Planning Your Life Backwards Is An Awakening

Well... I decided to think about my entire life until I hit 100 years old. Yes, I believe I will live that long and be yoga and headstands! Spreadsheet link available

Have you ever ZOOMED OUT on your life?

Well, I have, and I want to share with you what I have learnt from doing this simple spreadsheet that looks at your entire lifespan timeline and how it can help you in ways you probably never seen BEFORE!

I love sharing articles on what I do that help me CARE MORE about what’s essential for me and my family to live our best lifestyle.

Firstly, by “living our best lifestyle,” I try to design every aspect of it intentionally and avoid just following the social norms. And if I do follow social norms, I do so because I want to.

For example, getting married before having a child is something I requested before Tony and I got engaged, which is socially normal to do, and I was happy to follow that tradition. It aligned with my family and how I visualised living my best lifestyle when having a family.

Another example that is not socially normal is having 2 kids living in a 2 bedroom house with 1 bathroom in Australia as a few people have said we would need to buy a “bigger house”, and I have just NEVER agreed with that or felt the need to buy a bigger place to fit our growing family. If anything, I want to do the opposite and squeeze us all into our kombi VW campervan to travel around Australia to “live our best lifestyle”, as that is what is important to us and what we VALUE as a family… TRAVELING and spending more quality time together.

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We all have ideas and thoughts about our future life. Most of us are taught to write them down as goals or make a vision board. I have also followed these practices for years, and I believe in them as they are essential for you to reach your goals.

But this month of reflection, I have been pushing myself to take into account all areas of my life, and how each goal/intention will impact TIME & MONEY as having a family now, these two essential things have become EVER so amplified.

TIME is something we all complain about “I’m too busy” or I don’t have enough time to do that.

MONEY is also something we all complain about: “Food shops are so expensive now” or “cost of living is so high.”

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What started out being a simple 10-year timeline jotting potential ideas of places to travel or things I wanted to do turned into this massive spreadsheet.

Zooming out to my 100th birthday and seeing what my life would look like and where each family member would be during each milestone I would hit in my life was a pretty strange feeling because it gave me so much perspective on how LIFE is precious as I get older and that there is an end date to all the dreaming I manifest in my future.

And I’ll share in this article all the significant ways it hit my heart so hard and why EVERYONE should do this spreadsheet!

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I have always lived by the saying, “Life is TOO SHORT. Don’t take it for granted.” And doing this exercise makes me feel much better than I have. If you want to do it yourself, you can read till the end.

It ultimately showcased to me when the most essential milestones would be happening in my life and what age my kids would be at that time, which is why I originally started writing this note.

Still, as I started, I thought it would be easier to just put it in a Google Sheet (spreadsheet link is below) as it was just the age of each of us in columns, and as I started, it turned into this massive family tree life map of where all of us would be in our entire lifespan.

• It showcased when our kids would start school and how much time we had before they had to go to school (is the main reason I started writing it)

• It showcased when the kids would be graduating and how old we would be

• It showcased when our 25th anniversary would be and how we could plan a fabulous party for that!

• It then showcased when my parents would POSSIBLY no longer be in our life anymore.

It helped me think of what I could be doing with my life at certain ages for myself or my family. To focus on the most meaningful thing we want to do as a family first and maybe put all our small dreams to the side.

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Understanding where you are in your lifespan

Doing this random spreadsheet helped me see and reflect on my entire life in a WHOLE NEW way rather than answering the question of where I want to be in 5 to 10 years. I don’t know about you, but I have never been good at answering that question because it was big of a question with so many ways to answer it, but zooming out even more, made it very clear to me that MAYBE we should be looking out long term first, then breaking our lives down into short-term plans.

When you look at your entire life timeline, it is an instant HARD reminder that you don’t know how long you will be living for, and that sinking fact hits home hard and motivates you to consider not wasting time doing things you don’t enjoy or love.

Reflecting on how you have lived in your past timeline

Ultimately, I am ALL about motivating you all to love your life because that is how I managed to live. By mostly travelling in my 20s, exploring 28 countries and living in 5, grounding in Perth in my 30s, building a business and family, and now as I approach my 39th birthday, I understand that it will shift how I want to be living in this next decade as I have been thinking about it as a lot for the past year.

My next question is, how do I want to live in my 40s?

By the way, you don’t live your life in decade blocks, but I have noticed it as my pattern, and around the 7-year mark, I started to transform into another version of myself. By the time I hit the new decade, I felt embodied in this new version of myself.

For example, I became a mother at 36, and a week later, it was my 37th birthday; in a year and a half, I will be turning 40, and I will probably feel more grounded and settled in my role as a mother as there is constantly so much to be learning as a mom of 2 under 2.

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Designing how you want your lifestyle to be

Ways to start designing would be

• to start at the end (death)

• look for crucial milestone dates that you want to do things by

• start from today and work out towards the future

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DEATH

We don’t ever think NEVER mind speaking about DEATH as in some cultures it is a very doom and gloom topic. Other cultures celebrate death and have extraordinary joyful events honouring a person’s life. In our culture, the only way most of us talk about our death is when we write our Will of Testament, and let's be honest, how many of us have done that? I will go into more detail below if you Upgrade now.

By zooming out and marking the time of your death and how long you believe you would like to imagine your life… pick any number. I picked 100 because my Lola (aka grandmother) lived to 104, the longest-living member in our history. My intention isn’t to break her record but to be able to do headstands and my yoga practice by 100, as that is way more important to me to be physically healthy, mentally healthy and emotionally thriving!

We need to embrace our unknown death the same way we accept birth and life with love and joy, as it is all part of our journey in life. If you find it hard to pick a number of times you would like to live, I think that’s normal. You can always go off the stats that the average age of a male decreases after 81, and for a female, it decreases after 85 years old. Upgrade now to see my actual example.

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MILESTONES

After having children, you completely understand the saying, “The days are LONG, but the years are SHORT.” So, the planner type person that I am came out in this spreadsheet, and more data came into this spreadsheet.

It made me see how precious our lives are with our children during their formative years and how we can plan to be as present as possible with them before school starts. We can choose the TOP places we want to travel to with the time and money we have with a precise selection vs just suggesting countries that are nice to go to.

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Hello to anyone new here…I’m Yogi Kim, a Filipino/Canadian mother of two boys under two: Phoenix, a 1.5-year-old and Memphis, our baby. I am married to my Cypriot/British husband Tony and live in a small 64 sqm home in Perth, Australia. I share about living my best life by design and how to CARE MORE about prioritising yourself, your HEALTH and the planets. I hope to inspire you to learn and rediscover yourself. Make sure to subscribe to not miss out. Thank you for supporting my creations…

I started this article by offering a discount for an annual plan for those of you who want to continue supporting my writing, as it helps creative writing flow more when I know the community is loving and reading my articles. At the end of last year, writing slowed down due to being in the newborn bubble with Memphis, which I had stated would happen when I first started writing my Substack in July 2023. However, I am excited to have so much more free time coming up at the end of Feb and will be able to get into a routine with my writing more frequently.

Also, a side note: I started to express this week to go out on a date with hubby and not have to rush home to feed Memphis. Planning on expressing regularly with Memphis to allow myself to have time off as a whole year of fully breastfeeding was a lot of work. Don’t get me wrong, expressing is work and not much fun, but as you can see in the photo above, I am lucky enough to have been gifted a WIRELESS pump so I can write and express pump simultaneously!!! This is a mama win for sure!

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I plan to offer my subscribers enough to read each article and share more deeply personal information with my paid subscribers who want to support my creations even more. For example, I plan on sharing the boys' birth stories with you all soon. They will be available to read, and the videos in that article will be for paid subscribers to watch only. So, if you would like to be part of my INNER CIRCLE, take advantage of this 20% off, as it is only available for a limited time.

I also plan to share some video content with you all this year. Please take a look at my plans below for more insight into this lifespan timeline spreadsheet.