How can working online give you your dream life? Discover more
Are you living your dream life? That question is so huge that it’s almost an eccentric topic to discuss, and one that leaves most people with the feeling that there’s no real path forward. But, I think there is a path. It’s not one that will work for everyone (nothing possibly could) but the path to your dream life could very well be working online.
The lifestyle goes by many different names: working online, remote work, working from home, location independence, the digital nomad lifestyle, and the laptop lifestyle, to name a few. At the core of all of those labels is the freedom to trade in an office for your laptop and make money from wherever you are.
And the freedom to work from anywhere in the world doesn’t stop with location freedom, but we’ll get into the other benefits. Let’s start at step one and define what your dream life really is.
3 steps to live your dream life by working online
You might not be able to figure out all of your answers in just a day. Take all the time that you need to digest this process and remember to save this post for later so you can come back to it.
Step 1. Determine your dream life
What is your ideal lifestyle? Nothing is off-limits. Your answer could range from living on a homestead, to traveling full-time, to simply having more time at home with your cat.
The only wrong answers are ones that are insincere. And try not to be hindered by analysis paralysis and fail to act altogether.
Instead, look for answers to these questions:
- When did you feel most alive? What were you doing? How did you get there?
- If money and societal expectations didn’t exist, how would you spend the next year?
- What do you spend time thinking about or doing when you’re procrastinating?
- What’s a subject that you could happily teach someone about with no preparation?
- Look down the road that you’re on right now – do you want to go where it’s leading?
Take out a notebook and write down your response to these questions. There’s a lot of positive research correlating writing down your goals and goal fulfillment. Be vivid is describing your answer to these questions, and keep writing until you come up with an answer to each.
These questions may feel confronting and require time to uncover answers to, but persist until you have answers. The answer doesn’t have to be realistic, either.
“Realistic” is an easy trap to fall into when you’re first exploring your ideal lifestyle. Truthfully, nothing new feels realistic in the beginning. Imagine the doctor who proposed the first heart transplant, or Leonardo Da Vinci’s first sketch of the modern helicopter.
Realism is a trap when tackling something as big as this.
Someone may say that in their dream life, they’d live on Mars. If they genuinely feel that’s their ideal lifestyle, they can still gather a lot of implementable insight: they want to live in a remote area, be self-sufficient, etc.
It’s okay if this changes over time. Actually, it’s unavoidable. Your ideal lifestyle will naturally change and evolve as you do. Your answer will just be a starting point, and then it’s time to orient your work around your choice.
Step 2: Find remote work
Short of living off of investments or a trust fund, remote work is the freest way to live. You can work from home, or from a cafe in Paris, a hostel in Peru, or a sailboat in the middle of who knows where.
And the benefits of location independence isn’t purely for fun. If you find out that a loved one has cancer, you can work from their bedside on your laptop. You can show up for people in your life without having to ask permission.
Naturally, you can just apply for a fully remote position and continue with typical employment while still enjoying your freedom. Or, you can stretch your freedom even further by starting an online business. That may sound intimidating, but it’s really just the process of creating the job that you would love to be offered.
Do you want to offer virtual swimming lessons for babies? People pay for that. What about teaching virtual piano lessons? Not uncommon at all. Want to be a virtual friend for hire? That exists, too.
The freedom of virtual work allows you to monetize anything that you’re capable of doing online, as well as what’s easy for you and what you enjoy.
For me, this looks like using Pinterest for a living. Every pin that you see on Pinterest was created by someone and uploaded so that you can easily find your next haircut, tattoo, or holiday itinerary. Creators hire me to help their pins be found.
A few years ago, if you had asked me “do you think it’s realistic to make a living on Pinterest?” I would’ve said no. But, here I am, a full-time Pinterest manager, living abroad. It all started in 2017 when I learned about lifestyle design and decided to try to figure out my dream lifestyle and see how much of it was possible.
Much more is possible than we usually see at first glance.
Step 3: Start implementing how to start working online, step by step
There’s no way to know what challenges and steps you’ll need to overcome as you try to execute your ideal lifestyle. But, there are a few big tips that will help you along the way:
Find support. It can come from your existing community, or seek out a new community online. Expose yourself to people who are also pursuing their ideal lifestyles, and use them as a reminder that it’s possible.
Learn constantly. Working online, and living any type of alternative lifestyle, comes with unexpected turns and challenges. You’ll be more resilient and proactive if you approach this lifestyle as a constant learning opportunity.
Find podcasts, YouTube channels, and blogs dedicated to the remote work lifestyle to learn from.
Maintain your mindset. Mindset will be the single biggest factor in whether or not you’re able to execute and sustain your ideal lifestyle.
Final Thoughts
There might only be three steps in this blog post, but it won’t be quick or easy to make your dream life happen. Step one alone stops a lot of people.
Stay conscious of how things in your life make you feel and be persistent in uncovering answers to the hard questions.
What does your ideal lifestyle look like, and can remote work get you there?
Discover some easy ways to start making money working online:
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Great tips. I have chronic fatigue and used to work from home but sadly lost my job. I would love to work from home again as it suits with my illness.