Life! By Design_ 6 Steps to an Extraordinary You - Laura Morton [57]
Now you’re faced with a real dilemma. Do you begin to change your habits so you can get healthy, improve your appearance, and understand how lousy you were feeling by discovering what feeling “good” really is? Or do you choose to continue those habits by convincing yourself that things aren’t so bad?
It seems like a no-brainer to me, yet many people stay right where they are—in their comfort zone of mediocrity.
Why?
They’re still living by default.
Living By Design 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 is hard to see in the moment. Pain is a natural part of change. We’ve all heard the saying “No pain, no gain” when we’re working out, but that philosophy holds true outside the gym too, especially when it comes to personal growth. Thankfully, we are wired to eventually forget that pain so we can heal and move on. Even so, we have to live through the pain to realize the gain.
The following exercise will help drive you to create your clearest vision for what you want to achieve. If you choose not to change your default way of living, make sure you write down the negative consequences of your conscious behavior, as hard as that may be. You will feel naked, as if you ripped off all your clothes and ran around your favorite restaurant. But here’s the deal. You cannot pass go, and will not collect two hundred dollars, without doing this exercise.
You must get present to the negative consequences of not changing as well as with the positive benefits of living By Design. One of those lists of consequences will emotionally drive you to make a change or not. We live in a yin/yang world, which means that this exercise should give you both pleasure and pain. You cannot create a vision for your life By Design without being present to both so you can become aware of your real motivation.
EXERCISE
1. Write out as many emotional benefits of choosing to live By Design as you can think of. For example, the benefits of living By Design in your relationships might include having a healthier, more loving and nurturing connection with your partner that gives you a true feeling of warmth, stability, security, joy, passion, sex, and anything else you want in your relationship that is not currently satisfying. Another example is the benefits of By Design living 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.
So, what are all of the positive benefits you will experience from living By Design? Write your answers below.
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2. What are the consequences of staying by default? Perhaps you will continue to financially spiral down- ward because you have no inspiration or plan, which means you will never earn enough money, you will al- ways have the stress of being behind on payments, your debts will dominate your thoughts every night, you’ll suffer through every holiday, and you will feel like a loser every time children say, “can I have knowing they cannot because you never made the choice to change. The more painful this exercise, the better. The more painful the consequences, the more real you are being with yourself. If you wrote it down, you know there’s a possibility of its happening if you don’t make the change. I dare you to list ten of the most real, painful, gut-wrenching realities of staying on the course of living by default in any of the Core Seven categories of your life. Write your answers below: