How to make your Dreamplan work
Ever thought about making your New Years Resolutions work? Well I have some ingredients for you to achieve your dreams. At least those are the ingredients I use already successfully for the last couple of years to attain my dreams:
(1) Write your dreams on paper
This helps me to vizualize my dream. As we all get distracted once in a while this is a great reminder to look at the goals we dream about to achieve
(2) The dreams should be SMART
Setting up tangible dreams which are archivable given my current situation is the second key to achieve them
Specific: Be as specific as possible about your dream!
152
You might wonder why the number 152 is so interesting for me …
… a couple of years ago I started to write my dream plan for the next 6 or 12 month (Thanks to the book: “The 4 hour work week” from Tim Ferriss). I can highly recommend this book and if it is only for creating your dream plan 🙂
In general at least 80% of those dream goals are archived which I’m total happy with. This year one of the things I haven’t archived is to crawl continuously for 1km. So a couple of weeks ago I finally started my training and there is some progress but the 40 laps on a 25m lane seems still far away. But there is one more month to go 😉
So last Sunday I went into the swimming pool and started to swim “breast stroke” style … 20 lanes … 30 … 40 (ok at least in this style the 1km is possible) … 70 … 80 (oh double the 1km is working as well) … 120 (3km … mmmhhh maybe I should aim for a bit more) … 130… 140 … 152!!!
Wow 152 lanes this is 3.8km and the distance of swimming for an Ironman. Never biked 180km or run a full marathon (which are the other two distances in an Ironman) but at least the swimming part on it’s own is doable. So for me the lessons learned is that when you have a goal which seems achievable work hard and try to go for it, especially when it is on your dream list! 🙂
PS: And if someone is reading this who can teach me Front Quadrant Swimming, let me know! I’m eager to learn it 🙂
Top 3 things I have learned
Recently I had a talk with a very good friend of mine and he asked me an amazing question
What are the top 3 things you have learned on your trip?
We were talking on the phone and so I was ready to argue myself out of this question with telling him: “This is a tough question, let me think about it for a day” but he said: “NO! Trust your guts and come up with three things!”
So here they are my top 3 things I learned on my 6 month around the world trip:
- Self awareness of my goals and how I want to live my life (My perfect day which I wrote down more than a year ago is really archivable and I love it!)
- Trust in my own strength and my principals for life, i.g. I love people and I love to inspire people with my thoughts and my radiant optimism (Personal Mission)
- Growth of self confidence and taking baby steps into the direction I want to develop
I love this question so much and believe it’s great to ask this question once in a while to yourself or to your friends.
Personal Mission
Have you ever thought about your personal mission here on earth? I was reading an inspiring book while traveling (actually a funny story on it’s own how this book came into m life …) and this was one of the questions:
What is YOUR personal Mission?
So what is your mission? Looking forward your comments 🙂 After some thoughts here is my version:
My personal mission is to inspire and support others in positive ways so they can make a positive change in their lives. To accomplish this personal mission on a regular base I …
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- Travel often to meet new and inspiring people to see things with new eyes
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- Do Sport often to stay physical and mentally fit (here Surfing in Costa Rica)
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- Live healthy and in a balanced way (here Hawaii with Acai Bowl)
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- Affirming others for positive things (here Surf lesson in Costa Rica)
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- Stay curious and ask lots of questions
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- Learn new things (here: video cutting)
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- Spend at least two hours per day with physical, mental, spiritual or social activities (here Stand-up Paddling in Hawaii)
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- Hug others and use physical touch to radiate positive feelings
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- Have lots of quality time with my partner and friends (here in Finland with Johanna & Visa)
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- Be emphatic towards others
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- Radiate my optimism to the world (here Costa Rica)
Cleaning apartments
After traveling for a while and now coming back home made me realize, how little stuff I actually need to be happy. For me
Events and people are much more important than stuff
As I’m moving apartments anyway it was time to get rid of a lot of stuff. And after the initial step was taken, cleaning the apartment was a lot of fun!!! Getting rid of old papers, magazines, clothes, books and all the other junk felt amazing. And I believe it was great for the junk as well as I could release it to other purposes.
So I went to two flea markets and wow it was awesome. Actually it felt like a little around the world trip. I met so many interesting people with great stories to tell …
One book I can highly recommend and which helped me a lot with cleaning is from Karen Kingston “Clear your Clutter with Feng Shui” (German version at Amazon: Karen Kingston: “Feng Shui gegen das Gerümpel des Alltags”)
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- Flea market in Dresden before the start
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- Flea market at the end
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- Wow so much stuff which we could release: 1/3 flea market and 2/3 bin
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- Wow so much stuff which we could release: 1/3 flea market and 2/3 bin
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- Sunrise for a wonderful day at the flea market in Kaiserslautern
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- My sister and me at our stand, what a great fun event 🙂
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- One of many great stories, after some “persuasion” we convinced him to buy the I love NY Shirt 🙂
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- Slyvia who had the stand next to us was amazing
What do you want to do?
A very inspiring video and after coming back from my around the world trip these were my big questions as well:
What do I want to do? What do I desire?
My best answer so far is: Live my life next to an ocean where the weather is warm and I can surf and exercise outdoor every day, spend quality time with my partner and listen to the waves. Building businesses that help others to enjoy life! Inspire others and travel to meet new and inspiring people and visit friends! What’s your best answer?
