My quest. Plan:A

[ChildOfChaos]

Hey guys,

 

Tomorrow is my 33rd birthday. I recently read "Level Up your life" and a book with similar ideas "The happiness of Pursuit" that has the basic idea that giving your life a quest is what makes it meaningful.

 

I decided to throw all my ideas for what I needed to do to improve my life and where I wanted to go, that I had already been kinda working into this one quest/idea that was more coherent vision based upon these ideas. I am not following strict game mechanics but taking the basic idea and adopting it in a way I believe will work for me.

 

I have made a document complete with a summary of the quest, objectives and then a final call to arms. I am going to share some of this with you, I have edited out a few personal things etc, but thanks for reading

[ChildOfChaos]

**Plan: A**

 

The world is my playground, my life is my adventure and I just want to have a great time with it. 

 

My purpose here is to simply become the most ****ing awesome person I can imagine being. To make my life as interesting, exciting and awesome as possible, to do that with all my heart and everything I have and to share it all with those that matter the most to me. Period.

 

I believe life is this creative process and that you are always creating your life and your world as you want it to be. It’s up to you.

 

Plan:A is my quest in reclaiming and recreating my life in a way that is awesome to me. It is the start of a new adventure, because to me life’s greatest quest is becoming the most awesome person you are capable of becoming and having the greatest ****ing life you can.

 

It’s called Plan:A because there is no Plan:B. There is no other choice. This is go time for me. If I don’t do this I will be a loser, I would have failed and it will all be my fault, the only person to blame will be me. I have to make this happen, period.

 

I am excited by seeing where I can take this, what I can learn, what will happen, how my life will evolve and to see what I am capable of doing and becoming when I commit to making this happen.

[ChildOfChaos]

I broke everything down to three main areas with some side projects and considerations to boot. 

 

#**1 - Look and feel like a RockStar**.

 

Feeling great and being in great health is the multiplier of everything, without great health, you have nothing. It is a key foundation of being awesome and creating a good ****ing life.

 

I want to create my own identity and dress like a badass. 

 

I am excited by the idea of creatively expressing myself as a person and individual here on this planet and finding a way to do that through the way I present myself to others, and the avatar I project out into the world.

 

Ultimately to me this is about being comfortable in my own skin, looking in the mirror and feeling proud of who I am, being strong, full of energy and just looking and feeling ****ing awesome.

**Milestone 1**: Have a completely flat stomach, lose all my body fat and at least 70 pounds.

**Milestone 2**: Increase strength and tone body. Correct my posture, Look great naked.

**Milestone 3**: Create an awesome style through a new wardrobe of rockstar clothing and grooming.

#**2 - Create financial freedom and independence**. 

 

Money to me is the currency of freedom and possibility, the more income I am able to generate the more it opens up these opportunities and adventures. Money might not be everything but it’s a force multiplier for how great life can be.

 

I spend at least 128 hours a month at my current job  where after 12 years of experience, I am close to minimal wage. I am wasting and ruining my life, It is time to leave.

 

I am inspired by wanting to be great at what I do and the idea of learning to create income in more intreasting and exciting ways. I am excited by how this will open up many possiblities for future freedom and independence, I am also curious to see what oppurtunies I will be able to create and develop.

**Milestone 1**: Become a badass web developer, create 5 award winning sites and portfolio/freelance business site.

**Milestone 2**: Get three paid clients, create a business that  allows me to receive a monthly passive income.

**Milestone 3**:  Leave current for something more exciting and rewarding that gives a higher income. Aim of £30,000 a year.

 

#**3 - Become a badass guitarist and record my own EP**.

 

Music has always been a large part of my life and who I am, but I have always experienced it from the point of a passive observer and listener, I want to participate, I want to create music for myself and enjoy my favourite songs in a new and more immersive way. 

 

I don’t want this to be something that I "always wanted to do”, playing guitar is not something that comes easy to me, I am not naturally musically gifted, so it’s a great challenge and a great thing to try.

 

I want to see where I can take this, in the future I want to learn to play the keyboard and to record and create my own music, that would be *****ing awesome. My ultimate aim with this would be to record my own EP.

 

**Milestone 1**: Learn and play the guitar. Be able to play 5 of my favourite songs.

**Milestone 2**: Take it further, Learn to play the keyboard and how to use music production software. Record and release my own instrumental EP.

**Further activities and things that would be awesome**.

 

Side projects and considerations:

 

- Document and Listen to 50 audiobooks, expanding my knowledege and exposing myself to new ideas and possibilities that I can use to improve myself and make my life more intreasting, exciting and awesome.

 

- Watch 50 documentaries to learn and enhance my understanding of the world and expose myself to things that I never knew existed.

 

- Embrace my love of music by building a collection of over 100 live concerts that I watch and enjoy as well as an extensive collection of music videos so that I can create my own music video channel as well as trying to go to as many live shows of my favorite bands as possible.

 

- Create an awesome inspiring home “life studio” that is my central hub were I can start and work on my adventures. 

 

- For fun: Watch every episode of the Simpsons, Family Guy and South Park ever made.

 

- Develop myself into the person worthy of the romantic relationship of my dreams and then go and get it. I want to be the person that you would want to hang out with, the person that you would want to be friends with, that you would aspire to be, that you would look up too, someone worth it. Someone that you would love so much you would want to cry. Because being that person adds a huge amount of value to the world. I want to be the person that when I die, there are not many tears, but what fucking great times we had. I want to be massively lovable. "If I were a stranger and met myself, would I want to hang out more with myself?” the answer absoultely has to be YES!

 

- One of the biggest things I want to do with Plan:A is really develop myself as a person. I want to be clear about who I am, what I want to do, where I want to go and what I stand for. It’s important for me to develop this and to always think about how I can be the most fucking awesome person I can imagine being. How I can make my life more interesting, exciting and awesome and how I can inspire, encourage and do that for others. 

[ChildOfChaos]

**Battle Cry: A call to arms, some final thoughts for the journey**.

 

Work Hard. Be Kind. Be Brave.

 

Shut up. Do the work. Be patient.

 

Be awesome, Make yourself proud, honor others freedom.

 

In life you should always be doing one of two things. Finding out what it is you want and then going after that.

 

Plan:A provides a framework for what it is that I want and now it’s simply a matter of going after that.

 

It’s as simple as that. The one thing that I have to do each day, each week, each month is to move forward. To put one foot in front of the other and make actual, real, meaningful progress. 

 

Everything else must be in service of that. A sickening desire to make this happen and get it done.

If you just do something, you fail, you learn, you improve, you try again and if you do this process long enough, you succeed, it's a universal law.

How do you keep focused? Execute. The world is full of noise and distractions, life your own life, on your own terms. Ignore everything else. If you move forward and you just keep going and keep illerating, keep making it better and you keep your destination in mind then there is actually no space for anything else, if you just keep that loop going.

In my life, the thing that has held me back the most is waiting. Waiting for the right thing to do, for something to be perfect, right enough, awesome enough, secure enough, sure enough, so I never just go or make it happen. I never Jump.

 

Now is that time to jump.

 

To be brave. To be bold. To go.

 

I am willing to fail, to look stupid, to screw up. But I never want to be boring or to be lame. I want to take it to the highest level I can, with the greatest intensity I can. I don’t want to be perfect, I just want to be badass because life is either a daring adventure or nothing and you know, that’s the whole ****ing point.

 

Working hard is exactly what I want to be doing, going after what I want with everything I have or else what is the point? I want to continually push myself and live out on the edges of what’s possible for me, always learning and improving and reaping the rewards of the things that excite me the most. This is what I belive is the essence of what makes live worth living, not to act upon that is how you become boring and lame.

