Update and Revisit: Creating Your Dream Life

The new year is always a time that gets me excited for what can be and this year I am revisiting one of the great activities I've done over the past 8 years that has really helped me focus on what I want to do in my life.

I take a sheet of paper and usually draw an circle in the middle of it and write MY LIFE inside it. Then I start out drawing a line from the circle and at the end of the line I write one thing I feel I must have in my life or that I really want. For instance, it might be a garden, more peace, exercise, a different car, etc. And I keep going until I run out of ideas. I've learned a few things over the years about this activity and now I usually make it a two step process. One day I write down everything I can possibly think of that I would like for my life. Then a few days later I review it and cut out anything that really isn't a must for my happiness or that isn't something I feel I can accomplish realistically right now. I try to hone it down to things I really do want most and that are true necessities or very strong desires.

This helps me to focus a bit more, not overwhelm myself and to be a little more serious about what's truly vital to my life, my happiness and my needs. Then I recreate a new MY LIFE chart. I hang this up in my office and then when I am considering opportunities and how I spend my time I am able to reference this chart to see if said opportunities fit any of the categories. If they don't it's probably something I don't need to do or is not going to take me where I want to go in my life. A simple example, say for instance I wrote down that snow skiing was a must have in my life. It would make no sense to move to a tropical island.

So far this year I have created my The Sky's The Limit version of MY LIFE and now I'm in process to hone it down, eliminate excess and complete the project. It was helpful for me to review how I've done this in the past, so I wanted to share those posts with you. Here's the post from the first time I did this project.

My First Dream Life Chart
Dream Life Chart Update: This was written shortly after I experienced a life-threatening infection and lost my hearing for a few months. Challenging time!

Below I am also adding a post I wrote several years ago that was originally published in 2011 on the blog: reFind Joy. The website, that was more lifestyle at the time, is now a business site, so my post is no longer available there. I wanted to have a copy of it available and added it here.

Actualizing My Dream Life and Finding My Joy

By Kalani Cropper

I am so happy to be here talking about joy today. I love joy. In 2009 I was working long hours in a stressful industry and had given up many things I love to focus on my career.  I was tired and too busy. I sat down one day, with a pretty piece of yellow cardstock and wrote My Dream Life in the center of it. I drew an oval around that then drew one line out from it and wrote down one thing I wanted for my dream life.

In a few minutes I had drawn 33 lines out from that oval. Things that ranged from the vehicle I wanted to drive, the family I wanted to have, the way I wanted to look and the work and play I wanted to do – all the things I felt I needed to have an abundance of real joy in my life. This life existed for me in another space and time and how desperately I wanted to arrive there.

I carried that yellow cardstock with me every day. I would look at it longing, from time to time, looking forward to the day. Then one day a couple months later, I decided to look at it with fresh eyes and note everything that had begun to happen. I was able to check off nine things that had either come into my life, changed in my life or were in the process of changing. I wanted a garden. Without thinking about it I planted a few vegetable and herb plants on my patio and was harvesting beautiful tomatoes and fresh thyme and basil. I wanted a life where I could ride my bike most places. I started riding my bike more places. I had begun to more conscientiously live my dream life.

I looked a few weeks later and realized that even more things had begun to change in my life. This time I marked 21 items. A few weeks later 29. At that moment I was amazed that the life of my dreams didn’t require a move to a new state, a large yard, charming little free-standing house, a quiet small town, a different body or new closet full of clothes. It did not require an all-out evacuation of my current life. It only required a more conscious living in the space where I was. It came to me that I already had all the elements of my dream life right there with a little more awareness, a few small changes and more enjoyable actions.

With this new appreciation I continued to make more changes in my life. Some were easy, some were harder. Some looked like they would be painful and weren’t.  Life continued to change and I continued to enjoy more and more the life of my dreams.

On a Sunday afternoon in January of this year, I found myself being ordered by an urgent care physician to get to a hospital immediately for a CAT scan. I had expected to get a prescription for antibiotics and head back home to the couch. Twelve hours later when I left the ER to be admitted to the hospital I expected to be hospitalized overnight. The next morning when I asked the specialist who checked me out if I was going home that day he said oh no, you’re not going anywhere.  Two months later, I’m feeling much better but still have lingering effects and more treatment to come. After being unable to do anything but lie down or sit and rest for four weeks, my priorities had begun to change yet again. Sitting still is not something I am good at.

But I knew this experience had happened for a reason. As I considered all I could’ve lost, all my recuperation required and the lingering health issues that might never fully repair, my perspective on all I needed in my life had quietly but intently changed. Weeks later, I decided to create a new dream life chart for 2011 and as a new start.

I started out the same…the oval…the lines shooting out from it. But this time I only came up with nine things -- nine things that really and truly mattered to my life and made me happy.  I would be okay without my dream wardrobe, I would be okay without my dream work, I would be okay without my dream house, vehicle or travel. What now mattered most to me was my life, my health, my loved ones, peace, calm, laughter and basic living needs. I felt a huge burden lifted from me. I felt lighter, more agile, more settled down and more certain of what mattered to me. At that time it was impossible for me to get caught up in wants that were unnecessary. I also felt less tolerant of spending one minute doing anything I despise or to be disingenuous in anyway.

At the same time I felt more motivated than ever to have the life I dream of and make good use of my time, energy and resources. No more playing small, more Just Do It.  It was a sweet time, that moment between painful illness and entering fully and completely back into regular, busy, stressful life – where I could watch my life for a moment with a clear, peaceful head.

