I was in the shower this morning and I just couldn't stop thinking about this topic- how committed are you to the life that you want to live?
It just kept repeating over and over in my head to the point where I said, ‘Louis, you've got to take the kids out for a walk because I have to record this podcast, I can't stop thinking about it’.
The thought was triggered because I listened to a podcast about a different topic where they used an analogy about doctors.
I want to tell you a story because it really got me thinking about my own life and my own journey, that's got me to where I am today. And also, to look forward to the future, where I want to go. And one of the things that occurred to me was how committed I am and my partner is to the life we want to live. This didn't happen overnight. The life that we want to live is not happening overnight. It's a process. But I wonder, do you think about how committed you are to the life that you want to live?
Being committing to the life that you want to live; here's what I mean by this.
So, my partner is a doctor. When we first met, he was working in a bar and that was all he was doing. We had a very boozy social life; in our twenties, no kids or major responsibilities, just having a good time. But along the way, both of us had different dreams that we wanted to follow; and so we started following them.
One of the things that my partner decided to do was that he wanted to become a doctor and he wanted to study medicine. He was studying bio-medicine at the time and he applied to get into medicine and he got in. But he got in in Tasmania. Now at the time we were living in Victoria and I was working towards a major goal, I had been doing a business course, and had got a small grant to get a business started. I had just rented a space in a studio. At the time I was working as a photographer, and I didn't feel like moving to Tasmania with my partner was an option.
He was really committed to studying medicine and I was really committed to creating my photography business. And we were both also really committed to each other. At the time, it felt really hard. That first year that he moved to Tasmania was not the most wonderful year of my life. Living apart from your partner, especially when we had already been living together was really tough. There were many days and times when it just wasn't fun at all and we spent a lot of money on flying back and forth to Tasmania and double rents and all of that jazz.
The point here is that he was committed, he was so committed to becoming a doctor, that he was prepared to live apart from his partner for six years to achieve that! I've never really spoken about our relationship before on the podcast because it's not really relevant I guess until now, but I think this is a really good analogy and story to tell, to get you thinking about how committed you are to what you want to achieve, whatever it is. I want to tell you a little bit more about this. So, he was in Tasmania studying and I knew at the time that I wasn't going to move down there. I also had other dreams that I wanted to follow, about going overseas. I just thought to myself, I'm not going to wait six years until he graduates to be able to go overseas. So again, we just fully committed to our lives and fully committed to each other and I moved overseas. I moved to London while he was studying in Tasmania, because my father is from the UK and I had always wanted to go to the UK and experience what life was like over there and see where he grew up.
I thought I can't wait six years until my partner has finished so, I'm going to do this. We continued our relationship while I lived in London, and he lived in Tasmania. And again, there were many tough times. But we were both carving out the lives that we wanted. And for me to go to Tasmania and just be with him wasn't the life I wanted to live and for him to put his medical career on hold and come to London with me was not the life that he wanted to live. We were both really committed to doing what we wanted to do, and also equally committed to being in a partnership. So, we made it work.
I want to tell you about this because often I hear people talking about things and just talking about it in a way that it's not possible. Like the thing that you want, the thing that you want to achieve in your life is just out of your reach. But that's actually bullsh*t. It's just because of the way that you thinking about it. And I don't mean this in a ‘you're doing it wrong’ way. I'm not trying to shame you or make you wrong or anything like that but I think it is human nature to place limitations on ourselves.
I've been looking at a book recently and it's all to do with property and one of the things that I hear commonly here in Australia and have even said so myself is that it’s so hard to break into the property market. Properties are so expensive these days, and it's just near impossible for millennials to buy property. And again, that is actually bullsh*t.
