Re-Decorate Your LIFE

by Kathy Gates

Does your life sometimes feel like a storage room where everybody else has dropped their mess and it seems there's no room left for you? If your home doesn't lift your spirits at the end of the day, it's not living up to its obligations as a place to restore and recharge. If your LIFE holds you back instead of supporting your desires, it's not living up to it's end of the bargain either. Our lives, like our homes, should be emotionally comforting. Forget about the living room...maybe it's time to "Re-Decorate Your LIFE." Here are the 4 key factors to an effective system to "Re-Decorate Your LIFE." Keep in mind that it's all about YOU and your personality, and what makes your life comfortable and happy for YOU.

1. Clear It: In your storage room of a life, you can't see past all the leftovers, daily junk, and misplaced energy to vision how it could be an efficiently functioning room that could bring you happiness. The clutter in your life - both physical and mental - is the biggest obstacle you will face when you start to "Re-Decorate Your LIFE." But in order to start developing the life of your dreams, you must begin by changing what made it so out of shape in the first place. In order to have room for the "new" in your life, you will have to clean out the old. You wouldn't buy a new couch and just stick it right on top of the old one, would you? What things do you need to let go of, or resolve, so that they are no longer in the way of creating a the life you love?

2. Define It: After you've removed the clutter from your life, it's time to decide on a purpose or function for the room. What's your vision of the perfect room? What are you trying to accomplish? What goals are you trying to achieve? How do you want it to function? Function is very important. You probably wouldn't want to put a bed in the middle of the kitchen, would you? Nor should you try to combine opposing things in your life. By choosing how you want your life to function, by leading a life centered around your priorities, you can screen out the stuff that doesn't fit.

3. Fix It: Keeping that vision firmly in mind, it's time to begin work on creating the life you want. Making sure the foundation issues in your life are on firm ground before you begin to add other things will ensure that you don't topple over and get off track at the first sign of stress. Would you invest in new furniture for a room that had holes in the walls, a water leak in the ceiling, and worn out carpet? Of course not; you wouldn't be satisfied with the end result. Anything you added would be damaged by what's already there. So it is with your life. It's important not to skip over this stage. Don't just paint over rotting wood. While it might look good for a while, the same old problems will creep back up to the surface - damaging anything new you try to put in your life - until you fix it.

4. Plan It: Now that you've cleared out the old stuff, decided on your purpose, and have corrected any foundation issues, it is a good time to divide and conquer and come up with a workable plan. If you have a very long, large room, you probably can't do it all at once. And if you have very large goals, you will need to divide the goals down into smaller, more manageable ones. What are you willing to postpone in order to achieve your goal. What is most important for you to do right now if you want to (be a better parent, get more education, write a book, find some balance, control your finances, etc.?) Each resource must reinforce the others to create a system, a lifestyle, that supports what you want out of life. Take it one step at a time.

I hope that you've seen that with a little bit of planning, a little bit of imagination, and some common sense strategies, you too can have the life you love. Whether you use the image of "Re-Decorate Your LIFE", or find another one that works for you, it is important that you remember that a simple and purposeful life is not an accident. Just like in building your dream home, it takes patience, vision, research, and planning to build your dream LIFE.

Kathy Gates may be contacted at http://www.reallifecoach.com/ kathy@reallifecoach.com. Click here to view more of their articles.
Kathy Gates is a Personal Life Coach who believes that "Life Rewards Action". She can help you set priorities and goals, build healthy relationships, and take control of your life. Please visit www.reallifecoach.com, email kathy@reallifecoach.com, or call 480.998.5843 TODAY!