take a few years to get there each time for each plan. And we didn't lose sight of them. Right. Kept them present every day. Number two, we went against normal advice from normal people and sought abnormal advice from abnormal people who have achieved abnormal results. And number three, we made investments that really stretched us many times for ourself, meaning self development, many times for our business, for business development, and many times financially. Literally, like saying, oh, God, I don't want to close out this one investment, but I know I need to go make this investment in this other thing. Right. You're choosing between two tough decisions. It's never easy, it's never comfortable, and it never feels responsible. But those are the ones that pop the most for us. Those three ways are how we got to our dream life. Now, you may get there differently, but we wanted to kind of share that formula.
Yeah, we just want to send you guys so much love as you make these decisions, because becoming the person you are meant to be is not an easy task. You will probably get in some potential family spats, you will lose some friends, and in the long run, it really turns out better than you can imagine. If we made that sound really challenging, it is. But now, looking at the life that we have for our family and the conversations that we've had around, you know, the big vision, the long term now, our family's very excited, and not just excited. A lot of them are on board with their own dreams and visions now because breaking a pattern is a little rough in the fam. And, you know, I look at the friends that we have now, and yes, we've lost. We've definitely lost some friends in our life throughout, you know, the past like 10 years. But we've also gained these long term friends that I know are gonna be in our life forever because now we share core values and vision. If you don't share core values and vision in your relationships, that's really where they're probably not going to last long term. So just looking at that for the future of who really shares those two things. Okay, you guys sending you so much love.
And if you want to tap into us as your abnormal couple that gives you abnormal advice, one of the things you can do is we text you a positive money mantra or a positive business perspective. Every single morning that I wake up, I wake Lori up to a mantra every morning. And she said to me once, hey, you should do this for other people. And I literally started to, you know, a few of you, and now thousands and thousands and thousands of thousands of you get a text every single morning when I wake up. So if you want to be able to tap into some of that to help put the right colored lenses on for the day, text me the word daily to 310-421-0416. Again, text me the word daily to 310-421-04160 and I'll make sure to throw you on the list and give you a little bit of goodness every single morning. This morning's was this, by the way, because I am good, money in my position becomes good. Because I am good, money in my possession becomes good. So they're just little, little quips like that every morning so you can see the world in the right way. Again, text me the word daily to 310-421-0416. Thanks for listening.
Bye, everyone.
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