We're sorry, but eCampus.com doesn't work properly without JavaScript.
Either your device does not support JavaScript or you do not have JavaScript enabled.
How to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Need help? Call 1-855-252-4222
Note: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
Purchase Benefits
What is included with this book?
Contents
Introduction Designing your life, as opposed to waiting for it to happen; moving past politics and taking responsibility for your own joy.
PART ONE: BREAKING THE GRIP OF THE PAST
Chapter One: Commitments Discovering what you're committed to; refining your commitments; the difference between a promise and a commitment; speaking from your commitments as a way of connecting; listening for commitments in others.
Chapter Two: A Different Kind of Listening Listening to the present vs. listening for old beliefs; how listening structures what we perceive as reality; five common filters to our listening.
Chapter Three: Incompletions How incompletions keep us in the past; distinction between finished and complete (realm of action vs. realm of language); taking an inventory of your incompletions; methods for coming to completion.
Chapter Four: Paradigms, Recognizing beliefs you inherit from your culture and from your family, which are not authored by you; early decisions you made and the rules for living that resulted from them. Chapter Five: Fact vs. Interpretation Exploring the profound distinction between fact and interpretation; realizing that you live in a world comprised of few facts and myriad interpretations; choosing empowering, yet authentic, interpretations; costs vs. benefits of buying into disempowering interpretations. PART TWO: DESIGNING THE LIFE OF YOUR DREAMS Chapter Six: The Source of Action Speaking -- declaring -- a new future; speaking as the source of action; declaring, and continuing to stand for your commitment; moving from automaticity to choice; who gives you permission. Chapter Seven: What Lights You Up? If anything were possible, what would you like to see happen? Your deepest desires and passions as commitments to guide you. Chapter Eight: Creating New Possibilities Listening generatively; creating space for people to offer ideas; brainstorming in a conversation for possibility. Chapter Nine: An Inspiring Challenge Homing in on your field of passion; focusing on your commitment within that domain; defining, refining, and declaring a breakthrough project. Chapter Ten: The Mountaintop Thinking backwards; designing pathways from your dream life back to your present one. Chapter Eleven: Completing Your Breakthrough Enrolling others; listening for others' commitments; creating and maintaining support structures of committed listeners; taking your ground; registering your accomplishments.
Chapter Five: Fact vs. Interpretation Exploring the profound distinction between fact and interpretation; realizing that you live in a world comprised of few facts and myriad interpretations; choosing empowering, yet authentic, interpretations; costs vs. benefits of buying into disempowering interpretations.
PART TWO: DESIGNING THE LIFE OF YOUR DREAMS
Chapter Six: The Source of Action Speaking -- declaring -- a new future; speaking as the source of action; declaring, and continuing to stand for your commitment; moving from automaticity to choice; who gives you permission.
Chapter Seven: What Lights You Up? If anything were possible, what would you like to see happen? Your deepest desires and passions as commitments to guide you.
Chapter Eight: Creating New Possibilities Listening generatively; creating space for people to offer ideas; brainstorming in a conversation for possibility.
Chapter Nine: An Inspiring Challenge Homing in on your field of passion; focusing on your commitment within that domain; defining, refining, and declaring a breakthrough project.
Chapter Ten: The Mountaintop Thinking backwards; designing pathways from your dream life back to your present one.
Chapter Eleven: Completing Your Breakthrough Enrolling others; listening for others' commitments; creating and maintaining support structures of committed listeners; taking your ground; registering your accomplishments.
The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
The real voyage of discovery
consists not in seeking new landscapes,
but in having new eyes.
-- Marcel Proust
Recently I had breakfast with a woman who had come to talk with me about women. She was a high-powered executive recruiter, and someone had told me she had her hands on a ton of information about where women are now. I was in the first few months of starting my company, Lifedesigns, and was still chasing every fox down every hole as I tried to figure out what shape the company would take. As we ordered coffee, the woman began talking about the numbers pointing to women's lack of opportunities, the progress women haven't made, using familiar terms like backlash and glass ceiling. And she showed me the studies documenting the fact that women's pay scale really hasn't risen much since 1970.
