Three Steps to Creating a Million-Dollar Lifestyle (Without Winning the Lottery)

As I was driving down the road last week enjoying the spring weather with the sunroof open and the windows down, I heard an advertisement on the radio about a specific state lottery ticket that was offering a pretty big prize. After painting a glowing picture of how amazing your life will be when you win the cash price, they wrapped things up by reading the disclaimer. You know this part, where the volume drops and the voice speeds up to the point you can barely understand what is being said. But I caught the final few words: “Actual chances of winning one in 4,480,447.” Now, relatively speaking, those are pretty good odds for a lottery, but I caught myself thinking, well, what about the 4,480,446 people who don’t win?

Which then got me thinking about how we can have the tendency to wait for something ‘big’ to come into our lives and make our dreams a reality and suddenly bring the results we have wanted for ourselves into being. But mostly, that’s not how life works. The vast majority of our lives are built in the day to day choices we make and actions we take over time. If you’re one of the lucky few who have won the mega millions, then the rest of this article isn’t for you. But if you are one of the 7+ billion people who haven’t (and likely won’t) win the hundred million dollar jackpot, here are three simple steps you can take today to begin building the results you want and living like you’ve won it all (because in essence, you will have).

1. Think about what your life would ideally look like if there were no time or money limitations on how you were living.

How would you be? What would your day look like? How would your health be? Who would you spend your time with? What would you learn and experience? Are there any causes you would be more involved with? 

As you get clear on this picture in your head, pick just one thing from this ideal lifestyle that you would like to create and be living out now. This can be a certain state of being you’d like to achieve, something you’d like to do, or something you’d like to have in any area of your life. Maybe you’d like to weigh a certain amount, learn to speak a new language, drive a new car, save a certain amount of money, spend more time volunteering in your favorite organization, or take a week-long vacation each quarter. Be as clear and specific as possible about this result you want to create in your life.

2. Write down every action you can think of that a person might take to create this one aspect of your ideal lifestyle.

For example, let’s say that you decided you want to take a week-long vacation somewhere every 90 days, you might write down action items like:

• Write a list of places I want to visit.
• Schedule the trips in my annual calendar.
• Set aside more money for these trips.
• Reserve travel tickets and hotel accommodations.
• Do certain work in advance and delegate appropriately so I can be away from my business for a week.
• Etc

You might have a very long list of possible actions that someone might take, and that’s great! Write down as many as you can think of without prejudging them.

3. Focus these actions into creating your desired result in your life right now.

As you look at your list, determine if any of your listed action items can be broken down into sub-actions. For example, your action item, “Set aside money for these trips” might be broken down into, “Eat lunch at home (or pack a lunch) twice per week to save an additional $20 per week for my trips” or “Set up a special savings account to hold the funds for these trips.”

You’ll likely notice that you have two types of actions: One-time actions and repetitive actions. Setting up a special savings account is something you only need to do once – you won’t need to set up a new account over and over again – however, transferring the extra $20 into that account will need to happen on a repeated basis in order for you to achieve your quarterly vacation goals.

You can now write out a ‘to-do’ list for the one-time actions you need to take so that you can check them off as you get them done. Then, select one or two (or more if you wish) of the repetitive actions that you will take in an ongoing basis to create your desired result.

Now over to you. Take a second right now to share just one thing that if you were doing it or if you had it in your life right now, it would make you feel like you were the million-dollar jackpot winner. And then let us know, what are the one or two actions you are going to add to your daily habits to make this result a reality in your life?