In this episode, Laura gives insight on the disconnect between the life you're living now and the life you want to live.

Hello folks, I am so happy to be here.

Today I want to talk about

designing your dream life

and how to go about turning

that dream into a reality.

With my clients,

I see a huge disconnect

between the lives that

they're living now and the

lives that they're hoping

to create for themselves.

This tends to turn into some

unrealized goals and

unachieved New Year's resolutions or

For some people,

those eventually turn into

negative self-talk,

resulting in phrases like,

I never complete my goals,

or I never keep promises to myself.

Phrases like this can really

eat at your confidence and

make it really hard to move

forward in achieving the

confidence you need to

manifest your dream life.

There are multiple paths to

creating your dream life,

but today I'm just gonna share one path,

which is future casting and

backward design.

You may be wondering,

what the heck are these?

Let's start with future casting.

Businesses tend to use this

idea to think about or

predict trends in the future.

When they think about these future trends,

they can better create products,

update their services,

plan monetarily for good and bad omens,

Okay, so that's future casting.

And I'll tie that to life

design in a moment.

Let's address backward design now.

You can find examples of

backward design in

engineering and education.

Engineers have to see the

big picture of what a

project will look like in

its completion and what's

needed to make all those things happen.

So they look at a final

product and they develop a

plan with the end in mind.

Educators have to do the same thing.

They have standards that all

students must achieve.

So a lot of teachers design

their units backward from

the goal to the first activity.

Again, designing with the end in mind.

So how in the heck would we

apply this to life design?

Well,

future casting for your life is the

idea of thinking about your

future and your future self.

backward design is then

taking that future life and

future self and designing

backward to the point you

are currently living.

Okay,

so how in the heck are we supposed to

do this?

If you're driving, by the way,

you'll want to come back to

this episode later and do this activity.

If you are in a space to do so,

pause now and go get a pen

and paper to take notes.

Or you can head over to my

blog and read a set of

detailed instructions on how to do this.

Let's move on to the first step.

Step one,

write about the person you wanna

be and the vision of the

dream life you want to live.

Again,

write about the person you want to

be and the vision of the

dream life you want to live.

So think about the life you

wanna create for yourself.

You're gonna do this in first person,

by the way,

and you're gonna do it in

present tense as if you are

already living this life.

Describe in detail your

vision for this dream life.

How does it feel?

How do you feel?

What is your home like?

Describe your career and how

you feel about it.

By the way,

I have a freebie for you if you

want some additional

questions to help you think

about what you can add in this journal.

So now the journal itself

should take some time.

Depending on how much

thought you put into it,

you could take 20 minutes

to write or you could

actually take several days

to really sit down with

what you've written.

Some of you may want to

write and then step away

from it for 24 hours so you

can come back to it later

with fresh eyes.

Again,

this should be written in first

person and it should be

written in present tense.

Remember,

this version of you already has

everything you want right now.

Okay, so let's move on to step two.

Once you're finished with your journal,

the next step is

brainstorming the answers

to three specific questions.

Question one,

what are the habits of this future me?

Write down as many habits

this version of you has in

order to achieve this amazing life.

Question two,

what do I need to start doing

today to create the habits

of this person living my

dream life and what

behaviors will get me there?

You'll notice that some,

if not all of the habits

you wrote down in question

one are the habits that you

have not mastered yet.

For this question,

you're going to want to

brainstorm all the things

that you need to start

doing today to practice and

master these habits.

And then question three,

what actions do I need to

take to move forward in

this life to get to my dream life?

Some of these actions may

relate to your answer to

your answers in question two.

But think of this question

as more of a to do list.

If part of your dream life

is owning your first business,

write down all the things

that you know are

about making this happen and

all the things you need to

research about making this happen.

This might include

researching how to get a business license,

trademark, tax information,

marketing strategies.

From here,

you're going to start organizing

your list by priority, breaking it down,

breaking down like really,

really large steps into smaller,

much more manageable steps.

And then in step three,

So we went through those three questions.

But then in step three,

you now know all the things

that are needed to reach your goal,

your desired life.

Start putting those answers

from step two into motion

and begin designing your

life backward with all the skills,

behaviors, habits,

and thoughts that you need.

