FOR 40 YEARS OR SO, I DID "NORMAL" FAIRLY WELL. Went to high school, then college, grad school, got married (then some more grad school!), got a job, moved to the suburbs, relocated (to another suburb) for a better job.

 

But along the way, inner rumblings kept telling me there must be a better way to do life—a life that would feel more like one I created because it was what I wanted most, not just the path of least resistance to a moderately enjoyable and secure life.

 

Perhaps you’ve dared to dream the same thing. You’re not in a bad place. In fact, life might even be really good—by normal standards.

 

But you’re just not sure you fully buy into the standards. 

 

I get it.

 

My wife and I were life-long city people, but we wondered how it might feel to live in the country. Meanwhile, we had a child—just one—but we met some folks who had many more than one, and we got curious. What might a large family be like?

 

As our one became two children, we even discovered an unknown-to-us educational option called “home school.” Then we began exploring a type of church very different than either of us had experienced before.

 

We reached a tipping point and began making decisions to do things differently than we’d been taught (programmed?). Over the next decade, we took steps toward different, one by one.

 

As a result, we eventually had eight children, home-schooled them all (the last one still in process), progressively down-sized our environment by moving from Los Angeles to Atlanta to Nashville to Lynnville, Tennessee (population 297—but we live seven miles outside of town). We migrated from evangelical Protestantism to Eastern Orthodoxy, and I left my good job with a large company to become my own self-employed boss.

 

We’ve mastered different.

 

And lest you think I’m leading to a pitch about how simple and easy it is to do different, I’m not—because it’s not. Different is likely the most challenging way you can choose to live.

 

And is it all it’s cracked up to be?

 

You bet it is.

 

Whatever your version of different needs to be in order to fulfill you, getting there will be worth all the effort you put into it. You’ll never regret going for a life that really matters to you, but someday you will almost certainly regret not going for it.

 

Your dream life is probably not any one thing by itself. It’s a collection of differences woven into the way you want to live. 

 

Taking action sooner rather than later is the first, best step you can take, so subscribe to my weekly blog today. I post weekly ideas on how to get un-rutted.

 

And when you subscribe, I’ll send you a free copy of my e-book, Better than Perfect. The book shares my version of different, and even though your specific dreams are almost certainly not the same as mine, I know what it takes to “go there” and want to get you headed to your upgraded life. 

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And one last starter: To see where you are right now on your road to different, read my  "How Ready Are You to Do Different" checklist, and find out how you’re getting along with your life as it is right now.