Dealing with the 2^nd death news in the past 6 weeks, this time involving a bright young mind who lost his life in a car accident, death as an instrumental change agent is again a topic that’s nothing new. Out with the old, in with the new, as it tragically sounds. While mourning about your loved ones would not do much aside from cherishing and recollecting the memories, I aim to at least leave you with a serious thought that would keep you thinking regularly about what you want to do with your life and actually realizing it.

One of this young fellow’s life passion was to travel the world while learning and experiencing new knowledge in life. I would assume he wants to learn other culture thoroughly, not just follow tour guides when breezing through downtown shopping area in metropolitan cities like typical people do under time constraints. You are likely either clueless about your true life purpose, too concerned about pleasing your family’s (parents, relatives, or spouse) expectations, or imprisoned from achieving your purpose due to various excuses (financial or time famine from whatever reasons). After all, hindsight is always 20-20, and very few people in the world know what they want to do in life, and have the guts to go after them despite surrounding displeasures. When someone around you passed away, you often pity your loved one for not being even close to realizing his/her dreams, yet you may not be able to reflect whether you are on track to fulfilling your own satisfaction. Do you want your loved ones to pity you for not being able to pursue your dreams when you leave? I hope not, which is where this article is handy.

To begin, let’s start by dissecting a normal person’s life:

Age 0: Birth.

Age 1 – 3: Teeth growing out, first words, and first time crawling on the floor.

Age 3 – 5: Preschool. Parents likely tell their child that s/he can be anyone s/he wants to be despite their perceived realities (e.g. astronauts, rocket scientists, etc.).

Age 5 – 18: Elementary and high school. Likely a time of confusion of choosing the education leading to perceived idealistic occupation b/c of deadlines imposed by the education system.

Age 18 – 22: College/University. While some do find a purpose to do what they love, a large number of people are bounded by their parents’ and society’s realistic expectations. Their wishes of being an astronaut or professional athlete receive different responses from when they were toddlers. At this age, they are told to be doctors, engineers, lawyers, grad students/professors/teachers, or employees at government agencies or multinational corporations due to the perceived job security and pride despite the façade clouded by the flawed social system.

Age 22-death: Either entering into the workforce, graduate education, or entrepreneurship. Basically expected by the society to follow the ladder structure with a false sense of hope, have children to repeat the process, and die.

Sure, there are dreams that are not pursuable b/c of certain physical or intellectual disabilities suffered through injuries in life. However, a lot of adults are living with significant discontent b/c they felt unable to pursue dreams that are perceived to be “unrealistic” by society, despite their feasibilities when distractions and excuses are removed. Common excuses for delaying to pursue dreams include perceived financial setbacks (e.g. “I will do A after I have saved X dollars”), pride checkpoints (e.g. “I will pursue B after I have earned Y degree”), and time famine (mainly from saying yes to too many unimportant commitments). So while we’re at it, I will give you a summary of what I have been using to ditch the common expectations on myself and focus on my personal goals that are important, thanks to the bible that I have been following in addition to other believers in the special community:

Definition: Figuring out what I want, getting over my fears (by assessing the worst case scenarios of the radical changes vs. status quo), seeing past society’s “expectations,” and figuring out what it will really cost to get to where I want to go.

Elimination: Applying the 80/20 rule to focus on those tasks that contribute the majority of the benefit, and Parkinson’s rule by making tight deadlines to accelerate progress, ensuring the benefits do materialize.

Automation: Building a sustainable, automatic source of income. This includes techniques such as drop-shipping, automation, Google Adwords and Adsense, and outsourcing.

Liberation: Successful automation of my lifestyle and the liberation from a geographical location and job.

Applying to my personal case, I have defined my ideal lifestyle to be a freely travelling entrepreneur who is mostly free to pursue in projects that I want to be in. More specifically, I envision being able to live in a certain location in the world several months at a time so that I can learn enough of the language or culture, but not too long to the point of potentially being pigeon-holed to the place permanently. I do not want to work 16+ hours a day on top of weekends like I have done in school as an exploited tool for corporations to milk more profits for their own hidden agenda, never mind the consequences brewing in severed relationships, damaged health (in the form of obesity and other stress-related issues), and loss of time (while money is recoverable, time is not). In addition, by pursuing my dream lifestyle, I am much more likely to influence the results that I want to see to improve the society’s quality of life. By going through the definition process, I have realized that progressing to my desired lifestyle is not as difficult as I (or a lot of people) thought it would be (i.e. you don’t need to be a millionaire to live like one). Even if the financial figure is daunting, having personal attachment to the end destination helps me staying focused on achieving the destination of liberation.

After defining my ideal personal lifestyle, I eliminated ruthlessly the unimportant time-consumers that eat up most of my time by using the 80/20 rule repeatedly on different activities. I also use the rules to revise my commitments and activities on a bi-weekly basis. Other than using the rule to eliminate inefficiencies, I also use it to multiply my output without working like a slave to earn them. At my day job for the summer, even having a demanding supervisor does not have me ending up to contribute all of my waking hours on it, as I use the rule to focus on the inputs that yield most of the output demanded. This is especially important so that I do not fall into the trap of a lot of employees in high tech industry (working 16 hours a day or over 100 hours per week constantly with a lot of time wasted in between, eating into sleeping, dieting, exercising, socializing, and grooming time leading into different kinds of health problems short and long term).

To convince you even further about my lifestyle’s possibilities, in order to fully liberate myself from society’s expectations of being a normal employee until I retire or die, I am also motivated to strategize and implement an automated source of income. I’m not saying this is child’s play, because there are infinite number of little tricks to be learned and practiced before putting the source into full motion (such as outsourcing, marketing, etc.). However, by making the appropriate decisions and not necessarily following what everyone else does due to popularity, risks of setting up this automated income source can be reduced. You may think you would have nothing to offer to be sold in such a system, but in reality, you always have something useful to offer that can be sold to people (unlike department stores trying to persuade you to purchase more garbage). I am basically following my personal plan (with a number of adjustments included from trusted friends throwing curveballs at me), and I am confident that I would acquire my dream lifestyle by the end of the year if I consistently followed the plan and alertly make required adjustments without hesitation. This is the last and also most-time consuming step to nearly complete liberation. With the right steps, you can adjust your income muse(s)’s strategy as many times as necessary in order to earn you the income that you need to support your ideal lifestyle.

Yes, death is always a sad and sober fact to accept and withstand, and it will come to you eventually. I am more saddened about the young fellow’s regrets of not able to accomplish his personal goals than the death itself. You may have come across this blog because you and I both know him personally. I hope his sudden death would also serve as a wake up call for you to access your life if you find yourself not liking life due to misleading promises of conventional lifestyle. Take control of your life and live each day as if it was your last. Your loved ones would have more quality cherished memories and you would likely have less regrets. I would like you to reflect daily upon a quote mentioned by Steve Jobs in the 2008 commencement address at Stanford University so that you do not have to wait until the death of your next loved one as a wake-up call again to reflect upon your life.

“When I was seventeen I read a quote that went something like, ‘if you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right’. It made an impression on me, and since then for the past thirty three years, I’ve looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ Whenever the answer has been ‘NO’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” – Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc.