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New tracking technology has enabled an array of geographically based web applications to spring into the consumers internet space. If we so desire we can track the locality of our significant others on the off chance of a catch-up meeting. We can walk down a street and our mobile device can tell us what products are available in our immediate vicinity. The tourism industry are reveling, with new opportunities to present information and assist travelers as they move. Tweets can be tracked and mapped to analyse trends of thought according to location. What else is to come? Certainly geographically based web apps are a growing industry, for us as consumers our movements mean a lot more than simply finding our way around town.

If you have ever watched Cricket on television you must have seen the shot analysis graphic. The one that shows the pitch and where, using different colors for different points, the batter has hit the ball. If you pay particular attention to this graphic you will see that the batter prefers certain kinds of locations to hit the ball. Ultimately the batter will probably have an ongoing shot profile in terms of his/her game that brings some consistency to how they move the ball around the ground during a game.

I think that the majority of the population have a similar movement profile. In that the majority of the people walk beaten tracks the majority of the time. If we took a step up and looked down from a great height we would see that our movements on a day to day basis over a year are very consistent. For example, in the working week the rhythm could be a definitive home, drop off, work, home with an occasional variant such as an evening activity. But even the evening activity would be predictable according to the day.

Now, in our travels we prefer certain roads, certain eating establishments and social places. Depending on your position and circumstance there are many places you simply cannot go. You can walk into most retail establishments, but few commercial premises and fewer industrial locations. When you travel you can travel on the roads but the great degree of land is off limits. Depending on financial positions your movement could be more restricted. For some the rising price of petrol has effected the number and distance of trips by road. On the cricket score graphic these longer trips would be considered as hitting a 6, the movement between work and home as 1’s and the extra variants to random occurrences around town as 2’s.

During a recession the price of goods and services have increased over the rate of income. So to the cost of owning and maintaining payments for our houses or dwellings. To compensate we simply move less. We sit at home, buy ourselves a big tv and satellite television and experience the world from our couch and what a world it is. It is a world full of surprises and most of all drama. As we retract financially, we retract physically and mentally.

Try something, grab a map of your town and pencil in the pathways that you travel on a frequent basis. Mark the ones most traveled in a thicker line to indicate their usage. You will soon see your scorecard and what it means to be living your life in terms of freedom of movement and probably freedom of mind. With common pathways and common environments come consistent thoughts, some good and some not so good. Sometimes these thoughts are repeated so much they feel as though they are decaying, they are exhausting, rusty thoughts that are pooling in our minds and soiling our free time.

Now if you seek to expand your geography and/or create new patterns of movement, you can live a truly free and interesting lifestyle. You can expand your experience and expand your mind at the same time. When you travel to new environments, and when you place yourself amongst new people your mind clears, cleans and begins to expand. A little bit of unpredictability and uncertainty disestablishes and shakes common beliefs, how we see the world changes and when the dust settles, we awake a little bit smarter and a little bit wiser than before.

It takes a massive commitment to design, live and secure your fulfilling lifestyle on an ongoing basis. The activity of life roars past our consciousness. As we get older our passions and commitments grow with us. If not kept in check many of the items that make up our day to day life can consume more of our time than we ever intended. We need a way to make space for everything that we value.

A fulfilling lifestyle includes living according to the values we believe in both our personal and working lives. We often here lifestyle experts talk about balance but the word balance leads us to believe that everything needs to have the same amount of attention and all at once. This can create an enormous amount of anxiety because we can’t balance everything all at once and we probably don’t want to. The truth is our values demand more from us at different times and we simply judge the importance of our values differently. Our priminister John Key doesn’t balance productivity and the environment equally 100% of the time, he cant, and if he did or even wanted to the adjustment process or weighting attached to each value as it changed would need to be made gradually over time or else the shock would destroy one or the other. Your values are the same. You cant neglect work all together, you cant neglect family but you can choose what is more important and what deserves more attention and gradually, you can consistently move towards a weighting of importance that is consistent with how you want your life to be.

