MusingsOnLife.com - Excerpts from LifeDesign Workbook

LifeDesign
Living Your Life By Choice Instead of Chance
Peggy Vaughan and James Vaughan, Ph.D.
Printed copies can be purchased at Amazon.com
(Read detailed Table of Contents and an Excerpt below.)

This is a 106-page workbook based on a "life planning" course Peggy and James developed and conducted over the past 35 years. It's designed to help you take stock of where you are in your life and decide what's really important to you. It's essential to actually write in it. Just reading it does not provide the kind of clarity that makes a dfference. So if you purchase the pdf version, you need to print it out.
While it's useful on an individual basis, it's also a great way to get clarity as a couple in organizing your individual throughts in order to communicate more effectively. Each person separately works through the workbook, then you come together to share your individual perspectives on life. Obviously, if used in this way, each person needs their own separate copy of the Workbook. So you could either print 2 copies of the pdf version or order 2 copies of the printed version.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I. Where Have You Been?: -Life Review; -Putting Your Life In Perspective; -Life Expectancy Questionnaire; -Instructions For Life Review; -LifeDesign Worksheet; -The Crucial Role Of The Family; -Family Values; -Perception Is More Complicated Than It Seems; -Highs And Lows; -Turning Points; -Listing Achievements
Part II. Where Are You Now?: -Where Do You Live—Past, Present, or Future?; -What's Going On Now?; -What's Changing In Your Life?; -What Is Your Self-image?; -What Roles Do You Play?; -Quality of Life Checkup; -What Motivates You?; -Possible Motivators; -Job Satisfaction; -Interaction of Work and Home Life; -How Are You Balancing Your Priorities?; -How Are You Using Your Time and Energy?; -What's the Best Use of Your Time Right Now?; -Some Reflections; -Why Worry About Values?; -Are You Living Your Values?; -Relating Feelings and Values; -What's the Best Way To Clarify Your Values?; -Clarifying Your Values; -Worst First Ranking; -What Means Most To You?; -What Do You Like To Do?; -What Are You Good At?
Part III. Where Do You Want To Go?: -The Lifestyle Checklist; -Lifestyle Checklist Grid; -All You Need To Know; -If I Could Live It Over; -Writing Your Obituary; -If Only; -Making It Happen; -Choices; -Goal Setting
Part IV. How Do You Plan to Get There?: -What Are Your Assets?; -Individual Effectiveness; -Doing A Reality Check; -Planning Worksheet; -How You Block Yourself From Reaching Your Goals; -Building A Support System; -An Ending And A Beginning

What is LifeDesign?

All too often, people are engaged in a constant struggle to attend to all the various demands of life and to find time and space to do the things they want/need to do. It doesn't have to be that way.

Trying to keep up with the daily demands of life can make it difficult to step back and take a look at just what's going on, how it's working for you, and how you can direct your life in the way you want it to go. The LifeDesign Workbook is a tool to help you live your life by choice instead of chance. LifeDesign will help you do that kind of assessment in an efficient, effective way. It allows you to organize a lot of information about your life so you can systematically plan for the future.

LifeDesign is an integrated set of activities and strategies to help people:: -Take stock of current life circumstances; -Clarify what's really important; -Decide what to do; -Plan how to do it

LifeDesign is about choice, clarity of purpose, and balance. It's based on the premise that each person creates their life experience through the choices they make every day and are therefore responsible for the satisfaction or lack of it that they're getting out of life.

LifeDesign is a guide for examining current use of time—with family and friends, at work, in community activities, and at leisure. For those who think they have no leisure time, LifeDesign is definitely needed. And for those feeling out of balance in general, it's also right on target. It will help identify the points of imbalance between values and ways of actually spending time.

LifeDesign is first and foremost a workbook. It works only for those who work at it. It provides more perspective on life than most people have ever had plus a systematic way of balancing life on an ongoing basis. It helps to get specific about goals and it teaches a process for tracking progress and making course corrections along the way. Everyone loses focus from time to time, but it's much better to notice it quickly and make the necessary small adjustment instead of waiting until the need for major change reaches crisis proportions.

LifeDesign teaches a practical process for each person to manage their life according to their own priorities and plans.

LifeDesign is a lifeline for people who are frustrated or disillusioned about the way things are going. It's a book that can help in answering the questions at the very core of life:: -Are you finding meaning in your current work and lifestyle?; -Are you satisfied with your important relationships?; -Do you often wonder who's in charge of your life?

LifeDesign respects the ability of each individual to make important decisions and to do what it takes to act on them.

LifeDesign provides an opportunity to reflect on many aspects of life—physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual—but it doesn't dictate the course that reflection should take.

LifeDesign is not a career or job-hunting manual, but it can provide valuable assistance in determining a career direction by seeking to clarify interests, skills, values, and other assets.

LifeDesign is not theoretical. The authors, Peggy Vaughan and James Vaughan, Ph.D., are psychological consultants who began developing the LifeDesign material for their first life planning seminar in 1970. Since then they have refined their approach and used this material with hundreds of individuals, corporations, and even the military (conducting a program for career military officers at the National Defense University for 5 years). It also includes insights gained from their combined years of working with people in other seminars, workshops, and speaking engagements, covering a variety of issues, including: communication, couple relationships, conflict resolution, balancing home and work life, and male/female issues both at work and at home.