Lee County Library System - The Best Year of Your Life

No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Ford's The Best Year of Your Life is a call to action to stop pretending that the future will bring you the life of your dreams and to instead start living your dreams in this moment and for the rest of your life.

Many of us spend our days thinking, talking and dreaming about what our lives could be like 'if only ...'. We make resolutions, we follow a new diet, we start exercise routines – we begin working on our lifelong goals and then we give up, get too busy and forget about what's truly important to us. Another year passes by and our dreams remain out of reach. But what if today you discovered that the life you've always wanted is right in front of you, well within your grasp? Are you ready to live it?

Debbie Ford not only answers these questions but offers a proven, practical blueprint for making today – this moment – the beginning of the best year of your life.

Creating a Powerful Intent

Imagine waking up each morning with an excitement and passion that you haven't felt in years.

Imagine going through each day, enjoying every moment, feeling purposeful and fulfilled. This is what you can expect if you live each day, week, and month of this year to its fullest — if you show up at each moment with the commitment to use all of your gifts, talents, and brilliance. This is exactly what you will experience if you bring forth the intent to have the best year of your life.

Like all great accomplishments, this life-changing journey must begin with a single step: You must create a conscious intent for this to be the best year of your life. An intent is a commitment to yourself to bring into existence a particular result. It is the driving force, the hidden compass, that directs your daily behaviors. A conscious intent acts as an organizing principle, guiding you to make empowering choices. It ensures that you are indeed the captain of your own ship, and it gives you the power to choose your destination. Intent precedes manifestation. With a powerful, conscious intent, you can chart your journey through life with clarity and focus, and choose the particular reality you want to create.

Intent is to humans what software is to a computer. When installed into your psyche, intent gives you access to new capabilities, which opens up new realities. Suddenly you are able to see your life through new eyes. When you powerfully choose to insert into your consciousness the intent to have the best year of your life — to load it into your hard drive, so to speak — you will see your life as you never have before. You will instantly have access to making changes instead of just talking about them. When you load the intent to have the best year of your life, you are choosing to bring into existence a life filled with love, laughter, success, and fulfillment. Following is an example that beautifully illustrates the power of intent.

Julia is a talented, vivacious woman who worked for my coaching organization for over two years. She liked her job and was good at what she did. She was happy and healthy, and had wonderful friends. By anyone's standards Julia was living a great life. Then, a year and a half ago, I offered to lead my staff through a "Best Year of Your Life" training. In the course of the training, Julia, along with the others, created the intent to have the best year of her life. Looking through the lens of having the coming year be her best year yet, Julia saw that she would have to make some immediate changes. Her first realization, which came as a surprise to both of us, was that she would have to quit her job and create a new career doing exactly what she loves to do: coaching others and playing golf. She also saw that if she was going to live her best year she would have to move to a place that inspired and uplifted her. Just by taking an hour to explore what her finest year would look like, Julia saw that she would have to make some major changes in two key areas of her life. Her new intent had allowed her to see what she couldn't see before. With great enthusiasm Julia explained, "I feel like I've been living in a little box and somebody just took the lid off and said, 'Hey, there is a whole big world out there and there are a thousand other options that you've never even considered.' "

Six months later, almost every aspect of Julia's life was completely unrecognizable. Her intent to have her finest year yet inspired her to move to a quaint little coastal town that she adores and to follow her passion for golf. She is now the founder and president of Championship Inner Golf, where she uses her coaching...