How to make dreams come true

We often get the question of how we made it happen. Two forces play a central part in the answer. Get to know them here.

Three years ago, we were packing up our house in Copenhagen. When I think about it now, I get a bit nostalgic, but at the same time, I feel very grateful. It has been three incredible years. We left home and a lifestyle we enjoyed because we wanted to travel the world with our children more than we wanted to continue what we were already doing. 

We learned a lot over those three years, and we are now all in a different place. Things evolved very differently from what we would have imagined. Still, we did got precisely what we wanted: 

We got a life close together, a lot of personal freedom, a big pile of new friends, great adventures in many different countries. 

We learned flexibility, languages, we learned to handle crazy situations with inner peace, and we learned so much about listening to the universe, how God will always call upon us and show us the way if we are willing to listen. 

We left a wonderful lifestyle in a beautiful city to get an adventurous lifestyle based on traveling, unschooling, community, and our open hearts to the cosmos. It has been magic, and it still is. We are very grateful for the freedom and the love. 

Now, how did we get here?

We often get the question of how we made it happen. Two forces play the central part in the answer: 

One is our wild adventure hearts, just wanting to get out there in the world and LIVE full time without restrictions. The other is the force of my husband, who has a “special gear”. He will sit down or get up, start in one end at getting the job done no matter what. He worked for three years straight, almost all of his waking hours, to create himself an online career that would support our lifestyle. Meanwhile, I did everything else (more or less) with the fantastic help of young workawayers who moved in and out of our house. It was a fun time, and we have no regrets. We knew what we wanted, and we were working hard to get it. 

Looking back and writing about it now, it sounds almost easy. But it was also a pretty crazy time. So often, we felt it was impossible. We thought that we would never reach our goal. We got so super tired and had our doubts. It was not at all a dance on roses. But it was worth it, and it was a great learning adventure. 

It could have been done much faster, with less security and a smaller online business portfolio. But, we had a unique situation: our oldest daughter had been accepted at an excellent university for writers, being the youngest ever to attend. So we decided that we had to stay put while she was pursuing her dreams. 

From dreaming to planning

To make a shift in life like the one we did, our most important advice falls into three categories. 

1. Clear value system
2. Set at date
3. Trust in life 

Step one: Do you know what you really want?

First and foremost, you need to make sure that you deep down do want this change. Things often look fantastic on Instagram and blog posts. Or seem impressive when you read a book about it, but is it truly something you want in your life? 

We felt a deep calling, we knew we had to go, but not everyone truly wants this or are ready to put in the hours.

We often meet people who say they dream about having a life like ours. We get flattered off course – But in my experience, it is usually just a dream, an escape for the brain, something that is nice to dream about – but not something you actually would do, or where you are ready to do the work needed. 

To make the shift, you will have to decide if you want to change from dreaming about traveling with your children full-time to actually doing it. Living it every day – with all its ups and downs. 

To know this, you need to get your values straight. It is essential to know your hierarchy of values and to be able to stick to them. Once you have done this job, any decision gets easy: You just match it up with your top 5 values and your clear goals to see if it is worth doing it or not. 

Do the inner work. This is our first and most important piece of advice. Do the inner work. Decide what is important. Once this is done, you can move from dreaming to creating the life of your dreams. 

How to do it? That’s a story for another blog post. Or ten 🙂 Or you can just google it; there are many good courses out there; I like Jordan B Peterson and Janet Bray Attwood; they have two very different approaches, but both in their way very powerful. 

Step 2: Do you know when you want to do it?

This is a piece of actionable and straightforward advice. But it works. 

Set a date for your lifestyle shift.

Then what happens is that all of your thoughts change from dreaming to planning. You stop talking about it and start acting.

We set our date to July 1st, 2018, and we decided on the date around six months before. 

All we knew was we wanted to make the shift at this time, but we were not sure how. We went back to the values and talked all of the practical elements over, and we ended up deciding to buy a bus. 

With the bus, we would be able to have a real home with us, living in many different locations, yet having our own space and homey feeling. We had talked this option over many times before, comparing with backpacks, car, bicycle, motorhome, slow travel, but after setting a date, it seemed a bus would be the perfect ticket out of the old lifestyle and into the new one. It would make the shift softer, and it would be fun!

My advice is, once you have cleared if you really want it or not, set a date.

Once you have the date, you will for sure start making plans. 

It becomes a practical challenge, and the dream wil dissolve. It is less fun to make lists and decide the big picture and all of the small stuff, solve all of the practical things, but it will get you out there. 

When you move from a dream state to planning, a lot of new emotions will emerge, and you will have to cope with them. 

Doubt and fear will probably be the most challenging ones. This leads me to the next step. 

Step 3: Did you align with the universe?

I recommend getting aligned with whatever version of religion that makes sense to you and your family, making sure you can hear the calling of the universe, of God. Start believing there is a reason you are here and that you will get answers if you ask. 

It is a skill. It can be learned. Start meditating, and start praying. If you feel you do not believe in God, start making rituals of gratitude. This is, in my book, the same as praying. And work on your intuition. 

Intuition is the part of your mind that will transcend into the unknown and unplannable, into the reality that is more real than bank accounts and calendars and gravity. Intuition works for everyone, and intuition will be the most essential gear in a lifestyle change. 

It is a loop. If you ask your questions, get clear in your mind, start believing your intuition, let yourself feel your emotions, and look at everything life shows you on the way, you will get better at understanding whatever you receive. Day by day, the transcendent life, the magic life, the rich and enlightened life becomes a bigger part of your experience. 

This might be the most challenging part to both accept and do; to me it is the most crucial part. 

The thing about this lifestyle is, it is different from what almost everyone else is doing; there is no recipe, often no one to talk to about it, and there are thousands of decisions to make all the time. 

You will need to cope with not really knowing what you are doing in so many cases, and if this stresses you out, you would be better of staying at home. 

When we cultivate our ability to listen to what I consider the voice of God – expressed in the leaves on the trees, the vibe of a room, the feel of things, the magic of things, what I simply often just KNOW to be true (not an actual voice I hear in my ears) – we listen to this, we are aligned with all of the unknown. We let our conscious and rational minds align with our intuition and our spiritual self, and things become very smooth. We have no regrets, no fear, no worries – we trust we are on the right path, and we walk gratefully. 

To sum up 

Inner work is always the beginning of something good. We need to find peace with our spiritual life through meditations, prayer, ritual, intuition – whatever version feels right. We need to know what is truly important to us and get clear on the values behind this. We need to continuously think about this and do the work of the hierarchy and make it operational, so we know exactly how and when we are on track. And we need to move from dreaming and talking to planning and doing. 

Janet Atwood calls it 

• Intention
• Attention
• No tension

Reflecting this into my philosophy:

Intention would be knowing what we want and how it looks when we move in the right direction as well as when we get it. 

Attention is the planning element, doing our part to obtain our goals and move in the direction our values point to. 

No tension, of course, reflects the trust in life you get from being aligned with God’s intentions. 

I know all of this is somewhat hard work, complicated inner work – but I can guarantee this is worth all the trouble, and the enlightened and conscious life you will get from doing it is worth all the trouble.

We are three years in on our lifestyle change – traveling full time and still loving every day of it 🙂