What would you do if you won 35 million dollars in the lottery?
Or if you’ve seen ‘Loot’ starring Maya Rudolph on ‘Apple TV+‘, what would you do if you suddenly had $87 billion at your disposal (although there is significantly different emotional baggage associated with receiving this money through a divorce settlement)?
The actual dollar amount is immaterial. In fact, whether or not the scenario is extremely realistic is not relevant either. The essential question behind this scenario is:
What would you do with your work and life if money was not a significant factor?
How would your life be different?
Would you change jobs, scale back your hours or give up work completely?
OK. What would you fill most of your time with instead?
Would you take up a new hobby, join a club or pursue a fitness goal?
Would you retrain or sign up to study something for fun?
Would you volunteer or give your time more freely to your friends and family?
Would you travel? If so, where and what would you do there?
Would you give some of the money away?
Would you invest in or sponsor other organisations or causes?
Jot down your response to capture your initial thoughts.
And if like me, you enjoy savouring this mind-bending scenario exploration, ponder these questions over the next day or so to and add or modify your list.
This scenario invites you to pull away from your every day experience and think a little more expansively and perhaps challenge you to think a little deeper.
Because I get it. You deserve a holiday, a break, a shopping spree, a party. But after the initial flurry, what would your everyday regular life be like?
How would you ideally like to spend your days?
Now, for all of you who say, ‘Why even ask this question? Because it will never happen to me’ As I said before, for the purposes of visioning, it doesn’t matter if it happens or not.
There’s no argument that having a certain amount of money provides us with security and access to many essential needs and services, such as food, shelter, education and healthcare. However, for the purposes of this exercise, having a ridiculous amount of money to consider increases the scale of what’s possible and what we think we could do. Sometimes the reason why we don’t consider doing certain things is because we unconsciously censor ourselves or label our dreams as being impossible, frivolous, ridiculous or some other negative label.
The next step in this exercise is to examine your answers to the previous prompts and list of ideas.
What are the essential elements to your unlimited or ideal life?
List down your essentials.
For example:
- job change
- travel
- study
- new hobby
- entertaining
- investments
- volunteering
- more time with family
OK. So now what?
Pick 1 thing from your list.
How can you incorporate this element into your current life circumstances, even if in a small way?
For instance, want to travel?
While you save up your spending budget and leave allowance, could you explore where you currently live with fresh eyes? Go for a day trip or mini-break over a weekend? Cook some exotic meals for dinner? Sit in the back yard or local swimming pool with a really good book or podcast?
Or if in your ideal life, you’d like to retrain or learn something new but don’t feel that you can currently afford the time or expense?
Could you find a way to get support from your current work employer through study support, a short-term secondment or a sabbatical? Can you learn more by reading books or blogs, taking a short course or watching YouTube and some TED Talks?
The possibilities for small actions are endless. The main thing is countering the ‘Yeah but…’ that may crop up as think of what we could do.
Our brains are generally programmed to look for the obstacles or things that might get in the way.
For extra credit, what windfalls do you already have in your life? And how could you make the most of them? What can you tweak to make what you have even better?
A mindset of appreciation and gratitude also creates a great foundation for more expansive thinking.
We need willingness and a degree of hope or optimism to overcome any initial resistance and inertia in making a change to our current ways of doing things.
If we want to find a way to move forward in creating the life of our dreams, we need to be prepared to try something new.
So, what would you do if you had a windfall? How would you like to see your life change? Then, go out and take a small action towards it?
Book a free 20 minute chat with Natalia if you’d like to explore this visioning exercise further, get some accountability to introduce some of these ideas into your life, or transform some of the ‘Yeah buts’ that are blocking you from realising these changes in your life.
We all have the potential to dream and live bigger, happier lives.
Go on! Live yours.