 

Everybody is running straight to the middle, average life, average rules, average way of doing things. I ****ing hate that. In what I choose to do, the most important thing is to just make myself proud, not to settle. I’m the only person I have to answer too, I know when I am selling myself short or when I could do better. I know when I let yourself down. I just need to do things my own way to get to where I want to go, in a way that makes me happy about myself.

 

When it comes to others… I must honor others freedom. Freedom to say and do whatever they want, without any requirement from myself. I don’t need validation from someone else and they are not required to give it to me. I get my value from living up to my own expectations and making myself proud. 

If something or someone is bothering me, I need to move on, shut up and get back to my work.

 

When it comes down to it, the most important thing is to DO THE WORK. You are here. The things you want are over there. The only difference between the two is the work you need to do. Shut up, be patient and do the fucking work. That’s all there is, anything else is an excuse.

 

My excitement from life comes from the sense of adventure and enthusiasm, the feeling of wanting to find out how something will turn out, seeing what I can do, what I can create, where I can go, what I can learn, what I can share, who I can make smile and what I can do. Geniunely waking up each morning excited to make progress, to move forward and create something better.

 

With this plan, I have no idea how it will turn out, what path it will take or what will open up to me, that’s exciting. The more I put into it, the more I will get out of it. That’s the only motivation I need to give it all that I have got!

 

Finally… I must remember that I will die (Momento Mori), one day everything will be gone. There is an absoulte urgency to everything, I must not wait, I must not allow things to take longer than they have too. There is an urgency to everything, my days are numbered.  You don’t know what that number is but it’s finite. So get busy with what it is you want to do. Make it happen. Period.  Time is running out.

 

Remember: You only live once, so just go ****ing nuts.

 

Good luck!

[ChildOfChaos]

Sorry for so many posts.

 

I just wanted to break it up a little.

 

If anyone has any comments feel free to make them. I have spend a good amount of time creating this. So I am looking forward to getting started.

 

I know some of the things aren't 100% concrete and don't follow the strict goal setting methods normally advised and that I am not using a levelling up system, but I function very badly with such systems. I am an INTP personality and I absolutely rebel and hate strict productivity systems, I can't use GTD at all for example. What works well for me is using my creativity and curiosity so i've tried to build that into what I am doing rather than making a strict set of rules.

 

The idea is that I need a direction to focus my creativity, curiosity and the work I do and this is it. I will be setting concrete next steps for what I am doing but this document represents the bigger picture.

 

My current plan is to have a "Progress board" which is going to be a whiteboard and on it I will put some key metrics marking progress that can be expressed i numeric form. Such as pounds lost, audiobooks listened too etc and then on this board I will write the next big goal or milestone for each of the main three things that I am currently working on.

 

The idea is that this will guide my day. I will wake up, look at it and then know what I am working on and try and figure out a way to move forward on any of those things.

 

Every week I will review the master plan, review where I am now vs where I need to be, look at how I can close the gap and brainstorm different things I can do, then update the whiteboard.

 

That's just my thoughts anyway...

 

 

 

[Aerisand]

@ChildOfChaos 

Hi and Welcome!

It takes some extra effort to further break down things into measurable goals, but it's doable! I spent quite some time on it as well.

The easiest way I could think of doing that was to find a mid point between my current state and the "max level" version of myself regarding each goal, and work from there.

It's like writing down steps. And if you don't know the steps to accomplish something, then you'd make the first step to investigate them.

 

Enjoy your quest!

[Gurkour]

That are some cool life goals! Just make sure that you don't "get stuck" on them - if you loose interest in for example plaing the piano you are not a failure for not learning it - simply choose another instrument!

 

And I really like this Plan A thinking! A great quote I heard about this goes somewhat like this:
"I only develop 'Plan A's. If I have a Plan B that mean I will not put everything I can towards fullfilling this plan A."

