How to Design a Life You Love: 5 Uncomfortable but Powerful Shifts #646

Feel like you’re drifting? In this episode, Lachlan shares the 5 powerful shifts that helped him design a life of purpose, freedom, and growth from running 58 marathons to rebuilding identity.

Chapters

• 0:08 Most People Design Life by Expectation
• 3:26 Know the Man You're Becoming
• 6:47 Build a Resilient Mind and Body
• 9:40 Control Your Time and Money
• 14:30 Audit Your Circle and Environment
• 17:15 Make Growth a Lifestyle
• 19:20 Summary and Call to Action

Transcript

Lachlan Stuart: 0:00

Most people design their life based on what's expected of them, so if you don't decide on the life that you want to live, someone is going to do it for you. This was a huge realization, and this is one of the topics that I love speaking about most, because I believe that every single one of us, including you, have the potential to design our life, but the reality is it's not easy. We haven't been set up to succeed in this, because we've adopted beliefs from people or we've taken upon ideas that we should live a certain way, and it is why more and more people are feeling unfulfilled. They feel confused or maybe even stuck, because we don't have the roadmaps, we don't have the belief and we don't have the know-how in order to achieve what we're looking to achieve. I want you to think about that.

Lachlan Stuart: 0:48

My name is Lachlan Stewart and I am a men's high performance coach, and I help men rebuild from the inside out and to lead with purpose, build unshakable self-worth and to live a life they're proud of. Now, most recently, I ran 58 marathons in 58 days across all 50 US states and all late states and territories of Australia, and for me, that was a huge bucket list item. Now I won't say it's something that I had been thinking about for a long time, but one thing I decided on when I was chasing success initially, a lot of that was materialistic, it was finances, and over the years, as I redefined what success was and I had experiences of giving milestones and goals, I realized that the goalpost kept moving, and that led me to start chasing fulfillment and start chasing alignment, which is where I thought about hey, things that I love outside of business success is I love adventure, I love growth, I love freedom, and the challenge of the 58 marathons was really going to allow me to embody all of that. So that's why one of the reasons I chose to go on that adventure. But what I want to go through today is giving you five key areas or things that I feel you need to get on top of and master in order to be able to design a life, or design your ideal life. Now there are more things. These are what worked for me and if you want to hang around for the last one because the last one not only is it something that people discuss regularly, but they never give you a bit of a roadmap, so I want to give you a roadmap, a nice, simple one that you can take away and execute today. Now, if you're here for quick fixes, this ain't going to be the video for you, but if you are here to understand that this could take a decade, you're going to constantly need to upskill and learn and review and understand what your priorities are in each season, then this is going to be a great video for you. It's going to be very practical, it's going to be very honest and it's going to almost bring you a sense of calm, because you understand you will have time Now.

Lachlan Stuart: 2:52

One of the first keys that I learned over the years of chasing success and chasing alignment or fulfillment was that you have to know the man you want to become or you are becoming. A few things in life is this there has been a version of you that's in the past, someone that you look back on, who didn't know what you now know, who maybe had different beliefs, different ideas and different priorities. You have evolved, which means you can continue to evolve, and the cool thing off the back of this video is you can probably be a little bit more intentional, and this is an area that I know a lot of men struggle with, and maybe it's an area that you're struggling with. It was an area that I struggled with for a long time. You don't just find purpose. It is something that you need to build through your identity. One of the things that, if I were to go back and give my younger self bias, from a time where I didn't feel like I had purpose, I felt stuck and I felt almost a little bit confused was just go out and try plenty of new things, collect a heap of experiences, make mistakes, fail, doubt yourself. Use the feedback from those experiences to work out things that you like or things that are in the positive side, the things that you like, the things you want more of, the things that you enjoyed and then the other side, the things or people, places and things that you don't like, that you don't want more of, because that's going to help you get clear on who you are. It's going to help formulating beliefs that you uphold and it's going to help you get clear on who you need to become in order to create that life. And that's a really cool thing and that is how I found purpose Younger.

