How To Design Your Life

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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there, you love this podcast and you want to receive inspirational text messages from me directly to your cell phone. If you live in the United States or Canada, text me right now. 512-580-9305 once again, 512-580-9305. Today we're going to talk about how to design the life that you want, the perfect life that you want. And this is super important. If you're the type of person who's listening to this podcast right now. You're listening because you want more in life. You want to create a life that you're proud of. But most people go through life with no clear plan, just basically like a sailboat that's just letting the wind take it wherever it goes. And they're just hoping that they end up where they want to be versus actually sitting there and going, okay, I'm going to take over the steering wheel. I'm going to get myself to where I want to go and so they don't plan out who they want to be, what they want to do, what they want to experience. And a couple days ago, I was meditating. And recently, what I've really been doing is just focusing on being grateful and focusing on just saying thank you. That's it. That's the main thing I'm trying to do. And we're about to move into a new house in about a month or so. And I started thinking about what it would be like if I brought Rob from 2015 into my life right now and what he would think about it. And because it's easy for us to be in our current life and to be like, oh, I need more. I want more. I want to achieve more. I need to do this. I need to do that. And feeling like we have, like, lack or feeling like we've lost something or feeling like we're longing for something. And so I just started thinking, like, if I could bring Rob from 10 years ago to this moment, what would he think about this? And I started thinking about, like, when I first moved to Austin, I lived in my friend's house, and I rented a room from him, and I started the podcast. I had the idea for the podcast when I lived inside of that house. And then I moved into a house of my own, and it was my first house I ever bought. And I remember when my girlfriend and I, who is now my wife, moved in, and we were so excited to have, like, this house that we lived in, and it was the first place that we moved in together. And I remember how grateful I was for that house. And then about a year and a half later, we went and we traveled for six months and rented the house out, and we just traveled all around the world. And how grateful I was because all I wanted to do was travel. And so we traveled for six months. I was so grateful for that. And then after we came back to Austin, we moved into, like, a nice luxury apartment downtown. And how grateful I was that I did that. And we moved into such a nice place. It was downtown, and we could experience that life. And then we wanted a bigger place, so we moved into the east side. And I was so grateful that we moved into the east side and was able to experience that. And then the house that I live in right now, I was so grateful for. And I was thinking about even each one of the steps of my life and how I've come so far. And I was just thinking just so much gratitude towards it. And I was feeling so grateful for each step. And the thought came into my head, how the hell Did I get here? Like, how did I get here? I started thinking about it. I was like, man, I have intentionally planned out my life for a really long time. And I started planning out my life and really designing my life. In 2007, the company that I worked for had a guy come in and talk to us about how to design your life and what you want it to look like. And putting a hundred goals down of financial goals and traveling goals and spiritual goals and intellectual goals and fitness goals and all of that, put them all down on a piece of paper and make a 10 year plan. It was the first time I'd ever made a 10 year plan. And I journaled out the life that I wanted, everything that I wanted. I found that journal a few years ago and it was crazy to see how many things I knocked off the list. And I didn't even realize it. And so today we're not going to plan out your life specifically from right now. What we're going to do is we're actually going to plan your life from the end and then work backwards. And so we're going to start from your funeral and then we're going to look back and it seems morbid. Yeah, we're going to talk about you dying today. Right? It seems morbid. But this is a super powerful exercise that I use with my clients that, that really helps you get a lot of clarity on what it is that you wanna create, what you want your life to be, how you want to be as a person, how you want your relationships to be. It allows you to become more focused on what it is that you want, but then also start to be very intentional in crafting a life that you truly want. And it's kind of like the idea of momento mori, which is, you know, the reminder, it's, it's a stoic philosophy, which is basically translates to remember you're going to die, think about death. And when you think about death, it can sound morbid, but really what it does is it, it makes your present moment way more significant when you know that you're not going to have this at some point in time. And I remember asking my mom a few years ago how often she thinks about death. And she was like, I don't know, maybe once a week. I was like, oh, cool. And she's like, how often do you think about death? I was like, I don't know, maybe like 10 times a day. And she's like, is something wrong with you? I was like, no, I just think about it because it's it gives urgency to my life. It gives urgency to this moment. And so we're gonna go through three steps of basically how to design your life and then how to live intentionally. And step number one is to imagine the end and who you want to be. And so I want you to imagine your eulogy. I want you to imagine that you're dead. You're dead, you're at the funeral, and you're giving a eulogy for yourself. And today can be a working session. So if you're at home and you've got a journal, just take out your journal and pause me as.

