How To Create A Life That Does Not Need To Escape From: Part 1

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Endless Vacation? Life that does not need an escape is possible or just a dream?

Many of us are living stressed and chaotic life that we look forward to one day retire and enjoy the fruit of our hard work. We look forward to going on vacation. Many of us dread Sunday evening or Monday Morning, when another work day starts.

Would you like to escape this and enjoy endless vacation? Who would not, and even though it may seem impossible, it is not hard to create a life that does not need an escape from. We can start living the life right now with little planning and habit changes. Once we are aware of life purpose, life becomes lot easier to live.

Just like when we want to lose weight, we go on diet. We lose weight and get back to regular way of eating to find we are gaining weight again. We do not need diet plans, what we need is lifestyle change of eating healthy most of time with indulging in our cravings once in awhile. The same way works for life and endless vacation, we need to make life style changes. It is not an instant change, it takes some time and effort to make these habit changes but it works. I am working on it myself for sometimes and I am making a big progress towards it and life sure feels much simpler and peaceful.

5 simple steps to Start Living Life that Does not need an Escape from.

1. Do Something You Love and Enjoy.

If you ask people, if they enjoy their work and many will answer “It pays the bills”. That is sure way to kill passion. While it is not easy to start making money from what you love, (I am prime example, I have made $14 in 2 years here but I sure enjoy writing and sharing my journey here).  Do something you love even when you do not get paid is ultimate feeling, while we need to make enough money to survive and meet out basic needs. We can do something we like while we are working in dreadful job situation or looking for a job in tough economy, such as volunteering, painting, singing, dancing, reading, teaching or helping others in something you already know.

2. Reduce and simplify Wants

If you really want to do something you love and make living, it can be tough at the start because of the money needed to pay bills and keep the life living standards one maybe used to living. However, if we reduce our wants to basic needs and some more, it is possible to live off in less income or money. No, I am not talking about being or feeling deprived, that will simply not work.

We all need simple basic needs such;

Shelter: A place to live, place to call home. It does not need to be large. One does not have to have 3000 square foot house with swimming pool to be happy, we all can live in lot less space and still have plenty privacy. Many people in other countries and some minimalist in USA are living in 500 square foot living space and functioning well.

See Thoreau’s cabin redux: tiny homes and happiness

Clean Water: We all need clean water to drink everyday. We are far more luckier then many people in world, who gets clean tap water in US. There are lot of filtration tools to filter the water you get in your tap. One does not need fancy bottle water, soda or sugar laden juices to live. Actually just drinking plain clean water will help with health benefits and giving uo soda and juices may make you lose some weight in return.

Food: We all need food to survive and live. Most healthiest food is vegetables and fruits which can be eaten raw or cooked simply at home in short time. One does not need fancy or expensive gourmet wine or cheeses to live, it would be wonderful occasionally but everyday simple meals will do your more good. Eating out everyday is expensive and unhealthy. I love cooking simple meals at home that can be cooked in 30 minutes or sometimes I like to use pressure cooker to cook up beans and lentils to make yummy and healthy soups or daals. It is a win-win for money and our waist line.

Clothing: Clothing is essential part of human lives, we need warm clothes in winter and simple cotton clothes in hot summer. One can buy good quality clothes at various stores, garage sale and goodwill stores. Designer clothing or brand names are not needed to look stylish, or you can find brand names clothes in thrift shop or outlet store for much cheaper price. If you can sew or mend clothing that is an extra bonus. I simply am not good at sewing and I have bought a sewing machine to improve my non-existing domestic sewing skills someday.

Entertainment: We human being like to entertained and get entertained as well. There are many free or cheap ways to go about amusing ourselves. One can rent movies or borrow movies from library instead of watching it in theater. If you must have a theater experience, you can see in morning time to get some discount. In summer time, there are many programs are offered free such as movie nights, music concerts, festivals, garden tours, theater previews shows and so on. If you like to read books as I do, you can always borrow from library and buy it only if you love it.  Going to park, playing board games such as monopoly is not only entertaining but also educational. You can host a pot luck at home, instead of going out in restaurants. I used to love hosting movie and dinner nights at home before we had kids.

3. Be Compassionate

You may think what being compassionate has to do with life that does not need an escape from, but it has lot to do with it. When we are kind and compassionate towards other human being, other lives, it gives us inner happiness or content glow that comes only when we are truly enjoying the life. When we harbor hurt, anger and hate inside, we will be unhappy even in most lavish resort. While giving up all hurt is not easy, but we can surely try to reduce as much as we can and be kind to others and ourselves everyday.

4. Letting Go

Many of our misery and disappointment comes from unmet expectation from others. While, we have most expectations from our loved ones, they tend to hurt us or disappoint us the most. The best way to tackle this is to have no expectation or little expectation from others. It just leads to nowhere. Many of us, tend to do and behave on what works best for us, so let them. Someone does not owe us happiness, love, gifts or gratitude. One of the most thing I have hard time letting go is rudeness and thoughtlessness that people show but I am working on it. No one owes me gratitude or thoughtfulness. We should do things because it pleases us and not for others.

5. Do not compare

When I was growing up, I thought I had everything and did not miss anything because as a young child I did not used to compare my things with others. However, it changes when I was in high school and it lead to myself feeling bad even though I had more than before.

Comparing kids behavior, spousal behavior and even worse fictional book or movie characters with someone you love, will only end up in disappointment. When R was young, he did not slept through the night like kids in movie where they sleep by themselves in a crib, I was sleep deprived and sad until I realized movie scenes where infant sleeps by themselves are fiction or at least very rare.

I love Austen and romance novels of past, so naturally I love Mr. Darcy and Captain Wentworth and Mr. Thronton but comparing them with Zenguy is futile thing to do but I have done it in past. I have come to realize that why to compare when I am myself not like Elizabeth Bennet, Anne Elliot or Ms. Hale, these are fictional characters.

There are always someone who will be more beautiful, handsome, richer, smarter and fitter then us and then there will be a few who are not. Why compare? Just compare yourself with yourself of past and make a better future yourself for tomorrow.

Summary:

While we can not always choose many aspects of life, we can choose our habits to make simple and small changes such as above to create a lifestyle that will be like a vacation like while living at home. So go ahead and start creating a life that does not need an escape from today.

Check out 2nd Part of the series: Creating a life that does need an escape: Part 2