What Your Life Looks Like vs. What It Could Look Like
You wake up to the sound of a phone buzzing. Not waves. Not birds. Not silence. Just another notification dragging you out of bed. The commute is the same. The people are the same. The conversations are a loop. Maybe you squeeze in a gym session or a drink, but the rest? The rest is waiting. For the weekend. For the bonus. For "someday."
What if that wasn’t normal?
What if your morning started on a balcony, warm air brushing your skin, with no alarms but the city around you waking up slowly. A motorbike in the distance. A neighbor frying garlic. Someone laughing in a language you’re still trying to learn.
That’s just one of the thousands of lives you’re not living.
The idea of a "dream life" gets filed away next to motivational quotes and delayed retirement plans. It’s something you imagine during slow meetings or doomscrolling sessions. You think about it on vacations, swear you’ll change something when you get back, then plug back into the same script. Work harder. Wait longer. Earn enough to maybe enjoy freedom when your knees start hurting.
That version of freedom is a lie people sell because they already bought it themselves.
Lifestyle design isn’t about being on a beach with a laptop. It’s about asking the question nobody really wants to answer:
What do I actually want my life to feel like, every day?
Most people don’t ask. It’s easier to keep playing the game and blaming the rules. You tell yourself it’s work, the kids, or your mortgage. Or maybe even that you "don’t mind it that much." You give yourself little rewards. A new phone. A weekend away. A half-hearted plan to take six weeks off "one day."
And maybe that works for a while. It did for me.
Lifestyle design isn’t for everyone. It’s for people who are done waiting. People who understand that time isn’t a renewable resource. People who realize the hardest part isn’t building a new life. It’s admitting the old one never fit.
You don’t need to change everything overnight. But if you’ve been holding your breath for years, maybe it’s time to exhale.
What Lifestyle Design Actually Means
Forget the influencer BS. No rented sports cars. No drone shots of infinity pools. No bleached smiles selling you something you don’t need.
Lifestyle design is a blueprint. You choose the location. You set the hours. You decide what matters. Where you live. How you earn. Who you keep close. What you eliminate. Life is always about trade offs. What are you willing to lose for that which you want to gain?
It is not a reward for success. It is the system that lets you define success without outsourcing it to your culture or your paycheck or whatever dumb mental gymnastics we are all guilty of playing.
Designing reality with precision.
This approach isn’t an escape. It’s a re-alignment. Your values matched to your calendar. Your needs reflected in your surroundings. Your freedom secured by your own structure, not dependant on outside forces.
And most importantly, it’s a choice. Not a privilege. Not a dream. A choice. Made over and over again.
Before you go further, ask yourself three things:
- What do you actually want?
- Who do you want near you?
- What do you want your days to feel like?
The Three Pillars: Mindset, Money, Location
Adjust Your Mindset
No progress happens if you still run your life on scripts you didn’t write.
You need to stop asking for permission. From your family. From your country. From the people who gave up on themselves years ago and want you to stay in the pot with them.
Most people live by default. You want to live by design. That requires saying no. That requires walking away from applause. It requires you to be misunderstood and still keep going.
If you need everyone to agree with your choices, you’re not ready.
Take Control of Your Income
This is easier said than done but has to be done. Freedom doesn't exist if your income is dependent on showing up for someone else everyday.
A location independent income doesn’t mean you have to start a YouTube channel or become a crypto bro. It means you look at what you do, and rebuild it around output instead of presence.
That could mean moving clients to async systems. It could mean building a service business where you don’t do all the service. It could mean trading billable hours for retainers.
Plumbers cannot just take their pipes abroad. But if they can operate a plumbing business, I am sure they can monetize their skills in other ways. They just haven’t considered how.
Choose Where You Actually Want to Live
Lifestyle design breaks the illusion that there’s one "best" place. There is only the place that fits you now. And later, maybe a different one.
You can:
- Travel nonstop and burn out by month nine
- Pick one base that supports your routines
- Layer seasonal cities that suit your cycles
- Go full expat and put down real roots
None of them are wrong. All of them are experiments.
The Hard Truths Most People Ignore
Freedom is exhausting sometimes.
Living abroad sounds exciting until you’re arguing over your visa at a consulate. Until your bank card stops working. Until your new apartment has unexpected problems.
You will get lonely. You will question your decisions. Your friends from home will stop understanding your life.
If you think this is supposed to be easy, you’re already setting yourself up to quit.
Also, kill these delusions before you start:
- "It’ll be easy." No.
- "People will support me." Not always.
- "I can wait until retirement." You won’t.
Mind the Details: The Small Things That Make or Break Your Life Overseas
You don’t live in a country. You live in an apartment. On a street. Near a grocery store. Surrounded by people you either want to talk to or avoid.
Your life should be built on routines. If not, work on that but I'll assume you're there already. It could be morning walks to the cafe that doesn’t mess up your order. Your workout schedule. Whatever it is, this shouldn't change when you change locations.
This is the part most people ignore when fantasizing about their life abroad. But the details matter more than the backdrop.
If your house echoes. If your bed sucks. If your only friend is someone you met in a Facebook group. You’ll feel it. Every. day. This was my life in Manila, working North American hours. A few months of isolation and, in my case, darkness, became an unavoidable problem.
Get the small things right. That’s how you stay sane.
The Emotional Side of Reinventing Your Life
Nobody wakes up and says, "Let’s blow up my life for fun"
This usually starts with something deeper. You feel disconnected. Misaligned. You look around and think, "I don’t belong here."
Maybe you never did.
Lifestyle design is the result of finally admitting that. It’s not about better weather. It’s about better fit.
You are not broken for wanting something else. Don’t just pretend the default you were born scenario works for you.
The Action Mindset: Nothing Works Without Movement
Reading this changes nothing.
The only way out is through execution. That means decisions. Movement. Mistakes. Discomfort.
It’s not supposed to feel good all the time. It’s supposed to feel real. Like progress. Some friction while moving in the right direction.
You get better by doing. By screwing it up. By refining. By choosing again.
Treat it like training. You are not building your own little utopia. You are building muscle.
Start small if you have to:
- Run a 90-day test abroad
- Set up one income stream that works from anywhere
- Build one system that removes you from a local obligation