[Bob the Bardbarian]

Bad.  Ass.  It's rare that I've seen an introduction with so much fire behind it.  But remember that it's not motivation, but self-discipline, that will lead you to success.  Don't get discouraged if you fail.  Just keep moving forward, and enjoy the ride

Welcome to the Rebellion!

[Balsquith]

Wow, if you can write an introduction like that you must already be the sort of person everyone wants to hang out with - even if they don't know it yet! I am feeling more motivated myself for having read it. Good luck with all your goals.

[ChildOfChaos]

Wow... thank you so much guys! It means a lot that you took the time to respond and reply!

 

I am going through what is mentally a really tough time for me right now, I am not happy with myself as a person and I am not happy with my life as it exists externally but I believe the reason why my external life sucks so much is because I suck internally and I am wanting to correct that. My biggest problem I have always had, is not knowing how to change that or what to change. I don't even know if this is right or what else I need to change, what mindset I need. There still seems way more I need to do, but I figured if i settled on this at least I had something to aim for and then I can see what happens and adjust.

 

This evening is very bittersweet, I am excited by the possibilities of the future, but I still feel a little dragged down by some aspects of my reality that I guess lead me to go after this. That feeling I guess is one of those enemies I will need to defeat on this quest! 

 

I completely agree that it's discipline that's important rather than motivation, that's something that I learned very recently. Motivation is great I guess, it will make you feel better about doing something, but it's almost irrelevant, it's only discipline that counts. I need to find the things I need to focus my discipline on to see this throw and where I need to be disciplined in terms of my mindset. All of that stuff I haven't yet completely figured out, but also I guess a lot of that gets figured out upon the way. There is a danger otherwise of over planning or never starting. It's just a struggle with that a little, cause my mind doesn't know where to go!

 

I am committed to this, but I guess that is my biggest problem. This general feeling of "not knowing" what I need to do or what I need to change to get to where would like to be, my general unhappiness right now, that stops me from doing what I should do.  I am hoping to use this as a solid framework to tell myself to shut up, do the required work and be patient, no matter what happens. I guess this is going to be an endurance test for me.  I guess that is my true quest. In pushing through, cause really now it is only a matter of doing, although I may keep getting other ideas, I need to admit that this right now is my best guess, so I need to stick to it and trust the process to see where it leads. I am already expecting that is where the real growth and improvement is going to come from. Having a day job, lack of energy etc, is going to make this the real challenge.

 

Maybe I will adopt that as my mantra of the quest. "Trust the Process", because that's now what I need to do. Now I have decided I need to go and see where it takes me. When I feel down or discouraged, I need to know that it's just part of the journey, that the game remains the same if I am winning or losing, in fact if i am losing then it also doesn't matter, because this is what I have decided is important, so i just have to keep going and that if i just keep going I will get there. I guess I need to get comfortable with feeling unhappy, discouraged, etc and just keep pushing through, isn't that the ultimate hero's journey anyway? Pushing through the struggle? My great war isn't a physical war, it's a spiritual war with my mind.

 

 

You guys on here are the best. It's really humanity at it's finest. If you look around at the world sometimes it's somewhat disappointing, but when you see all the people here, on quests trying to better themselves and the world, it's so inspiring. I feel sad for everyone else, because I feel they are missing out and I feel sad for all the people that are doing this and aren't appreciated for it. So I really digg the encouragement, thank you strangers on the internet for making my evening.

 

The fact that someone has said "Bad. Ass." and that it has "fire" behind it, and someone says that "I must already be the sort of person everyone wants to hang with", really means so much to me, because it is entirely how I aspire to be! So at least I am somewhat on the right track. 

 

THANK YOU!

 

 

[SoulCode1110101]

Hey there! I just posted right above you and I just picked up "Level Up Your Life" too! Just started working through it and am excited to set up and get started on my quest for a better life. Looks like you've got some pretty good goals and plans worked out so far, so it looks like you're well on your way too