Tag: debbie ford

life curation · reading list

The Best Year of Your Life: The “Plan It” Section, Part 1

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Ooh, it’s Monday again, and this month is just moving right along! I’ve been having a lot of fun with April: that may be because of the Joy Challenge, or maybe it’s the warmer weather we enjoyed over the past weekend. In any case, this has been a fun time for me.

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As part of creating the best year of my life, I’m reflecting on my December book selection, The Best Year of Your Life by Debbie Ford. In my previous post here and here, I discussed the Dream It section of the book, and how I worked through the exercises outlined in those chapters. Now, I’ll discuss the Plan It section of the book, which I feel has the most intense and critical exercises of the book.

Since the material in this portion of the book are crucial to consciously creating the best year of my life, I’m going to go through this part MUCH more carefully. I’ll break this review down into three parts: one for each chapter in the Plan It section.

Chapter 4 of this book talks about creating a clean slate. How many of us try to create something brand new and wonderful on top of our old mess? I can’t recall how many times I “turned over a new leaf” only for those same old leaves to pop up as soon as I lose my focus or resolve.

So my exercise for this chapter was to handle unresolved projects, incomplete tasks, and relationships past their expiration dates. I’m happy to say that there are only a few projects and tasks that I have to do (mainly, closing out some tax consulting projects from last year and finalizing financial arrangements) and I have no relationships that I need to sever: my current circle is healthy and positive. I’ve given myself until June 30th to complete the old tasks and projects, allowing myself one project/task per week until they are all done. I’ve listed out the actions I need to take on my calendar, so I won’t have to think too hard about what to do next.

Do you need to “clean up” before you move forward? Let me know what you intend to finish up during the next few weeks and months!

life curation

The Best Year of Your Life: the Dream It Section Follow-up

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A few weeks ago, I gave a brief recap of my revelations while working through the book, The Best Year of Your Life by Debbie Ford. I completed my notes on Chapter 1, but I hadn’t finished fleshing out my thoughts on Chapters 2 and 3. Here, I’ll follow up on what I learned from doing the work outlined in those chapters.

Doing the Work to Create my

 

Chapter 2: Exposing the Fantasy -I thought deeper about the feelings I associate with my “fantasy” life: I often fantasize that I will feel joy, eagerness (happily looking forward to the good stuff to come) and calm. Activating joy will be easy, since I’m doing the Joy Challenge and will be regularly activating that emotion on a daily basis. Eagerness will come from taking more chances and affirming the goodness of everything that comes across my path. I can engage the feeling of calm by instituting relaxation practices for different scenarios. Right now, I can only think of two situations that would greatly benefit from the relaxation practice: I’ll need one for when I feel stressed about work, and one that I can engage to set the tone for a good night’s sleep. Once I finalize the details of those practices, I’ll make another post describing them. That takes care of Chapter 2’s exercises!

Chapter 3: Stepping Into Greatness – I allowed inspiration to come to me, and I created my vision for this year: I will become a well-known influencer, using my reach to encourage people to supporting the arts, move past relationship disappointments, and create the most enjoyable, luxurious lives that they can experience.  The traits I mentioned in the previous post – discipline and boldness (extroversion) – still apply. Creativity is also required, as is excellent communication skills. Focus will be big for me: I tend to get sidetracked. I could easily list about 5 – 10 additional realms that I want to influence, but my primary love is the arts, so I’m going to focus on that, with healing from relationship trauma and living high-quality lives as secondary and tertiary goals.

I’m glad I got a chance to review these chapters and get clear on what I’m dreaming up in 2018. I’ll be sharing more on how I plan out this year’s activities in a future post. Ciao for now!

life curation · reading list

The Best Year of Your Life: The “Dream It” Section

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Happy Monday, beloveds! What better way to start a week than to discuss some of the things I’ve done during the past (almost) two months in preparation for my best year ever?

strangecharmed

(photo courtesy of StrangeCharmed.com, one of my new favorite websites)

As you all recall, Debbie Ford’s The Best Year of Your Life was my December reading list selection, and I reviewed the book in January. I didn’t want to make the review too exhaustive, because I intended to reference it throughout the year. This post is the first of those references, and I’ll share my takeaways from the first section of the book, the Dream It section.

Chapter 1: Creating a Powerful Intent – I’ve been doing affirmations for quite some time now, but I recently changed my daily affirmation to the one provided in the book. Daily, I affirm, “This is the best year of my life”. I’ve noticed that I have had a much “smoother” day-to-day experience, My life isn’t “perfect” but it’s good and I am more aware of the little ways that show my life as being good and satisfying. I can improve on this step by using some of the tips in the book, such as writing my affirmation on signs and notes and posting them in my office and home. I could also use it as a background on my phone and computer.

