“To receive this check, your job is to earn a bachelor’s degree with a 3.5 GPA,” I went on to explain.  “Knowing that this check is waiting for you, how would you go about accomplishing this so that you get to claim it?”

Silence.  And then, finally, “I guess I’d work harder.”

“Work harder… hmmmm.  What does that actually mean?” I asked.

“Well, you know, work harder.”

As the conversation went on, it dawned on her that the source of the cool half million would be her own income, if she planned her college education as a business venture.  We talked about how to get the most for her money, where she could save, how to seek out support; we strategized about what classes to take, approaching the act of learning as a “job” responsibility in the business of attending college; and how to zoom in to find a major she’d love that would lead to a career she would also love — one that could make her a good living in today’s world.

We went on to talk about adopting a project management approach to knocking out college courses.

One thing I’ve noticed with genuine alarm is the use of technology by high schools and colleges to keep track of students’ assignments for them.  With no record-keeping on their own part, a couple of clicks let’s them see what’s due.

I think this is a case of the pendulum swinging too far.  Historically, writing down assignments, mapping out and completing them, keeping track of grades and turning things in on time was the responsibility of the student.  There were, of course, a small minority of instructors who habitually were weeks behind in grading, so students could not monitor their own progress.  I’m guessing that irate parents, whose students did not fare well in this situation, demanded change.  So, we’ve gone from almost no communication between high school instructors and parents — to full access to a website with their adolescents’ real-time grades and assignments.

The hope, of course, is that parents could help their kids stay on track (and maybe stop blaming the teachers when they don’t).  But the result that I’m seeing more often is that young adults experience a blurring of boundaries of responsibility for their school performance.  Their parents are now tracking their assignments — after the school relieves them of the task of writing them down!  Independent initiative to bring a grade up is often overshadowed by a parent’s noticing it before the student, followed by an unpleasant, motivation-killing confrontation.  In effect, parents have, to varying degrees, taken over responsibilities that rightly belonged to students stepping into the demands of adulthood. Failure is not allowed to happen.

While adolescents vary in the level of support they need from adults, they are all developmentally slated to strive for independence.  Too much intrusion into their responsibilities can have the nasty effect of taking away their privacy and their initiative.  But even when parents handle these new powers judiciously and respectfully — and some do it wonderfully — there’s the plain and simple truth that in order to succeed in college and in the work of their choice, young adults need to be able to own and manage their own responsibilities.

I can say for certain that no job I have ever had came with a daily to-do list prepared especially for me. And yet, my young client had almost no skill in envisioning an assignment as a series of steps, never mind estimating the time needed for completion in order to come up with a reasonable start date.

As I continued to talk with this student, all of these opportunities for self development became evident. In fact, it was such a good conversation that it will become “College: Your First Business” — the next Self Development Place ecourse — designed especially for students graduating high school or completing their freshman year of college.

The point is, “working harder” just won’t cut it.  Success requires vision, strategizing, determination, and focus — all of which fall out naturally from approaching college as a business venture and students as entrepreneurs.

Gosh, I wish someone had shown me how to do that!

I was talking my friend Dr. Meyer, a scientist with a long and successful career (and my professorial consultant for www.mycoachfran.com). As a child, Dr. Meyer had decided that he was not going to live in poverty, and from the moment of that decision, he actively worked to create the life he wanted for himself. In the process of describing that path to me, he talked about writing a paper when he was nineteen on a certain topic related to DNA. He began to be very interested in a very specific research question. Here’s what then happened:

1. He decided that he wanted to be involved in the research.
2. He asked his instructors who in the United States was doing the research.
3. They told him.
4. He contacted those people and let them know he wanted to work with them.

Ralph glossed over this story because it wasn’t really what he wanted to talk about; he had another point he was trying to make. But I stopped him cold.

“What made you think anyone would care that you wanted to work on this? As a student it never would have occurred to me that anyone would care,” I said, a little incredulous at the perceived audacity of a kid who approaches the big guys in his field and says that he wants in.

“It never occurred to me that they wouldn’t,” he said, looking confused, as though I had asked him to explain something that was self evident.

I explained to him that he had just encapsulated the difference between his upbringing as a boy and mine as a girl. To me, it never would have occurred to me that anyone would pay attention to my interests and invite me in. To him, the thought that they wouldn’t didn’t even have residence in his psyche. Because of this, Dr. Meyer had a fabulous academic path, including working with a Nobel Laureate. Why? Because he asked.