As she spoke, I nodded, having no doubt that her facts were accurate. She's the kind of person you'd trust to measure out explosive chemicals. At the same time, as I listened and nodded, I felt my throat tighten up. My mind wandered off, anxiously, to all the decisions I had to make as the head of my own company. Her facts seemed to spin a web of impossibility around me and my venture. Finally, I interrupted.
"You know what?"
She sat, her face expectant.
"I don't care," I said.
Considering I'd said about the rudest thing anyone could say in a business meeting, she took it pretty well. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"I don't care," I said again. I had absorbed her facts, and I was even willing to admit that her interpretations of these facts were valid. But I couldn't listen to any more of them.
Because while the facts were most likely true, her interpretations -- though valid from where she stood -- were not empowering me. The problem with research, of course, is that it's about the past. It's a description of what we already know about the state of things. Sometimes it surprises us with what's so. But most of the time, we use it to confirm and prove what we already know about how wrong things are. What her statistics were doing, powerfully, was entangling me back in the past. And what I needed, at that moment, was an interpretation that enabled me to move forward into possibility. We got the check.
Alone in my office, I searched for some sort of inspiration to pave over the pothole in my psyche she'd opened up. Suddenly I thought of Carolyn Stradley, the CEO of C&S Paving in Marietta, Georgia -- the company that paved the track at the Olympic stadium in Atlanta -- whom I'd heard speak, years before, when she'd won a Women of Enterprise award from Avon.
I had initiated these awards to honor women who overcame enormous personal obstacles to attain significant economic success, partly because I have been fascinated, for as long as I can remember, by breakthroughs. I wanted to hear stories about the moments when we transcend our past, our habits, our "character defects" and our limits of circumstance, which in Carolyn's case had been steep. Born into Appalachian mountain poverty, Carolyn was eleven when her mother died. Her alcoholic father abandoned the family, and for a few years she and her brother, living in a hut, ate wild berries and trapped rabbits to stay alive. Married at fifteen, pregnant in the eleventh grade, Carolyn started work as a secretary and continued to attend school. She had kept on with her studies in engineering construction even after her first husband died. As I sat in my office, I imagined Carolyn, sitting in her office after the bankers she'd approached for a loan to buy her first truck had laughed in her face. And I began to laugh at myself, thinking about how much more she had overcome.
Carolyn's astonishing journey had stuck in my mind for years. Or rather, the question of how was she able -- how anyone is able -- to remain undaunted in the face of overwhelming adversity. How had she created a terrific new life out of the remnants of a miserable one? How had she gone from living in the woods to landing the largest U.S. Air Force paving contract ever awarded to any female-owned business?
Then the obvious occurred to me: Being disadvantaged is a sort of advantage, because people who come from behind try harder. I started to get mad -- not at the woman who'd served as the messenger of the bad news at breakfast, but at myself, for buying into the conclusions I thought those facts implied about my future.
It was an anger I remembered. I'd felt it once before, in a swimming race, when I was a kid. At twelve I had qualified for the semi-finals of the U.S. national freestyle competition. As we poised ourselves on the starting blocks for the next-to-last race, the girl beside me swayed back and forth in an odd way, and when I turned to look at her I lost my balance and fell into the water, feet first. A second later the judge shot the gun to start the race. Though I looked at the judge to rule it a false start, he shook his head no, telling me it wasn't. I was furious! But at that moment, I had to make a decision. I could either be right, and insist on my version of the facts, or I could start swimming.
I'm sure I swam the fastest I've ever swum in my life -- though everybody else had taken a racing dive, I came in second in that heat. And ultimately I won the final.
