My husband called me while I was at the grocery store to tell me he had just listened to a podcast of an interview with Danielle Laporte. I was making my way through the Prilosec section, acutely aware of the figure I cast: I use a Bluetooth to talk on the phone because it leaves both hands free for driving, petting the dog, and, in this case, pushing a grocery cart, but I’m also aware that it makes me look slightly crazy, as if I am talking to myself–and answering myself–animatedly. But as I exited the antacids and entered the cereals, I forgot to be self conscious, ironically because my husband was talking about just that: self consciousness. But of another kind.
The Desire Map, LaPorte’s book upon which the interview he heard was based, is about arriving consciously at the doorstep of our lives. It’s about putting considerable thought and intention into how and what we want to feel in our lives. LaPorte talks about gratitude lists (something my life coach has been hammering into me), goal setting, and a letting go of the kind of ambition that blinds you to what you have actually already achieved. We feel 900 feelings in the course of a day, LaPorte says in her podcast (which I ran home and listened to immediately), but she encourages us to come up with a list of no more than 5 feelings we WANT to feel, and that we are willing to commit to feeling,which we do by consciously showing up in our lives on a day to day, hour by hour basis. Got your list of 5 desired feelings? Now what can you do that will make you feel them? If one of your desired feelings is joy, what can you do today that will bring you joy? If one of your desired feelings is connection with others, what can you do today that will make you feel that? Hour by hour, day by day, we build our lives through conscious intention.
LaPorte is youthful-sounding and accessible and her insights tie directly into the concepts and cornerstones of my life coach training. I’ve downloaded her book on Kindle and I’m reinstating my gratitude lists and I’m going to make a list of “accomplishment” goals and “feeling” goals. Right after I put away the malted milk balls and the Prilosec.