Life! By Design_ 6 Steps to an Extraordinary You - Laura Morton [73]
If you’ve ever gone on a diet and quit, if you’ve ever made a New Year’s resolution and not seen it through, if you’ve ever set forth a goal or an intention and gave up partway through, what was missing from the equation that allowed you to give up? I guarantee it was structure and accountability.
They are what hold your vision together on the days you don’t feel up to it. They are what get you to the office on the days you’d rather call in sick. They are what make me do my affirmations on the days I don’t feel like doing them, and make me get up and speak to a crowd of forty people when I was expecting fifteen hundred and still be ready and present for them. Structure and accountability are designed to save you from the consequences of not doing something.
It has taken years to refine the process of living By Design and move it from twenty steps to six steps. My clients look for fast results. If you want to make a shift from living by default to living By Design in any area of your life, follow these six steps. I promise you, my friend, there is so much joy and possibility for you on the other side. I know you’ve read books like this before. I know you’ve been down this path before. Give yourself the gift of one more disciplined experiment. And this time, see it through—free of the four addictions that have held you back in the past—and experience the true joy and endless possibilities you were meant to have in your life.
EXERCISE
Write down your three most important goals. Now, apply the 6 Steps to Living By Design to be present with what you want. Read these steps with the idea of bringing you closer to your goals rather than amplifying all the things that are holding you back.
What if I could teach you to control almost every aspect of your future? Do you want that kind of power? Of course you do. That is why you are reading this book. But if all you’re doing is reading and not acting, you will never break the cycle of living by default. To begin living By Design, you have to be willing to turn your thinking around and take control of your thoughts, or they will continue to control you.
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. Learning to control your internal communication will limit the negativity in your life.
Your subconscious mind is like a hard drive in a computer. It stores every old action and old behavior—everything positive and negative that has happened in your life. The primary overriding thought your subconscious mind has is to protect you and keep you safe. So when you become aware of a problem in your relationship, for example, your subconscious mind immediately pulls up old data to support or advise against, say, making a decision to have a difficult conversation with your partner. It isn’t natural for anyone to purposely put themselves in a place of fear, pain, and anguish. Yet sometimes the actions we have to take require us to break through that subconscious protective barrier.
Your conscious mind is made up of words, thoughts, actions, and everyday behaviors. So if I tell you to take action and go clean up that relationship, your subconscious mind fires off lots of excuses for not going through with it. For example, you might say something like, “The one time I brought up this issue, my spouse got really upset with me. We got into a really bad argument. I felt terrible afterward and vowed never to bring it up again. Forget it. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing.”
The mind cannot differentiate between real or imagined thoughts. This makes all