What I needed, after that breakfast, was an interpretation that empowered me to swim. I could not ignore the facts the recruiter presented, the interpretation I chose, after our parting, was that women needed the Lifedesigns technologyexactly becausewe have definitively proven that biases and obstacles exist. We've proven they exist, and we've also proven we can fight harder and work longer and give more, that we can compete and win -- or at least place -- in other people's races. The question now is, What race do we want to be swimming in? This is what the Lifedesigns program is about, and why, I decided, it was so desperately needed.
As we begin the twenty-first century, women -- in the United States, at least -- have significantly shifted their place in the world. Many of the struggles of the last hundred years have been about getting what men had that we didn't: the vote, the chance, the independence, the freedom, the partnerships, the salaries, the promotions, the board seats, and so on. Though the world still presents us with structures that are male-designed and -dominated -- I know someone who has the facts to prove it -- it is impossible to ignore the deep and significant gains we've made in access to opportunities. But even the women whohavebroken through, who have the partnerships, the salaries, the promotions, and the offices, are often wondering,Is this all there is?It was the question I had asked myself when, in the spring I turned forty, I got an office overlooking Central Park as part of a promotion. As I sat down on my gorgeous white couch on my first day, a sinking feeling overtook the luxurious atmosphere of corporate privilege. The fabulous office with the breathtaking view, I knew, wasn't "it." I had achieved the trappings of success that many people spend their lives trying to get. But, like many women, I had been so busy fighting to get there I hadn't allowed myself to question whether "there" was where I wanted to be. I'd been afraid, with my nose to the grindstone, to look up.
I think I was feeling what Gloria Steinem talks about inRevolution from Within:that like many women who have achieved "success," satisfaction was eluding me, because the "success" I'd achieved was preordained, predefined, prepackaged. And the question of why -- of what it's for -- remained obscure, because the demands of my daily life discouraged the sort of long-term thinking that would clarify or refine a higher vision.
Sometimes, by the way, we never even develop a vision of what "it" is! Women are taught from an early age to fit in, to be nice, not to stand out, to be pleasing. Often, they're waiting to be recognized or rewarded -- or rescued -- by others, before they acknowledge their dreams to themselves. They're waiting for the "right" answer to appear from outside, never knowing that they get to -- and have to -- make up what that right answer is for themselves. Women have the children, and are increasingly responsible for aging parents; we'retaughtto be responsible, and responsive, and to wait until those responsibilities ease up before we define and pursue our dreams. We're waiting to be married, or divorced; waiting until the children are a little older, until things calm down at work. And while we're waiting, while we're looking the other way, another window of opportunity to move nearer to the life of our dreams quietly closes. Until, if we wait long enough, we have a moment when we realize that something fundamental that we wanted in life has passed us by.
Now, in my office that day, I hadn't yet missed the boat -- at that point I still hadn't defined what my boat was. All I knew was that my definition of great wasn't all the things I'd thought it was. It wasn't about having everybody think I was drop-dead gorgeous, or marrying the greatest guy, or having a bunch of stuff, or fitting in well enough to earn the great promotion that merited the office.
A few years later, I listened to Women of Enterprise winner Judy Bliss describe how she developed her $1.4-million business, Mindplay. Because her family had little money -- her mother took in ironing to make a living while her father was in prison -- Judy had grown up making cardboard cutout toys for her two younger sisters, to entertain them. Much later in life, as a computer programmer and the mother of a six-year-old son, Judy had decided to quit her job because her boss refused to listen to her predictions about the coming popularity of the personal computer. Judy's son had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, or ADD, and was having difficulty learning to read. Judy herself had always had difficulty reading, and had read very slowly; for years, her strategy for staying ahead had been to wake herself up at four a.m. each day and read for a few hours before going back to sleep. Now, having quit her job, and working at her dining table, Judy began to see clearly that her son was not learning to read. She began to design programs to teach him to read. But kids being kids, whenever her son knew he was supposed to be learning, he refused to execute Judy's programs. So Judy began to invent games -- as she had for her sisters, years before -- to get her son to learn. These games became the products that Mindplay sells.
