The Desire Map by Danielle Laporte

WARNING completing The Desire Map will disrupt your fucking life!

Sounds terrible right? Well, sometimes temporary pain is necessary for living a life of true happiness. Sometimes you gotta undo all the shit that you’ve done to get to where you want to be. Your experience with The Desire Map could be different…but I’m going to venture to say you will still have some disruption. Disruption is natural when it comes to making life changes, don’t resist it. Beauty awaits you on the other side. Here’s what we’re going to discuss:

Disruption is natural when it comes to making life changes, don’t resist it. Here’s what we’re going to discuss:

In The Desire Map: A Guide to Creating Goals With Soul book/workbook by Danielle Laporte, you learn to set goals based on how you want to feel. Why would you do this?
Once you determine how you want to feel and what your goals are, what happens next and how to prepare for it.
The amazing tribe of Desire Mappers and what awaits you in your new life – yes because it will be a new desirable life if you follow suit.

I tell you this all through my filter and experience, and hopefully, you can learn and benefit from it.

For as long as I can recall, I’ve always burned deep with a desire of wanting to become someone special. Someone to be remembered. Someone who can buy all the things I want (keepin’ it real here $$$). My earliest memory is being only TWO YEARS OLD and being rocked to the core with the desire of wanting a magic wand like Eureeka from Eureeka’s Castle. I prayed for it (sorry God), wished on a couple shooting stars, and told myself that if I believe hard enough I can make all my dreams come true. As I grew, my aspirations evolved into more maturing things like having a life-size Barbie limo with hot tub in the back.

Fast forward to 2010, I was 22, with a baby, broke AF, and somehow talked my Dad into sponsoring me to go to Tony Robbins’ Unleash The Power Within. Life changing. At this time, I was not achieving the success I hoped after starting my own business but I knew I was capable of manifesting amazing things into my life. After all, I figured out how to move to Huntington Beach, CA at 19 with $100 in my pocket. If I had anything, it was faith in myself. Tony walked us through an exercise to visualize an audacious goal that we wanted to achieve in one year. With my bank account in the negative and a baby to feed, I pictured myself making $100,000 within one year. Seemed impossible. While I had faith in myself, I also felt knocked down by life that I wasn’t sure this could happen.

Can you guess what happened one year after setting that super scary goal???

I crushed it, naturally (Crush It was a book I loved during those days). I worked my ass off day and night, got up more times than I fell, but I made it happen.

Pretty awesome, right? Yea, sure. I didn’t have to worry about buying diapers, in fact, I was able to start buying Honest diapers. Ballllla $$$.

The problem was after reaching that goal – a six-figure income, it wasn’t what I thought it would be. More money, more problems. Not saying the money was bad, I liked the money. I still like money. Making the money just didn’t feel like I thought I would. I thought by reaching this magic number that my problems would disappear, and I would be happy. High on life. But I wasn’t.

Want to know the saddest part? I thought I wasn’t happy because I needed to make more than $100,000. So I did. For years I worked tirelessly. Chasing money to chase happiness. Not how it works.

I set a goal of making $100,000 thinking I would feel a certain way once achieved, but I didn’t. Imagine if I would have started with how I wanted to feel in one year instead of assuming money would bring that fulfillment?

2014 rolls around (give or take a year, I’m getting old). I heard about Danielle Laporte and The Desire Map, not sure from where, maybe Marie Forleo or a serendipitous Facebook post, not sure. I get my hands on this workbook, and I spend a whole weekend taking it VERY seriously. At this point I was so fed up with myself for still feeling unhappy despite having much to be grateful for, I put my heart and soul into this workbook. Then, I finished. Here are the core desired feelings I wanted to feel every day in my life: bliss, fierce, flourish, rigor, purpose. I know you’re thinking WTF, but they were special to me at the time. The process you go through to get to those words is some deep personal work, so you feel on top of the world once you’ve come up with your core desired feelings.

HERE’S WHERE I WENT WRONG. My mindset wasn’t right. Most likely because I quickly skimmed over The Desire Map book portion and dove straight into the workbook. I missed some key insights from Danielle. After you come up with your words, you then set your life goals around doing things that will allow you to manifest these feelings on the daily. I simply just plug and played little things into my already existing life which was already lackluster. Ohhh I want to feel more fierce?! Let me stop wearing my pajamas every day while I work from home. I’m gonna put on mascara and jeans! That’ll do the trick.

Nope. Despite adding in things here and there into my life to achieve my core desired feelings, I still wasn’t happy. Something inside of my still just didn’t feel good about the life I was living. That’s when I realized I hadn’t prepared myself for this type of goal setting. Deep down I knew what kind of changes I needed to make in my life to achieve my CDFs (core desired feelings). I needed to go all in, not just dip my toes. At the time, I wasn’t willing to take the massive action to make significant life changes to actually start living the life I wanted. Sounds stupid, I know. Why wouldn’t you make the changes and make room for a life you love? Why is change so paralyzing sometimes even though we know it’s for the better? Well, I don’t fucking know.

What I do know is that I finally got the courage to begin making real changes in my life. I mean shake-my-life-upside-and-start-over kind of changes. A purging, if you will. Most importantly, cutting people (one person, in particular, who was taking up space in the house and it wasn’t my kids if that helps you narrow things down) out of life who was sucking my soul. Letting go of stories I had made up about myself along the way. You know, those “I’m not worthy” of everything I desire stories. I began Implementing routines that are going to set me up for success – which takes a lot of experimentation. Instead of trying to plan out every little detail of my life, I needed just to let go. Make room for magic.

Ahhh…magic. Magic is one of my new CDFs. The first time I did The Desire Map, I did it alone. This last time I did The Desire Map (I like to do again when I’m just feeling stuck) in a workshop setting at Wanderlust in Hollywood. Led by a Desire Map facilitator, the class took us through the exercise while weaving in yoga, breath work, meditation, and vulnerable stories told by the other women in the room.

My advice to you is to go all in with this workbook. Let out all the emotions you are feeling. Sit with it before you make goals. Most importantly, be ready. Be ready for the changes. Be ready for the magic. I am a big believer (now I am after seeing how my life is unfolding) of getting RID of anything or anyone in your life that isn’t supporting you to reach your highest good – your highest calling – to make room for something better. I am a student of life. My life is still evolving, I’m still improving and making changes on the regular. I will say though, I’ve never been this happy in my life. This happiness has come from rolling up my sleeves and not settling.

You can find The Desire Map Book and many more amazing products (hello, Truthbomb cards) on DanielleLaport.com or on Amazon. Start living a big life. A life of fulfillment. It’s messy. It’s beautiful. Throw out everything you know about setting goals and give this a go, you won’t regret it. While your going through the workbook and after – be sure to join search on Facebook for Desire Map groups (such as this one) and connect with other woman while sharing your story. Then, head on over to Pinterest and do a search, you will find a lot of great content there to support you and inspire you on this journey.

Okay, I want to know two things:
1. Have you ever set a goal, achieved it, and it just wasn’t all that?!
2. If you have already done The Desire Map, tell me your CDFs!

Here’s a video with Marie Forleo and Danielle Laporte for your enjoyment.