Review
Test review
Love Your Life
Cultivating Your Vision and Tending Your Dreams
Cover Artist Gerber Studio
Have you ever experienced the nagging sensation that your life hasn’t turned out the way you planned? When you look at your life, do you wonder how you got where you are now?
It’s easy to be swept up in the tide of family expectations, career diversions, financial responsibilities and personal insecurities to end up far adrift from where you’d originally planned.
This book is designed to help you get back on track so that you can live a life that you love and reclaim your happiness. You’ll discover a simple 8-step process to:
- Connect with your vision, purpose and passion.
- Define your personal and professional aspirations.
- Develop an action plan to accomplish your goals.
- Overcome any obstacles to your success.
- Achieve the life of your dreams.
If you’re ready to live a life that is both satisfying and fulfilling, this book is for you.
A debut author dispenses advice on how to design the life of your dreams.
Your life is a garden that requires careful, deliberate tending, according to profession>al coach Young. Yet too many people let their gardens go to seed, finding themselves frustrated and unfulfilled even if they enjoy the outward trappings of success. In this pithy guide, Young walks readers through the process of creating a "lifescape that feeds your soul and gives you a reason to be excited when you get up in the morning." Just as a gardener must select the right plants for the climate and the soil, so must we all identify the "required ingredients of our dream life," she argues. Fortunately, Young has devised a process to help people do exactly that. She begins by encouraging readers to "discover what makes your heart sing," then discusses topics such as clarifying needs and wants, tracking progress, making use of available resources, creating an action plan, and enhancing one's professional image. Each chapter ends with a series of pointed questions for readers to answer, which will help them apply that section's lesson to their own lives. The goal is to move through the book sequentially, ending with a clear vision for the road in mind as well specific criteria for success and a sense of possible obstacles ahead. Though the title suggests a more general self-help tome, the book is primarily focused on helping people find their perfect career paths. The tone throughout is perky and positive, with the implication that once readers have decided what they want out of life, they're halfway to making it a reality. This rosy "if you can dream it, you can do it" outlook is encouraging, but there's less discussion about what to do when readers hit a bump or how to cope when their dreams and talents don't align. But for those who have a nagging sense that there's something missing from their lives, Young's work is a valuable starting point.
A practical plan for getting out of the weeds and following the ideal path.
- Kirkus Review
It's an age-old question for many of us: What do we want to be when we grow up? Goethe encourages us with "Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it," and Joseph Campbell tells us to "Follow our bliss." In Love Your Life: Cultivating Your Vision and Tending Your Dreams, Cheryl Marks Young likens our life to a garden, and each of us the master gardener. Eight well-written chapters walk us through discovering our lifescape, with detailed interactive exercises following each chapter. These exercises assist us in determining our unique strength, how to find support, and the steps to follow to bring our new found knowledge to completion. When we are finished with this remarkable little book, we have a complete blueprint to design our lifescape: "everything you want your life to consist of, both now and in the future."
In Love Your Life, Cheryl Marks Young asks readers to begin by "getting clear on what makes our hearts sing" and asking ourselves questions: 1) Where do we find joy? 2) When are we most satisfied? 3) What would an ideal day be in our life? 4) Are we a creator or a maintainer of that already created? 5) What are we good at? 6) What talent do we lend friends, family and co-workers looking for help? 7) What is our natural affinity, or do we have knowledge of something learned over our years in school and work? Once we have established our unique strengths, do we have all we need to accomplish this or could we augment our affinity by taking a class, getting a mentor, or shadowing someone who has those skills? We should not be afraid to try, even if we might not be perfect in the beginning. Young tells us to "try anyway, trust your instincts and work through your fear." Most of all: "Don't let others protect you from failure or disappointment. Know that you won't know until you try." Young reminds us to always keep in mind that we should leave room for surprises and look for that specific factor to make our life joyous.
Most helpful for this reader was the exercise to Create Your Survival List by writing down ten parameters you absolutely must have in your ideal life. These can include job-related requirements, such as salary, outside contact with others, autonomy and commute time, or personal requirements, such as location, routine, hobbies and relationships. Chapters also include how to communicate in writing, physically, and verbally, and not to be afraid of who we are. This jewel of a book is a must-read for all of us because, no matter how old we are, we cannot be afraid to know what we would like to be when we grow up.
- Readers' Favorite
You May Also Like
Love Your Life