As I listened to Judy's story, something occurred to me -- again, something so obvious I almost missed it. The women I'd been listening to all these years, I realized, didn't set out to create astoundingly successful businesses. Carolyn Stradley didn't say to herself, while living in the woods, "You know what? I think I'll start my own firm, become a renowned woman entrepreneur, and be honored by whoever is elected president of the United States in 1992. It'll befabulous." None of them, in fact, had ever mentioned setting out to make a lot of money, to be recognized, to smash the glass ceiling, or to become powerful. What they'd done was to develop a vision of what they wanted their life to be, a vision so compelling that they'd created resources where there were none, surmounted insurmountable odds, even re-created themselves. Not because they'd hit bottom, or because they'd set goals, but because what they were going after mattered to them more than anything else in their life. Judy cared more about creating a world in which her son would learn to read than about anything else. Her extraordinary success came in the pursuit of something very simple: how she wanted her life to go.
This held true, I realized, on whatever scale women were operating. I'm on the board of Trickle UP, an organization that helps people start businesses in third-world countries with an initial investment of about $50. At the three-year mark, these entrepreneurs, the vast majority of whom are women, have an extraordinary business success rate of over 85 percent. These women have fewer children, and they achieve literacy rates far higher than women who are urged by governments to do things that are good for them. They succeed not because the industrialized world says they're supposed to, but because they need to in order to chase their dream of economic independence.
When you develop a vision that matters -- a statement of what's already most important to you -- you can achieve breakthroughs. You don't necessarily need to work harder, or expend more effort, but simply to identify what it is you're workingfor.
My own moment of vision came on a plane after working for corporate America for twenty years, after a conference during which I'd announced, without permission, that the huge corporation I worked for could actually sell women's empowerment and self-fulfillment. Unfortunately, they'd seen the program I was developing as a marketing tool, or a human resource tool to inspire salespeople, not as a product in itself. "What does that have to do with anything?" the other corporate officers had asked me later. "We have to make our numbers!" The listening they offered, and the responses they gave to my ideas, were skeptical and lukewarm at best. On the plane home, the words of the high-powered marketing consultant I'd retained as I was designing the Lifedesigns program echoed in my mind:Is this a business or a cause?When I'd replied that it was both, he'd corrected me. No, he'd said, you have to choose. As I drifted in and out of sleep, I think I subconsciously recognized that like so many corporate women, I'd earned success at the expense of being fully female. You can ride in the front seat where we make the money, the men seemed to be saying, but only if you put your values and your causes and your caring about the world in the trunk. When I woke up I had acknowledged to myself that I would never be able to realize my vision within a corporation -- any corporation -- that hadn't been designed to my specifications.
On the back of a tattered envelope I pulled from my purse, I wrote down: M.O.B. These initials stood for My Own Business. I jotted down notes of what I pictured: myself as a motivational speaker who would do appearances, create seminars, and produce books and tapes that made a difference in other women's lives. On this envelope I made a small, quiet declaration of my future. I decided that I could design Lifedesigns to help women who wanted to make a difference, make it. That I would challenge the notion that the stock price and the bottom line were incompatible by creating good, and joy. And -- dare I say it -- money.
I left everything I knew, and had succeeded at, to create Lifedesigns. The program was developed with the input of consultants, employees, colleagues, friends, husbands, daughters, the workshop leaders, and, of course, the participants. Transforming that initial seed of a declaration into a profitable motivational company took three years. During that time I experimented with many ideas that partly worked -- and partly didn't -- all the while defining and refining the way I was going to make my vision a reality. The experience shifted how I thought. Radically. It convinced me that we're not just here to survive, to get through, to function impressively, or to support someone else's dreams, that none of us is here to settle, to compromise, to allow life to happen and hope it's not too bad. We're here to live fully and passionately, to allow ourselves to be fully who we are. Not to have it all, but to spend it all, to use it all up. I love this quote from Shaw's playMan and Superman:
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
What I want on my tombstone is not: SHE COPED, but rather SHE WAS HERE...AND IT WAS NEVER THE SAME.