Here's an example of how I

did this for myself.

If you've been around me for a while,

you know that I was a

teacher for 25 years.

I wanted to quit teaching so badly,

but it took me 10 years to

finally leave the profession.

I'll deal with that story in

another podcast.

Before I left teaching,

I started my coaching

business thinking I could

start getting clients and

get my program created on

the side while I was still

earning an income.

Once the school year was over,

I was free to work on my

coaching full time,

but I couldn't seem to get any traction.

And it wasn't until I did

this activity for myself

that I realized I had not

really stepped into the role of coach.

I was still living life and

making decisions as if I

was a teacher with a

coaching side hustle.

This realization was such a

hard pill to swallow.

This may look different for

all of you when you do this work,

but here are a few things

that I learned about myself

from this exercise.

By the way,

this is not the end-all be-all list.

You may have some things

that are different.

I certainly had more than these,

but these were five of my top takeaways.

One of the things I learned,

I did not fully devote

myself to coaching because

I didn't see myself as a

confidence coach yet.

The second,

I wasn't behaving like the CEO

of a business.

Third, because coaching was a side hustle,

I wasn't showing up

consistently every day.

I was really inconsistent.

The fourth,

I hadn't developed a lot of

habits and behaviors my

future life required to

actually be achievable.

And the final one,

I would use the excuse of

my full-time job to explain

why I wasn't working so

hard on my coaching business.

I was full of excuses.

That's all there is to it.

Once I realized that's what I was doing,

it really was a lot easier

to figure out what I needed

to do to actually step into

my future self,

to step into that role and say,

I'm a confidence coach.

By designing with that end in mind,

I was able to see the whole picture.

Before, I was just doing the basics.

I told myself, okay,

I want to be a life coach.

I guess the first thing I

need to do is get certified.

Then I'll open up a business.

It went like this for a long

time where I would just do

what seemed like the logical next step.

If I'd started with the end in mind,

oh my gosh,

I would have figured out what

my thoughts needed to be,

what programs I eventually

wanted to develop,

how I could best serve my clients,

possible products to help

me reach my goals, and so much more.

This all would have helped

me create a much more linear process.

Instead,

I spent a lot of time throwing

spaghetti at the wall,

hoping something would stick.

I would try to figure out

email marketing only to

find I hadn't completed two

other steps first.

It was a lot of wasted time

and energy and frustration.

After doing this exercise,

I started putting into

practice the habits, behaviors, actions,

and thoughts of my future

self and started actually living as her.

I'm no longer pretending

that person is down the

road and she'll like

magically manifest herself.

If you have these really, really big,

awesome dreams that you wanna go after,

folks, you cannot play small like I did.

You have to really think

about the kind of person

you need to be in order to

achieve these dreams.

And there's gotta be some

timeframe to that too, right?

I sat there for 10 years and told myself,

I really, really wanna leave teaching.

But in those 10 years,

I didn't live as the person

who planned to leave teaching.

I want to show you how you

can start designing and

stepping into the life that you want.

This is just one of the many

skills I teach you and

thrive my coaching program.

So let's recap.

Step one,

you got to take some time to

reflect on the life that you really want.

Get super, super, super clear on that.

Super clear.

The second step is

brainstorming the answers

to those three questions.

Remember that first question,

what are the habits of this future you?

Second question,

what did I need to start

doing today to create the

habits of this person

living my dream life and

what behaviors will get me there?

And the third,

what actions do I need to

take in order to move

forward in this life to get

to my dream life?

And then, of course, step three,

which is starting to

actually design your life

with the end in mind.

Is it going to happen overnight?

Of course not.

But your dream life will be

achieved so much faster if

you know exactly what to do to get there.

All right, my friends,

I hope that everything I've

talked about today has been

incredibly helpful to you.

Have an amazing day.

Thank you so, so, so much for tuning in.

Don't forget, if you want that freebie,

you can head over to my

website and it'll give you

additional questions for

figuring out kind of what

your dream life is.

If you found this episode helpful,

please subscribe and share

this podcast with a friend.

Have an amazing day and I

hope to see you soon.