Lachlan Stuart: 4:27

When I was younger, I always wanted to be an athlete and you may have had something that you wanted to be when you were growing up and then, through life experiences moving locations, traveling you realize, hey, or even achieving that you might have thought to yourself that actually isn't what I want. So who or what does that version look like in order to create the life that you want? So some things to think about here. I'm not going to dive into it too much today, but I have plenty of other episodes on this. But you want to look into your values. You want to look into your beliefs, you want to look into the standards that you have and how you prioritize your time. Now, your values can essentially be like your internal compass.

Lachlan Stuart: 5:06

So for me, what I value at the moment in this season of life is I value freedom. Freedom to me means having the finances to do what I want, but also the time, the flexibility, to be able to design my days. Another thing is health. I never want to sacrifice my health just to do certain things in my life. I want to make sure that I have great health throughout my life, so that's important to me as well. Another thing is connection, so understanding that the people that I'm surrounding myself with, the people that I'm investing time in are also investing time to challenge me, to make my life better, to have a laugh, to go to concerts, to do these things where they energize me, not drain me. The cool thing about going through that whole process is that when you know who you are, your decisions become simple, right, because you have a sense of certainty around what's going to pull you towards where you want to go and what's going to hold you back, and then that way, you can make decisions according on that.

Lachlan Stuart: 6:00

So if you do feel like you struggle to make decisions, get stuck into mapping out who you want to become and who's that version of yourself that you need to be. If you want to prompt on, I guess, social media not social media on chat, gpt, if you or don't want to get into some coaching with myself, there's something you can do here and I guess, pause this and write this down who is the man I'm becoming in 12 months, what does he tolerate and what does he no longer do? And if you start there, you're gonna start putting pen to paper. You will then start being able to think what does it look like In order for me to not tolerate that? What boundaries do I need to have what do I need to believe in myself in order to achieve that? So that's key number one. Need to believe in myself in order to achieve that. So that's key number one. Know the man that you're becoming. Number two build a resilient mind and body. Your mind is, or your body is, the vehicle. Your mind is the driver For me.

Lachlan Stuart: 6:56

When I work hard, when I train hard and I feel comfortable in my skin, I'm definitely more confident. I feel like I am unstoppable in things that I'm working towards and I just get that. Doing those hard things and doing things that most people won't be doing getting up early in the cold or last night hit my training session late at night. It was windy, it was actually it was freezing. Last night I hit my training session late at night. It was windy, it was actually it was freezing. I got out there and I did it anyway, because I always want to build that confidence by knowing I'm doing things that people aren't and a lot of people aren't getting out of bed to look after their health. So if you get that, it's a quick win, but plus you get all the health benefits of the energy feeling good in your skin, pushing around hard and heavy weights or running fast. You just feel more capable in your ability. So that's a wicked one to get into. So for me, it helps me build certainty, it helps me build trust, it helps me build mental resilience.

Lachlan Stuart: 7:47

All skills that are transferable to other areas of your life could be transferable to having resilience to push through a work challenge, to confront someone who's not showing up in your life, maybe the way that you want to hold them to the standard, or maybe they want to be held to themselves. But for me, I think about the mind and body, and Matt Johnson said to me in one of my earlier episodes he's just like man, I always want to be eight weeks out from being able to do anything. If someone invites me to do something, and I was like that's pretty cool, I would love to be on that as well. I'm just going to show you this camera Be eight weeks out from if a friend says hey, I want to go do this hike, do you want to do it? I know that I could just adjust my training slightly and go get stuck into that. So there is something that I now sort of live by in terms of building a healthy mind, a resilient mind and a resilient body.

Lachlan Stuart: 8:41

You probably know deep down whether you're putting your best foot forward from a health perspective. You may even be thinking well, I don't have time, I don't know what to do or I lack motivation. Your job, if you wanna improve that, is to figure out how you're going to solve that problem. Don't just allow that to be the reason why you don't have that. I speak to plenty of people who don't have time. But if we were to audit your time, if we were to follow you around all day, I'm sure I could find pockets. And you need to be that honest with yourself. And look, I don't want to be that asshole who rips into that. But if you want to ultimately design a life, the energy that you get, the confidence that you get from building your mind and body, is going to help you achieve that. So keep that one in mind.