Linda Babcock and Sara Leschever, address the power issue of the socialization of girls in their book, Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide. I want to raise your awareness of the impact on you of the messages you heard growing up on your ability to go after what you want right now, today.

Here are just a few of the reasons, according to Babcock and Leschever, that women don’t ask:

* Asking equals begging, and women don’t beg.
* Women are supposed to take care of others; taking what you want for yourself is selfish.
* When men are unhappy with what they’re getting, they ask for more; when women are unhappy, they blame themselves and retreat into feeling inadequate.
* Women try to become more and more “deserving” by working harder so that what they want will be offered without their asking. (And are angry, resentful and depressed when it doesn’t happen, I’ll add.)
* Women believe that asking is damaging to relationships.
* Women believe it’s rude or insubordinate to negotiate. (That’s a message that is first delivered by parents who don’t realize how crippling it is in the long run.)

Here’s why this is so important.

If you’re unable to identify what you want and ask for it, you’re headed for feeling resentful. You’ll underachieve and that makes self esteem go down. Instead of following the career path you’re capable of, you’ll settle for working under people who don’t have more talent than you — but do have the ability to ask for what they want. All of that spells depression. Long term.

So this is a buried skill worth digging up. I say that because you knew how to ask for — even demand — what you wanted when you were a baby, before you’d been told that nice girls don’t do that. With some personal work, you can restore that innate ability.

Sound difficult? ASK for help!!!

But how many of your friends do you see moving in that direction? How about you? Why do we throw away the opportunity for remarkable lives?

There are lots of reasons to choose to play it safe – to choose to be a zoo assistant instead of an oceanographer, a day care teacher instead of a psychologist, a follower instead of a leader. Part of it is the subtle message, conveyed more to girls than to boys, not to dream too big.

But I find with many women that another huge part of it is that we’re not taught how to take on and walk through tough challenges. Couple that with the clamor for a 4.0, and you’ll witness stretch goals being replaced with sure things.

It used to be that the pressure for grades began at age six. That was the point at which the educational system warped children’s natural curiosity, their desire to learn and grow, into a means of judging them. Exit the joy – especially for kids who pick up academics more slowly (or more quickly) than the pace designated by their teachers. How quickly a child can move from “Life is fascinating!” to “I’m not good enough.” But even for those who fly through their classes, “being smart” and pleasing authority figures often become inexorably connected to the belief in their own value.

And that was then. Now it begins at age three or earlier. A client recently told me about her search for a preschool for her three-year-old daughter. She was interviewed by the preschool (not the reverse) and her daughter was screened according to her knowledge of letters, numbers and colors. Now this mom is worried that her vivacious little girl is inadequate. I firmly disagreed with her conclusion and explained that from my perspective, those schools had done her a huge favor. Screening three-year-olds by their “book learning” is a red flag that screams, “Find another school!”

School – whether preschool, elementary, high school or college – should be about building a person’s capacity to live a fulfilling, productive life. With that as a measure, success cannot be adequately assessed by tests and grades alone, if indeed at all.

What does it take to succeed, that is, to go after what you want in life and joyfully reel it in?

By definition, it would begin by being able to state a goal. It would move on to being able to see how to achieve it, break it down into steps. It would involve taking your dreams seriously and committing to them. It would require the strength of self and resilience to cope with a learning curve of multiple trials and multiple errors without losing self-esteem. You’d have to be able to risk failure and learn how to teach yourself and be able to feel joy in your achievements. You’d need to get clear about your values and continue to strive for accomplishments that are consistent with them.

You’d have to be able to organize, prioritize, plan and manage time. But really, unless entry into a program of study required it, you might never need an “A”. In fact, students who easily achieve A’s often lack the strength to hang in there when faced with a challenge in which they can’t immediately succeed. Being brilliant is a “nice to have”; being able to persist when solving a problem takes time, when you don’t know the answers and they’re not easily found – that’s not nice to have. No, that’s the sine qua non of long-term success in life. Life, after all, is an ongoing series of challenges – relationship challenges, educational challenges; career and financial challenges, health challenges, parenting challenges – and the answers come through blood, sweat and tears.

I’d better clarify.

