Interested In Raising Your Lifestyle Bar?
Raising your lifestyle bar – what you’ll settle for in life – isn’t easy. I guess that’s why so many of us settle for far less than we ideally want out of life. I got thinking about this after some friends had been over for a visit last weekend. We moved to a peninsula on the west coast of Scotland 3 years ago and visitors have to take a short ferry trip to get here. Usually they leave their car on the mainland and we pick them up from the ferry terminal and drop them off a day or two later.
Without fail, no matter how many times they’ve been here, guests head straight for the dining table in our front room. There they find a stunning view over the Firth of Clyde. On a clear day you can see all the way to the Isles of Bute and Arran beyond which is open sea and the rest of the world. Usually the Firth is dotted with sailing boats and fishing boats. Cruise ships, container ships, ferries and submarines pass by regularly. It’s never a dull view and it draws you to it. People say we are so lucky to live here. Luck has nothing to do with it. Wanting a better way of life and taking a risk has everything to do with it.
What Do You Want To Get Used To?
What’s this got to do with raising your lifestyle bar? Well here’s the thing: We are now totally used to that view. We take it for granted. It’s the first thing we see when we open our bedroom curtains in the morning. Basically it’s the backdrop to our lives here. Now we won’t settle for anything less. Don’t get me wrong we still appreciate it and sometimes pinch ourselves to make sure we’re not dreaming that we live here. Because 3 years ago our view – the one we took for granted – was of a railway station and hundreds of identical buildings. They were nice old Victorian buildings – but still…
Its human nature to settle for what we get. We get used to our circumstances whether they are our ideal or not. Raising your lifestyle bar is about taking control of what you want to get used to. That can mean where you live, what you earn, how you earn it and how much time you have to enjoy life. In many ways this is the opposite of what we have traditionally been taught. We are taught to work hard, do the best we can and settle for what that brings us. But all within a fairly tight set of constraints and structures: 9-5 jobs, and career ladders. We work the 40 hrs a week for 40 years to retire at 40% of our final income when our best years are behind us plan.
Benefits Of Raising Your Lifestyle Bar
Sadly for most people following that plan leaves them with a lot of regrets at the end of it. They never think about raising their lifestyle bar or even that it might be possible. The good news is that raising your lifestyle bar has never been more possible and worth the effort. We did it 3 years ago and the view (literally and metaphorically) is amazing.
Our situation was far from ideal at the time. We were both in our mid to late forties. I’d been laid off for the second time in 2 years. My partner had just qualified as a driving instructor and was just getting her business started. WE financed that by re-mortgaging our house in Glasgow. Nevertheless we wanted to raise our lifestyle bar. We spent a couple of weekends exploring the area we now live in and decided it was one of those now or never things. We put our Glasgow place on the market and crossed our fingers. It sold over the asking price in 10 days. So we rented a place for 4 months before buying our ideal house (well under the asking price) and have lived here ever since.
Using The Internet To Raise Your Lifestyle Bar
I’m a bit of sceptic when it comes to “asking the universe for what you want and it will come”. But so much of our journey does seem to have been a result of visualisation that I’m more agnostic about the idea now. There were a lot of steps but they all seemed to fall into place like a line of toppled dominoes after we took the plunge. On the practical side it has been made possible by an online business that I started with help from some incredible mentors that came my way. The universe? – who knows – although on the very day we moved house I made $5K in commissions.
I can say with absolute certainty that the Internet is a great vehicle for raising your lifestyle bar. It certainly worked for us. You need some new skills, some fabulous, high profit products to sell and a great deal of support and mentoring. I found all of the above when I watched the same series of free videos you can sign up for on the link below.