As you need to.

And I want you to imagine that you are someone at your funeral giving a eulogy for yourself. What do you want to say about yourself? By writing your eulogy, you can start to create a very vivid picture of the life that you lived. And then we can work backwards after we do that, and we can write about the person that you aspire to be and the values that you embodied, the legacy that you're going to leave behind. And it helps you reverse engineer your life and figure out who you want to be. And then every decision that you make from here forward brings you closer to that life, hopefully, if we use that. And so I'm going to give you a few different categories, and I want you to kind of just write stuff down. If you're writing, if you're driving your car, just start to think about these. Let's talk about your character and your values. First off, how do you want people to describe you after you die? When you're not in the room, how do you want people to describe you? Do you want to be remembered for kindness, for integrity, for perseverance, for being adventurous, for being fun, for being loving? What do you want people to describe you as? What core values did you live by and how did they show up in your daily actions? So maybe you say, you know what? I want to be a very honest person.

Okay?

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to commit to honesty. I'm going to make a commitment to always tell the truth, even when it's difficult from this moment forward. Maybe you say, you know what? I want to be kinder. So I'm going to practice daily kindness. I'm going to set a goal to perform at least one act of kindness every single day, whether it's helping a colleague, volunteering my time, even just giving somebody a compliment when I walk in a Starbucks. So maybe kindness is the thing I want to start cultivating. Maybe I want to be more patient. Okay, well, what does that look like for me to develop more patience in my life? Maybe you want to be somebody who has really high integrity. So you start thinking, okay, what would it look like if I lived the rest of my life with the highest integrity that I possibly can? Maybe I want to be somebody who's really resilient. I want people to talk about how no matter what happened to him, he always was a way. He always found a way to get through it and work through it it. And he inspired other people to break barriers as well. And so start to write down what characteristics, what values, how do you want people to describe you after you're gone? And we will be right back. Teachers are deep into new units this