I’m not advocating for schools to stop giving grades, and I’m certainly not on a campaign against brilliance. I love brilliance! How amazing to watch people immersed in doing the things they’re gifted at! We need all the brilliance we can find to address the difficult issues of our times.

What I am saying is that grades are nothing but a tool to rate progress. What matters when it comes to building a life is having the tools and developing the inner strength to make progress.

Because just as real learning rather than good grades equals an education, being able to go after your dreams, not playing it safe, is the design for a fulfilling life.

The great news is it’s sooooo easy to fix!

Here’s my secret weapon:

The Swift To-Do List 7

This little gem does everything you need to keep your life in order.  (And I should say here, I do not have any affiliate arrangement with Dextronet; I’m just a true fan of this product.)

You can do a lot of neat things with this software, but here are the top three functions:

• Create a series of separate lists — one for each of your classes — and you might also have a list for college or internship applications, your job, shopping — any area of your life that is buzzing with tasks and/or creative ideas.  Add an icon to each list to give it a unique look.
• You can add tasks to each list, categorize and prioritize them, including adding a due date. (You can also add detailed notes to any task and even upload associated documents.)
• By clicking on View — All Lists, and then go to the funnel icon on the toolbar and choosing the filters, you can create a list of today’s tasks.  If you only want to see the tasks you’ve marked as highest priority, the software will pull each item from every one of your lists that is so designated and display them on one screen.  You can then sort this short list by due date. Presto! Your day’s work is in front of you.

That last feature is the key to success.  It’s a cinch to add tasks, thoughts and ideas to any one of your lists any time something occurs to you; in fact, I leave my list open on my desktop the whole time I’m working.  But — it’s impossible to focus and get anything done if you’re looking at a list of 100 items.  By prioritizing and adding due dates, you can see in front of you only the tasks that you need to do today — or the ones that are due between now and next Friday — whatever you decide.

So you can save your sanity in two ways.

First, all that stuff that’s buzzing around in your brain threatening to cause a meltdown can be placed on appropriate lists.  Your brain can rest.  One by one, the things you just can’t afford to forget can be released from your brain onto your list.

Second, when you open up your laptop, you’ll see in front of you just exactly what you need to do right now.  You’ll find yourself knocking things out right and left — and when you place that satisfying check beside the completed items, they’ll be archived for you and removed from view.  Read pgs. 251-265 for biology; complete outline for essay for English; get the oil changed on the car; make a call to the members of your joint project group — zip, zip zip.  It’s a great feeling.

Sound good?  There’s a free trial version.  Once you download it, you can switch it from the “Professional” version to “Standard” which is all you’ll need.  There’s even a freebie — the “Lite” version (scroll all the way down and click on the small download link in the bottom right-hand corner), but it lacks the filtering ability that lets you create a single list, pulled from all of your lists, of what you need to do today.  I do think that’s a crucial feature.  So, if you need a tool that allows multiple lists, creates a consolidated list based on tasks you’ve prioritized, and costs nothing, email me at f r a n h e n d r i c k AT m y c o a c h f r a n DOT c o m, and I’ll send you my own version in Excel, called the Next-Up list.

Once you get this system in place, you’ll feel unbeatable, you’ll actually have more free time — and I’m willing to bet you’ll sleep better too!

COMING SOON: Power up your productivity with my e-course on Getting Organized and Getting Stuff Done! I’ll work with you one-on-one to help you create your Success Map and the master list that will take you where you want to go.

First you decide where you want to go! Then you find a map that will take you there.

But once you take out the map, you find that there are many ways to get to the same place. There’s the fastest way, the most direct way – and those two are not always the same. There’s the scenic back roads way or the interstate route, not to mention the zigzag path where you stop at all kinds of cool places along the way.

You’ve got hundreds of choices and opportunities open to you this year. Your “destination” might be a certain GPA, applying and being accepted for college, being involved in projects that allow you to stand up for what you believe in, or honing you skills as a musician or artist.

Today’s post is about choosing and mapping out the trip. Here’s how:

• Start out by downloading the template for your personal map to success. In business, this is called a strategic plan. By putting into words what you want to achieve, identifying your strategies for doing it, and analyzing the barriers that might prevent you from attaining your goals, you provide yourself with a powerful tool for making the most out of your year.
• Once you’ve downloaded the template, you’ll see text boxes where you can enter information. (If you don’t see them, click on “Highlight Fields” in your toolbar.) When you hover over each field, you’ll see directions for filling it out. Take your time with this. There’s no need to finish it in one sitting.