The Lifedesigns program is designed to provoke profound shifts in thinking. My mission is to provide you with the skills, confidence, and capability to createyourversion of a fabulous life. I'm out to explode your sense of personal and professional possibility, to give you a method for designing and creating a life you love, to support you, and help you support yourself during your transition. And I'm committed to your knowing that you're not alone in pursuing your goals.
One of the skills you'll develop, in the course of this book, is reaching out to others, and especially other women -- either in informal groups, formal professional organizations, or larger networks. Perhaps one reason some women now hesitate to identify themselves with such a valuable movement as feminism is that it's picked up such negative vibes in the popular mind-set. A feminist is often now perceived to be a woman who's angrily fightingagainstsomething. The image of the women's movement that seems to be floating around in the culture these days is of a bunch of women coming up over a hill with pith helmets, with picks and axes! But when you define and then declare your precise vision of what you want in life, you blame no one. Making a commitment to design and create your dream life is a stance that is notagainstanybody or anything, butforjoy and self-satisfaction. And declaring your dreams creates an almost instant community of supporters. Declaring what you want, rather than attacking what is, creates a positive force that brings others, including the men, along. The model of being chosen makes martyrs and victims of women in all kinds of little ways, all the time, whereas the model of choosing, and continuing to take responsibility for those choices, creates an inclusive space that says:This is my journey, to my dream, and I want you to come. There's plenty of room, and anyway, I need your help.It's a stance that's too loving to resist.
Since you're not creating a practice life -- since this is the only life we'resureof having -- I invite you to make your life burn brightly: to look past the frustrations, to dump the old beliefs that aren't working, to create and refine a vision for your life you can stand in -- and stand for -- now. Whether you're at the point of wanting to reconnect with your dreams and passions, or you're pursuing them tentatively; whether you're "successful" but dissatisfied or you're satisfied and happy, yet seeking to make a greater contribution -- wherever you are in your life, my goal in this book is to convince you that the life of your dreams is a matter of your design, your power, your control, and not something that "happens to you." Scary as it may be, I'm inviting you to chuck the idea that it's any harder for women. To shed your belief in -- your conviction in -- what holds you back. To peel off the fear that you're too old or too young; a little too big, a little too small; that you're too enthusiastic, or too emotional; that you're "too black" or "too white" -- or just a little too female. To quit having to be right about how wrong it is, and was, and how wrong it is around here. To abandon the desire to be provided for, to stop waiting for the world to serve up the perfect environment in which to develop and express yourself. To design and create that environment yourself. To declare your passions to others, and to reach out to support other women's dreams. Most of all, to consider the power of your own possibilities, the power of one individual -- a single woman -- to make a difference in the world.
Thousands of women have participated in Lifedesigns. Whether they're CEOs or homemakers, actors or artists, students or mothers, entrepreneurs or athletes -- we've even had a Rockette! -- they all had in common a dream of making a greater difference in the world. Over and over, I'll be asking what "great" looks like to you. The exercises will encourage, beg, and badger you to define success in your own terms; to define, refine, and then declare a vision that matters to you. Once you've put what you want out into the world, the book will walk you through the process of making your dream real, a process that will serve as a template for change in any area. If this sounds grandiose, keep in mind: I am now living the declaration I made on the back of an envelope.
So I will begin by declaring, again, that my vision is to empower women, worldwide, to design and live the life of their dreams. This book is a catalyst to enable you to do just that.
Copyright © 1998 by Gail Blanke Enterprises, LLC
Excerpted from In My Wildest Dreams: Simple Steps to a Fabulous Life by Gail Blanke All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
