6 Steps to Create the Life You Want
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Do you wake up every day and go through the paces, living for the weekend or your next payday? Are you happy with your life? Are you willing to have things fall apart, knowing you can endure the short-term pain to find the opportunities that exist on the other side? You’ll make difficult choices along the way, but remember they’re short term.
The basic principle behind “living by design” is this: the right attitude plus the right action plus the right structure equals an extraordinary life!
Easy enough, right? Well, if it were really easy, everyone would be doing it. If feelings determine your attitude, then your attitude determines the actions you take—or don’t take—which, by the way, are also actions.
Living by design can be achieved through a six-step strategy.
The first three steps were created to help you plan what you want. The next three are ways to attract what you want into your life.
Are you ready to get started?
Step 1: Wake up!
It’s time to wake up and realize that your past actions are what keep you inactive. Those actions have taken away your power and put you into a victim mindset, where you feel as if you have absolutely no control over your life. When you wake up from your coma, you’ll begin to regain that control.
When I ask clients to write down their three main goals, without fail they respond with these: improve relationships, health and finances. But, most people won’t address the other issues in their life if their finances aren’t satisfactory.
Financial stress is the No. 1 cause of relationship failure. When you’re making money, you feel good. You’re creative, expressive and open. Conversely, when you’re not making money, all those inspired actions tend to dry up.
Although most people start with the first three categories—relationships, health and finances—I always try to reiterate that the remaining four—career, spirituality, contributing/giving back and desire to learn and grow—are equally important to creating a strong balance and quality of life.
If your career is mostly on track but your relationships are not, focus on creating a plan to improve your relationships.
If your finances are in trouble, there’s an urgency to create a plan to get them back on track. It’s important to know which areas need your focus so you can make immediate changes and start seeing positive results.
Step 2: Make the choice to change your life.
Knowing that you need life adjustments is a great start, but it simply isn’t enough. You have to act on it. Don’t be afraid to get upset or a little depressed or to regret having let the pendulum swing so far out of bounds. Those emotions are what will drive your declaration that you’ve made the right decision and that it is time to change. Designing your life sometimes requires making painful choices that are good for you. In many cases those choices will ultimately be good for everyone involved, even if that’s hard to see in the moment. The following exercise will help drive you to create your clearest vision for what you want to achieve.
1. Write out as many benefits of choosing the life you live as you can think of. For example, there may benefits for your health, which may include living longer, having better flexibility, being more energetic and less tired, and feeling good about the way you look.
2. What are the consequences of staying where you are?
Perhaps you’ll continue to spiral downward financially because you have no inspiration or plan.
Will you be driven by the benefits of your decision or by the negative consequences of changing? Be present with and driven by all possibilities.
Don’t worry about which list drives you. Embrace it. Some of the most successful people I know are driven by their fears.
If you wrote it down, you know there’s a possibility of its happening if you don’t make the change.
Step 3: Create your life.
Now that you’re aware of the resistance and the issues in your life and are present with your motivation to change, you can move and clarify what you really want for yourself. It’s a time to create new intentions, gain clarity and see yourself the way you want to be.
Declare what you want. This is the step where most people get stuck. I ask you to answer several questions as authentically as you can. Don’t hold back. Trust your gut.
• Why are you here, and what’s your purpose?
• How do you want to come across to others? What are your values?
• What are your God-given talents?
• Five years from now, how will the world experience you?
• Who would you be if you were already there?
• What do you need to let go of to take the next step?
Now, create a vision board. My vision board maps out the milestones, as I see them, unfolding in my mind from beginning to end. A vision board gives you an incentive to reach your goals.
My vision board for the book “Living by Design” looked like this:
1. Assemble a great team.
2. Create the book outline.
3. Meet with publishers and sell the book.
4. Celebrate signing of the publishing contract.
5. Write the book.
6. Begin premarketing.
7. Successfully sell the book in presales via the Internet and other channels.
8. Begin book tour and connecting with thousands of people inspired to Live by Design.
9. Do publicity.
10. Celebrate making the bestseller list.
Keep your vision board in your office or on a piece of paper that you carry around or keep it on your smartphone. As I meet my goals, I revisit my vision boards to make adjustments. I have one-, three-, and five- year goals that need to be tweaked from time to time.
It’s your vision, your plan that takes you everywhere you want to go.
Step 4: Do the things that bring you power!
Success is fundamentally predicated on finding what you’re passionate about and then becoming relentless in your pursuit of every facet of that passion.
This is where you get into what I call “inspired action,” which is all the individual steps you must take to carry out your vision. One of the ways I make myself OK with the process is by asking myself questions such as these:
What do I love about doing this?
What do I love about the person I am becoming?
What do I love about being disciplined?
Most people spend a lot of time reminding themselves of all the things that are missing instead of looking around and counting their blessings. They say things like “I hate my job,” “I hate my relationship,” “I hate how I look” and “I hate my life.” Understand that everything we repeat attracts more of the same.
Step 5: Practice visualizing yourself as being already there.
If you can think it, act it. If you act it, you become it. That picture in your mind sets the tone for the outcome.
Every detail matters—from the words you use to create the image to the desired outcome. When you practice visualizing, you’ll find that the more detail you can see, the clearer you will be to create your vision.
Step 6: Create structure and accountability.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who will support your new choices and those who will love to see you fail (the defaulters). Both can be terrific motivators.
The more people you tell about your plan, the more accountable you will become to succeed.
There’s nothing new about the subject of positive thinking, yet many people still fill their brain with mostly negative thoughts. Your thoughts are created by your belief system. Your success in all areas of life—personal, work, spiritual, relationships—is determined, for the most part, by the power of your beliefs, what you tell yourself about yourself. Self-talk, which consists of your innermost thoughts and actual words you say to yourself, goes on all the time.
This article was excerpted from real estate coach and trainer Tom Ferry’s book, “Life! By Design,” available on Amazon.com.