Most people live a life as if it is something that happens to them.  They live a life by default, allowing the circumstances of their life to decide their fate.

What if, instead of living life by default, you could be the author of your life? What if you could determine the outcome of your life, one day at a time? Living a life by design takes waking up with clear intentions and goals, with a plan on how to get there and the unwillingness to accept less.

How do you live a life by Design instead of a life by Default?

1. Write Down Your Goals

Dr. Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at the Dominican University in California, recently studied the art and science of goal setting. She discovered that the people who regularly wrote down their goals were 42% more likely to successfully achieve them.

When you THINK about a goal, you’re only using the right hemisphere of your brain, which is your imaginative center.  But, if you think about something that you desire, and then write it down, you also tap into the power of your logic-based left hemisphere.

Just the act of writing down your goals ignites an entirely new dimension of consciousness, introducing your ideas to the powerhouse that is your subconscious mind.  It firmly instills in your subconscious what you’re working on and helps attract into your life what you need to make that vision a reality.

2. Surround Yourself with People You Strive to Be Like

Choose your friends carefully as you are greatly influenced by the five people you spend the most time with.  Surround yourself with people who live their life with principles that are aligned with your own. Ideally, choose friends that are a little bit ahead of you.  This will force you to stretch and grow towards the goals you’ve created for your life.

3. Set Goals and Achieve Them

People who live by Design practice the habit of setting goals and achieving them. No matter how big or how small, they set goals and create a measure of success. They know when the goal has been achieved. This constant practice is what allows them to set bigger and bigger goals and see them through to completion.

4. Don’t Be Afraid to Go Your Own Way

Living a life by design takes waking up with clear intentions and goals, with a plan on how to get there and the unwillingness to accept less.Few people live a life of Design.  It’s easy and comfortable to surround yourself with a familiar company and live life by default. However, if you want to Design your life, you must be willing to let go of people that are not aligned with or who do not support your principles and goals.

5. You must Practice Discipline

To truly design your life, you must become a master of discipline. To be who you know yourself to be, to get to where you want to go, you must be extremely disciplined and focused on your goals.  Living life by design takes an almost obsessive awareness of your true self and the steps needed to achieve each goal.

Practice living life by your design by creating habits for yourself that you refuse to give up. These habits become an opportunity to practice the art of discipline. A practice you commit to doing every day.  It is through this commitment that you become clear on the importance of how you spend your time and every moment of time spent becomes an opportunity to practice discipline toward the life you have designed.

 

 

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