Yes, it is difficult. But I'll ask you this question again. How committed are you to the life that you want to live? If you want to own your own home or you want to buy an investment property, or you want to set yourself up for the future, how committed are you to that? Are you prepared to live apart from your partner for six years? I'm not suggesting that you do that? By the way, I've got to say living in a long-distance relationship is not fun. There’s so much about it that is not good and is incredibly painful, being away from the person that you love, but at the same time, Louis and I have been back together for years now, this was a long time ago, and we have such an amazing relationship, because we have that experience in our back pocket now. Looking back, it seems easier than it was. It was very difficult at the time, but we did it. We lived apart for six years, and we're still together. And because we've done that, in terms of our relationship, we can do anything, there's nothing that we can't do.
In terms of how I was talking about a property, if you want to buy a property, you can buy a property. Now, you might not be able to do it next week. You might not be able to do it next year. It might actually take you five years to do it. I don't know your financial circumstances but if you want this, are you committed to doing it or not?
I'm working with this client at the moment on weight loss, and she wants to lose a certain amount of weight. It's not something that she can achieve in a couple of weeks. And one of the questions I asked her is, ‘if this takes you five years to do, will you still do it?’ Are you still all in?’ She said, ‘Yes.’
She is committed to living the life that she wants to live. She's committed to losing this weight, even if it takes five years. Anything really is possible. I want to give you a few more examples.
It's funny, I didn't expect it to go down the relationship route but I can think of another example of someone in my life who's close to me. She lives in Australia, but she has a relationship with a person who is in New Zealand. They have been together for a few years. Every three months or so she flies over there. And she lives over there with him for a few months. Then she flies back and lives in Australia for a few months. For so many people, they would just say no to having a relationship with somebody because they lived in another country. I'm not suggesting that that's wrong. Maybe you don't want to be in a relationship with somebody who's not with you all the time. But these two people do want to be in a relationship. They live in two different countries, and they're committed to making it work. They are committed to the life they want to live?
I'll continue the example with my partner becoming a doctor, he earns a decent wage now.
Sometimes we can judge people who have a high income or rich people, so to speak. But have you ever thought for a moment how these people got to where they are?
I'm sharing this with you because I think it is helpful to have awareness about what it might take to create the life you want. It cost around $80,000 to complete his degrees. We lived apart for six years. We had to move many times as part of his work requirements. And then, if you've been following me on the podcast, you know that at the start of the year, we moved again to New South Wales for his work.
We're in a partnership, so I fully support what he does. He fully supports what I do. We're committed, to him being able to get his advanced qualification. We moved our whole family here to New South Wales, away from all our family and friends. That's what we're committed to doing to creating the life that we want to live.
I'm certainly not suggesting that you have to bust your balls and live a life that's, really uncomfortable and that you don't enjoy but I'm also saying that maybe you need to do some things that feel uncomfortable to achieve the goals that you want; financially, health wise, relationship wise, whatever it is in your life that you want. In the financial realm, a lot of people aspire to have their own property and or to buy an investment property. I see so many people wiping it off as something that they can't achieve. It might not be something you can achieve in one year or five years but maybe it's something you can achieve in 10 years. Are you committed to doing that?
This question ‘how committed are you to the life you want to live? is so powerful for you to contemplate. Firstly, it opens you to actually consider committing to what you want in your life and not discounting it as something that you can't achieve just because it's going to take you longer than you think.
Second, to create awareness about what you're doing, taking the time to think- 'am I actually committing to what I want to do?'
A lot of us, I think, we dabble in things. We have an idea what we want to do. But when it gets hard, we let it go.
Or we think something is simple not possible for us. For example, I have some friends who have just totally wiped having their own home. They've just said, No, I can't do it. It's just financially not possible. It's only financially not possible because they're choosing not to work towards it.
Now. I'm not suggesting that everybody should own a home and it's the most important thing. But if you want something in your life, the only person stopping you from getting it is actually you. As you know, I have investment properties. I did not know how to buy investment properties before I started investing in property. But I knew it was something that I wanted to do. I was committed to doing it. It took me years to save for my first property. Years. I won't go into it now because I've already talked about it on other podcasts, but I drove a crappy car. I used to buy all my clothes from the OP shop. I wanted a house so badly that I was prepared to do those things.
