Paris? Thailand? Bali? New York? Time with kids?
Time with parents? Morning cappuccino? Afternoon yoga? Evening concert?
What is it for you? If you could design a typical EXTRAORDINARY week… a week that you experience most of the time… what would it be?
Watch the video below to hear one of the BEST exercises I’ve ever done. It’s so simple… but so life changing. This is how you start to create a freedom-based lifestyle.
What Does YOUR Ideal Week Look Like?
Comment below with some of the most important things you want to experience on a regular basis…
Hi James,
Thank you for the inspiration!
I have lived in Spain but not in quite some time.
I want to wake up to La Concha Beach, Tarragona, and Costa Brava.
I hope to do my work in between enjoying my days. At night in Spain I will have a few client calls but enjoy the beautiful days.
I will sell more products on my website in the future.
Love hearing about your travels.
Be well!
Hi James. We live in South Florida too and love the idea of taking off to someplace cooler for three months. I can completely see how this would be a great thing to do. We do however have two dogs and two cats, which do not exactly fit that freedom lifestyle template. I guess we need to find someone extraordinary who will take our fur-babies into their home for this period of time. Would love any ideas you or your followers have.
Rhonda
Rhonda, you can completely DO IT… there are lovely people who love to take care of your pets while you go… and I have been one of those lovely people, many times! 🙂 One of my own personal tricks for creating a creative traveling life, where I get to stay in gorgeous places for long periods of time where/when I want, has been to house-sit! I travel… do my thing… and when I need or want a place to stop for awhile, to focus on my work or to write or rest, I house-sit… It takes some time to get the flow of it, but it works! So for YOU, I know you could find the help you need, when you want to go! If I choose to keep doing this, I will expand to other countries and whether here or abroad, I will start designing the house-sit *locations* around my work, so I am leveraging the stays as visits to communities where I want to share or teach my work. SO… there is always a creative solution! and YOU can DO IT! … and, hey, if you have a great place, maybe I’d be happy to help you?? I know there is someone – so let that not be an obstacle – at all! 🙂 (play around with googling house or pet sitting online and you’ll find help… or, write to me) ~ Good luck, and have fun!
Thanks for sharing this Sharon – Melanie and I are also debating if we can get dogs. We would love to… and we’re gone 3 months out of the year. So it’s refreshing to hear that yes, there are people who will care take while we’re away.
So happy for you James and thanks for this fun exercise.
For my week I’m going to pick a week near the end of February / beginning of March and I’ll spend it in Arizona. I’ll be visiting my family out there. I have breakfast with my aunt and uncle, then drive north to watch the Cubs in spring training. In the evening, I’ll drive a little further north and will meet my cousin and her husband for dinner at their house.
I’d spend the night and then drive north a little bit to see some of the area I haven’t seen yet and go hiking in the beautiful mountains there.
I’d check emails and send some responses to clients and send some pictures to family back home.
The end of the week I’d spend back in south Arizona visiting some favorite sites and saying goodbye to my aunt and uncle before heading to California where my husband and I would stay for about 10 days and during that time we’d go the the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival (I’ve ALWAYS wanted to do that because I love old movies). We’d do the whole tourist thing but when the film festival starts we’d go to EVERY special presentation and catch our favorite films. During one day we’d people watch and window shop on Rodeo Drive.
Hoping to make this a reality soon!
Love ya James!
Hi Winnie,
This is a perfect VACATION week… but I meant a perfect normal week. A week that you experience most of the time throughout the year. For example, when in Europe I get up late, have cappuccino with Melanie, explore whatever city we’re in at the time and then get to work around 4pm and stop around 10pm. This is how most of my days are in Europe.
So what would you like a normal, but extraordinary, week be like for you?
