Free your mind…human batteries (for a corporation), working like a robot (in an office), super powers (of lifestyle design tactics)…do these sound familiar in your life(style design) journey?

As I worked through my copy of Pat Flynn’s ebooks the Smart Way with my upcoming product and attempted to drum up feedback and followers for my freedom business this week, I ended up watching the entire Matrix trilogy. Although it was on mostly for the soundtrack, I picked up parrallels that I immediately appreciated, and you will too. I found myself empowered by seeing the correlations played out…and I want to give that to you….plus it’s just plain fun.

Check out the 12 Matrix clips below along with my own introductions for immediate “aha” moments and invigoration to move forward with your current battles. Wherever you are in your path, I think these video’s will make some things click and get you hyped. Most of the clips are around 2 minutes long and you’ll probably want to view this page within the website as RSS readers and e-mail clients won’t pick up on the video embedding.

Searching

Remember that itch you had, or still have…that there’s something a bit more than “working for the weekend”, then draining your work sorrows with Saturday booze, working in a cube, TPS reports, the American dream crippling debt? There’s gotta be a better way to redesign your life, keep searching….

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Authority

We’ve all woken up late for something, when it’s work, there’s a specific sense of dread that washes over you. Your supervisor will have something to say, and if you want to continue suckling at the paycheck teet, the conversation plays out like this…you think you’re special?

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All I’m Offering is Truth…

You come in contact with someone who’s living life differently and for the first time…you see it’s real. It’s not some random their Dad is rich, won the lottery pipe dream…there’s truth here…and you want more.

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Batteries and Reality

Although you’ve been told you need to do well in school, graduate with honors, you find yourself in a job where non of that seems to matter. You’re grinding your way through a company structure thinking it will get better eventually, saving for retirement, enjoying luxuries (or NOT) of a company…all you really are…is someone else’s battery.

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Alternate Reality

After you’ve broken your mental shackles…life can be what you make it, sure there are some unalterable rules, but don’t let that stop you…you think that’s air your breathing? Learn the ropes…

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Your First Failure

You launch your first product, build your first blog, try out your first virtual assistant…and have absolutely no idea what you are doing…let it all go, fear, doubt…

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Confusion, so How Does this Work Again?

You’ve taken a few big strides in changing your lifestyle, maybe started connecting with an audience, life hacking, affiliate sales…but do you really put stock in all this? How do you make it your own…mental grappling to ensue…

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Your First Big Fight

Guns blazing, you sign for every social media website ever made, spend hours reading every blog on rebelling against the status quo, you try not to lose yourself in the fray…

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Your First Big Win

You launch your first product, hit 500 subscribers, make $100 in passive income…at last, you see it’s real…you’re starting to believe…

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The Code Revealed

Marketing, time, productivity, passion, you start to see the man behind the curtain in everything around you, you see a path, it’s open for you to take, there’s no going back now…the world is yours for the taking…

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You Can Fly

The road is long and hard, there are battles around every corner but with your new found power, your enlightened awareness, you need only to keep going, you can fly…

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Disclaimer: These videos are for educational use only. All rights reserved to original owners.

What do you think? What hit you? Leave a comment.

Income Stage Update:

Income stage tactic updates on creating followers and writing an e-book soon to come. Complete with an ebook template process, and how Twitter, Facebook, and the IT Arsenal blog are creating traction and shaping a real business feel. I’ll take you through the literal links from, social media post, to a friends re-post, to new audience, and created fan, something I’m seeing in real time as the edges are smoothed out and I take ownership of online activity specifically for earning income and launching products.

P.S. If you’d like to get automatic updates of new material here on The Life Design Project, you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed!

The stereotypical grade school question comes to mind when I think of dreamlines. If you could be anything when you grow up, what would it be? Only instead the context here is, if you had a million dollars in the bank, or you knew you were more capable than anyone else, what would you do? My gut instinct was to say, well duh, I’d buy a Viper GTS, and lounge around all day but would I really? Sitting down to think of it, I realized I wouldn’t do anything of the sort.

Actions: Write out what fulfilling your dreams would really look like on a 6 month time line. Take four steps a day for three days toward achieving them. Cut out un-enriching monthly expenses.

Goal: Open your mind to what your dreams look like in reality and on paper.

