We all have hopes and dreams. When we dial-in on them a little closer, we may even call them goals. This is a good thing. It’s important to have a sense of direction and purpose.

Too often, however, hopes and dreams, even when reduced to goals, go unrealized. We either bite off more than we can chew (e.g., a list of 10 New Year’s resolutions) or the transformation we seek is too vague or too distant to reduce to daily action.

“I want to lose weight” is a worthy goal but it’s not a plan. And that’s the rub when it comes to behavior change. We are not what we hope to become. We are what we repeatedly do.

Most people want the same things, including health, happiness, good relationships, and financial security. Those that achieve these things take consistent, daily action that brings them closer to their goals. Others meander aimlessly through life and are surprised when they never get anywhere. As anyone who has gotten really serious about behavior change knows, life is nothing more than the sum of one’s habits.

Change your habits and, yes, you’ll change your life.

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New shows on Netflix. New York Timesbestselling books. Donation centers bursting at the seams. Photos of neatly rolled garments taking over Instagram. A new verb, ”Kondo-ing,” entering the lexicon.

In case you haven’t noticed, minimalism and the tidying up movement are having a moment. “Less is more” has gone mainstream.

 It’s not that the idea of living with less, and the realization of the attendant benefits, is a newly discovered concept. Thousands of years ago, Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus came to the conclusion that “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” It’s just that today’s culture, or at least some meaningful corner of it, is finally catching on.

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Nearly two years ago, Heather and I transformed Life and Whim from a blog, which we had started a year prior, into a business. Heather manifested a dream to create and launch a collection of northern Michigan-inspired apparel and accessories on our online store. It was both a stressful and exhilarating experience.

In anticipation of the launch, we spent a tremendous amount of time laying the groundwork by creating content in order to build an audience, being active on social media, and forming relationships with “influencers” who could help us spread awareness of our new entrepreneurial endeavor.

We did this work while running the marketing agency we’ve owned together for more than a decade. It’s the means through which we make our living. And, to be honest, we neglected our agency for a time as we chased our dream of building a lifestyle brand through Life and Whim.

We had really high hopes for the launch of our store. We envisioned a day, in the not too distant future, when Life and Whim would become our full-time endeavor. But things didn’t work out the way we expected.

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The typical overworked and overstressed American limps into most weekends. 5 p.m. on Friday is a finish line that leads straight to the couch. The rest of the weekend is a blurry haze of obligations, errands, and other tasks that couldn’t be accomplished during the workweek. Instead of going into Monday refreshed and recharged, we enter the new week just as exhausted as we left the previous one.

 

The cycle repeats over and over, intermittently interrupted by vacation time. The thing is, we’re not particularly good about taking vacations. The Society for Human Resource Management found that while employees who take more vacation are happier and more productive, the average worker took only 17 days off in 2017. Another recent survey found that the average U.S. employee takes only half of their allotted vacation time. Moreover, in today’s “24/7” always-on work culture, vacation often means merely working off-site.

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While spending way too much time inside over the past week as the polar vortex descended on the Midwest, Heather and I started planning our summer bucket list. On the agenda are some classic favorites, such as camping trips with friends, beach days in Sleeping Bear Dunes, backpacking at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, and lazily exploring northern Michigan’s quaint coastal towns. 

But a bucket list wouldn’t be complete without adding some new adventures into the mix. Routine has its benefits, but life—especially in adulthood—can get stale without the pursuit of more first moments. 

Think about the last time you learned a new skill, hiked a new trail, visited a new country, or formed a new relationship. Recall what it feels like to expose your family to new experiences, and to see the wonder in your children’s eyes. These are the moments—“First Moments”—that make us feel alive, create lasting memories, and remind us that how we spend our days is how we’ll spend our lives.

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For years, while living in urban and suburban environments, Heather and I would look for opportunities to escape to our “happy place.” When the stress became too much, the busyness crept in, and we just needed a moment to catch our breath, slow down and spend time in nature, we’d head north. Most often, Traverse City, Michigan, was our destination.

We would spend a long weekend recharging, hiking the trails and exploring Sleeping Bear Dunes, eating fresh food, and breathing in the crisp air. After a few days, we would begin the trek home, and spend much of the four-hour drive fantasizing about how nice it would be to spend all of our time in our happy place while lamenting how unrealistic the whole idea was. After all, we had a family to raise, businesses to run, and responsibilities to look after. Maybe after we retire, we’d conclude, while exiting off the highway.

But year after year, the allure of our happy place would keep pulling us back, and that nagging desire to make our intermittent escapes our everyday existence persisted. The obvious and irrefutable logic of the truth we were denying was inescapable: We only have one life to live, so why wait until retirement—an uncertain, future outcome—to live how we want, where we want?

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