How Do I Live My Life by Design?
There are times in life when everything seems to be moving along according to plan. You know where you need to be, what your responsibilities are, and who you are in relation to the people around you.
Then something changes.
A relationship ends. You retire. Your children grow up and leave home. A parent you have been caring for passes away. Your career changes. Something that gave your life structure, identity, and familiarity is no longer there.
And now you are standing in this strange space between what was and whatever comes next.
This is often when people start asking, “What am I supposed to do with my life now?”
I think there is a better question.
How do I want to live my life from here?
Living your life by design does not mean creating the perfect five-year plan or figuring out exactly who you are going to become. It is about recognizing how much of your current life was created from old programming, giving yourself space to separate from what no longer fits, and consciously choosing how you want to experience this next season of your life.
That is very different from simply deciding what you are going to do next.
Most of Us Have Been Living From an Old Blueprint
We like to think we designed our lives because we made choices.
We chose a college. We chose a career. We chose a partner. We may have chosen to have children, where to live, or what kind of work we wanted to do.
But underneath those choices were already a lot of ideas about what life was supposed to look like.
Long before we were old enough to make major life decisions, we were watching the adults around us. We were learning what brought praise, what created conflict, what success looked like, how hard we were supposed to work, and whether our own needs came before or after everybody else’s.
Nobody sat us down and gave us a handbook. We learned it through experience.
Something happened, and we put meaning to it.
Maybe being helpful got you praise, so you became the helpful one, or keeping the peace made life easier, so you became the person who made sure everybody else was okay. You watched people work very hard and came to believe that hard work was the path to worth and success.
Those ideas can follow us for decades.
Eventually we stop seeing them as programming and start saying, “That’s just who I am.”
But sometimes it isn’t who you are.
It may simply be who you needed to be during an earlier chapter of your life.
When the Old Life Ends, We Often Try to Hold Onto It
One of the biggest things I see when I work with clients in transition is the desire to hold onto something familiar.
That makes sense.
When something important ends, part of our identity often ends with it.
You are no longer married.
You are no longer going to work every morning.
You are no longer raising children in your home.
You are no longer actively caregiving for a parent.
The event may already be over, but emotionally and mentally you may still be trying to operate from the old blueprint because it gives you some sense of familiarity.
I think of this period as dis-integration.
We usually hear the word disintegration and think everything is falling apart. I like to look at it differently.
You are dis-integrating from the version of yourself that belonged to the previous chapter.
That does not mean everything about the old version of you gets thrown away. There are beliefs, strengths, behaviors, experiences, and wisdom that helped you through that part of your life and absolutely deserve to come forward with you.
But there may also be things that need to stay behind.
This is the unpacking stage.
You get to look at what happened, what you learned, what still serves you, and what you no longer need to carry.
That process can take time.
And that is okay.
I Had to Do This in My Own Life
I went through this after the second major breakup of my life.
Suddenly I was single again, living in Connecticut, and still going to my corporate job every day.
I could have stayed focused on what had fallen apart.
Instead, at some point I realized I wasn’t ecstatically happy with the life I was living, and I needed to actively participate in it again.
I went back to something I had used after an earlier breakup. I started looking at my life as Priscilla Bengtson, Inc.
If I were a business, what was my mission? What was my vision? What was my purpose?
But I didn’t start by trying to create some grand new future.
I started with me.
I got back into exercising regularly. I meditated. I pulled oracle cards in the morning. I created a routine before going into the office that helped me feel good in my body and connected to myself. At the end of the day, I stopped working a million hours and started winding down. I cooked healthier food. I lost weight. I felt better.
The external pieces of my life hadn’t dramatically changed yet but I had changed the way I was participating in them.
I also noticed that I wasn’t behaving the way I thought I was “supposed” to behave after a breakup. I wasn’t spending all day angry. I wasn’t staying stuck in sadness. I understood why the relationship had ended, and I was okay with that.
I had a choice.
I could allow the breakup to occupy real estate in my mind every day, or I could begin living my life again.
That is one of the ways I learned what living by design actually looks like.
It happens in the daily choices long before the next big chapter arrives.
The Gap Is Part of the Process
When I work with clients in Spiritual Counseling sessions, we often talk about the gap.
They are no longer where they were, but they are not yet where they are going.
That can be a very uncomfortable place to live.
Most people want to get out of it quickly. They want the next relationship, the next job, the next purpose, the next plan, the next identity.
But you cannot always go directly from an ending into a fully formed new beginning.
There is an in-between.
My question becomes, what do you want to do in the meantime?
Not what are you going to accomplish.
Not how quickly can you fill the space.
What do you want your life to be like in the meantime?
You could spend the entire gap angry, frustrated, and resisting the fact that your life changed.
Or you could allow yourself to process what happened, rest a little, and begin becoming curious about what is possible now.
You do not have to know what comes next.
In fact, right after an ending, you probably won’t.
You may have a feeling that something else is coming, but you cannot necessarily see it yet.
That doesn’t mean you are stuck.
It means you are between cycles.
Stop Trying to Immediately Fill the Space
This is especially important for people who have spent their lives being responsible and productive.
When space appears, we have been trained to fill it.
You retire and immediately begin looking for everything you are going to do in retirement.
Your children leave home and you fill the calendar.
