Designing Your Life - Taking Stock

January is an ideal time to begin the process of re-vamping or redesigning your life. When you are in, or approaching, a transition period in your life, where do you begin to redesign your life?

Well, think about it for a moment. If you decided to make a new recipe that you had never made before, what would you do? You have the recipe in front of you. You recognize some ingredients and some directions, perhaps, and are unfamiliar perhaps with others. So, the first thing you might do is to check your cupboards, pantry, and refrigerator to see which ingredients you already have and then you make a list of the items you will need to purchase.

The very first step is checking to see what you already have. In the Designing Your Life process, I call this Taking Stock. In this first phase, you take a good and thorough look at yourself and your life, and you identify all the things you bring to the table thus far. Whether you are in your teens or in your golden years, or anywhere in between, this is a critical first step in re-inventing your self or creating the life of your dreams. Here are some of the "ingredients" you might check out:

- Life experience
- Work experience
- Roles you play in your life
- Skills, talents
- Aptitudes
- Personal characteristics, strengths & weaknesses
- Interests, passions
- Personality type
- Values
- Life purpose

Our Designing Your Life program and the accompanying Designing Your Life workbook provide a structured way of taking stock of all the qualities and experiences that contribute to who you are today and support you in bringing them forward into the next phase of your life, while at the same time identifying new skills, talents, and so forth that you wish to develop. The program contains exercises and tools for exploring each of these "ingredients" and more.

You can also do this without the structure and support of a program, coach, group, or book (though support is a very valuable part of the process for most people). Here are some tips for making the most of your personal Taking Stock process:

1. Purchase a spiral notebook or large blank journal that will be devoted exclusively to this Designing Your Life process.

2. Set aside some segments of quiet, uninterrupted time in which to do your stock-taking. Create a contemplative mood for yourself, perhaps by walking first or meditating or breathing quietly or listening to soothing music.

3. Consider each of the points on the list above, and take time to address each one separately and thoroughly. For some aspects (such as skills, characteristics, interests, values), you can make lists. Others may require other tools or approaches (free-writing, resume reviews, specialized assessments, etc.). Plan to do these exercises in small sessions, one or two aspects at a time, over a period of days or weeks.

4. For the lists you have, identify the top ten in each area and then rank-order them in order of importance to you. This is especially important in the area of your Values.

5. Create a summary page that pulls together all that you have learned about yourself, including all of your Top Ten lists.

When you have completed the Taking Stock phase of this process, it will be time for the Visioning phase - an exploration of the future life, career, or business you wish to create. In the next blog, we will take a look at that phase.

Meanwhile, if you find that you could use some coaching support in your Taking Stock process, please contact me. I am committed to your success and well-being!

Gratitude and The New Year

As the old year passes into the new, why not take a moment to think about these questions:

- What am I thankful for in my current life - right now, this minute?
- What "gifts" did I receive in 2007 that I will be bringing with me into the New Year?
- What continuing or new "gifts" do I intend to be thankful for in 2008?

During the Christmas holiday, I discovered a beautiful song, Thankful, sung by Josh Groban on his CD titled Noel. What a beautiful expression of Gratitude this is! For a real treat, take a moment to click the link above and view the lyrics and listen to his song on YouTube.

Being thankful for what you already have is a pre-requisite for attracting and creating what you want in the future. This is why keeping a Gratitude Journal has always been a cornerstone of my Designing Your Life program.

Rhonda Byrne, author of the 2007 best-seller, The Secret, has also published a companion journal, The Secret Gratitude Book. In the Introduction to this journal, she writes:

To transform your life, you must find a way of being grateful for what you have now. As you focus on sincere gratitude for several minutes at a time, you will move your frequency to one of the most powerful frequencies there is, and all-good things will begin to appear in your life!

Focusing on Gratitude on a daily basis can take many forms, including:

- Keeping a Gratitude Journal and writing in it daily
- Saying your "gratitudes" as you might say your prayers, every morning as you awaken and every evening before falling asleep
- Include saying your "gratitudes" as you begin your meditation practice
- Expressing gratitude as a blessing before every meal
- Stopping at any moment, as you are moved to do so, to appreciate what is before you and to say "thank you"

I often find myself expressing gratitude through the opening lines of a poem titled I Thank You God by e.e. cummings:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes...

