What Does Your Ideal Life Look Like?
Hi sweet friends,
This week I am continuing to build myself up as a #DVSurvivor and am using a tool called The Success Principles Workbook to keep myself both motivated and accountable. I invite you to do the same so we can root for each other!
I finished Chapter Three, and it's called "Deciding What You Want: Envision Your Ideal Life." Easier said than done, right? :)
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One of the questions the workbook asked was this - if I knew I couldn't fail, would I pursue what I really wanted? I sat with this thought for awhile. I think in some way, that's what I'm doing with my new empowerment video series on YouTube. But I asked myself how much bigger can I dream?
This chapter also prompted me to dream vividly, which is super important. Knowing what you want clearly is critical to success.
There's a section that talks about how as children, some of us did not grow up in a household that nurtured our dreams. I was one of them! I remember telling my mom that I wanted to become an actress. I was in fifth grade. 엄마 (mom in Korean) dashed that dream really quickly! Such dreams, to an immigrant family like mine, were considered silly and unrealistic. As I grew up, I was conditioned to be practical, and during my senior year at UCLA I worked four side jobs while attending college full-time. And I didn't move out of California after graduating until I secured a good paying job.
Compared to that are All-American girls like Taylor Swift. Ironically, one of my traditionally Korean aunts introduced me to a song called The Best Day. It's a beautiful song, and in it Taylor sings about her parents' love and support. She grew up in a pretty house with space to run. I read that her mom took her to Nashville to visit record labels when she was 11 years old. What a contrast.
But despite our upbringings, it's never too late to dream as big as you want. And it's up to us to fuel our dreams with action.
The book asked if I felt uncomfortable when asked what I really wanted. I wrote YES! I was recently at a friend's clothing boutique, and she was gifting me a few pieces of clothing. She asked me what I liked and told me to choose a few things from her store to try on. I couldn't decide and didn't pick anything. I hate making decisions. It makes me really uncomfortable. But that's a really important way of using your voice to declare something that's important to you. Maybe it's because I've been overruled so often while growing up, but I find myself complacent now and prefer to go with other people's decisions and preferences. This chapter helped me to realize this about myself, and I'm trying to improve on this aspect of myself.
Then the workbook guides me through a bunch of charts:
Finances
Work, Career, Business
Relationships
Health & Fitness
Free Time, Fun, Recreation
Personal & Spiritual Growth
Possessions
Making a Difference & Being of Service
Within each chart are two columns - What and Why.
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The list gets specific. You need to visualize every detail of your ideal life and write it down. For example, one of the things I wrote down in my possessions chart was this:
What - New MacBook Pro with largest storage capacity and fastest speed
Why - So I can take my laptop to-go and edit via Final Cut Pro
The final part of the chapter has me adding to my journal and listing the single most important thing to me right now from each chart. I think I'm supposed to look at this summary from my charts regularly so that it gets ingrained in my mind. :)
Let me know what some of your highlights have been if you're doing the workbook too!
Love,
Christine
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