Ralph Carlson Blog

As I draft contents for my new One Month Travel website, I’m going to share parts of it here.  I’ll be refining the drafts along the way but posting here helps me improve the writing and provides an opportunity for comments and questions that will help improve my communications.  Lifestyle Design was a revolutionary concept for me to discover at an advanced age but I would rather learn important things late than never.  Tim Ferriss opened my eyes with The Four Hour Work Week and I recommend that anyone start their exploration of Lifestyle Design with Tim.   These are my thoughts about Retirement Lifestyle Design for now.

I have to credit Tim Ferriss for shaking up my life. Before Tim I saw life as a challenge. I believed that a satisfying life was one where you had the skills to manage whatever came your way, to react.to events- not control them That seemed to me to be the message of my education and I embraced it. I went to school, managed my career and raised my family. It was a good ride but something was missing. I just never understood what. Now, after reading the Four Hour Work Week, I discover that what I was missing was Lifestyle Design.

When your life reads like a cookbook, it’s no surprise that your lifestyle fits a stereotype. What is missing is a decision about where you want to end up before you even start cooking and the idea that maybe you don’t want to follow a recipe concocted by somebody else. What was missing was how I wanted to live.

The end of a working career is no time to change course. I needed to ride to the finish line if only to secure an income for retired life. But retirement opens up a new door and allows you to start again. You are free to consider and peruse other options. So when my time to retire arrived I thought about how I wanted to live. Then I was able to reorganize resources and activities to accomplish the desired lifestyle.

My wife and I always wanted to travel but career and family commitments made that impossible. If we wanted to travel, what would we have to change to make it happen?

Lifestyle Design is taking charge of your life, first by deciding how you want to live, deciding what is important and what is not. Then you take inventory of your resources and skills. What do you need to add to make that lifestyle possible. Then you make a plan to acquire them. What do you have that no longer matters to you that you can sell? Are you spending too much on things that don’t matter just because you think that appearance is important? What is important in the end is living in a way that satisfies you, no matter what others might think.

Instead of using your current lifestyle to excuse failing to live your dream, define your dream and const5ruct a new lifestyle to support it.

You can help me by commenting and asking questions to help me improve my writing.  Thank you so much.