Lachlan Stuart: 9:22

Here's a bit of a prompt I've got here. Fitness isn't optional. If you want to lead. It's not about six packs. It's about who you become when you finally show up daily. Boom, that's a bit of a mic. Drop on that number three and look, I don't talk about this too much, but I think it is ultimately really important take control of your time and money.

Lachlan Stuart: 9:40

You can't build your dream life if you're a slave to someone else's calendar and paycheck. In my opinion, we live in such a ripper time in life where you can use social media. There there's so many flexible options. But to me, it's ultimately for me to get back in a position in my life. I wanted to be in control of my finances. I wanted to be able to determine what I'm worth and the value that I put out there, and one of the crazy things about that is I don't have the stability of a paycheck or of sick days or of mental health days. It all relies on my performance and what I'm building and the value that I deliver. Or mental health days it all relies on my performance and what I'm building and the value that I deliver. Now, that is confronting for a lot of people, but when I think about building a life that I want to live, it ultimately is shining a torch on me to be like dude. You've got nowhere to hide. You're either good enough or you become good enough or you don't, and I really like that because ultimately, my future is in my hands and I love that. So maybe you're in a position where you don't like that, but you want to like that.

Lachlan Stuart: 10:40

Go back to the mental resilience part and the identity. Who do you need to become to get into that position and we'll talk about that more in point five. But start thinking about managing your calendar like a leader, and I'm doing a presentation tomorrow night with some of my one-to-one clients that are coming into the boardroom and we're gonna talk about things around time management and give them a few strategies that they can implement. But one key thing that you can take away from this one is just say no to more things that aren't moving you towards where you wanna be. If it's not a hell, yeah, it's a no. And how do you decide whether it's not a hell? Yeah, it's a no. And how do you decide whether it's a hell, yeah. We'll go back a few steps to knowing the man you want to become and even probably one step before that, knowing the life that you want to build. That's going to help you get better at that decision-making process. So make sure you start looking at that. So introduce and start thinking about financial self-leadership.

Lachlan Stuart: 11:34

The benefit of earning the money that you want to earn is you get freedom over your life, if you want to do the holidays, if you want to do nice things for people, if you don't want to have financial stress, if you want to be able to wake up and literally design your day the way that you want, and know that money isn't a limitation, you've got to start learning about it, and there's people like Dave Ramsey who I really enjoy his philosophy around money, but as much as there's all savings and accounts and investing. If you have your own business, if you have a way to generate money, it is a very cool position to be in. But in order to get there and one thing that I've learned over the last decade, in order for me to get into that position, I've had to challenge my beliefs. I've had to really stretch and test myself to become someone I didn't think was possible a decade ago. But I set the goal and I started going through these key things, which was let me recap quickly but one is knowing who I needed to become, the man that I needed to become, to create. That was two building my mind and body like building a resilient mind and body. Three is taking control of learning about finances learning how to sell, learning how to market, learning how to deliver value to people in a way where it impacts their lives, that they're willing to trade good amounts of money to get an outcome, to get a result. So the goal isn't to make more money, necessarily, but it's essentially to buy back your time, and that is a quote from Dan Martell and I love that.

Lachlan Stuart: 13:03

For me, even at the moment, going through bringing on staff members is not to continue expanding, but it's to have them do the things that I don't want to do, so that I spend my day doing things that I enjoy and I got time back to do those things. So very cool position to be in. So think about delegation, where you can start doing that. Automating life. Admin, we all got it. But what can you outsource? And this even comes back to how much money do I need to earn to have someone do my laundry so that I can spend time doing something else to do my emails? To do all of these things? Find problems in your life, put a dollar value on them, and that can be an incentive or a motivator to get out and start putting yourself in a position where you can control your finances so that you can then buy back your time. I love that idea. So quick little thing to think about. Where are you bleeding time and money by trying to do it all yourself?

Lachlan Stuart: 13:56

You may have this belief that I had, and it was literally shattered a couple of weeks ago. For me, if I want something done, well, I have to do it myself, and I believe that for such a long time. But I would always get to this point in business and in life where I'd be spinning the wheels because I was trying to do everything super well, and you just can't do that when you have so many things on your plate. So you do need to find people or tools or resources that you can delegate to, so you can get back in control of your time and money. Key four audit your circle and environment. So your network isn't just who you know, it's who you become hanging around them Such a powerful line that one.

