Since it’s a New Year, I’m reviving an old post about one of my favorite books to help you figure out what you want. At this point, I’ve read The Desire Map at least six times, so I’m adding some new insights to the post as well. Enjoy!

If you’ve been following this blog for a while then you know I have a girl crush on Danielle LaPorte. She gives us fiery ambitious chicks (and dudes) something to think about. In fact, one of the best moments of WDS in 2013 was the chance to actually see her roc the mic in person.

While I’m usually on Danielle LaPorte’s products like white on rice, I knew The Desire Map would require more attention. So I waited. I also waited until after my book launch to really dive deep into this. So while the rest of the world started this work as early as December, I didn’t get my hands on this baby until the third week of January.

And I am so glad I did.

Not because it wasn’t good (it’s great, in fact!) but because the Desire Mapping process she walks you through requires your full attention. Attention that quite frankly I didn’t have for months.

So for those of you who are thinking about getting this book and working through this process, please make sure you create the space to do so! You will thank yourself later. I promise.

Below you’ll find my in-depth Desire Map review so that you can get the most out of reading the book and doing the exercises.

Goals with Soul

The entire point of The Desire Map is to match your goals to how you want to feel. Essentially, the pursuit of the goal should feel as good as attaining the goal itself.

As a self-proclaimed ambition junkie this hit me like a ton of bricks. How often had I gone after stuff to hit a benchmark? Or because it seemed like the next logical thing to do for my business? Or because I thought it would make me happy?

Similarly, how often had I struggled and strived to make shit happen? While my ambition and strong will have certainly gotten me incredibly far in life and especially my career, I knew there something was missing.

I realized that I, along with most of Western culture, had it ass backwards. Although I’ve been up to my eye balls in personal development since 2010, and although I intellectually knew that outside stuff doesn’t make you happy, and although I felt this truth many times in savasana at the end of a yoga class, I was still slipping big time. As a result, I was stressed, anxious, and not at ease despite the fact that I knew I had found my purpose. Somehow my successes would turn back into stresses.

When LaPorte walks through her theory things suddenly click. The entire point in this life is to feel good. And as we all know (and as I preach all the time), if you feel good the universe responds big time.We find solutions to problems, we feel at ease, and we can play big.  So imagine what would happen if we planned our goals and desires in alignment with how we wanted to feel? There’d be some fucking magic happening!

Core Desired Feelings

By the end of this book, you’ve identified your core desired feelings (CDFs) and planned some annual goals in accordance with those feelings. LaPorte walks you through each section of your life – career, money, relationships, health, spirituality – and asks you, “How do you want to feel?”

Not, “What do you want it to look like?” or “What do you want to hit this quarter?” or “What do you want your man to be like?”, but how do you want to feel when you think about the different areas of your life. She then encourages you to narrow it down to four of five feelings. These feelings will be at the core of everything you do.

After tons of scribbles in my moleskin, meditation, playing with words, time with a thesaurus, and time reading what the words actually meant I came up with the following for 2017:

Prosperity

Union

Allow

Divine Feminine 

These words don’t necessarily mean their literal sense. For instance, Divine Feminine doesn’t mean I’m going to join a goddess circle. To me, Divine Feminine means compassion, empathy, sexy, receptive, nurturing, and intimacy.  It’s about being the best woman I can be. Likewise, prosperity doesn’t necessarily mean I want to be dripping with diamonds (wouldn’t be too shabby though, eh?), it means I want to rich in every area of my life.

Similarly, they aren’t just words. They are intentions. And intentions are some powerful shit.

Desires as a Habit

LaPorte doesn’t just leave it there though. She teaches you how to apply these feelings to your life, and as such, start creating ideas, goals, and actions that will help you cultivate these feelings.

For instance, my career goal of creating one product this year that can better the lives of the members of my community makes me feel expansion, union, and opulence. If I make it just for women we can throw divine feminine in there too.

In essence, it’s no longer about the money, or about a sales, or about quarterly sales goals, it’s about feeling good and doing good. The money will then sort itself out. In my experience, when you stop stressing over numbers and instead focus on feeling good, the response you get is beyond anything you could imagine.

And just like I applied this to a career goal, I applied it to my personal life. THAT’S the beauty of all of this.

So from now on I’m:

• Going to plan my weekly work based on how I want to feel.
• Buy more flowers and light some more candles.
• Spend more time with my friends.
• Stop neglecting my personal life.
• Heading back to the yoga studio.
• Stop giving people money out of guilt (big one!)
• Walk outside more.
• Meditate in the morning BEFORE checking my phone.
• Allow myself to enjoy the fruits of my labor. This is going to be a big one for me in 2017.
• Take my desires and emotions into account when growing my business, building relationships, handling my money, and moving my body.

Why? Because I want to feel prosperity, I want to allow, I want to feel in union, and I want to feel the divine feminine.

Some tips for reading this book:

I found the following to be very helpful in getting in the right headspace for this kind of work:

• Lighting candles. (I’m loving Paddywax Green Tea Bamboo!)
• Natural lighting. Or, if doing this at night, soft yellow lighting.
• Lots of tea.
• Moleskin and a good pen. (Or you can buy the workbook separately from her site)
• Music that puts you in an introspective mood. (Deva Premal’s rendition of the Moola Mantra was on repeat while I read through the book.)
• A clean space. Preferably one where you don’t typically work.

Overall The Desire Map isn’t just a book. It’s a far out experience that will have you asking the big questions as you plan your life accordingly. I highly recommend this read and I recommend going through the process as often as you’d like.

Click here to purchase your own copy of The Desire Map (affiliate link).