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If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into
someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not
much.
– Jim Rohn (Entrepreneur and Speaker)

In a previous article, we talked about 3 Essential Ingredients Before You Start Your Online Business.

Here, we will explore more deeply how you can build your business around your lifestyle.

In my opinion, freedom, fulfillment and purpose are the key pillars and vital ingredients to a lifestyle that supports a successful online business.

Without these, you will almost certainly get stuck because you won’t be motivated to work on your business long-term.

And let’s be honest: Why else would you want to start your own business in the first place?

Freedom

Freedom means that you can direct your own life without constraints or coercion. In the end, it’s you who’s calling the shots in your life — not your boss, not society, and not your parents.

Happiness is highly correlated with a sense of freedom.

Starting your own online business will give you the control you might feel is lacking in your working life.

Unfortunately, many people accept compromises to our freedom because it gives them a (false) sense of security.

Financial Freedom

Being financially free does not necessarily mean having millions in the bank.

You might actually be much closer to financial freedom than you think!

It just means that you can buy the things you want.

Freedom of Time

This is about doing what fulfills you most when you want to do it.

Creating an online business and passive income streams doesn’t mean you can just sit back and not do anything all day, every day — they do require at least some upkeep, and a lot in the beginning!

However, it does mean that you can structure your day as you like, that you actually want to spend time on your business, and that you can take a lot of time off.

Having your own business means that you decide when and how much you work. Plus, you’ll have many more opportunities to work smart, not hard.

As the saying goes: If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.

Freedom of Location

Consider how running an online business will give you freedom of location.

This is the freedom to live wherever you want.

Don’t like your city? Don’t like your neighborhood? Don’t like the weather where you are? No problem, if you have freedom of location you can just go somewhere else and work there!

Personally, I go on a lot of “workations”, i.e. I go to nice places with my laptop and just work there.

Freedom of Association

This means deciding who you want to spend your time with.

There is no need for you to spend time with people you dislike, or even just feel ambivalent about.

Unfortunately, many people don’t like their jobs – in part because they don’t like all of their colleagues.

However, if you are running your own business, you have freedom of association.

Spend your life with people that support and inspire you instead of people that make you unhappy and hold you back!

Freedom of Purpose

This is a big one and comes up often in my mastermind and in other situations when I talk with people who want to quit their job and start their own business.

Do you want to work for someone else or do you want to work for yourself?

With your own online business, you’ll have freedom of purpose.

You get to choose your own legacy.

You choose where you’ll have the most impact and then you just work on that.

I don’t know about you but I want to make my mark on the world. I want to do great things and inspire many people. I can’t do that with a 9-to-5.

Fulfillment

“Freedom means very little if fulfillment doesn’t come with it.”

Fulfillment is the well-being and satisfaction that comes from being value-aligned, gaining skills, growing personally and impacting others positively.

Being in Alignment With Your Values

Some people think of business and especially sales as an activity where you have to lie to people, you have to trick them into giving you money, and you take more from people than you are giving them.

That is not at all true!

You can have a thriving, successful online business and still live in accordance with your values.

In fact, you can even live much more in alignment with your values than in a regular career!

As an employee, you often have to pretend that you are busy, you have to do meaningless tasks and pretend that you enjoy them, you have to pretend that you are happy when really you’d just rather do something else.

Personal Development and Growth

Many people get fulfillment out of developing their abilities and gaining skills. They like growing and achieving new milestones in their life.

I have worked at a company with a personal development program and a budget for learning materials. However, I have never grown as much personally than when I started and grew my own company.

Plus, as my own boss, there are no limits to the selection of topics I want to study and skills I can learn. When you are your own boss, you can freely decide what and how much you learn.

Also, think about how reaching all the milestones will affect your motivation and self-esteem: your first website, your first blog post, your first subscriber and follower, your first interaction with a client, your first sale, … — it’s a fun, wild and wonderful ride!

Making a Positive Impact

Making a positive impact in someone else’s life can give a lot of fulfillment.

If you are already thinking about creating your own online business, then it might be because you don’t see too many chances in your current job to make a positive impact.

So the question is: With what type of business could you make a positive impact in other people’s lives the most?

Conclusion

The things that give you fulfillment are also the things that contribute to your day-to-day enjoyment and keep you motivated.

So avoid a business that you hate, thinking it’s the only way business is done.

Purpose

Lastly, if you build your online business around your purpose, it is almost guaranteed to be successful because meaning and motivation is the result of following your purpose.

With purpose, I mean the desire to have meaning and to be part of something bigger than yourself.

Be Motivated By Your Purpose

According to Daniel Pink, there are 3 things that motivate us – autonomy, mastery, and purpose:

• We’re motivated by our desire to feel free.
• We’re motivated to better ourselves and to excel at something.
• We greatly desire for our actions to have meaning.

External Rewards Considered Harmful

There is an old belief that people are only motivated by rewards and punishment and that belief is wrong.

In fact, receiving only external rewards eventually leads to a loss of motivation because it violates our need for autonomy.

Therefore, it is very important to have internal motivation in addition to earning money.

Start With Why

So ask yourself: Why do you want to start a business? What’s your higher purpose? If you had all the money in the world, why would you still do it?

Conclusion

What do you think? What is your ideal lifestyle?

What freedom is most important to you? What fulfills you the most? What gives you purpose?

Let’s create a business around that so that you can achieve your dream lifestyle!