Lachlan Stuart: 14:38

So being around the wrong people can kill your ambition, can make you have such a pessimistic view on the world and on life. My thinking who continue to live incredible lives. I just look at them and get inspired. I'm like I want to do more of what they're doing. What does that look like in my life? And so that's why it's so important to look at the people that you're surrounding yourself with and the environments that you're surrounding yourself in and the media that you're consuming, and ask yourself how does that make me feel? What value is that adding to my life? Is this energizing or is it draining? Is it making me more optimistic or is it making me more pessimistic? How does it make you feel? Start going through that and then you can start making some changes if you need to. You're going to get pulled by people who expect more of you.

Lachlan Stuart: 15:36

When I started hanging around people who what I perceive to be big amounts of money they would always challenge me to think bigger, to charge more, to upskill and invest in myself so that I could become more valuable. Because they're like why can't you? And when I started getting challenged, I was like I can be more, I can do more, and I would watch them go through that same process, where they would hit a roadblock, hit a plateau, be faced with a challenge. We'd talk about it. They'd have a breakthrough and I go wow, they're experiencing all the same things that I'm experiencing, yet they're still continuing to grow. They're still continuing to thrive. They have the doubt that I have Every day. They have moments of doubt continuing to thrive. They have the doubt that I have Every day. They have moments of doubt Am I worthy of this? Can I really achieve this? What if it fails? But they do and they persevere anyway. That was a huge lesson for me and that's one of the benefits around hanging around people who do that, because it makes you realize that we're all going through similar things. Two, it's inspiring, so it does motivate you. And three, when they move, you move. You grow together.

Lachlan Stuart: 16:36

Obviously, the cliche quote here if you hang around five people who take responsibility, you'll be the sixth. So if you hang around five people who make good money, you'll more than likely be the sixth, because when you're sitting around having a beer or you're going for a barbecue or you're going for a run, you're going to talk about those things that challenge how you think, give you new perspectives, insights and ideas, or just inspire you more regularly so you take better actions. So what drains your standards? Sorry, who drains your standards and who lifts them? Super simple one to audit on for the time being. Now, finally, fifth and final, you've got to make growth a lifestyle. You have to make it, so your life changes, the moment that learning becomes a non-negotiable.

Lachlan Stuart: 17:21

When was the last time you listened to a podcast, aside from this one, an audio book, read a book, went to a personal development event, took time to set goals? If you aren't doing that regularly and daily, how are you going to expand your thinking? How are you going to solve problems? Because who you are, the thoughts, beliefs and ideas that you have right now, isn't who you need to be to get further along. So what are you going to do differently? How are you going to get those ideas? How are you going to have those breakthroughs, personal development and growing daily. So it's going to challenge your beliefs, as I said.

Lachlan Stuart: 17:58

So you can look at reading daily, mentorships, courses, even solitude, like thinking, being alone with your thoughts, is a pretty confronting thing, but a pretty powerful thing as well. I remember, even just on the 58 marathons, the amount of time that I spent in my own head was mind-blowing, but I had so many thoughts, so many ideas and so many realizations, things. What's really important to me? Why am I doing the things that I'm doing? Why am I friends with that person? I'm really appreciative of that person.

Lachlan Stuart: 18:29

Solitude, once you get through, I guess the chaos and the fear. It becomes quite an amazing thing. What's the last thing that you learned that actually made you uncomfortable? I want you to think about that. So, for summary, the five keys that I think are very important that will help you build a life that you love. Design your ideal life is your identity, physical and mental strength, time and financial control, environment and having a growth mindset. Super simple A life you love doesn't arrive by accident. It's designed. These five keys help me do exactly that. So if you're ready to design yours, start with one, and if you want to go deeper, I've built a 15-day starter kit that helps you do exactly that. It's going to be in the show notes, or if you can just head to my Instagram at Lachlan Stewart and you'll be able to get it in the link in the bio. Thank you guys for being here. Remember, if you loved this episode, hit the subscribe link. We will see you next week.