Keep your finished plan near your desk where you can see it. Read it once a day and assess whether you’re on track once a week.

Here’s to your success — however you define it!

You can count on five things as you begin to strike out on your own.  If you’re in conflict with your parents, chances are one or more of these factors is in play.

1. People grow and change. High school and college add up to an accelerated course in becoming independent.  You’re changing all the time, taking on new challenges and seeking the freedom of being an adult.  Plants reach for the sky — and so are you.
2. Human beings have an innate desire to be free and whole. That’s healthy; that’s the way it’s supposed to be.  And as tough as that can be on parents, believe me, they really don’t want you to stay home and remain dependent.
3. Parents have a deep desire for their kids to be whole, happy, safe and successful. That’s why it’s so hard to let go!  Until they’re confident that you’ll be safe and successful, they’ll stay closely involved.  Even though that’s protective, it can feel intrusive.
4. Relationships need to evolve as the people in them grow, change and become more (or less) independent.  When a relationship doesn’t morph along with the people in it, they feel angry and resentful.
5. Change is a challenge. The truth is, most people would rather keep things the way they are than go through all the discomfort and risk involved in change.  You might feel that fighting and frustration  seem more appealing than jumping into the unknown.  (I promise you, there’s something better if you’re willing to figure it out.)

So, it’s a given that as you get older your relationship with your parents has to change.  The key is devising a win-win approach that builds their confidence in your ability to keep yourself safe and manage your responsibilities and, in turn, increases the scope of your independence.

Coaching can be a big help in finding the way through conflicts.  It puts a layer between parent and young adult, and allows you to demonstrate your capacity for independence without being “micromanaged”.  It’s a win-win — you get the independence you really need; and your parents get the checks and balances they need to know that you’re okay.

It’s not for everyone, though.  Here’s what it takes to use coaching as a springboard to independence:

• You’re ready to own your own successes — and mistakes.
• You’re willing to be realistic about safety.
• You’d rather handle responsibilities on your own than have someone looking over your shoulder and reminding you about what you need to do.
• You’re beginning to realize that it’s your life and you want to make it spectacular.

So how does it work?

We start out with a conversation.  If it will by helpful to you, that conversation can be with you and your parents together.

Then we pull out the tool box and figure out what tools will help you get where you want to go — and, at the same time, provide your parents the data they need to fulfill their responsibilities to you.

Two tools that we use are the Success Map and the Up Next List.

Your Success Map is a document that you create.  Your goals; your definition of success.  It includes what in business are sometimes called “key indicators”.  Those are measures that let you know whether you’re on track.  You can share these with your parents at intervals that you agree on.

The Up Next List is just the best organizational tool ever.  It helps you put into words everything you’re working on — and then creates for you a list of what you need to do this week.

I’ll walk you through using these tools in the next two posts.  If you have questions, send me an email and I’ll help you get started.

Actually, the title of this post is a play on words, because homesickness really is a form of panic.  Understanding what it is will help you see how to help yourself through it.

It’s surprisingly easy to become dependent on your peers or parents or the structure of high school to tell you who to be, what to think, what to feel, how to please people in order to avoid being rejected.  Besides all of that, your old life provided you with familiar roles that gave you a sense of who you are.

When you leave home, all of a sudden this supportive structure is gone!  You’re hit with the loss of the roles you played in high school roles and maybe even the status you enjoyed with those roles.  There’s suddenly no structure saying what to do, no parent saying who to be.

Homesickness is a form of panic that occurs with the loss of these anchors of identity.

You can try to overcome homesickness with an act of will, but you really don’t have to.  The dynamic in play is a loss of self; it happens when your sense of who you are is tied to a particular environment or person.  The result of entering a new environment is unexpected, overwhelming anxiety.

What helps is letting yourself be around people who see you, simply by responding to you – not to your sadness, but to your person. Add in activities that remind you who you are and you’ll begin to get you self back.