Sometimes it felt impossible to do, but I just didn't let go of the goal. I remember there were plenty of times I used to get home from work and look at Realestate.com. It was kind of depressing, because I would think, ‘Oh my gosh, I'm so far off being able to buy a place.’ This was all happening when my partner was living in Tasmania and the bulk of my money was going on flights back and forth to Tasmania. Any other money was being put aside for a home deposit. I just kept putting that money aside, and it took a very long time. It took a lot of disappointment. A lot of looking at houses, a lot of insecurity.
When we went and bought our first house, I didn’t know what to do and dealing with the agent was challenging. I can't even tell you how disrespectful he was to me. And we almost didn't buy the first house because of the way that he treated me. But I just thought, you know what, I'm not going to let this get in the way of me buying our first home. I'm not going to let some guy who's rude and demeaning get in the way because I wanted to buy a house.
And so again, I just want to ask you: How committed are you to the life that you want to live? All the things that I've written about today, in the moment so many of them felt really difficult and challenging at the time. But when I look back on the things that we've done, it wasn't as hard as I thought at the time, because you expand your comfort zone and your ability to do things.
That first house we bought, we lived in at first, but in the back of my mind, I always knew we probably wouldn't stay living there. So we bought it with the view that it would potentially become an investment property. And the second place that we bought, which I knew was going to be an investment property. I didn't know all the ins and outs of what it takes to buy an investment property so I went and did a course. I went and studied property investing. I surrounded myself with other investors. There's an incredible podcast called the Smart Property Investor. Many property investors go on the show and talk about what they've done. They talk about their journey. I used to listen to that show nearly every day.
I would listen to what other property investors were doing and it completely normalised it for me, being a property investor became something that just was so normal because I was just listening to people investing in property every day. And so then when I went and invested in property, it became something that I felt was achievable and it was still scary and it was still definitely stepping out of my comfort zone going through that whole process of drawing down equity from one of our properties, investing in another property going into larger amounts of debt paying a buyer's agent to actually go and find a property for us because the property that we have is in a in another state because we wanted something that was within our budget.
All of those things took commitment. You don't pay a buyer's agent, a lot of money to go and buy a property for you unless you're serious.
There was a point in time where I thought, ‘what would I do if I was a professional property investor?’ How would I behave in this moment, if I had already reached my goal? Would I pay a professional to find the property for me? Or would I try to scrimp and save every dollar and figure it out? I thought as a professional property investor, I would pay somebody to go and do it.
So that's what we did. But it takes courage to commit to doing those things. Go all in.
Whatever goal it is that you're following, or whatever goal it is that you're trying to achieve. It takes commitment. And I like to think of my life as a commitment. There's things that I want to achieve in my life. I can see them as individual goals, but I also feel like I see my life as a commitment in the sense of how I want to live. There are dreams and goals that I'm going after that I've only just started now. They are long term goals that are going to take me potentially 10 plus years to achieve. So what? What else am I going to do?
I was working as a teacher and I really love being in that job but I realised it didn’t serve the lifestyle I wanted.
I have changed my career in my forties to do something that I'm really passionate about and live the life I want to live. Now have I completely got all the ducks in a line and living the result of that? Not yet. I'm still working towards it, and working on a lot of things that I want to create in my life. Am I going to get it all in the next year or so? Definitely not. It's going to take me a long time to achieve some of these goals that I have. But as far as I know, I only have this one life. I want to spend it living the way that I want to live.
I don't have all the answers. I don't know how to achieve all the goals that I have. But finding out how to do things is just a Google search away, I can just look stuff up. The important point is that I have commitment to the life that I want to live and I'm going ahead and I'm working out how to do it. I'm creating the mindset and learning the things that I need to do to create that.
I hope this has helped you today.
if you would like help working on the life that you want to live on purpose you can schedule a complimentary consultation with me.
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