The point of creating a dreamline is to first, wrap your head around actually pursuing your dreams and secondly to examine exactly how much money it would cost, monthly, and daily to live them out. The results are pretty interesting when you write them down on paper. I certainly can’t live out my dreams on my current income, but I see how it could be possible if I created a few successful sources of monthly income. (a topic I know we’re going to take our time with in the coming weeks)

Creating a dreamline at first seems like a silly exercise, but after doing it, and especially after laying it out on a calendar, it has proved it’s usefulness. The plausibility may seem absurd, but now I have goals. Dreamgoals. There’s a 50 year old saying turned “Law” that states “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” (Parkinsons Law) So if the theory holds true, just putting down the dreams (including cost) on a calendar, will push me to achieve them sooner than if they are loosely floating around in my head.  So here are my dreamlines.

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WHAT I DID:

• Completed above exercise. Then went back and redid it.
• Put events on Calendar (try google calendar)
• Examined monthly expenses (Cut out…
• Steps taken day one.

looked up a stunt driving program to pull a 180 in

found speed reading product with reviews unlike the px-method (breakthrough rapid reading)

put times on calendar to achieve these

find a place that teaches keet kune do (found multiple people looking for classes in philly and nj based training)

• Steps taken day two.

tried to contact tim ferriss, had a delightful three e-mail back and forth with amy

looked up flights to china, roughly $1500. then looked up world travel tickets and found a trip from West Coast-Beijing-Shanghai-Bangkok-Kuala Lumpur- Los Angeles for $1499.

contacted three dojo’s, might get a web design gig out of it

read about successful blog tips for traffic (ie. you!)

• Steps taken day three.

started measuring my reading speeds and recording other actions

updated blog with simple tips, actually getting hits

re-branded online image during this testing

OUTCOME:

• Realized my dreams aren’t unreasonable
• Developed genuine interest in pursuing some awesome goals
• Understood I couldn’t do all of these if I worked 40 hours a week.
• I actually took steps toward doing them and now see myself completing them.

Try and let us know what you get out of it.

“Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves – regret for the past and fear of the future.”
Fulton Oursler

“He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Actions:

1) Identify how you would approach life differently if you never had to worry about money and were not afraid of failing.

2) Identify what is the worst possible scenario that could happen if you were to approach life this way.

3) Identify what steps you could take to work your way out of this situation.

Goals: Realize that fear is probably keeping you from some good things and even if everything goes horribly wrong you can easily work your way out of it.

One of the truest things I found in Tim Ferris’s book (4 hour work week) was the idea that most people would rather stay settled in an unsatisfying situation than face the fear of change.  If I were truly unafraid of failure I would definitely try countless new things and seek out adventure.   And I think thats the whole point.  To seek out challenges rather than stability.  To find things that interest and excite you rather than hoping to avoid difficulties and things out of the ordinary.  When thinking about the “worst case scenario” I found it interesting that I didn’t really fear losing money (probably because I don’t have much to start with).

What I really feared was that if I were to take a risk I could possibly end up more stuck in a situation that I enjoyed less.   But I think that as pretty much anyone goes through this exercise they are likely to realize that the worst case scenario is not too likely, in fact it’s unlikely.  And the more realistic you become the more you realize that even if you were to take a risk you could probably work your way back to your current situation fairly easily. Here’s what our worst cases look like.

OUR CONVERSATION

1) What is the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering

• R – i would lose $1000-2500 dollars, get scolded at work for being distracted, seem like an idiot, babble about this to people, end up with nothing, waste lots of time and energy
• B – I could quit my job and always regret it because I couldn’t find another that I liked as much.  I could blow all my savings and regret not being able to buy a house or provide for family in the future?  I could leave the country and be bored by myself (possible die) and feel like I just wasted part of my life and time.

2) What steps could you take to repair the damage or get things back on the upswing, even if temporarily?

• R – work extra freelance/craigslist gigs, sold stereo and tv, focus more on work productivity instead of financial freedom productivity, not babble
• B – sell body to the night. apply for minimum wage jobs until a teaching position opened up.  Move in with mom or dad and look for teaching jobs around country.

3) What are the outcomes or benefits of more probable scenarios?

• R – figure out financial success like books report and people have done before me, gain some life experiences people don’t have, actually make money and or have a start-up, meet tim ferriss like my brother claimed he did, travel.
• B – start a product and make extra money.  Have more fun and enjoy each day more.  Not feel like I am wasting time.  Actually meet people.

4) If you were fired from your job today what would you do to get things under financial control?

• R – sell everything except my computer, make…umm $2000 live off credit cards and craigslist jobs until i got another consistent IT gig
• B – look for a waiting job or something until I could get back into teaching.  Try to start own business.

5) What are you putting off out of fear?

• R – spending money on ideas i think will work. putting more money into savings because i think i’ll need it now. putting myself, my name, my face out on websites and products in case they fail.
• B – meeting people of the opposite gender.  traveling and being alone.  doing anything new.

6) What is it costing you to postpone action?