When your a one value junky the fix starts to become sour. Your lifestyle becomes numb, your day to day the mundane. For example, if you are an career obsessed workaholic that is neglecting your family under the guise of creating them a better life then you are a fool. They would rather have your time and attention than a better life. Ask them and then ask yourself. Wouldn’t you rather experience more life more often with your family than over dose on work for the next 20 years. Of course you would but why don’t you? You don’t because you lost touch with your values, you don’t have a plan. You have got into the habit and a frequency of behavour that overdoses on one value. Now your not to blame. Your probably wired this way or at least have been raised to work hard and provide for your family.

The challenge is in re-prioritizing our values when some activities shout louder for our attention than others. Isn’t that the way. Anything thats really important takes a reasonable degree of effort and creating a blue print or a living plan is one way of securing a framework of planned behavior that can be referred to regardless of mood, or external influences. But you have to have some idea of what you want and thats easier said than done. Start small, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months it doesn’t matter really. Lets just get back to what really matters to you and lets get it down on paper.

Once you work out what you value it easier to create a blueprint of what you want your life to look like on a day to day basis. For example, your blueprint could include working 8 am to 5:30 pm Monday to Friday in your preferred profession, one out of town trip per month, and two overseas holidays per year. It could include Yoga once a week, weekend sport with the kids, or to read a book every day. Now we could call these items goals, or you could call them whatever you like.

Now we are not setting limits here with this, I think its better to set this blueprint ideal as a minimum standard that you hope to achieve and lets keep it realistic. Essentially for the blue print to work it needs to fit within our budget and be achievable in terms of commitments. Now I am sure that there are a few people reading this thinking, how ridiculous, I don’t need a life style blue print to live my life, I don’t need a plan. Well if thats you and your living it 100% day after day, fitting it all in without compromise then good for you, stick with it because its probably working whatever your approach is to lifestyle management.

For others, the demands on their attentions are to such a degree that securing and living their values becomes increasingly difficult. When we are saving for a large purchase most of us are required to save money or pay it off over a period of time. To achieve a large goal we must work at it as a habit over and over again. Every time investing a little bit more in the attainment of what will ultimately become a great achievement. For example, to experience a loving, fulfilling and intimate relationship takes planning and attention. Its the little things and the big things that matter most. Yes guys if you plan a weekend away you will still have to put out the rubbish that week. To get everything you want in your life you need to plan for it. You need to make space.

Now its likely that from time to time your activities will challenge you away from your plan. Your work will get busy or family commitments may increase. Your sport or hobby may demand more and more time to reach a higher level. When this happens, stop, check your plan, check that your behavior is consistent with your values and if needed, when the time is right get back on track.

We all get pushed and pulled by life, sometimes by the things that we value, sometimes by things that make no sense to us at all. Remember, you get to choose the standards that you live by, you get to choose who you are right now.

Full of self importance, no normal day to day activity is normal when you are time poor… Standing at the check-out, leg fidgeting, already several steps ahead of your body. An accelerated heart beat, you watch meticulously the movements and interactions of the teller and shopper in front of you. If only you had been slightly faster, if only you could do what you do just that little bit faster. You would not be standing here now, waiting, waiting. You must remember to make haste next time you come again.

Perfect interactions make for perfect usage of time. A simple mistake could waste more time, the wrong eftpos card, an incorrect password, all eat away at your lack of time. The time poor drive fast, eat fast, talk fast, or choose not to talk at all. The time poor do not take time to nurture relationships, these things take too much time. The time poor stay focused on the task at hand for how else could they make the impossible possible. To be time poor you have to be more perfect. Can you be more perfect?

Too many of us are time poor, and ironically, the faster we go the less we get done and the less of life we enjoy. If you are time poor it is likely that you have a belief that you need to work hard, and even harder in your head. Why is it that you work so hard in your head? To make money, for self growth, to please your boss, to please yourself, to be good, to be accepted, to be noticed, to be important, to be somebody? How are you going with that? I am willing to bet that someone keeps moving the goal posts and you end up working harder and faster for longer.

