by Connie Komack, Book, 2006,
LifeWork Enterprises.
Review by Mireille Massue
Rating:
In a hurry?
Recommendation
Untitled Document
Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, it you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Butterflies and their symbolism have always fascinated me. In the fall, millions of Monarch butterflies migrate to the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico. Scientists are puzzled by why they travel to Mexico and how they even know where Mexico is.
In mythology and art, the caterpillar, the larva of a butterfly, is associated with disease. Once it spins itself into a cocoon, the caterpillar spends a period of seclusion (cocooning) transforming itself and emerging as a butterfly. As a symbol, people associate the butterfly with positive transformation, change, rebirth, renewal, hope, and freedom.
Why the butterfly?
LifeWork Enterprise’s logo is the Monarch butterfly. As the symbol suggests, the firm provides services and support to help transform the growth and development of people, businesses, and organizations. Connie Komack, founder of LifeWork Enterprises, is a coach, trainer, speaker—and author of Designing Your Life: A Life/Work Empowerment Program.
It's a 178-page easy-to-use spiralbound workbook of exercises, questions, and suggestions to help you turn your "dis-ease" (unease with one’s life) into a journey of self-discovery. Each chapter is like a piece of a puzzle.
When completed, it forms a picture of the strategies and tactics to help you reach your chosen goals. As the workbook format implies, Designing Your Life is designed for hands-on individual use, but it can also can be used in the classroom or in one-on-one coaching.
Four questions
The book is organized around four questions:
Who am I? Taking Stock
Thirty-five exercises ask you to identify and examine your interests, values, both your empowering and limiting beliefs, strengths, talents, personality traits, aptitudes, and purpose. The section ends with a four-page summary of who you are.
Where am I going? Envisioning the Future
Exercises like ‘The Want List,’ ‘Lottery Exercise,’ ‘Eight-Area Visioning List,’ and ‘Career/Life Fantasy’ which is one of the key exercises in this section that help you identify and explore your wants, wishes, hopes, dreams, and goals for your future.
The Career/Life Fantasy on page 94 is the key exercise of this section as far as I'm concerned.
How will I get there? Planning and Taking Action
Henry David Thoreau once said, “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; now put the foundations under them.”
This is the section that helps you build a foundation under the strategies you have identified and developed in the previous section by translating them into an action plan. Some of the tools used in creating a plan are setting goals, identifying and handling obstacles, doing research, and managing your time.
How do I live my dream? Staying on Purpose
There is a quote I often tell myself: “Success is a journey, not a destination.” Part of any successful venture is maintaining it. This section uses questionnaires, charts, and checklists to help you focus on your destination on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
The 140 questions and exercises are helpful for doing what the author says they will do. If you consider the book for work with a group, be aware that the Autobiographical Narrative exercise in Part I asks you to describe your family life and significant relationships.
There is a chance the exercise could reveal experiences and issues that are very sensitive. However, the author says that in the many times she has used the exercise, she hasn't encountered a problem of this nature.
Exposure to the book has again made me aware of the power of the written word. Writing makes your thoughts visible. Visibility creates clarity and focus. Clarity and focus can combine to trigger an urgency to achieve.
Butterfly story
There are plenty of stories related to the symbolism of butterflies.The one that is most significant for me concerns a man watching a butterfly struggle to get through the little hole of the cocoon. Thinking that he can help the butterfly get out faster, he cuts a larger hole.
What the man didn’t understand was that the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny hole is necessary to force fluid from its body into its wings so that it can fly properly. The man’s kindness crippled the butterfly, and the butterfly was never able to fly.
The moral of the story: Freedom to achieve comes by way of the struggles we go through. Choosing to take the easy way can cripples us.
Someone once told me, "Embracing the status quo leads to eating your own tail. Eventually you disappear." The questions and exercises in Designing Your Life are like the hole in the cocoon. They help individuals make important choices instead of deferring to the status quo or the opinions of other people.
Recommendation
Designing Your Life is an excellent workbook offering tools to help you scrutinize your current life and work goals, reformulate them, and transform them into opportunity and action.
Outstanding; 
Very good; 
Good; 
Above average; 
Average; 
Below average; 
Poor