Hi James – You brilliantly mentored me writing my book You Can Break-Free fast a few years back and yes it’s still selling well on Amazon…I do a similar exercise with my Golden Goal Goal success clients (my second book!) using EFT and Matrix Reimprinting to clear the blocks as they go. I tell them to imagine first a day from Hell and then their Perfect day…but your freedom WEEK lifestyle is fab as an extension for a solopreneur.
by the way…writing this from my ipad here in Fez in Morocco before returning to the UK and later in winter…South Africa…while keeping my business flourishing via Skype and Internet so with you fully!
You’re the best!
Love, Caryl Westmore
Hi James, we had a consult some time back and I love what you are proposing… I am a physical therapist so prob work similarly to your wife : my business is not information or a product but a one to one personal service with a clinic whose management is starting to really exhaust me ! I would love to see how I can morph my experience and skills to a less physically dependent envoirnment ..much of what i read on line is geared to products and not services ….thanks !
Hi Siobhan,
Yes – the location freedom part is dependent on a business that can be done over phone/Skype. But the nature of the exercise of your ideal week is that it’s a week you have regularly. I just choose to have those weeks in the summer here in Europe. But when I’m at home in LA, I design my days and weeks to be ideal, too.
For example, we love art museums. So Melanie and I make a point to be tourists in our home town and take advantage of everything LA has to offer, too.
Well Mr Roche
I am sure a Coffe with you and Melanie on cam would be an amazing traffic generation wizard for all the Artists at Coffee Shops!
Dear Mr. Roché,
or hello James,
thank for this inspiring post and the inspirations through the comments (I love touristing in my hometown, too, and Sharon´s input was eyes opening aswell).
Here is my vision for an ideal ordinary week:
I work from my lovely home in the green outskirts of Vienna (close to a large old forest and recreation grounds but also to a stop of an underground line that will take me into the city center in no time at all). My home consists of a friendly, light little house for my beloved one and me, a little garden and a former stable that has been transformed into a workshop/office space, again a light and friendly place with enough room for my work space and my business partner´s and about two additional work spaces that we rent out to other creative entrepreneurs. Of course my love who sometimes works from home also has a pleasant space here.
The morning: I wake up around 7am, my business partner arrives between 10 or 11, so I have lots of time for breakfast, some exercise, a morning ritual to set the energy for the day and check in with my intuition, maybe even a little walk.
My business partner is also my good friend, and we mostly have a good time. Workwise we are the perfect match: we develop our projects together, then I will do the illustrative work, whereas she takes care of the business, communication, marketing side of things, be in touch with printers, publishers, possible new clients- and we´re both creative at what we do! We love this cooperation tremendously as it allows us to do what we love to do and do best, knowing that trough the complementing skills of the other the project will be completed.
We work around three or four hours, then we prepare and share a light lunch together with everyone who works here, which adds a festive vibe to the days. (I guess we take turns in cooking and tidying up).
Some more work in the afternoon, – ideally the workday ends around 4pm.
Wednesdays and weekends are free, well, a Wednesday might be used for research in the city or an inspiring visit to an exhibition, or sketching in a Kaffeehaus as long as it´s done with a sufficiently lazy attitude.
As for the ideal year: July and August the business is closed for summer vacation, from the 17th of Dec to the 7th of Jan we can´t be found near the studio (only if inspiration hits hard ;O)
About four weeks of the year are reserved for free projects, or research or gathering material and inspiration somewhere out in the world, in my case that could be a journey with lots of time for looking, sketching, writing – it could be done all four weeks in one go but also split into smaller time segments.
All of this is quite flexible of course, so there is always time for unexpected visitors, prolonged breakfasts, celebrations of every kind….
At this point in my life this is VERY fictional writing, but I am glad could I could come up with this detailed image now – in the beginning of the year the wonderful coach and mentor Kirsten Stendevad asked a quite similar question in the Xtraordinary Entrepreneur course and I couldn´t come up with much…, now your post offered a perfect impulse to see how far my thoughts on this had grown.
Thank you! and All the Best, Carla
p.s. I´m sorry, such a long comment, and here´s me again! But I noticed there is something better to do with Wednesdays: some non arty volunteer work, definitly.