How to live the life of your dreams

How?

In the end, I think the answer comes down to priorities.

We will make time and money for the things that are highest on our priority list.  I love to read and can curl up in bed and read until the wee hours of the night, but I haven’t hardly read at all lately.  Yes, I could make excuses and say I’m too busy or my boys demand all my time.  But the reality is that it isn’t high enough on my list.  In my free time, I choose to play with my beads or surf the internet rather than reading a good book.

The same is true about traveling the world.  We will find a way to do what’s important to us.  If new floors in our house is more important than a family vacation, we get new floors.  If a new couch is higher on the priority list than bicycles, we get the couch.  And if taking an extended family vacation is of the utmost importance, that’s exactly what we’ll get.

Our family bike trip to the ends of the world didn’t just fall in our laps one day – we made it happen.  We looked at our lives and at the limited amount of time we had on Planet Earth.  We looked at our sons and realized that they were growing fast and we only had one chance at this parenthood thing.  In short, if we didn’t do it now, we would lose the opportunity.

So we made it happen.

We quit our jobs.  We packed up our house.  We bought new bicycles.  We headed out to see the world with our sons.

Traveling with our boys had become our number one priority and we made it happen.  Yes, there were a million reasons not to take our trip – we didn’t have enough money, our house needed work, our careers would suffer, a trip like this wasn’t what society expected us to do. But all we really needed was one good reason to take the trip – and time with the boys was that reason.

So how can you live your dreams?  Make it your highest priority.  Make the decision to do it and let people know what you’ll do.  Then take steps to get there.  It’ll happen – if you make it happen.

Nancy Sathre-Vogel is mom to Family on Bikes, a family of four who recently rode their bikes 17,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina. She blogs about lessons learned from their journey at www.familyonbikes.org