Create Change Drop by Drop | Why Lifestyle Design is Self Indulgent

Why Lifestyle Design is Self Indulgent

The lifestyle design community and freedom creation is focused on muses, internet marketing, passive income streams, life hack tricks, productivity tools and location independence.

It’s a bit self-indulgent if you ask me.

Personal development and the confidence it creates is at the heart of any meaningful act in the world but it easily slips into greed for self-improvement. Without a mindful approach to the whole of our interaction with society and the world an individual is just as neglectful of the compassion and diligence that the world needs as any large corporation is.

The goal of lifestyle design and liberation should not be to rise above the masses and soar unburdened through the skies but to free us to do the work that connects us with the world and gets our hands dirty – that liberates others and changes the world for the better.

At a certain point in all of the personal development we have to get outside of ourselves and start working in the world to make it a better place.

If that means putting in manual labor at a local community garden, working at a soup kitchen, or teaching under-privileged children business and life skills, then we should step up and do it. If it means raising money to fight malaria in the Philippines by exhausting yourself over seven days in seven cities for your birthday, then so be it. If it means leveraging the power of your twitter followers to donate to micro-finance organizations or to raise money for education supplies in disadvantaged regions, then get out there and leverage.

Helping others create meaningful change in their own lives is great, but then organizing those same people to create meaningful change en masse in the world is the next step. It’s also the step we neglect.

We can’t backdown from mobilizing our tribes on issues of human rights, deforestation, poverty, and other striking social and ecological issues without short changing the very principles of liberation.

The growth that lifestyle design and liberation gives us should not be limited to freeing our financial and leisure life but be extending our compassion and engagement with others and the world.

When we turn the tools of lifestyle design and liberation upon social and environmental issues we are no longer indulging ourselves but turning ourselves over to something larger than us.

Turn yourself over to something bigger than you.

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jake

I'd rather be self-indulgent than insufferably preachy. Yuck.

CarlNelson

I'll be sure to keep this in mind.

Anyone, else think this is preachy?

alexfayle

Nicely said! I'm all for lifestyle design (and in fact talk about it all the time on my own blog) but for me it's not at all about passive income, internet marketing or even necessarily about money. It's about doing what's best for you and best for those around you (including the world at large).

Glad to have found you through Cath Duncan's latest blog carnival!

CarlNelson

Thanks Alex. Agreed, it's not all about those things and I'm glad you've found me and we can connect.

What's your blog, I'd like to check it out.

Fabian Kruse

True words here. For me, participating in social change on a local level is very important in my daily life. But of course, everybody is different and has his own priorities. In the end, the "typical" lifestyle design isn´t more self-indulgent than any other form of "typical" life - so this call really goes out to everybody, not just people interested in L.D. Probably we just have to learn to connect more with society outside our own work environment to bring change along.

CarlNelson

"In the end, the "typical" lifestyle design isn´t more self-indulgent than any other form of "typical" life"

Great point Fabian. All scenes and communities have their own self-indulgent aspects (my own dance community is far from exempt) and yet I think lifestyle design, for all it's focus on introspection, growth and development so often fails to address the issues of social change directly. Instead leaving it as a monetary afterthought (i'll donate to a charity) to their own business and lifestyle extravagances.

Fabian Kruse

You´re absolutely right concerning the usual focus of L.D. In this sense, it would be good if more lifestyle designers would put social action as a priority onto their portfolio from the beginning, that´s for sure. As much as L.D. for me is a positive example for a much larger group of people, it´s surely missing this component.