Living Deliberately: How to Create a Ridiculously Awesome Life

Living Deliberately:

How to Create a Ridiculously Awesome Life

by Rachel & Greg Denning

Living Deliberately: How to Create a Ridiculously Awesome Life

Rachel and Greg Denning

Copyright © 2012

Published by DiscoverShareInspire Publishing at Smashwords

All Rights Reserved.

You may share parts of this book, without written permission, as long as you include a link to

http://www.discovershareinspire.com/livedeliberately

(A free version of this book is also available at this link, perfect for sharing with family and friends.)

Please do not share the entire manuscript – without prior written permission.

This book is dedicated to -

YOU

Here’s to creating YOUR ridiculously awesome life.

Table of Contents

Welcome

Who Are We?

How This Book is Arranged

Principle 1

Reality is Negotiable

Wishing is Negotiable

Why Live Deliberately?

Dream Big Dreams

Doubt and Fear Are Traitors

Excuses Are Like Armpits

Make Your Life Awesome - Video

Principle 2

Leaving Victimville

The Disease of Victimism

Rising to the Challenge

What is Victimville?

Recognizing Your Residency

The Blame Game is Not a Game

Excuses Be Gone!

Get the Hell Out of Victimville

Principle 3

Identifying What Matters

How to Identify Your Values

How to Prioritize Your Values

If I Gave You $100 Million Dollars

What Don’t You Value?

Feed What’s Important

Become a Procrastinator

You Can’t Hit a Target... - Video

Principle 4

You Have a Purpose

Recognize the Singers

How to Discover Your Purpose

Living on Purpose = Following a Path

How to Actually Live on Purpose

Lives of ‘Quiet Desperation’ - Video

Principle 5

You Are Here

A Snapshot of Your Life

Your Circumstance Reveal You

Sometimes the Truth Hurts

Examine Each Area of Life

Overcome Any Problem - Video

Principle 6

Imagine Where You Want to Be

You Can’t Hit a Target You Can’t See

What Will Make the Biggest Difference?

Don’t Worry About Making the ‘Wrong Decision’

Be Specific

Principle 7

The Exchange Rate

You Can Have Whatever You Want

The Pie Chart

Zero-Base Thinking

Focus on the Daily Routine

Your Time is More Precious Than Gold

Wherever You Are, Be There

Principle 8

Minimalism as a Force for Good

Minimizing Obligations

The Burden of Possessions

The Siren Song of Consumerism

Leave the Peacock Pageant

Live ‘Poor’ on Purpose

Minimalism Equals Freedom

Becoming a Minimalist Changes You

Principle 9

You’ll See It When You Believe It

You’ve Been Conditioned to Be Where You Are

Learn to Act ‘As If’

You’ve Got to Be Serious

‘Providence Will Move Too’

Become the Master of Your Fate

What You Believe is True - For You

Nourish What You Want to Harvest

Just Take the Next Step in Faith

Principle 10

Facing Fear & Moving Forward

Fear is Faith in Reverse

What Are You So Afraid Of?

Face to Face With the Worst Case

Do the Thing You Are Afraid to Do

Come Hell or High Water

Principle 11

Leaving the Herd

It’s Lonely on the Road Less Traveled

However Long & Hard the Road

Truthfully, Most People Don’t Care

You Can’t Please Everyone

You Can Pick Your Friends

Principle 12

Funding the Dream

Reallocate Your Resources

More Than One Way to Earn a Buck

Give Up the Predictable Paycheck

Create a Patchwork of Paychecks

Redesign Your Current Income Stream

Make Your Business Mobile

Work Hard, Retire Early

Get a J.O.B.

Quit Your Job, Live Off Your Passion

Principle 13

Ready. Fire! Aim.

This is How Serendipity Works

Hesitation is a Thief

Principle 14

Failing Forward

What is Failure Anyway?

Principle 15

Staying Motivated

Discouraged With the Downturns

Don’t Tell Anyone, But...

Principle 16

Life Long Learning

Never a Graduation from Education

What Does a Great Education Look Like?

Bibliotherapy

Input Determines Output

Principle 17

Stayin’ Alive

The Greatest Killers

Principle 18

Living Deliberately

Don’t Wait for ‘Someday’

Plan Now to Live Deliberately

YOUR Deliberate Life

Cross the Rubicon

Your Life CAN Be Ridiculously Awesome

Additional Resource

Books

Audio

Blog Articles

Welcome!

We’re so excited that you’re interested in living life deliberately, and the story of how we created our ridiculously awesome life.

We created this book to share our experience, so that we might help individuals and families like yours design a life that you want to live, and that you’ve consciously chosen.

What does it mean to ‘live deliberately’?

The dictionary defines ‘deliberate’ as:

done consciously and intentionally; fully considered.

When you live deliberately, you choose to spend your life in a particular way - a way that has been consciously and intentionally chosen by you, after careful consideration of all the alternatives.

Living deliberately means that you don’t follow the formula prescribed by society, just because ‘that’s what everyone does’, or it’s what’s expected of you; or even just because you’ve never considered another way before.

When you live deliberately, you don’t just go through the motions, and do the same thing day after day after day, because you’re stuck in a rut. You don’t make decisions within the confines of what is ‘socially acceptable,’ unless that’s what you really want because you’ve considered other options.

When you live deliberately, you wake up, take a look around, and say, Is this what I want for my life? Is this what life is all about? Is it the best I can do?

If the answers are ‘No’, then it’s time to make some deliberate changes.

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.

Live the life you have imagined."

Henry David Thoreau

What is this book about?

This book was written to help you consider other ways of living - ways that are fulfilling, exciting and meaningful - by sharing our personal story of living deliberately. It is here to help you design a deliberate life that is exciting and filled with purpose.

Too many people dread getting up in the morning and going to a job they hate, away from their family. Too many people feel trapped by debt and strapped to their bills.

Too many people feel discontented with the life they’re living, wondering if there’s more, yet not knowing what ‘more’ is.

Too many people think they could pursue their dreams, if only they made more money.

We’ll take you through the process that we used to move from our ‘okay’ life living in suburbia, punching a time clock and paying on a mortgage, to a life filled with travel, freedom, adventure, fulfillment and purpose.

Every morning we get up excited about how we get to spend the day - doing work that we love; spending quality time with our family; exploring the world. We’re blessed to have a ridiculously awesome life.

YOU too can design a lifestyle that allows you to spend the day with your loved ones doing the things you enjoy. You can gain more freedom, have more fun, and be more fulfilled.

True success is knowing your real purpose and priorities and living by them each and every day.

In this book we’ll share a series of principles - the same principles that we used to go from being participants in the ‘peacock pageant’, following the recipe that society gave us, and having an ‘okay’ existence - to living a life filled with adventure, passion, purpose and fulfillment - A life that is so amazing that we can’t help but feel gratitude and excitement for each new day.

We’ll take you through, step-by-step, and show you how you can create the same results in your own life.

This book is written for your success!

Who Are We Anyway?

Coconut palms wave gently in the trade winds, as soft sunlight streams through and dances across our path.

Ahead of us, our four young children clamber, examine and probe in tide pools, under rocks and in crevices, searching for seashells, hermit crabs and other treasures.

It’s our camino de atardecer - sunset walk - an evening routine at our home in Las Galeras, Dominican Republic (DR), a place we spent three Walden-like months in 2009.

Before the Dominican Republic, we drove the Pan-American Highway with our four children (ages 4, 3, 18 mos. and 3 mos. at the time), from the U.S. through Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and eventually Panama (in 2007).

We lived in Costa Rica for a year (2007-2008), learning Spanish, exploring beaches and waterfalls, and bungee jumping.

Our family has also lived in India, working with the leprosy affected (2010); driven across the United States (twice); traversed the Alaskan Highway; explored British Columbia and the Yukon; and spent a year in The Last Frontier - Alaska (where we had baby #5 - Atlas - in 2010).

Leaving Alaska in April 2011, we’re currently slowly driving from Alaska to Argentina in a truck powered by recycled vegetable oil.

But our travels together are just one aspect of our family life.

We’re parents to five children whom we adore and educate ourselves.

We’re staunchly devoted to family and education.

Children are the greatest resource we have, and ensuring their proper development is an investment in the future of our world.

We believe that as parents, our lives should be designed around the upbringing of our children.

That’s why we’ve developed a lifestyle that allows us to spend maximum time together as a family, in activities that we believe build character and enhance their development.

We’ve created this book to help families like yours pattern a lifestyle that allows you to spend time together doing the things you love - an activity that is guaranteed to strengthen your family.

Strong families = strong communities = strong planet.

This book isn’t about family travel - although it will help you to do that if it’s something you want.

It is about introducing new ideas, expanding your reality, creating more freedom and considering new possibilities for your life.

It’s about living deliberately.

How this Book is Arranged

Does the idea of recreating your life seem awesome, but overwhelming?

Is the thought of making life changes exciting, but a little frightening as well?

That’s why we organized this book with simple Principles - principles that are meant to be applied one at a time.

We don’t want you to throw your family into an upheaval with a declaration that We’re re-designing our life!

Living deliberately is a process, not an event that happens overnight.

It’s something that you’ll probably work on for the rest of your life. These are just the steps to get you started.

Each Principle is meant to be savored.

The information in this book isn’t fast food, but a gourmet meal intended to be thoroughly enjoyed and entirely digested.

Ideally you could spend at least one week on each Principle, allowing the ideas and action items to be deliberated on and fully absorbed.

You’ll be amazed at the new beliefs and inspirations that will come to you when you simply allow one of the Principles to be in the back of your mind for a week or more.

We’ve arranged the Principles in an order that seemed most natural, but don’t be concerned if you find yourself doing them out of order - their arrangement isn’t an eternal law.

Do what seems like the most logical ‘next step’ for your family.

And as you do them, we would love to hear from you. Please visit our Facebook page and share your experience and feedback.

We also strongly encourage you to connect with us and others with similar vision.

