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Melanie Van Orden,
Jet Set Now Editor
May
5
Jet Set Freedom: Blessing or Curse?
May 05, 2008 by Melanie Van Orden
OK, so you may be wondering why I would EVER suggest that the freedom of a jet set lifestyle could be a curse. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a blessing. It’s a big, big blessing that I sometimes wonder at the fact that it came to be in my life. I love my jet set lifestyle and I wouldn’t give it up.
But what I’m talking about it something that comes with the territory of having a lot of freedom when it comes to how you spend your time. (Which is something that happens to a lot of us who work for ourselves.) What I’m talking about is a tendency I have to loose my focus on what I need to do in order to keep my jet set lifestyle running!
When virtually unending options of how to spend my time are opened up before me, I can let time slip away focusing on things (even productive things) that give me some sort of pay-off right now at the expense of the more important payoff that I want in my future. I can tell you, it is even harder to focus on goals and tasks when you are living in your dream location and just want to explore all the time! As a result, I end up feeling frustrated and disappointed in myself when I failed to reach my desired goal because I lost sight of what I wanted most. Oh, yeah, and I kind of procrastinated a bit. OK, a lot.
I had a goal of writing an amazing post about how to plan your new jet set lifestyle using my “to do” list that I saved from when we were preparing to move to Buenos Aires. I told everyone who is taking my e-course to look for that post today. When I sat down to actually write the post, the amount of information I needed to sift through and organize was pretty huge. It’s important stuff, but pretty daunting to cover comprehensively.
So, I procrastinated and now it is much too late to organize and compile all that awesome information into a coherent blog post by the end of the day. Sure, I could do a shoddy job and just gloss over what needs to be done in order to embark on a jet set lifestyle, but that wouldn’t be doing you, or myself, any favors. You wouldn’t find that information helpful and I wouldn’t gain any new subscribers or readers from a sub-par blog post. So I decided to reschedule my “how to” blog post and write a post that could flow easily from my heart about a challenge I am facing that you might be able to relate with.
Have you ever found that you repeatedly lose focus when you are the only one directing your actions? I often find that I perform beautifully with structure, external deadlines and the expectations of others, even if I am miserable while doing it. (For example, I had an unfulfilling managerial job for 2 years that made me dread going to work every morning. My bosses always told me that I was the best manager they ever had!)
Now that I have the freedom that I so often longed for, I find that the lack of external structure and pressures leave me “blowing in the wind” a bit. Even though I have a passion for what I do and am excited about what I know I can achieve, I drop the ball. Even through I plan and write down all the right things, like goals, next actions, timelines, deadlines and rewards for completion, I sometimes follow anything but my written plan.
Maybe I spent too long surviving off the expectations of others to expect myself to completely change how I direct my actions in such a short period of time. I used to always think that that I was a natural “self-starter” with “initiative” and “focus.” Turns out that I may only be those things when I stand to face some pretty undesirable immediate consequences if I slack off.
You may think that I am being too hard on myself over the incident of a missed deadline on this blog. But I tell you this is a pervasive pattern that has become clear in my life since leaving the rat-race and embarking on a whole new way of living; taking total responsibility for my own happiness, mistakes, successes and failures. Writing this blog post is another step on the way of taking responsibility for myself so I can get back control of how I spend my time!
After all, Time really is one of the most precious and powerful things in life. I’d say it’s in the top three most powerful things in existence, right up there with Love and Reality. How I spend my time will determine whether I continue to progress on my (relatively) new journey of a life of freedom, fulfillment and success or whether I slip back into my previous existence of going with the crowd and settling for less.
What about you? Have you experienced a “motivation vacuum” when you suddenly had the freedom you were looking for? What do you do to keep yourself on track with how you spend your time?
Filed Under Internet Business, Misc., Money
Comments
4 Responses to “Jet Set Freedom: Blessing or Curse?”
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I wasted a good thirty minutes today looking for Mr T videos. Absolutely pointless but hey…. maybe we need these little sidetracks to keep us sane.
Just wait til you add children into the mix!
Feedback is always motivating - you’ve obviously put a lot of effort into the eCourse (I’m up to lesson 5), well done! I know the content well, and I know how much hard work goes into this sort of thing, so you really are being too hard on yourself.
@Forest Parks
&
@Ronna Porter
Thanks, guys. I’m working on balancing my expectations with an appropriate workload. That’ll help when I’m jetting my future kids all around the world with Jason!
Hi Melanie,
I stumbled on your site via Yanik’s blog, and to be honest I don’t think you are being too hard on yourself. I struggle with what you have described pretty much each day (I have run my own consulting enterprise in the tough world of telcom for 7+ years now), but each day I try to move a little in the direction of being more self-disciplined and focused. For **that** is the absolute honest-to-God one fundamental key to freedom, success, happiness and untold satisfaction.
And, expecting anything less of ourselves is, honestly, shortchanging ourselves. Not to say we don’t do it — I do too — but it is invaluable to recognize this rationalization for what it is (idle nonsense, which we know in our hearts isn’t what we should have been doing), and slay it like the 3-headed fire-breathing dragon it is!
I am so glad to see that you are not only sharing your jet-setting lifestyle with others, but are also honest enough to admit a slip-up when it happens. This is the absolute first step to correcting this behavior in the future. And, as every guru and philosopher through the ages has in their wisdom opined — realizing things and taking responsibility is the first step to making massive progress towards correcting them.
And, I can assure you that the next time you have such a deadline, and you actually end up meeting it (even if it is a very difficult thing to do), you will be stronger, richer, and better for it, and will derive such a wave of satisfaction that it will keep you going for a long time to come, making such goals easier and easier to meet over time, until they become second nature.
Anyway, great post, and more power to you for trying, and keeping at it. I know you will be even more successful with time, and long-live your jetsetting lifestyle!
-Vishal