Building A Life By Design
I’ve been fascinated by the last couple of episodes of Ben Fogle’s new TV series “New Lives in the wild”, The last episode in particular is a shining example of how leveraging modern technology- the internet – can open the possibilities for those determined to live life on their own terms allowing anyone to live a life by design.
The episode covered the story of a 49-year-old former dump truck operator from the UK. A keen adventurer and traveller, this guy decided he wanted to buy and live on a remote island. This kind of life by design is a dream shared by many people but which to most might seem unattainable. Not so these days, but how did the Internet help this guy to achieve it?
How The Internet Enables Living Life By Design
First of all he had limited resources so he decided to cash in pretty much everything he had to finance his life by design – on Ebay! This included his house and most of his possessions but he also auctioned off his circle of friends and basically put up his entire UK life in its entirety. Only on the Internet!
Whilst I’m not sure how the sale of the non-physical parts of his life went he raised enough to buy a small island in Panama and set off on his adventure. But that’s not where the power of the Internet ended in this remarkable story.
Many of the skills he needed to acquire and the contacts he needed to make were found online. He needed to build his off grid house and how to make it habitable and reasonably comfortable so having made sure he would have a good internet connection he was able to search Google and Youtube for most of the information he needed.
In an unexpected twist Ian also found a partner online who wanted to share his dream – online dating being a huge industry in it’s own right. So now, again thanks to the Internet he has a partner to share the adventure with. Further to that they both supplement their savings by designing websites for people remotely. All of this can easily be done online with some digital marketing skills.
Learn The Life By Design Skills
I realise that this might not be everyone’s cup of tea as a life by design but the point is that without the ability to leverage the internet this would have been a near impossible feat. These two people are actually just touching the tip of the iceberg in terms of how they could further finance their lifestyle choices with digital marketing skills.
So even of living an off-grid life on a tiny island in Panama is not what your design for life would look like, it’s an object lesson on what you can do. It also reminds me of some of the people I have been lucky to meet through my association with the SFM and DEA.
I’ve written before about Greg and Fiona Scott, authors of Living The Laptop Lifestyle, who have used their SFM training to travel the world for months at a time, working online and helping others to do the same.
It really is a different world now and we absolutely can learn the skills that allow us to create a life of our own design. Its almost like building a website – which you can do from a wooden house you built on a tiny island in Panama it would appear. This is the ethos behind the SFM and DEA and their community of lifestyle adventurers. Find out more about living a life by design by clicking the image below and signing up for some free video presentations that give you a fuller picture of what’s possible in this digital economy.
