For the better part of my life, I’ve done what was expected of me. Or, what I thought that people expected of me. As soon as I stopped doing what is expected, I started experiencing the freedom I had been looking for. I’ll share with you my tricks on how I changed my mindset and started to live free without acting like a total Donkey about it.

Figuring out what you value the most

The first step of living like a FOCCER is to determine what you want to spend your precious time on. You will have to determine what you value the most and then make it a priority to spend as much time as you can on those values. As a result, you will be doing exactly what you want to do.

For me, doing what I wanted to do wasn’t easy. I had to battle many voices in my head. I had sold myself the story that people would look down on me when I became a cook instead of becoming a real estate developer. Next to that, I was constantly stressed about making ends meet month after month. After trying many different things, I slowly started to experience freedom.

Freedom is what I value the most. I think you’re free when you don’t give a damn about a job title and how much money you make. You’re free when you can just be satisfied with what you have. You’re free when you can spend as much time with people that you care about. You’re free when you can be so focused and enjoying what you are doing that you totally forget about the time and the world around you. However, the freedom that I picture comes with a price, responsibility, and risk.

When you try something new, minimize your risk

Spending all of your time on what you value most is easier said than done. Everyone’s situation is unique, so there is no secret cure for all. You will just have to try many things to see what works for you.

Basically, I see life as a constant quest to figure out what you value in life and trying many different things to live up to your own values until you have found out what works for you. If you keep on going long enough, you will make small steps that will combine into a giant leap ahead.

The foolish thing to do would be burning your ships behind you and blindly follow your instincts. On contrary, I think you will have to minimize unnecessary risks when you dip your toes in unknown territory. I believe it is wise to make sure you don’t have to stress about your basic needs before you move up to becoming the best version of yourself.

Be brutally honest to yourself

In everything you do, the key is to be brutally honest to yourself. Your current situation is made out of stone-cold facts. If you are not satisfied with how things are, you will have to be totally honest to yourself to figure out what the source of your dissatisfaction is.

I find it also good to remember myself that history can’t be changed, and the future is unpredictable. Lying to myself only makes me run in circles to fix my old lies. By being brutally honest with myself,  I started to build more self-awareness and self-confidence.

So, how do you figure out what you want to spend your precious time on? I’ve determined five things you can work on that follows Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs. I like to start with things that I can control and slowly move up to things that are not (yet) in my reach.

(1) Make sure you don’t have Financial Stress
(2) Disconnect from Chaos
(3) Make time for Quality Time
(4) Take care of your Mental + Physical Well Being
(5) Figure out what to do in Life

Below, I dive deeper into the things I did that helped me to form my personal values and determine what I wanted to do with my time. I am still working on these aspects, and expect to keep working on them for the rest of my life to make sure that I prioritize working on my values.

(1) How to Make Sure You Don’t Have Financial Stress

First things first. I hate stress. I hate financial stress the most. I don’t want to stress about my finances. Not when I don’t have a lot of money. Not when I have enough money. Not even when I’m rich. Financial stress is just the worst.

Simply put, when you are financially stressed, I think there are  two things you can do: make more money or spend less. Making more money sounds easy, but can be difficult if you’re not highly skilled in something with high demand. I think it’s easy to fall into the trap of trading your time for money.

In the short run, you will get more money. In the long run, you might burn yourself up from chasing more money. That’s exactly what we don’t want, as the goal is to not have financial stress. I think that if you’re desperately looking for ways to make more money, you will eventually still stress about money.

I found it way easier to start with cutting unnecessary expenses. It may be a hard pill to swallow at first, but it’s the one thing I do have control of. I can’t control a guaranteed income. However, I can control how much I spend. In order to get control over my financial stress, I asked myself some questions. Maybe some of these questions can help you to cut on some expenses before you can start earning what you deserve.

(2) How to Disconnect from Chaos

Next to financial stress, I hate the stress that is caused by other people. If someone has made a mistake and tries to drag me into their stress aura, I say no thank you. At all costs, I try to stay away from the stress that is created by the chaos of other people.

I came to the realization that social media and news are keeping me stressed. The algorithms and alarming headlines keep my dopamine rushes flowing at a faster pace than I can handle.  Unfortunately for us, social media- and news companies earn their money by keeping our attention. The more we stick to their website or app, the more they will earn. Nothing keeps us more engaged than danger and alarming headlines are just good ways to incite fear.

Our instincts are designed to react to immediate threats. That’s when our fight, flight, or freeze mechanism kicks in. Biological life is all about survival, making sure you have enough food, and being able to reproduce. However, in western society, most people don’t have to fight for their food and survival anymore. We get our ‘threat’s from different sources.

The number of immediate threats to our personal existence has greatly decreased. Now, we get our doses of fear through clickbait news and social media headlines. We react to news from the other side of the world as if it’s an immediate threat to our lives. In reality, we are just watching something bad happen on our mobile phones while we are in no immediate danger at all. In other words, you are stressed about something that you don’t have to be stressed about.

I noticed that when I was traveling, I didn’t feel the need to constantly check my phone. Maybe because it’s not convenient to check your phone when you’re abroad. Or maybe because I’m busy doing things that I enjoy and don’t feel the need to check my phone. In any way, I’m much less stressed and much more enjoying the world around me when I’m not constantly on my phone.