Caregiving ends and suddenly you are helping everybody else.
A relationship ends and you try to maintain a friendship because completely letting go feels too unfamiliar.
When I see someone holding onto an old pattern that clearly isn’t helping anymore, one of my favorite questions is simply:
“How’s that working for you?”
They know the answer.
It isn’t.
Then we can get underneath it.
What are you getting from holding onto this?
Often the payoff is familiarity. It may not feel good, but it is known.
The unknown requires a little more trust.
That is where space becomes important.
If every available minute is filled, you do not have much opportunity to hear yourself.
What Do You Want to Experience?
I think this is where life by design becomes much more interesting.
We are so used to goals that everything has to become something.
We learn because we need a certificate.
We exercise because we want a certain outcome.
We take up a hobby and immediately think about whether we should get better at it.
I know this pattern very well.
Years ago, a friend and I were both beginning our spiritual development. She once pointed out a major difference between us. She would experience something for the experience itself. I would experience something and then need to understand why it worked, learn how to do it, and figure out how I could apply it.
She wasn’t wrong.
That was me.
Today, I think there is tremendous value in doing something simply because you want to experience it.
You do not have to know where it will lead.
You can reconnect with something you used to love before life became so busy. Maybe you enjoyed making things, playing music, moving your body, traveling, learning, cooking, or spending time with friends.
You do not have to bring every old interest back.
Choose something that creates a little curiosity.
Dip your toe in the water.
See how it feels.
That experience gives you information about who you are today.
Sometimes we don’t discover who we want to become by sitting at a table trying to think our way into an answer.
We experience our way into it.
Use Freedom as a Litmus Test
When I think about what living by design feels like in everyday life, the first word that comes up for me is freedom.
I am not talking about a life with no obligations or responsibilities.
I mean the internal feeling of freedom.
When you are deciding whether something fits this next version of your life, notice what happens inside you.
Does saying yes bring you toward more freedom, joy, happiness, and abundance?
Or does it immediately put you back into a box of expectations?
That tells you something.
For me, cooking is a great example.
Yes, cooking has a practical outcome. I need food to eat.
But I don’t only cook so that there is food on the table.
I experiment. I play with flavors. I use creativity and curiosity. I enjoy seeing what happens. Then I get to eat what I created and decide whether I liked it.
The experience itself brings me joy.
That is very different from approaching everything in life with “I am doing this so that…”
Not every experience needs a future payoff.
Sometimes the payoff is that you felt alive while you were doing it.
Living by Design Does Not Mean Controlling Your Life
This is another distinction that matters.
Living by design is not the same thing as controlling every outcome.
You can create a beautiful plan and life will still show up.
Plans change. People change. Our bodies change. Relationships change. Priorities change.
A designed life needs room to adapt.
Otherwise, your new blueprint simply becomes another set of rules that you use to judge yourself.
You said you were going to do something, and now you don’t want to.
Instead of immediately deciding you failed, look at what changed.
Are you reacting from fear and old programming, or does this genuinely no longer fit who you are today?
That is where awareness matters.
Pause. Take a breath. Notice what is happening. Then make a conscious choice instead of automatically repeating the old response.
You are allowed to adjust.
Your Life Is Happening in More Than One Cycle
I also remind people that we are not one-dimensional.
Your entire life does not go through one big ending and one big beginning all at the same time.
You may be in a new beginning in your career while experiencing an ending in a relationship. Your health may be in a completely different phase than your spirituality. Your finances may be stable while your family life is going through a major shift.
Different areas of your life are moving through different cycles at the same time.
That is why one part of life can feel wonderful while another feels confusing.
It is normal.
Some transitions are so big that we are very aware of them.
Others happen quietly in the background.
Living by design means becoming conscious enough to notice what is changing and allowing yourself to respond to where you actually are instead of insisting that every part of your life should look the same.
Your Something Better Can Begin in the Meantime
If you are in the gap right now, I want you to know that you are not alone.
No matter how spiritually aware, awakened, or experienced we become, we will still have endings.
We will still have times when an old identity falls away.
We will still have periods when the next step is unclear.
That is part of being human.
You do not have to rush through it.
Give yourself time to unpack what happened.
Allow yourself to dis-integrate from who you were.
Bring forward the parts of yourself that still belong.
Leave behind what no longer fits.
And in the meantime, find some enjoyment.
Find a little freedom, a little joy.
Try something because you are curious.
Reconnect with a part of yourself that may have been put on hold while you were busy doing everything you thought you were supposed to do.
You don’t have to know exactly who you are becoming.
You can discover that along the way.
Living your life by design is not about having the whole plan figured out.
It is recognizing that your life belongs to you and giving yourself permission to consciously participate in what comes next.
That is how you begin creating your something better.
Reflection Questions
If you are in a transition now, take some time with these questions rather than trying to answer them quickly.
- How much of the life I am living today did I consciously choose, and how much came from what I learned life was supposed to look like?
- What parts of the previous version of me do I want to bring into this next cycle, and what am I ready to leave behind?
- What do I want to experience in the meantime?
- Does the life I am creating give me a greater sense of freedom, joy, happiness, and abundance?
Want to go deeper into this conversation? Listen to the full Living Your Life by Design episode of This Life or Something Better on Spotify.