Day 20 — Describe The Ideal You, The New You

You can start to let your imagination loose, you can dive deep into your creative self and paint whatever picture you want. This is where you get to know what it feels like to be god, where you design what you want to be.

Designing Your Life

Lifestyle design is fashionable, even a bit passe, but life design is older than we know. The greatest gift you can give yourself is to take a blank canvas and start designing. You can range far and wide in your pursuit of the ideal, you can go into the macro with over- arching concepts or go into the micro with amazing detail. What is it you want? What have you always dreamt about, especially when you were young? What have you shied away from, been afraid to do?

Design is a creative, iterative process that never really finishes. This ideal you will grow and develop overt as you get more comfortable with the idea.

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.

My Shift as a Man

When I shifted as a man, when I became a man, I had the chance to create a new me.

I had fallen into a pattern of living that, on some levels, was acceptable. I was in the second half of my life, I had succeeded at what I had been doing. Somehow it seemed that it had just happened to me, circumstance and fate had created an amazing life for me.

I wanted to turn it round so I sat down and decided what I wanted to be. I created a relationship vision for myself, a vision based on how I wanted to live and what kind of person I wanted to be. Having sketched it out I set out to create it.

As a designer by profession I knew that this wouldn't be achieved in one go, I knew it would take time revising and perfecting my design. I am now in a situation where I have completely transformed who I am and I still work on it. I enjoy dealing with the many details of my life and creating a more amazing me.

Challenge

• It is important that you write this all down, but be free, be creative. Brainstorm and let go of all limiting beliefs. Let your mind range wherever it wants to go.
• Start at the big concepts. What type of person do you want to be? What traits would you like to be remembered for? How do you want to make your mark?
• Write your own obituary. Use this as a celebration of the life you have yet to live. What were the highspots in your life or career? What effect did you have?
• Now work on the detail. What do you want to be as a person, how do you want to live? Have a lot of fun and truly open up to this.