Every time I feel stressed because of other people or something that I can’t control, I ask myself some questions to snap out of that stress. Maybe these questions can help you to find your way to disconnect from the chaos. 

(3) How to Make time for Quality Time

For the most part of my life, I have been trying to live up to the expectations of society. I was busier with what other people would think of me, than actually thinking what was important to me. My idea about what’s important in life changed when I started to travel.

In South-East Asia, I talked with people who were far less lucky and wealthy than I was. However, those people seemed to be much more satisfied with their lives than I was. How could someone who is considered poor in Western civilization seem so happy?

I realized that the people I connected with lived far less complicated and much more simple lives than I did. They did what they had to do to make a living. The rest of the time, they spend with family and friends. They were not trying to live up to expectations from society. They were not chasing any job title or a luxury car. They were just trying to take care of their family, have a good time with their friends, and not having to worry all the time.

Reflecting on my own life, I noticed that a lot of my time went into chasing some kind of status. I spent much of my time seeking the approval of others. I even spent a lot of energy on the approval of people I don’t know because of social media. Chasing extrinsic goals drained me mentally.

Sure, if you want to be famous, you might need the approval of people you have never met in real life. If you want more inner peace, I found that chasing extrinsic goals is just a waste of energy and good mood. What really matters to me is being able to spend good quality time with people I care about. Instead of chasing external goals, I started spending more time on my intrinsic values.

To spend more time on my personal values, I needed to block dedicated quality time. My trick for blocking quality time is that I make sure to block enough time. That means I don’t plan too many things in one weekend. I keep it at two, max three, different appointments per weekend. Furthermore, I think it’s easier and fun to organize something or do something together with the people you care about. For example:

(4) How to Take Care Of Your Mental + Physical Well Being

In my 20s my life was full of drinking, partying, staying up late, skipping nights. I didn’t have a lot to worry about as my life was just cruising ahead. Things got more complicated as soon as I graduated from University. My body wasn’t working as it used to do, and my soul was in a different place than my head.

I have many holes in my memory from heavy alcohol consumption. I used to think it was a sign I had a fun night. However, if I recount the moments of regret, it’s almost always after heavy drinking nights. Not only did heavily drinking make me feel guilty, it also made me make horrible choices. I easily swapped long term options for more short term gains, such as midnight snacking and postponing my to do’s.

On top of my weight, I also felt more and more pessimistic as I had heavy hangovers. While drinking, I felt like the king of the galaxy. However, all my good intentions just evaporated the next morning. I felt down. I just wanted to be by myself, being a miserable piece of crap. For every night of drinking I had to recover for three days. In those three days I just felt down, did nothing productive which made me feel guilty. The spiral went downwards.

If I wanted to be more productive, I had to change. I didn’t totally quit with alcohol. I just stopped going to social events where I knew that one beer turned into getting totally wasted. By just drinking less alcohol I lost over 10KGs. Maintaining an acceptable weight even feels effortless. I’m not having pessimistic breakdowns anymore. And last but not least, I get more work done than ever before.

I’m nowhere near to being a fit boy. I still have weight to lose. I still have the stamina to gain. However, I find it less difficult to maintain my current weight and making sure my mind heading towards a hopeful place by making habits out of some of the things below.

(5) How to Figure Out What To Do In Life

Up until the moment I graduated, my life was straight forward. The goal was simple. Get good grades and graduate from University so you can get a good job. Life was easy and I didn’t really have to think for myself. Just follow the instructions, color between the lines and life will do the rest.

Well, not for me. I got the feeling that everybody around me knew exactly knew what they wanted to do after their graduation. Me, I had no clue. However, I was 100% that I didn’t want to work for a boss for the rest of my life. I wanted to do things for myself. But what those things were exactly? I couldn’t really say.

If you feel a bit lost people will tell you to follow your passion. Find your purpose and do that. If you don’t know what your goals are, people will just say to do what feels good. I found out that it’s easier said than done. What if I don’t know what my passion is? Do I even have a life purpose? To be honest, I think passion and purpose are just vague and ambiguous terms to oversimplify things.

I’m not even sure if there is a general purpose of life. I don’t know if we all have a unique purpose in life. But what I’m 100% sure about is that one day we are all going to die. When we die, our lives are nothing more than a unique set of moments we have experienced. In the end, no two lives are the same. That realization made me question why I would want to achieve things that other people want? Why not just figure out what I want to achieve and spend as much time on trying to achieve exactly that?

I figured out that it’s easier for me not to place too much emphasis on something abstract as a purpose or passion. What gave clarity to me was to determine what I didn’t want. Next I had to figure out what my values are, how I would like other people to treat me, and what I want to achieve before I die.

Below are some of the things I do to figure out what to do in life and how to keep myself on track of achieving the things I want. If you feel a bit insecure about where you want to go, maybe some of these things might help you.

Now, pick something that sparked your interest and start now. Escaping the rat race is more about being confident with who you are and what you want than comparing yourself with others. The less you feel the need to compare, the better. If you start working on just one thing that sparked your interest, the domino’s will start to click.

I will continue with practical tips on how you can get new inpiration by opening yourself up to different cultures and lifestyles in the next step: Be Open: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone.