Hi everyone, Dr. Desiree here. Today's video is all about designing your ideal life. What does your aligned life look like for you?

Aligning Our Needs & Values with Daily Life

I know I use the word align quite a bit. I'd like to talk about how your needs and values and wants can align with actually how your daily life looks. When we say this is what matters to us, this is what's important to us, this is what we need, this is what we want; How can we match that up practically in an actually then how we're spending our time, money and energy?

That might seem kind of simple or straightforward, but we know that there are boundaries and barriers and societal expectations, family, and so on and so forth. There are so many forces that work upon that can get things out of alignment pretty quickly. Just because you want this and need this doesn't mean, boom, that's what you have. That doesn't mean that's exactly how you can live your life because there are other things getting in the way.

Choosing Your Values

So I wanted to explore a little bit questions to ask yourself, this is a dreaming big kind of video. Like how can you really dream up your ideal online life? I love talking about values and I should save that for another video, especially when I was doing a lot of career counseling. That was my favorite part, was helping someone explore their values really exploring what is important to them when they think of a happy life or a successful life.

• What kind of person do they want to be (their identity)?

• What kind of life do they want to build?

• What kind of life do they want to have?

• What might their legacy be?

• What would they like for their loved ones to remember about them when they're gone?

Exploring some of those categories in relation to values, can be really meaningful and enjoyable. And of course I'm the one that's always like, they're all important to me, I want to choose 25 of them. What do you mean I have to choose 10 and then, eight, then three and just two or one! I always felt resistant to having to whittle down my list of values. All of them matter!

Dreaming Big

Anyway, as you think about your values and what really matters to you, that for sure informs your wants and needs and building an aligned life. There's so many categories here so I just kind of want to throw out some questions, get your wheels turning, just start thinking and dreaming about what's possible because typically it's easy to feel stuck or trapped or powerless in your current situation and to feel like your circumstances can not be changed in a meaningful way because there's so many larger external systems that there's nothing you can do about. So please know, I hear that.

I understand that and I too felt very stuck in the middle of my burnout journey in terms of health care, student loan forgiveness, the price of real estate and the cost of living in the city that I lived in, etc. There were many things that I felt like, well, there's nothing I can do about that and so I just have to suck it up and deal and gradually seeds were planted by other people that I trusted who made changes in their life that I realized, wow, maybe I do have more power than I thought to make small changes, to make large changes. Like I am more powerful than I thought I don't have to just suck it up and deal. Even when dealing with large systems that I have no direct power over without directly control or change.

What Would Your Aligned Life Look Like?

So with that being said, thinking about what would your ideal aligned life look like?

• How many hours would you want to sleep at night?

• What time would you get up?

• What time would you go to bed?

• Would you not use an alarm? Just allow your body to wake up naturally depending on career family members

• where would you want to live? You know, city countryside, suburbs?

• the United States a different country?

• You want to live in the woods and the mountains closer to the ocean. You want to look somewhere safer.

• What kind of foods would you eat and your ideal aligned life, would you be able to choose a different cuisine, higher quality foods?

• Would you be able to outsource more of the things that you don't enjoy doing in the different areas of your life, whether that's small tasks or, you know, cleaning or cooking what would you be able to do differently if you have your ideal aligned life, you know,

• how much would you move your body? And in what way, what would be possible, you know, greater access to you know, certain sports or certain, you know, fun recreational activity, right? Would it be easier to play tennis or go swimming or ride your bike or, you know, play soccer?

• How much would you watch the sunset or watching the sunrise?

• Would you be able to control the pace of your day control the schedule, be able to listen to your body? So on the productive days, when you felt motivated, you felt energized, you got work done. And on the days that you were sick or tired or unmotivated, that you could honor that and focus on rest and rejuvenation, self-care slower pace, not necessarily being productive.

• How could you give yourself more space, flexibility, grace, and self compassion to really honor your natural flows of energy and your rhythm. What would life look like?

• How would you make your living with your career change?

• Would you do something differently?

• Would you use your talents and skills in a different way?

• Do something more, do something less

• Read more for pleasure?

• Travel more?

• Would you visit people you love more often?

• Would you take up new hobbies, have the space to explore interesting things that you felt like you didn't have the time, energy or money for, because you really had to focus on meeting everyone else's needs, right?

• Being an outstanding employee and outstanding parents, and really not having space for, for you, what you care about, what would your life look like?

• How would you spend your energy?

• How would you spend your time?

• How would you spend your money?

• How would you be able to honor your nervous system, your needs, your capacity of what feels like enough? What feels like too much?

• How could you center peace and fulfillment rather than overwhelm and exhaustion? Like what different decisions big or could you make it just continuously pivot and get you closer to really living a designed, aligned life?

I'm not saying everything would just be perfect and beautiful and you'd never have problems. That you'd never get sick, or have a fight. You never have calendars. Of course that's not how life works. However, you’d have that feeling of freedom and autonomy, that you are in charge of your relationships, your energy, your time, your money, that you could be making informed decisions where you have that capacity to say: “Okay, this works, this doesn't work. Okay. That wasn't quite right. What can we tweak?”

Knowing that you matter and that you deserve to have a life that works for you and that the more that you are fulfilled and rested and happy. And the better you'll be able to put that light and love out into the world and treat other people in beautiful ways and help model and give permission to them, to step into their power and their authenticity and build their life the way they want.

Alright, I'd love to hear about what some of the pieces of your aligned life look like. Dream big! More as possible! You have more power and more control than you know, and I'm here for you.