What do YOU want to do? What do YOU desire?
Where is home?
After traveling to so many amazing places and living at great destinations for months this question was in my head for a while and I didn’t have a great answer.
Then I stumbled on this awesome and very inspiring TED talk: “Where is home?” from Pico Iyer and he came up with a great definition for me as well
“Home is where you become yourself”
Another great quote from Pico Iyer is about traveling which holds true for myself as well:
“Traveling is a little bit like being in love, all your senses are turned on”
or
” Traveling is not like seeing new sights it is looking with new eyes”
If you get the chance watch this great and inspiring TED talk, or some of the others TED talks
Coming home
After six month traveling around the world, it was time to fly back to Germany to meet family and friends back home.
What an incredible journey where I met so many inspiring and amazing people.
Now it is time to reflect this awesome adventure and plan the next steps 🙂 And from my experience I can say, the next “mini retirement” will come for sure!
If you have ever considered to take a sabbatical DO IT! It is an amazing experience for a lifetime. Thank you all for being part of it and reading my blog, traveling with me and supporting and inspiring me in so many ways. Thank you!
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- My “office” at the airport
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- Love this Ad: We will not rest 🙂
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- Sunset on my way to the terminal
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- London Airport Impression
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- London Heathrow impression
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- Back to Germany
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- London sightseeing 🙂
Life lesson
In this brilliant 6 min talk Angela Lee Duckworth talks about the success in education and in life. And she has observed it is about the GRIT. How do you build grit? She is not sure yet, but a growth mindset is very helpful. When you stick with your future, life will progress in this direction.
Live life as it is a marathon
This video reminds me very well of my learning experiences on my around the world trip, especially surfing. In the beginning I was more falling then surfing. I was more paddling then anything else, I was so exhausted from all that, especially because my body and my technics were weak.
But then you have one second on the board and you feel the adrenaline rush in your body and you know all this falling and being exhausted is part of it. And I knew that over time I will get better in surfing. And I did! Not that I’m a great surfer yet, but I see the progress and this is very rewarding indeed and helps me to stick to the goal in learning how to surf 🙂 Life lesson learned!
Helping to build a school in Nicaragua
In April I got the chance to participate at an volunteer project from “Surf for Life” and “Waves of Hope” in Nicaragua. Thank you for your continuous support and donation for this amazing project. Now that I have been there I can tell for sure that your donation will have a great positive impact on the community there in Nicaragua.
It was such an humbled experience to see how people, who have only little resources and infrastructure, try to improve there lives by education and working hard. In the community where the high school is now build there is currently no economic system (no supermarket, no other services were people could spend there earned money) so all the money is currently going to the city which doesn’t help the community. Unemployment in Nicaragua is between 50 and 80%(!!!) depending on the age group.
The new high-school is also used as a vocational training center to educate the students to become bakers, mechanics, hairstylists or organic farmers. Giving them the opportunity to grow their own economic community system in the future.
If you have the chance support Waves of Hope and thus this community. Great small things are happening here!
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- Flying to Managua
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- Arrive in yesterday …
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- First part of our volunteer group for the week: Melanie, Katie, James, De and Pooja
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- Jamie telling us about Nicaragua and the project “Waves of hope” Amazing!!!
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- This is who I love spanish teaching in an relaxed and playful environment
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- Here som facts about the High school building
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- Open air shower, I love this!
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- Yoga hut for the week
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- Our group get’s ready for the work week
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- Time for our first work day
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- Thumbs up for your support for this project
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- Work for day 1 is to help make the floor for one of the class rooms
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- Great picture at the computer and library building
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- Hard work but happy 🙂
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- Cement making process
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- Sunset in Nicaragua
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- Pooja your were my life saver with those delicious nuts on the work site
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- Impression from the work site
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- Jamie and Ben the founder of this awesome project in talk with one of there employees
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- Work site impression
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- Project for the day …
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- Basic housing in the community
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- Primary school where in the afternoon English is tought
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- Eneyda was my first conversation partner in the english class
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- Cristel it was a pleasure to meet you.
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- Yeah some more surfing 🙂
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- Morning surf is the best!!!
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- It feels amazing being on the board early in the morning
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- Yeah 🙂
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- This is how I feel after surfing: Exhausted but happy 🙂 Here: James
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- We are ready for another day at the work site
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- Stay curious and ask lots of questions (here in Nicaragua)
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- Those kids will be going to the high school one day
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- Ok, no waste system in Nicaragua so everything is burned …
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- Ok this was very hard work but De kept us in a great mood with his “clean” jokes 🙂
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- Pooja shows us what we did yesterday (those 3 classrooms)
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- Ok and this is the work for today those other 3 class rooms 🙂
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- Yeah Jump 🙂
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- So humbled that I could participate at this project
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- Picture is almost done at the library/computer lab at the high school
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- Corinne runs the kids club every Tuesday and Thursday in the El Coco Loco
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- Wall in El Coco Loco
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- Dana on a horse
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- Plumeria my favorite flower
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- Have lots of quality time with my partner and friends (here in Nicaragua)
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- Awesome walk with Pooja on the beach for sunset
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- Last dinner with the group
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- Great pizza