As professional adults we run an online business, almost never meet our clients and customers in person and continually change and adapt what we do, rarely doing the same thing for more than a year or two at a time.
As parents, we don’t follow the standard health care advice (e.g. vaccination schedule) but make informed decisions based on our own research and follow a schedule which we believe better suits our daughter & her health. We’re also likely to take a similar approach when it comes to her education.
As a mother, I will continue to breastfeed my 14 month old daughter while it’s still giving her massive benefits (which is well beyond the 12 months recommended by most Western health systems); if that makes others in society feel uncomfortable, that’s their issue not mine.
As homeowners, we don’t own our own home (well we do but only to rent out & until we can sell it); instead we move around the world living a nomadic life and staying in a variety of apartments & houses wherever we go.
As health-seeking humans, we choose a holistic approach to mind/body health and would rather avoid conventional medicine and drugs in all but emergency situations and where there’s no other alternative.
We do all of the above because it’s ingrained in our mindsets and belief systems that they are the things that will work best for us. We don’t do them because they’re unconventional – that’s just a by-product of the choices we make.
If you look at any other person you think lives an unconventional lifestyle, you’ll probably see a similar pattern. They never consciously set out to create an unconventional lifestyle, it’s just the way they are.
But why is this important?
There is a whole swathe of people attempting to create a lifestyle which flies in the face of convention; eschewing all that’s worked for others in the past and revelling in a non-conformist, there-are-no-rules mentality.
Good for them. The economy and world in which we live in today requires a different attitude and approach and these front-runners are leading the way.
But where it gets tricky is when the motivation for doing this is superficial, not well thought out and frankly, in some cases, a case of “me too-ism” or “look how cool I am”. Grow up.
Living an unconventional life is about living a life that works for you – some of it may be conventional, some unconventional – who cares? The important thing is that it works for YOU. Nothing more, nothing less.