• R – its costing me experiences to look back on. the possibility of not living life, but just being another american robot working for a weekend. time and fun in exchange for dull security, thats not even secure.
• B – Wasting time.  actually living the way I am afraid of living. Feeling bored, trapped and alone. Wasting time.

Goal: Improve life, become people and money savvy.

For those of you who like to be resource intensive, there’s a plethora of information that will equip you with the people skills, technical skills, and positive spirit to move in the direction of financial freedom, time freedom and work freedom. Some of these books and certainly their concepts will be covered going forward. The tenants of effective productivity, the pareto principle, money management, and people management are the original life hacks. They are what influenced me throughout the years to take on this project. Knowledge is only half the battle though, action is the other. We can help you with the first. Here’s a quick run of the books, blogs, and audiobooks (I’m a huge fan) that have changed my life as a whole.

• Automatic Millionaire

takeaway: pay yourself first before every paycheck.

• Winning Results with Google Adwords

takeaway: technical “how to” on paying people to look at your product

• The 4 Hour Work Week Blog

takeaway: action oriented kick in the head that generating income and living your dream is doable.

• The Richest Man in Babylon

takeaway: money basics, a must read.

• How to Win Friends and Influence People

takeaway: people basics, obvious but overlooked. a must read.

• www.getrichslowly.com

takeaway: keeping current with using money wisely

• http://www.viralogy.com/experts/

takeaway: the best advice from people who have already broken free.

• http://zenhabits.net/

takeaway: makes me live more productive

Yours?

Goal: Gain some understanding about the game of life design and terms used.

First things first. I admit I want to jump right to building easily managed companies, making loads of passive income and traveling around the world for experience and fun. I have to admit also, I have no freaking idea how to do that, yet. Stage 1 of life style design is to wrap your head around changing some traditionally ingrained thoughts on “work”. We can’t do that unless we understand some new rules, or to put it bluntly understand why what other people are doing sucks.

I deem this the more boring part of lifestyle design, as freeing yourself from the rat-race (ie. 9-5) is what draws the most attention. Now that i’ve said that, understand that unless you’ve laid the groundwork, you don’t know where you’re going. Don’t worry though, stage 1 is just about taking in a few eye opening ideas, generating income will be covered in detail. We’ll see how some successfully work free people did it, and how we’re going to do it. Nothing here is blindingly new, but actually thinking it through will change you’re world.

«New Rich» versus «Deferrers»

• Deferrers work arduously until their retirement – their goal is to shorten the time until they retire. The New Rich spice up their lives with frequent mini-retirements – they use forms of automated (easily manage business’s) or location independent (consulting?) income to allow for untraditional hours.
• The untraditional hours allow for new experiences, traveling, taking classes, living out dreams.
• Deferrers want to work for themselves, New Rich want to have others work for them.
• Deferrers want to become bosses, the New Rich neither want to be bosses nor employees, but owners.

“Everything popular is wrong” – Oscar Wilde

It’s amazing how “set” people get. Generation after generation of people confident they are doing something right won’t ever pick their head up to realize there’s another route. Here are some popular things you see that are just wrong.

• Busy-ness is mistaken for productivity. Excessive overtime is considered admirable, less working hours as a symptom of lazyness, independent of the respective results. In post corporate positions, as long as you’re there 40-60 hours a week, you’re doing okay, despite your results.
• Instead of utilizing personal strengths to the maximum, people waste their lives on the improvement of their weaknesses.
• Think like a teenager. I remember no matter what job I had I constantly thought about the hourly rate. It kept me maximizing my efforts. Take your, and everyone else’s corporate job into consideration for you’re hourly rate.
• Asking for permission by default means to be confronted with naysayers by default.

Eye opening Questions we asked ourselves

1) How has being realistic kept you from the life you want.

• R – i don’t do fun things, i always thing there are more tasks to do. i don’t own a company. i don’t go on vacation every other month. i dont see my friends all the time. i get bored with life and people and want to get lost in fantasy video games. i save money because its safe, never considering potentially good risks.
• B – I have become “un-passionate” and don’t care about doing things or about people as much as I want. I have started to wait for each day to be over.  I have not met many new people in the last two years

2)What would happen if I did the opposite of the people around me?

• R – i would seem weird, like i spent a lot of money perhaps, was all over the place. never worked. was always switching projects, pursuing ideas.

• B – I would not care about the future.  I would not complain or be tired all the time.
  

3) What will I sacrifice if I continue on this track for 5, 10, or 20 years?

• R – i would sacrifice far fetched dreams, traveling, learning multiple skills, i could become cornered in one career, possibly be locked into one company.
• B – I could possibly die alone and wake up every day bored not appreciating anything about life.