If you or a friend need some help to get through homesickness, keep these ideas in mind:

• Accept yourself as you are. If you’re having trouble with being away from home, don’t fault yourself or criticize or point out how easy it is for your friends, and don’t punish yourself.  Instead, acknowledge your fear and how bad you are feeling.  Analyze the dynamics of your fear and address them.
• Find someone who naturally serves as a mirror; someone who automatically reflects back your actual thoughts, feelings, preferences and beliefs.  Not what you think they should be, not what you wish they were.  The idea is to help you be solidly centered in who you  are.  This is about asking “Who am I now?”  Feeling solid in who you are makes it possible to leave your usual surroundings and go into new situations.
• Be patient with yourself. Don’t let your mood dictate your the messages you give yourself.  If you’re accepting of your own feelings one minute and condemning the next, it’ll be harder to regain your footing and feel better.
• Create some tangible links and ways of connecting. Photos, old letters, a beloved movie, chocolate chip cookies — not to mention your cell phone, IM, Facebook and email.  These tools can help you hold the presence of your home and family within you while you’re adjusting to new surroundings.

Try not to panic.  You will get through this.  If you’re depressed — eating or sleeping too little or too much, feeling hopeless, having no fun, even feeling like giving up — then don’t hesitate to get some help.

Homesickness is a state of mind that can magically dissipate when you feel secure again.  I’m hoping that will be very soon.

Teaching and learning, at their best, involve a relationship between instructor and student that is different from any other.  Choosing to learn at a deep level from someone — allowing yourself to be taught — involves trust, and that’s a relationship to be entered into selectively.  But in all classes, even when you’re not deeply engaged, there is an interaction that occurs between you and your professors.

Where you sit, your attentiveness or lack of it, the work you turn in — all of these are part of that interaction.  Here are a few things to keep in mind, tips from a long-time professor:

• Just like students, instructors are likely to feel a little nervous at the beginning of each new class.  That’s because they really care about their students and want to be effective and helpful to them.
• Remember, this is a relationship — an interaction between you and the instructor — not a performance, so it your attentiveness really does matter.  Think about the last time you tried to talk about something important to you to someone who did not make eye contact, yawned and maybe checked their email while you were talking.
• Consider demonstrating your interest by sitting in front.
• Stop by during office hours to ask an authentic question or clarify a point.  Don’t just go through the motions, though.  You need to have cultivated your own curiosity in the subject first.
• If you run into a professor on campus, say “hello” instead of suddenly scrutinizing the sidewalk. (You’d never do that, right?)  It doesn’t feel good to anyone to be invisible.
• Let your instructors know when they make a difference in your learning or in your life.
• Consider that a five-minute powerpoint can take hours to prepare — and years of accumulating the knowledge that goes into it.  Be appreciative of this.

Part of building a career is grabbing the opportunity to talk to people who are expert in what you want to do.  You might feel a little afraid at first.  Remember, courage doesn’t mean not being afraid.  It means making the choice to go ahead in spite of your fear.  Remember, too, that when someone genuinely wants to know more about a topic that you’re well-versed in, and is willing to work hard at understanding, it’s a great compliment.  That’s true for professors, too; many welcome conversations with students who are interested in their areas of expertise.

So go for it!  I hope you’ll meet some fascinating people this year!

Here’s what I’d like you to do:

1. Make a worry list. Sketch out a quick list of the challenges you’re facing – the ones that have you stumped, lost or stuck.
2. Hide it. Put your list aside where you can’t see it for the moment.
3. Create a gentle space. Plan a half hour that you can have all to yourself, a time when you’re free to think and imagine.  Create a space that encourages you to expand into your thoughts.  Maybe it’s a park bench, maybe it’s the breakfast room.  You might curl up on the sofa with your laptop, or it might be more your style to go to a really nice book store to choose the perfect journal, a place of honor for the thoughts that you will place in it.
4. Dare to imagine. Begin a post entitled, “Ideal Day.”  This will help you create a larger context.
5. Let your unconscious go to work. Now you have two important things.  You’ve got a page that describes where you are now and a page that describes where you’d love to be.  What you envision, you will begin to bring into reality.  Read your “Ideal Day” every day or so. (If you’re a coaching client, you’ll find a form for creating your Ideal Day on your private coaching webpage that you can continuously update .) Add to your Ideal Day whenever a new word or idea comes to you.Let yourself drift into this writing project:
   

   Describe in detail an ideal day, including the non-work parts.

   A truly sun-streaked day.

   A single day. Literally the absolute ideal day.

