You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to. You can do good things for yourself and make the world a better place at the same time. – Chris Guillebeau
If you haven’t read about how Chris Guillebeau is changing the world, you need to visit his site, follow him on twitter, become a facebook fan, etc. He has four basic tenants of his philosophy.
The essence of my philosophy is this:
1. You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to.
2. If you don’t decide for yourself what you want to get out of life, someone else will probably end up deciding for you.
3. There is usually more than one way to accomplish something.
4. You can do good things for yourself and help other people at the same time.
Most people that I know live their life based on projected values and desires. For example a son may become a Lawyer because his Father always told him he should. One 
thing I see happen quite often is the dating/marriage/baby/home cycle. A couple dates, then gets married because that’s the next step. Soon they take the next step and have a baby. Of course now they need to buy their own home because, well, that’s the next step. Of course non of these steps is wrong, evil or bad. They are all great steps IF it’s what the couple wants.
Recently Baker over at Man Vs. Debt packed up the few possessions he and his little family owned and jumped into an RV to travel the United States for a year. It may not be common and the idea may scare some people but it was what they wanted to do, so they did it. Baker got his blogging fame started by selling his ‘stuff’ and going on a global expedition. How many people do you know that can list all of their possessions on a one page excel spreadsheet?
I was in the real estate and finance business for about 8 years. More than once I advised my potential clients against buying a home. Buying a home can be a great investment and can be the right thing for somebody looking to put down roots for a while. Many times though my clients could not answer my questions about how long they plan to be there, if they liked the area for the long term or what type of home they want to raise their family in?
We get so caught up in checking things off the list we sometimes forget to evaluate the list and make sure it’s something we want.
The idea on nonconformity is not the same as being different for the sake of being different. Sometimes what you want is to have a Mac, other times you do it because you want to be different from the guys with the PC’s. Do things that you want, and do them the way you want. Remember Chris’s #3. There is usually more than one way to accomplish something.
What do you want out of life?
Ok, now really. What do YOU want out of life?
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