Our question for the week is: How do you want to design your life from this day forth?
The Little White Lie Movement is all about life. It’s about living it fully at whatever age we’re in, saying YES to our particular Little White Lie (the secret about ourselves we’re hiding behind and that holds us back) so we can truly embrace our authentic self, talents, and dreams.
The person to help us unpack this concept is my guest on the LWL Facebook Show, Darla Claire, Lifestyle Architect and Success Coach with certifications in TimeLine Therapy, Hypnotherapy and NLP Life Coaching. You can watch the show here:
Can you actually design your life?
Darla’s answer to this question is an enthusiastic ABSOLUTELY! And she’s proof positive that this is so. Darla shares her story of living day-to-day, working and raising her family, and not giving any thought to ‘designing’ a life, or even the idea of a lifestyle. (How many of us does that describe??) “…Until I was thrown into having to make some big decisions,” Darla says. “I got a divorce in my 50s [after a 25+-year marriage], and suddenly without a parachute, having to design a new life for myself.
I was like, Oh my gosh, what have I been doing all these years?” She is now a firm believer. This forms the foundation of her work now. Each of us can design for ourselves a great lifestyle, and not just settle for the norm. You can design your life!
Nothing wrong with the norm, mind you, but the point is this: Are we making conscious choices about what we want to do and be? Or are we just following our inner self-talk, and the stories and expectations that have been in our heads for, well, most of our lives?
A great place to begin this conversation is Darla’s title, “Lifestyle Architect” – I just love that, don’t you?
The term ‘architect’ came from her childhood. Darla’s father was a custom home builder. She tells us: “When I was a little girl, I used to sit on my father’s lap while he was drawing plans. He was making these plans with all the architect’s details, and I wanted to skip the foundation. That was boring to me. I wanted to get through to the pretty house! He made it clear to me that the foundation was the most important part.” His wise words stayed with Darla as she was creating her business, how we all need to have a strong foundation in our minds; otherwise things in our life are going to crumble, and we’re not going to get where we want to go.
So what is this foundation made of?
Well, I asked Darla: What are some of the roadblocks that we hit to designing this life that we want, especially as we get older?
Darla: “The biggest roadblock is our mind, 100% the way we think and what we’ve been taught.” So our individual human ‘foundation’ is our mind — what we think and what reflects back to our life as a result. You can begin to see how the structure of our lives — to stay with the metaphor of architecture — will only be as strong and sturdy as our thoughts are. Profound, right?
Now let’s throw in the age factor, the LWL’s signature topic. Darla believes our mindset is key especially as we get older. When she was going through her life ‘redesign’ after her divorce, her mind was telling her, “I’m too old to get a job. I’m too old for somebody to want my services”. Fortunately, she chose to challenge these inner stories and make a different decision. She says: “Frankly, when we have the right mindset, age doesn’t really become a factor anymore.”
Darla shares some tips to help us Little White Liars be better architects of our lifestyle:
1. Read The Four-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss (which I think is a terrific book too!). The author says, “You can have it all — really”. He invites you to forget the old concept of retirement and “the rest of the deferred-life plan”. There’s no need to wait, and his book offers a blueprint to make this happen.
2. ‘Take the temperature’ of your emotions which come from your mindset. There are negative emotions that people maneuver their lives around because they don’t want to deal with them. This can affect their lives and really hold them back. Explore what could possibly be stopping you from doing the things you want to do by checking in with your emotions around those things. What are you telling yourself that you can or can’t do (especially CAN’T do)?
That’s the beginning of being able to change and design that life you want.
3. A big emotion that comes from our mindset is around the limiting belief about our age, getting old — feeling we’re too old for whatever. It is so common for people to feel this way. The good news is that we can change our mindset to believe that you can have the life you want. One thing to think about is that, as we get older, we don’t have the same wants or values that we had 20 years ago.
As we get older, certain things become more important than they used to be. So why are we comparing ourselves to that younger person? For example, I don’t want to do sky-diving anymore! But I would love to go on a trip to Italy to the vineyards. The key is not to beat yourself up about it. Just think about it: What kind of lifestyle would you like?