   Think about your surroundings; the people you see; the work you do; the fun you have; what you see, hear, taste and touch; how you feel.
   Write it in the kind of detail that leads you right into the space of that day. Write it so that you can feel it.

   Try not to judge whether it’s practical or possible or sensible. Just focus on describing a day that brings a smile to your lips.

6. Tackle challenges one by one. The image of your Ideal Day gives you a context within which to address individual challenges.  It’s really important to have that context; otherwise, each challenge becomes your whole world, and that shouldn’t be. Your whole world is bigger than any of these individual challenges.Take a similar approach to each problem on your list.  Sketch out in broad terms the ideal resolution. This sketch should address your fears.  For example, with a tough class, you’re probably afraid of failing or becoming overwhelmed.  But in your ideal,  you are able to work at it and keep your self-esteem intact.  Ideally, you can find the help you need and really begin to grasp the material.  The how’s and where’s will begin to suggest themselves if you can address your fears first.
7. Don’t turn away from your path. What I mean by this is don’t squeeze your eyes shut at the possibilities that suggest themselves.  Like trying for a college that really intrigues you even though you might not get in.  Or sticking it out in a class that you might not get an “A” in, or leaving a relationship that’s bad for you even though you’re afraid to be alone.

Here’s one more quote from Joseph Campbell to keep close to you.  Bring it to mind when you’re terrified of your own ideas, when you feel that the solution that has occurred to you is impossible, when the ideal day you’ve envisioned feels out of reach.  Here’s what he said:

“A bit of advice
Given to a young Native American
At the time of his initiation:
As you go the way of life,
You will see a great chasm. Jump.
It is not as wide as you think.”

Wishing you a great week ahead on the path that is yours.

Whether the next steps you’re struggling with have to do with your classes, your major, your parents or a significant relationship, you may not be able to see beyond the very next brick in the path.  Life can’t come with a map because each life, each person is different.  This article is about helping you as you choose each step on your own path.  It’s about having the courage to celebrate your own unique journey.

So, let’s get started.

In the first place, I’ve got a bone to pick with Hollywood.  There’s nothing like movie heroes to make you feel insecure.  The message is: life is predictable and even when it’s not, you should be competent to handle it.  It’s all a great adventure, you’re the hero, and heroes can resolve their challenges in an hour or so.

Well, thanks a heap.  Because propaganda like that makes you feel like you’re doing something wrong when your life takes an unexpected turn.  It makes you feel incompetent when you haven’t got a clue about what to do in the circumstances.

“Real lives are made up of a series of challenges, problems,” a mentor once told me.  And guess what – she should have added.  There’s constantly a new circumstance that you’ve never faced before, and you don’t have the experience or the knowledge to simply know what to do and do it.

Real lives are made up of complications like these:

• You’ve landed in a class where the professor’s English is spotty and you have no idea what you’re supposed to be learning
• You’re in a relationship that despite its good points leaves you drained and feeling dull and blah.
• Your roommate is a morning person and you’re a night owl.
• You’re missing your home and your parents, and you feel sad all the time.
• The major you thought you’d love is a complete bore.

Well, you can relax on one score: there’s nothing wrong or even unusual about you if something crazy has happened and you’re completely stumped about what to do with the problems you’re currently facing.

Here’s what another great thinker, Andrea Lee, has to say: “Learning is what happens when you (really, really, really) don’t know what to do.”

The temptation is to look for a road map to tell you what to do next and next and next.

But what’s so fantastic about life – and so scary – is that you get to create your path. You don’t get to choose all the circumstances, that’s for sure.  But you do have a lot of wiggle room to choose how to handle them.  And that’s what makes you come alive! Following someone else’s map, doing what someone else did, isn’t you living your life!  It’s you living someone else’s life!

Let me share with you a longer version of the quote from Joseph Campbell that this article began with:

“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s

Do you remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books?  They often come to mind for me as an analogy.  Each book consists of a non-linear set of very short chapters.  At the end of each chapter, the reader has to choose between two or three alternatives of what to do next.  Based on that choice, she’s directed to a subsequent chapter.  Each reader has a different experience.

But even in those books, the alternatives are limited and provided by someone else.  In your life, you get to invent the alternatives for responding to each set of circumstances – completely!

Now that’s an amazing opportunity.

Later this week, I’ll show you how to begin to play with these ideas so that you can take advantage of the fantastic freedom to design a life that’s yours.