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for our future. My coach wasn’t surprised by my lack of response. He then asked me to tell him about any experience I’d had when I felt full of joy, where I wasn’t doing anything other than being in the moment. My thoughts quickly turned to a recent trip I’d taken on a friend’s sailboat. I told my coach about that spectacular day, how we sailed into the Pacific with a Frank Sinatra CD playing while I had the wheel and was just cruising along. There was something about being on the water, feeling the wind on my face, and being with a good friend that felt very Zen, peaceful, and full of joy.

My coach asked me why I wasn’t creating moments like that every day.

“Because I don’t own a sailboat,” I said.

“You don’t need a sailboat to create that experience. What you were attracted to by being on the boat were the couple of hours you had where no one was coming to you with questions, problems, worries, and concerns. You had ‘quiet time’ in that moment.”

I had to think for several minutes about what my coach had just said. To test his theory, I spent my lunch hour for the next month walking down to the dock near my home and sitting by the sailboats in the harbor just being quiet. I gave myself sixty minutes of reflection time. I wasn’t trying to solve any of life’s great mysteries. Instead, I allowed my mind to be at peace and my body to just breathe. It was almost like being in a state of meditative nothingness. In the end, my coach was right on the money. Being next to the water, feeling the breeze and the sun on my skin, just as I had that day on the sailboat, was an effective and quiet way to recharge my batteries.

It is important to carve out “you” time every day. It doesn’t have to be more than twenty minutes, as long as it is uninterrupted time you give yourself to recharge, rejuvenate, and reinvigorate. Surprisingly, it doesn’t have to be alone time as long as you can be at peace. I have clients for whom tossing a baseball around with their son is all they need to find delight, passion, and joy. Be forewarned, checking email, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and messages is not what I am talking about here. What I mean is checking in with good friends, going for a run, meditating, reading, cooking, or doing whatever will give you extra power so you can go out and give more of yourself to the world.

EXERCISE

Knowing what you know about your goals, what activities or rituals would naturally and automatically fire you up to meet that goal? Make a list of the things that give you power personally and professionally. Declare all the things you’re going to do on a daily basis to give yourself power—from making a tough sales call to becoming present in your relationship. What can you do to become more connected to your family, your body, your job, your intellectual self? What will you do to create your best life, By Design?

Most people I know are fanatical about making sure their cellphone, iPod, or other personal devices are plugged in on a daily basis. They worry about being suddenly disconnected if the battery were to run down. If you’re willing to give an electronic device this kind of daily care, why wouldn’t you do it for yourself? Think of “you time” as plugging yourself into the wall and getting recharged.

Step 5: Practice visualizing yourself already there, in possession of what you want.

Just as highly trained athletes see themselves crossing the finish line, making that impossible putt, or winning first place, you must first visualize yourself as you choose to be. That’s when you become the change you are seeking. 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.

Faith is a gift that allows us to see things that aren’t visible to the eye. Some people call this the gift of visualization, which is the process of creating a clear, sharp, emotionally charged mental movie of what you want to happen. It’s imagining events as if they have already happened. It’s