Chapter 2: Exposing the Fantasy – I need to redo this step. I did it in December but I didn’t put as much time and energy into it as I would like. I need to specify the feeling I associate with my “fantasy” life and then clarify exactly how I will activate that feeling daily. This is a key principle of law of attraction, so I’ve done it before but I’ve never been consistent about it. The consistency will really make the difference.

Chapter 3: Stepping Into Greatness – I could stand to redo this step, as well. My vision for this year isn’t as laser-focused as I would like. It’s a bit fuzzy, so getting really clear and then identifying the personality traits that would make it possible would do wonders for realizing this best year of my life. Off of the top of my head, traits such as discipline and boldness (extroversion) would bring me closer to my dream. But, I want to make sure that I’m invoking the best qualities to bring about my ideal life, so I’ll spend some more time on that.

So I’ll post again, in a couple of weeks, just confirming the progress I’ve made on redoing the activities from Chapters 2 and 3. I’m looking forward to sharing that with you all!

life curation · reading list

Review: The Best Year of Your Life by Debbie Ford

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Happy Monday, beloveds! After getting the first snow of the new year, I found myself with some extra downtime – I didn’t want to go out venturing with snow and ice on the ground! That gave me even more time to pick my favorite highlights from December’s reading selection, The Best Year of Your Life by Debbie Ford.

Just a few weeks before reading this book, I decided to look up Debbie and see what projects she is currently working on. Imagine my shock when I found that Debbie had passed on nearly 5 years ago. I mourn the loss of such a wonderful writer and incredible coach. However, I am thankful that she left her wisdom with us in the form of her book and other teaching materials.

The Best Year of Your Life takes the reader through three phases involved with creating your best year. The Dream It phase involves creating a intention that will guide you throughout the year, realizing that what you really want is how you desire to feel throughout the year, and discovering the personality traits that need to be developed in order to realize this ideal year. The Dream It phase helps you create a concrete vision of your ideal year, and gets to the core of the attributes needed to make it happen.

The Plan It phase involves laying the groundwork for the best year ever. Debbie shows readers how to clean up all of the unresolved/incomplete projects and tasks in their lives and how to expose and correct common pitfalls on the path to creating an ideal existence. She then goes step-by-step through the process of setting goals up in a way that practically guarantees success.

Finally, the Live It phase gives readers daily and weekly actions that keep them on track to achieve their goals. Debbie teaches how to create integrity “anchors”, practices that keep them focused throughout the year. She then teaches about the power of having high self-esteem, the necessity of being mindful and aware of our significant moments, and the importance of regularly creating “unforgettable” days that will be the cherishable memories of tomorrow. Lastly, she discusses the power of dedicating the year to a worthy cause or individual and how aspiring to excellence is the perfect support for an ideal year.

Without a doubt, my favorite chapter was Chapter 6, “Planning Your Year”. Debbie’s step-by-step formula for successful goals was just what I needed to get clear and organized in my plan of action. Sometimes, there are a lot of thoughts swimming around in my head, and Debbie’s approach helped me cut through the mental static and get laser-focused on what I need in order to make my best year possible.

The toughest chapter for me to read and begin implementing was Chapter 3, “Stepping Into Greatness”. Identifying the traits that I needed to cultivate in order to be the kind of person that easily attains my goals is something that I’m still working on. Hopefully, I’ll continue to get more clarity as the weeks go on, and, as I get clear, I can start consciously exhibiting those traits more consistently.

My favorite quote in this book was in Chapter 9, “Claiming the Moment”. That quote reads, “Time is precious. And when we realize this, we become aware of the importance of claiming each moment. Every moment holds the potential for being memorable. We all have the power to stop what we are doing and look for a way to make each moment special. If we won’t stop each day and claim some of these moments, they will pass us by, never to be found again.”

I know that this was my December 2017 reading selection, but I suspect I’ll be referencing it throughout the year. Debbie’s words are impactful and her guidance is easy to follow: I can see myself coming back to this as a refresher all year long. This book is a jewel!

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Reading List: December’s Book

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I had originally planned to just pick up my October book selection and finish that one, but I believe in following inspiration and I was not inspired to finish up Mae West’s story this month. Now, don’t get me wrong: I love Mae’s story, and I am excited to finish it. But I felt that the last month of the year deserved something . . . different.

Instead, I decided to read something that would set the perfect tone for the upcoming year. So I selected “The Best Year of Your Life” by Debbie Ford. I read it many years ago but I feel that now is a good time to reread it, especially since I intend to make 2018 the best year of my life.

You can thank Debbie for the terms like the “shadow self” and its counterpart, the “light chaser” (many people also use this term interchangeably with “lightworker”). I haven’t read her most famous book, “The Dark Side of the Light Chasers” but who knows: maybe that will be one of the monthly books sometime in 2018.

You can feel free to click on the links or the photo of the book to see what “The Best Year of Your Life” is all about. I’m looking forward to this “refresher”!