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The next category is your impact that you had and the legacy that you had. What impact did you have on the world? You know, if you're writing from the end and just start with the end in mind, instead of saying, hey, I want this thing, I want to leave the world with this impact, you're going to say, rob left the world with this impact. What impact did you have on the world? Did you make a difference in your community, in your industry on a global scale? What causes were you passionate about? How did you contribute to them? Consider all of the ways that you inspire and help inspire other people and help them out in some way. Maybe you say, I want to support a cause. I want to find a specific cause that I can put five hours a day into. I'm sorry, five hours a week into. And I can donate a certain percentage of my income or volunteer there in a certain amount of hours per week or per month. And you support that cause and become something that really motivates you to put your extra time into. Maybe you say, hey, I've gotten pretty far in life. What I want to do is I want to start mentoring other people. And you might want to aim to mentor a certain amount of people in your field and help them grow and help them succeed like other people did for you when you were younger. Maybe you Say, hey, I've got a lot of knowledge and I want to write a book. Maybe you want to establish a scholarship. So what does it look like for you? What is your impact going to look like? What did it look like over the course of your lifetime? What legacy are you leaving? Next category I want you to start thinking about is I want you to start thinking about the people that you're close to in your family and your relationships. How do you want to be remembered? You know, when you look at your relationships, what do you want your children to say about you? What do you want your family to say about you? What do you want your spouse to say about you? How are your relationships, the people that you're closest with, going to talk about you? Did you create really deep, meaningful connections with your loved ones? Were you a really supportive partner? A nurturing parent? A loyal friend? Think back on the quality of your relationships over the course of your life. It's the end, it's over. You're dead. Think back of what your life was and the love that you shared and write it all down. What did it look like? And just don't even think about. Just write it. Don't go, oh, well, that's not realistic. No, no, no. Just write it down. Maybe you want to, like, have a really, really firm and strong family bond. Maybe you want to make sure that you have family dinners every single week. You have outings a couple times a month to make sure that you have quality time with the people that you love the most. Maybe you want to be a really active parent. Maybe you didn't have an active parent when you were a child and you want to be more involved in your children's lives. Maybe you want to go to the school events. Maybe you want to coach their basketball team. Maybe you want to help them with their homework every single night. What does it look like to be an active parent? Maybe you want to have a really great partnership and you commit to regular dates, date nights every single Friday, getting a sitter and making sure that you have date nights every single Friday. Maybe it's weekend getaways, once a quarter, just the two of you, so you can have a really strong and loving relationship with your partner. Maybe you want to have really great connections with friends. And maybe you've been so busy for the past five years that you need to reconnect with some of your friends. And so you're going to set a goal to reach out to old friends and maintain regular contact with them, whether that's calls, whether that's visits, FaceTimes, whatever it might be. Maybe you want to get better at intimacy. You're not really good at vulnerability, and you want to start being a little bit more intimate and vulnerable with your partner and improve your communication with them. What does that look like for you? And so start putting it down what you want it to look like with your relationships and with your family life. Okay, next thing is, what milestones do you want to hit? What accomplishments do you want to have over the course of your life? Like, what significant milestones do you want to achieve? What did you achieve over the course of your lifetime? Whether it's personal, professional, creative achievements. Just write everything down that would just make you feel the most fulfilled. What did you excel at? How did you push the boundaries? How did you bring your potential to the real world? Maybe you want to complete a marathon. Maybe you want to start a business. Maybe you want to publish a research paper, buy a home. Maybe you want to win a Grammy or win an Oscar. What are the accomplishments, the fun things, the big mountains that you get to climb? That's the next category. The next category after that. Passions and adventures. What passions did you pursue over the course of your lifetime? Did you travel the world? Did you put yourself into new cultures? Did you embrace new adventures? What did you do? Reflect on all of the experiences that made your life amazing. You're dead. Reflect on all of the ones that made your life amazing. Maybe you say, you know, go skydiving. Maybe it's travel to 30 different countries. Maybe it's learn a new language. Go on a solo backpacking trip for three weeks. Maybe it's go to a major cultural event like the Olympics or carnival or something like that. What is it that you decided to do? What are the crazy things that you did over the course of your amazing life? Okay, next category is your financial goals. What was your relationship with money like? How much money did you make? Did you achieve all the financial success and security? You know, what wealth did you create? What did you do? You're dead now. What happens to that money?

Who gets it? Do your children get it?

Or do you just give your children a little bit and you donate all the rest to a charity that you really appreciate? You know, maybe you want to. Maybe you retired by 45 years old. Maybe you had 25 investment properties. Maybe you had seven streams of income. Maybe your net worth was $10 million by the time you were 50. Just write it all down. And what you do is you start writing all of this stuff down of, like, what you want your life to look like. And you, you start thinking about all these different aspects and you create a very detailed vision of what your life was, AKA what you want your life to be. Sometimes it's easier to start with the end in mind than just go, well, this is what I want for my life. And this vision that you create becomes a foundation for this journey of your life that you have going forward. How did you want to feel every single day? What was your internal state like? Write everything down that just inspires you, that comes up. Okay, so that's step number one. Step number two is we're going to reverse engineer your life. We're going to come up with a roadmap, a blueprint. Once you've written out your eulogy, the next step is to work backward and create a roadmap from this. And so what you're going to want to do is you want to set goals, and so you want to put deadlines and you want to actually figure out what the deadlines are going to be. Okay, so if I want to be at $10 million net worth by 50, well, then I need to be at a million within the next three years. Okay, how do I need to do that? You know, if you want to be remembered for your generosity, maybe you set a goal to contribute a certain percentage of your income to charity every single year. If you want to be a big global traveler, you need to figure out how many countries you want to go to, what countries you want to go to, and what age you want to hit them by, and then give yourself a deadline for every single one of them. And so you just come up with goals and you actually start to plan. Okay, well, hey, this is the life that I created, you know, from my eulogy. This is the first thing I want to do. I want to do this, this, and this within this year. Okay, let me start planning out. You start creating goals from that. Make sure you give yourself deadlines for every single one of them. Because like the phrase says, a goal without a deadline is just a dream. We don't want it to be dreams, we want it to be goals, and we want to be able to have them to work towards. Then what you're going to do is you're just going to have regular reflection to make sure that you're staying on track. I would recommend that you do a really in depth reflection of your eulogy, your plan, your blueprint, every single quarter. And you just review your progress, celebrate your achievements. You know, if you hit five different milestones, go out and buy yourself a Pizza, whatever it is, get a good glass of wine or whatever it is that really makes you feel like, you know what, I'm going to celebrate myself. And then you start to move and

shift a little bit.

Life is really dynamic. Your vision is going to change. It's going to evolve over time. And so regularly sitting back and reflecting is going to make sure that your actions are remaining aligned with your true desires. So now you start to have, okay, now I've got the goals, I've got a little bit more of a, a roadmap. And I know what I'm going to be doing. Now that you have it, you've basically got your life manifesto. You know exactly what you want your life to be, you know exactly what you want to hit it by, and you go, this is what I'm going to be and what I'm going to create. So what do you do now? Well, now you've got to create it. So you've got to go step, step number three. And step number three is to start living this life, to actually bring your vision to life. When you write your eulogy out and you create that roadmap from the beginning to the end, what you need to do now is actually start living with intention. Don't wake up every single morning and just, well, I hope I can create my dreams today. No, you're going to wake up every single morning and actually have daily reflection. And every day I want you to look at that and you remind yourself

every single morning before you leave the house. Maybe you can habit stack, which means

if there's something that you do every single morning, you, you're just going to take this life manifesto and you're going to attach the reading of it to another, another habit that you have every single day. So maybe if you drink coffee every single day, what you're going to do is you're going to read your life manifesto. Good Lord, I can't even get out your life manifesto. You're going to read it every single day for five minutes while you drink your coffee. And you start your day by revisiting your eulogy, remembering you're going to die one day. This is the life that you're going to create. I need to start working towards this thing. And the daily reflection really helps you stay grounded in your purpose. And then you start to make choices that align with your vision, not align with scarcity or staying in your comfort zone or whatever it might be. And then what happens is it helps you make better decisions. It's more mindful decision making. Because every decision that you make, no matter how big or how small, should bring you closer to your vision. And so what you start to do. This is a phrase one of my very first mentors gave me, which is, is what I'm doing right now getting me closer to or further from my goals? I wrote about this in my book Level up, because I just love this phrase so much. I used to ask myself this all the time. Whenever I'd set a goal and I would become aware throughout the day of, I'm doing something, whatever it is that I was doing, and my awareness pops in. I would just ask myself, I was sitting on the couch and I was like, is what I'm doing right now getting me closer to or further from my goals? Well, this is getting me further from, okay, I've got to stop doing this thing. I've got to do something else. And so what you do is you actually start making better decisions, because you're using this life manifesto that you're reading every single morning while you drink your coffee. And you're sitting there going, okay, I'm looking at what I'm doing right now. I'm scrolling on Instagram. It's been 17 minutes that I've been scrolling on Instagram. Is this getting me closer to or further from my goals? Hmm. It's getting me further from my goals. All right, maybe I should do something different. What is the best action that I can take right now that's going to get me closer to accomplishing one of the things that I need to get done this year? And what you do is you use your eulogy to help you plan your life out and bring the idea of momento mori, of remembering that you're going to die, to bring urgency to your life, to remind you that one day it's going to end. One of the worst things that could happen is looking back and being like, I could have done more. I could have impacted more. I could have had more potential I

brought to the world.

But when you take this life manifesto that you've created from your eulogy and you think about it every single morning, it brings urgency to your life, it brings excitement to your life, and it gives you something to shoot for. So try it out. Let me know how it goes. That's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me obdialjr. R O B D I A L J R One of the biggest things that you can do to say thank you is to just spread this podcast anywhere where you can spread. If you put on Instagram, if you send it to your friends, whatever it is, this podcast only grows from you guys sharing it. And so if you would share it, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. So I could impact more people and help more people and hopefully in some sort of way make the world a little better of a place. So if you do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

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