What more powerful way could there be to usher in 2008 than to be thankful for all the blessings we bring with us into this brand new year!

Practicing Extreme Self-Care: Reprise

The very first post I wrote in this blog was on Practicing Extreme Self-Care. And now, almost two years later, I am circling around to this subject again. Why? Because when you design, create, build, and live the life of your dreams, then practicing self-care and creating potent health in your body, mind, psyche, and spirit becomes absolutely essential. It is the solid foundation of the mansion that is your life.

Henry David Thoreau is quoted as saying, If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; now put the foundations under them. Your health, your vitality, your energy are the foundations of your life. These things need to be in place - strong and solid.

Two years ago, I was just beginning to build those foundations for myself. Today, they are strong, and getting stronger by the day. Today, I can write from experience instead of from theory. Today, I can tell you that focusing on building health in all these areas, especially in the physical body, is the best thing I have ever done for myself.

So, what wisdom can I add to that original article? Here are a few thoughts:

First, fall in love with your body. For many people, that is not an easy thing to do. But it IS do-able. What it takes is acceptance, appreciation, and gratitude. Whatever body we have been given, it IS the body we have been given. It is the vehicle that houses our psyche, senses, soul, and spirit. It is, as some have said, the Temple of our soul. We need to treat our bodies with love and reverence, and take care of them as we would take care of the most precious of places or people or possessions in our lives. As for appreciation and gratitude, it is our bodies that allow us to experience magnificent sunrises and sunsets, music that moves us to tears, the sensuous taste of food like chocolate, the smell of the briny ocean or a rose in bloom, and the touch of a baby's smooth bottom or the embrace of a friend or lover. The more I have come to understand the miracle of having a body with which to experience this world and this life, the more I have come to accept, embrace, nurture, and appreciate my body.

Second, a friend recently shared with me these secrets for living a long and healthy life, and I am passing them on to you. The keys to creating perfect health are these "triple powers": Right Thinking, Nutrition, and Joy in all that you do:

Sickness is not the natural state of the human body; it is a perfect creation of the Perfect Creator. Though injuries must come to balance the wheel of destiny, sickness is a self-imposed torture that should not be. Through the triple powers of right thinking, nutrition, and joy in all that you do, the body should always be in perfect health. (excerpted from Spiritual Living, unpublished manuscript, ©Robert G. Black, 2007.)

Right Thinking means thinking positive thoughts and having positive expectations. (e.g. "I am healthy and getting healthier every day" or "I expect to live and be healthy until I am at least 100 or more".) This kind of thinking is also the basis for the Law of Attraction and the laws of Cause and Effect. To borrow and rework Henry Ford's famous quote, if you think you're healthy (or youthful, or whatever) or you think you're not, you're right.

Nutrition surely is key. I have been learning this for myself these past two years. What we put into our bodies for nourishment and fuel is absolutely ESSENTIAL to how we function on a daily basis and how we set ourselves up for the future. If you don't know much about nutrition, go read everything you can find about it. Subscribe to publications like Nutrition Action or Environmental Nutrition or Prevention Magazine, or Dr. Andrew Weil's monthly Self-Healing Newsletter, or any one of many wonderful medical school publications. Read every book or internet article you can find. [Check out these informative and entertaining books by Drs. Michael Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz - YOU The Owner's Manual, YOU on a Diet, or YOU Staying Young.] Talk with a nutritionist, naturopathic or holistic doctor, or any other expert in nutrition. And, if you already know a lot about nutrition, but are not putting your knowledge into action, then what are you waiting for? DO IT TODAY!

And as for finding Joy in everything you do, that is what designing, building, and living the life of your dreams is all about! And here's the key: you must know what you want (and that can be as specific as a "I want to be the author of a best-selling historical novel" or as open as "I want to be happy"), believe that you can have or achieve what you want, know that you are worthy and deserve to have what you want, and then be motivated and courageous enough to actually go for it!

And believe me when I tell you that you don't have to have all the answers, or have all your ducks in a row, before you begin. You just have to start taking action, one baby step at a time towards your dream, and the whole world opens up before you!

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