Designing Your Ideal Life

How much joy do you currently have in your life? Think 3 dimensionally! What might it take to feel you're moving closer to a destination that's right for you as a unique individual? As a life coach, I help people gain clarity on what kind of life and work will make them happiest. It's about aligning your life with what most inspires you, about understanding who you are at your best and working towards that ideal to make it real. I offer holistic life management to my clients to help them confidently set and achieve life goals! My clients are successful professionals in their thirties to fifties. While they have achieved much, all too often they feel that their lives are living them, that they are somehow imprisoned by their routines.

Feeling almost marginalised in their own lives amidst the pressures of work and home commitments, they are often unable to identify what their truest values really are, or to define what would make them feel most alive and fulfilled. I generally first hear from a prospective client at a point in their life when they realise that they don't want to settle for ok or even fairly good, that they want more. It's hard to do this alone. Even if you have the motivation and time, it's difficult to be objective about yourself and step far enough out of your paradigms and situations to see the big picture. Happily, I find that with systematic quality focus and time, it's possible for everyone to move forward and make magical positive changes in their lives, rather than continuing to conform to a cookie-cutter preset role defined by others.

Sometimes big changes are called for. Sometimes many small adjustments can make an incredible difference. It's important work, life-defining work, literally, and we need to be steady, deliberate, and careful so that any life changes made as a result of the coaching process are made with confidence and conviction. It's not about impulsively resigning from your job on Friday and going travelling round the world. In my experience, it takes people about a year to make sustainable life transformations-my clients include a bored London businessman becoming a Scottish property millionaire....a public relations executive becoming a novelist....a business owner dividing her week between London and a home in Italy....a barrister and mother of 3 creating an inspiring work-life balance that leads to even greater success...

Feeling in charge of your life and creating balance, and fulfilment can be a harmonious gentle process. We need to simultaneously visualize the big picture of what we want our lives to look like, as well as ensuring each day reflects that vision and balance. Let me introduce you to some life coaching approaches that work wonders for my clients:

1) Clarify the big picture. What is your vision of your ideal life? What is your dream destination? What are the 4 values that most inspire you? Are you currently living your life in a way that is centred by your values?

2) Are your body, mind, spirit , and emotions in harmony? Are you taking care of your body, exercising and eating to give you energy and radiance? Do you think positively? Are you taking care of your spirit and emotions, in whatever way feels right to you? You need to feel energised in mind, body, and spirit in order to get exciting results in your life.

3) Have more fun! Decide on what you can do each day to give you pleasure... sitting in a park for 10 minutes and feeling the sun on your face, having fresh flowers at work, meeting a friend for cocktails, going dancing...

Erica Jong once said that if you risk nothing, you end up risking even more. Whether you're 30,40, or 50, you don't want to wake up in 20 years time feeling sad about what you didn't do or about ways in which you didn't allow yourself to grow. If you commit to clarifying what you really want and who you really are, the next step of defining the path to the destination is much easier. As the poet David Whyte writes, "anything or anyone/that does not bring you alive/ is too small for you."
©Dr Nicola Bunting, 2009

Dr. Nicola Bunting

Master Certified Coach (MCC, ICF)

Director, La Vita Nuova Personal and Professional Coaching

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