You can also watch a free video:

OUR Story: How Did We Get Such An Awesome Life?

Principle 1

Reality is negotiable

Reality is negotiable.

Timothy Ferris

We’re looking for people who want to commit to the company until they retire at 65, the man said who sat across from me and my husband.

Greg and I looked at each other, then answered almost in unison, That’s definitely us. We’re in until 65! Being an entrepreneur was definitely something I didn’t want. I wanted my husband to have the security of a steady paycheck and a 401(k) retirement plan.

My husband was given the position, and we were more than thrilled. We purchased our first home, adopted our first child and settled into living life - me as the stay at home mom and Greg as the bread winner - dreaming of the time we would retire and be able to travel and live abroad.

What do you want to do when you retire?

Do you want to spend more time with your family, travel the world, pursue your hobbies and passions, do something you love to do?

How long will it be until then? Thirty, forty years plus? Maybe shorter if you’re lucky and work really hard?

Does it have to be that way?

Greg and I thought so. When we pursued the corporate path, we never considered that there might be other options. What else would we do if we didn’t ‘get a good job’? Be unemployed?

Sometime around the time I was expecting our second child I began to think about our kids future. How would we pay for their college? I started studying college funds, which led to investing, which led to real estate.

Then I picked up a little book at the thrift store for $.25. It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t very well written. But the ideas inside were life-changing.

While perusing its pages, an ‘a-ha’ hit me.

You mean to tell me that we can design our life to be the way we want it to? If we want something different than what fate has allotted to us, we can do something about it?

I’d never contemplated such ideas before.

I’d never thought about why we pursue the social prescription of college, career and climbing the social ladder until 65.

But now I thought, isn’t there a way to live the life we dream of living ‘someday’, but right now? Can it be done? Can we live a fun and fulfilling life - the kind of life we imagine we’ll live when we retire - while we’re ‘raising a family’?

We grew to believe there had to be a way.

Life doesn’t have to be so hard, does it? Do we have to exchange our life energy at a job we hate, doing the same thing day after day after day, ad nauseam?

There is another way! It may be difficult for you to see that right now, but that’s why this book was written.

Living deliberately doesn’t mean that you have to sell all your stuff and go nomad like we did.

But it does mean that you consciously design your family lifestyle to be the way you choose, instead of mindlessly following the path that others have prescribed.

At the most foundational levels, deliberate living is about questioning the prevailing ideology that turns us into factory workers punching a time clock for 40+ hours per week during the most important years of our family’s life.

It’s time to abandon the ‘delayed-living’ proposal of family time, travel and pursuing your passions when you retire.

It’s time to do it NOW!

Wishing Won’t Make It So

"Work will win when

wishy washy wishing won’t"

Thomas Monson

White sand emerged from a grove of coconut palms, and fanned out in a silvery crescent until it touched a sparkling, turquoise-blue sea.

It was our first glimpse of this piece of heaven called Playa Rincon in Las Galeras, Dominican Republic.

Less than a year previous, while we were dreaming of travel escapades, we’d asked a good friend with travel experience what his favorite part of the world was.

The beach which stretched before us now had been his enthusiastic answer.

Now here we were in person, making this island our home, with our four little tots in tow.

But we didn’t just wake up one morning and discover ourselves in this dream destination.

We didn’t just wish ourselves here with thoughts of ‘Wouldn’t that be nice?’ or ‘I wish we could do that.’

Our arrival at this tropical port of call was made possible only by the consistent and deliberate pursuit of our goal.

It was an aspiration that we intentionally planned and consciously executed.

When we made the goal, did we know that we would be able to reach it? Nope. But we knew we definitely wouldn’t reach it if we never tried.

Scraping together every resource we had, we worked hard and saved up. We sold most of our possessions (even my wedding ring) and we made it happen.

Buying one-way tickets to a destination we’d never been to, we loaded up our family (and our mountains of luggage) first onto a plane, and then onto a bus, until we reached the Caribbean shores of Las Galeras, the place we decided to call home for awhile.

Live Life by Priorities

A lot of people look at an experience like that and tell us,

You’re so lucky!

I’m jealous. I wish I could do that.

The truth is, they can. And so can you.

Our move to the Dominican Republic (or Costa Rica or India or our trip from Alaska to Argentina) didn’t happen by accident.

We wanted it. We planned it. We worked for it. We achieved it.

But it hasn’t been all success. We’ve also failed and had to give up and ‘come home’. More than once. We’ve learned what doesn’t work. We’ve made course corrections.

Even now, our life isn’t perfect. It’s not problem free. There are still things we want to change. There are still things we’re trying to figure out.

But our life is on purpose - meaning that everyday we are gaining more and more freedom by doing the actions that will bring us the things we want.

Everyday we choose to pursue our ambitious plans instead of acquiescing to the status quo. Everyday we choose to create a ‘passion business’ instead of getting a job.

Everyday we choose to embrace all that we are meant to be and believe in ourselves and what we have to offer the world.

Everyday we choose to have faith that we can achieve our dreams, and live the life