Living your life by design. 

Doesn't that sound just gorgeous?!  The idea that we can choose how we want our life to be, and then go about creating it.

Did you know that this is actually what we're doing now, but we're likely just unaware of it?  Our thoughts play a vital role in how we act and react in our lives, and those actions and reactions create our results; our reality.  

So choosing our thoughts, rather than allowing them to be on autopilot, outside of our awareness, becomes an incredible skill that we can develop in order to live our lives by design.

About 25 years ago, when I first discovered how our thoughts create our lives, I was introduced to the idea of affirmations.

Essentially, an affirmation is a sentence that you design and use as a thought that is better/more useful/more constructive/more positive than the thoughts you currently think, with the intention of taking a desire and making it real.

I loved this idea and dived right into it!

But rarely did it actually help me to "manifest" my desires into something real and concrete.

In fact, every time I tried to set a goal and create affirmations around that goal, trying to convince myself that this new thought was actually real, I've just never felt quite right.  Something was always off.  Have you ever felt like this?  Well . . . .


I RECENTLY DISCOVERED WHY.

It felt like a lightbulb moment, for sure!  You know those profound realisations where you feel it deep in your bones and it creates a feeling of freedom in your body.  That's how it felt.  Everything suddenly fell into place.

The affirmations and goal-setting didn't work because . . .

they have to come from a FEELING.  Not a mental energy, but a feeling energy.

You have to FEEL an emotion around your desire, and it's the energy of that feeling that drives your actions, as well as attracting situations and circumstances and opportunities to you that align with that feeling.  THAT'S what moves the desire towards reality.  And our feelings are always, always preceded by a thought.

How fun!!

And the most amazing trick to know is . . . that you are capable of designing a THOUGHT that allows you to FEEL that desired emotion NOW, as in RIGHT NOW; not at some distant point in the future when you HAVE the thing, or are DOING the thing that you want, but actually IN THIS MOMENT.

I've been working with the ladies in my CLUB Cocorico membership around this recently, and everyone has found it so insightful, and we're all gradually gaining wonderfully transformative, real-life results from using the process that I'm going to share with you in this episode.

There's a 3-step process that invite you to follow along with, so if you'd like to, go and grab a piece of paper and a pen and let's get started.

WE'RE GOING TO DESIGN A THOUGHT FOR YOU.

(Well, you're going to design your thought, and I'll guide you through it.) It will be a thought that will make you FEEL an emotion that you want to feel in relation to a particular desire that you would love to make real.

I'm going to outline the steps here, and then I suggest that you listen to this podcast episode to get all the details and hear some examples so that you can gain more clarity as you design your own thought.

Ok, so here is the outline of this 3-step process:

1.  Choose a DESIRE that you'd like to make real.  It can be around your family life, self-growth, finances, health and well-being, biz, career, fun . . . anything you like.  Choose just one.

2.  Now, name the FEELING that you want to feel around that desire.  What is it that you imagine you will feel when that desire is real.
If it's something generic, like "happy", then  go deeper and find an emotion that is more precise.  It might be that you want to feel satisfied, fulfilled, inspired; that you want to feel delight, joy, confident, self-assured.  Using https://www.thesaurus.com/ can be really eye-opening here - it is full of synonyms, and you'll for sure land on something that lights you up.

Then find an image that makes you feel this emotion when you look at it.  Print the image and paste it in a notebook or pin it up where you'll see it and be able to feel that emotion every time you look at it.

3.  Now we're going to design a THOUGHT that supports that feeling.  A thought that relates to your desire, and makes you feel your desired emotion every time you think this thought.  It will likely take you a little while, and you'll want to continue editing your sentence/thought until is feels BELIEVABLE and until it moves you to act in a way that brings that desire to life.  It's essential that you believe your thought in the present, not as a thought that you imagine might become real in the future.

Now, every time your old negative self-talk thoughts sneak back in, which they will, you can just say, "Hey, old thought - I know you.  Let's try something new.  I have a gorgeous new thought that I'd like to keep thinking.  Let's work on this together.  We can do it!"  

Funny, huh?!  But so fun, and very cute.  Begin the practice of talking to your own brain, and letting it know that you're trying something new.  It actually feels really good.

Once you put these three pieces together, you'll see how the dance of life, in which you simultaneously make things happen AND allow things to happen, will conspire to gradually make this real for you.  YES, you'll play a big role in that.  And it starts here.

Be kind and patient with yourself in this process.

Feel your emotion.

Be moved to act in a way that aligns with your desire.

And begin to live your life by design.

Have you wondered what your days might look like if they were filled with language sessions that YOU run?

ALLOW ME TO PAINT A PICTURE FOR YOU . . .