Imagine running, rushing, fretting, day after day, week after week for the rest of your life. What would that be like? Looking back from your rocking chair years from now, how would you feel about your life and everything you achieved? Proud, happy, or regretful. You can dress it up anyway you like. Wear the suit, talk on your phone, being busy means more importance, right? NO, the time poor are the new poor! The time poor have more stress, are more prone to illness, carry guilt, and are completely detached from knowing who they really are.

The time rich have a mindset of abundance. They seem to have all the time in the world because they have conditioned their mind to believe that there is enough time to do the things they want to do. The time rich experience life in its entirety.

You need a mindset shift. You need to re-engineer how you think about time. Time is in abundance. The time rich are never rushed, they take their time. They take their time to meet the right people, to get to know them and to create real opportunities. They get more done because their mind is clearer to make better decisions.

You can be rich instantly. Give the greatest gift of yourself to you, your family, friends, colleagues, your community. Give them your time.

Autopilots check your seat belts, buckle yourself in its time to fly. Do you live life fast, do you finish other peoples sentences? Do hours blur into days into weeks. Is your life on auto pilot?

Its easy to switch into auto, when a great deal of activities and experiences throughout a day also occurred the day before and the day before that. Its like your very own ground hog day over and over and over again, day after day, week after week and then there is a blip. Some people call it the weekend. Others call it an inconvenience. Who can help it? Wake up, have the same shower, eat the same breakfast, watch the same breakfast show, drive the same route to work, check your emails, answer the phone, retire.

Im not serious right, do people really live like this? They definitely do. If you are on auto most of the day then you are probably not stopping to smell the roses, in fact you probably wish the roses weren’t there because at some point they are going to need to be trimmed and that will disrupt your work routine. You probably started off excited about work, motivated to perform, to do what it takes to reach your goals. This motivation turned from a passion into an obsession ultimately to become a burden. Does this sound like you? Are you one more setback away from burn out?

When the everyday becomes mundane; when you feel tired continuously even with a normal routine, when you cant relax, cant let go, you are stressed out, its time for a break in the weather. What you need is a way out.

Cue your brain and scary voice “there is no way out, there are bills to pay, my job needs me, my organisation needs me, my boss needs me, I am doing this for my family, who else will pay the bills, got to feed the kids, got to get just one more project finished” etc etc etc and on and on…

Listen to this voice and acknowledge it exists, of course these are real concerns, they deserve acknowledgement. Thank your brain for being so considerate of your needs. Now choose to pay real attention to thoughts that are actually helpful. Ok so if you are on auto pilot then paying attention isn’t one of your top skills at the moment. But work with me here.

The world will not wait for you to complete your obsession. Actually the world will start to show you reasons for why your obsession is no good for you. You feel crap, your spouse becomes angry, you don’t take holidays, you get sick easy and generally you don’t enjoy life. All in all, auto sucks!

Return to who you were before the passion became an obsession. Put yourself in experiences that have nothing to do with your routines. Feel again, one sensory experience at a time. Take back every inch of your life one moment at a time. You may not wake up tomorrow as the life of the party, you may not marvel in the stars or gaze lazily for hours at the beauty of life but you may smile more often.

Now forget about your long term goals, forget about your obsessive drive whatever it may be. Live for the day and only this day. This is your day right now. It is going to be unique to you. You can choose right now how you are going to experience it. It is within your power to choose how you will react to every experience life will deliver to you on this day.

Right now do something different, from the moment you get up to the moment you go to bed. Get up on the other side, have a cold shower, eat something different, drive a new way to work. Don’t check your email till later, take the time to wish everyone you meet a great day. Try it out, check it out, slow it down, time is in abundance, time is at your disposal. You are in control, its time to grab the wheel, take the stick, reach over, gently, gently, now turn off auto.