I will never be able to think of that time without being reminded to keep life sweet and simple – and to remember that all the elements of my dream life, my joy, are here right now, today all around me.

Here's another update from 2013 that talks a little more about my process and the things I've learned along with a link to an inspiring article from Drew Barrymore.

2013 My Dream Life

If you feel inspired to try to create  map of your dream life I'd love to hear about your process and inspiration. Leave a comment below if you like!

Organizing And Reorganizing For The New Year

It seems many of us enter the new year with a burst of energy for reorganization. This is usually the time of year when I get pretty serious about making a sweep through the entire house to organize better spaces and reorganize areas that have grown out of control over the year. The week before Christmas, when we were down with a mild and queasy flu, I grabbed a composition notebook and started making a list of organization projects, room by room.

In the few days before Christmas, in between nursing hits of ginger ale for the stomach, watching movies and taking feverish naps, I managed to knock off a list of small projects. I reorganized my sock drawer and got rid of a lot of no longer attractive socks. I reorganized where I keep my workout clothes and pajamas, taking advantage of the huge drawers under the half-staircase that leads down to our bedroom. They are right next to my side of the bed and don't make a lot of sense overall. But for bulky things like workout clothes and pajamas I now realize they are perfect. Under the top landing of the staircase there are four square-front drawers stacked two on two. So I took the top two for clothes and in the bottom two I put books I like to have by my bed on one side and bedside toiletries (hand lotion, saline nasal spray, eye drops, a few favorite essential oils and stress-relief scents, microwave heating pads, etc.) in the other. Great use of the space and now there is far less clutter around my bed. Hooray! It'e easier to keep all the surfaces around the bed clutter free, which makes for a much more restful space.

In the bedroom I still need to reorganize my jewelry drawers. They used to be so fabulously organized and now some of my jewelry is getting older and worn, there are a few pieces that need repair and I really need to just update a lot of my costume jewelry pieces. So that will be a project for another day. I also need to tidy up the lingerie drawers and my swimwear drawer. Trying to do just one drawer a day seems much more manageable than trying to tackle the entire room.

Simultaneously, which wouldn't be recommended by any professional organizer, I've been working on my office. Today I got the itch to organize all the small supplies I have in my work space. On one side of my desk is basic office supplies that they entire family uses. On the other is my business supply cabinet with small bits and pieces I'm using to make things. As I'm going through cupboards and drawers I am questioning why I chose to store some things in the office. What was I thinking when we moved in?! I guess it felt like I had all the room in the world at the time, but now I'm taking books and other things out of this space and putting them in our family room. I also need to reorganize the printer area. We seem to have two dead printers suddenly -- a vintage laser printer and "not old enough to be dead yet", "multi-purpose-do-it-all-but-not really" inkjet printer -- and now have a new one that's working like a charm. I need to disconnect the oldies and give them a proper resting place.

In my beautiful former workspace in Los Angeles, it was all open shelving and I'd designed a place for everything before I purchased the Elfa unit that I came to really love and enjoy. Just talking about it or looking at old photos makes me a little sad. Here I have four big boxy drawers, four lower cabinet shelves and two sets of upper cabinet shelves...all with doors. Initially I thought the doors were fantastic because they would hide everything. And hide every they do. Getting stuff in and out is a major pain and the short height of the shelves makes storing anything vertical like binders or magazine racks impossible. Frustrating. So I'm working at trying to find better solutions for usage of the space. Maybe I'll buy some bright baskets for the lower shelves so that I can see what's inside those deep, dark caverns.

I'm hoping that by having my areas of the house more organized it will help inspire others to be a bit more organized with their things. I was imagining that it would take a couple of weeks to get things spic and span in my spaces, working in between many other commitments, but it might be the entire month of January and that's okay. I'll just keep working at it. It seems like every time I start a project, not long after I see The Man working on organizing some area of the house or garage.

The other big key to organization success is finishing small projects. If they don't get finished, they often stay unfinished for a while and multiple half-done projects just make everything feel chaotic. So if I start something, I want to finish it all at one time, in a couple of hours, more or less. This is the biggest reason why I am keeping daily projects so bite-size.

I have lots more to do in the office. Home offices seem to be where everyone dumps things and ours is no different. Since it's a shared space with the laundry I've had to really crack down on dirty laundry making its way into the dirty clothes baskets rather than thrown on the floor. Life with family is a constant battle for cleanliness and order, is it not.

We've been working really hard with The Bug to help her create good habits for staying organized and keeping her room a place where people, especially she, wants to be. Her room is small so we try not to keep too much stuff in there. There are other areas of the house where she can store toys and games, winter clothes, etc. So the goal is to keep her room simple and mostly for sleeping and getting dressed and ready for bed. Instilling this goal in the heart and mind of a pre-teen is a good parenting challenge...daily....I'll leave it at that. Ha.

While I'm writing this, solutions are coming to me for some other organization challenges we have in this house. I need to race in and write those down in my 2017 organization notebook before I forget. I think after a year here in this house we've really come to a place where we have found the quirky things about it that don't work so well. But solving those in a way that works for our family is our next big challenge and I know it's totally doable with a little elbow grease and strategic thinking. We have plenty of space, we just need to use it better and find ways around some of the bizarre quirks.

Do you get the organizing bug at the beginning of the new year? If so, what projects are you taking one and how is it going? Thanks for coming by!