52 Practical and Inspiring Ways to Improve Your Life

Life Makeovers
by Cheryl Richardson

Now in paperback, the New York Times bestseller — featuring a powerful program that shows you how to reclaim your life one week at a time.

Cheryl Richardson, the bestselling author of Take Time for Your Life, known to millions for her "Lifestyle Makeover" series on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," recognizes firsthand how tough it can be to juggle the daily demands of living in a fast-paced world, and how easily you can become disconnected from your true self and what makes you happy. In Life Makeovers, she has taken all the know-how and insight she has gleaned from her years as a personal coach and distilled it into a simple, year-long program that shows how making small changes, over time, can have a huge impact on the quality of your life. In fifty-two simple yet profound essays, Richardson provides a plan for both reflecting and taking action, along with specific, practical advice and exercises to help readers gradually and permanently remodel their lives, week by week. Easy to use and fun to read, this workbook is the perfect companion to Take Time for Your Life. Topics include:

• The Gift of Time: It's Self-Management, Not Time Management
• Are We Having Fun Yet: When Life Gets Too Serious, Here's What to Do
• Give Your Brain a Vacation: For Finding the Best Ideas, Try This
• Standing in the Shadow: Whose Talent Are You Hiding Behind?
• Stop Juggling and Start Living: Here Are Some of the Balls to Drop
• Close Encounters: How to Make a Deeper Connection with Others

Her brief, personal essays will inspire you to make changes, and her Take Action Challenges, which appear with comprehensive resource sections at the end of every essay, will guide you through small steps that will teach you to think, act, love, work, and even laugh in a whole new way. Written in Richardson's signature, heartwarming style, Life Makeovers is the ideal book for anyone looking for a balanced way to stop dreaming about a better life and start living one.

How often do you daydream about living a better life — a life that reflects more of you, your values and deepest desires? How many times have you come to the end of a busy week and toyed with the fantasy of packing a bag and leaving it all behind? I'm sure I don't need to tell you that in today's world most people live with a nagging sense that something's missing or that life is passing them by. So many of us long for time to discover who we are and what we really want before it's too late.

For the last nine years I've worked as a personal coach helping clients to reevaluate their lives and connect more deeply with what really matters most. The goal was to improve the quality of their lives. The improvements varied, depending on the client. For some, new jobs that honored their values and their need for a life outside of work helped make a difference. For others, getting the right support or putting smart systems in place allowed them to eliminate the stress of success. And, it was not uncommon for clients to scale back or simplify their lives dramatically in order to reclaim the peace and serenity they desired. Each client's story was unique, and yet they all had one common goal — to live a more authentic life, one that reflected their values and most treasured priorities. Let's see if any of these stories sound familiar. . . .

As Olivia stands by the window in her office looking out over the city, she wonders where her life is headed. Working as a manager for a high-tech company, she feels like she's been on a wild ride. Stock prices are up, sales are strong, and she's been a major contributor to the success of her division. Her work used to be rewarding, but now Olivia feels miserable. Although she found the life she thought she wanted, she feels as if she's lost herself.

Olivia gets up early every day, hits the gym by 6, gets to her desk by 8, and on most nights leaves the office after 7:30. She daydreams about how life used to be when she spent more time with her friends, dated on a regular basis, and had more time to herself. At this point Olivia says that her life feels like one long routine day after another. She's tired, lonely, and ready for a change.

Olivia's situation is a good example of what happens when we dedicate so much of our life to work — we end up missing our life. We forge ahead, get many of our needs — such as the need for community, recognition, or accomplishment — met at work, and suddenly discover that we no longer have a personal life to go home to. This realization can be a hard pill to swallow.

Sometimes, however, the problem is a little different. For example, in David's situation, his success has given him much more than he bargained for. Sitting at his desk at the end of a busy day David wonders if all his hard work is really paying off. His consulting business is more successful than ever. He's made more money this year than in the last two years combined. And, he can barely remember the days when he worried about making payroll. Yet David walks around with a nagging feeling that something is missing. Although he's reached the level of success he always hoped for, it doesn't feel the way he expected it to feel. He has more responsibility than ever — a loving wife, three small kids, a large house in the country, and twenty-five employees to manage. Instead of feeling happy about the role he's created for himself, David says he feels like an employee working for everyone else. He often fantasizes about selling the business, downsizing his family's lifestyle, and trying something new. David's not sure he's willing to continue paying such a high price for success.

Or there's Margaret, whose unhappiness has more to do with an inner challenge than with her external circumstances. After dropping the kids off at school, Margaret drives to work feeling conflicted. The mother of two boys and the owner of a wholesale gift company, Margaret feels like she's being pulled in two different directions. On the one hand she thrives on the excitement and sense of accomplishment that she gets from growing a successful company; on the other, she longs to be with her boys while they're growing up. The stress of this conflict is starting to wear her down. It's hard enough juggling what feels like two full-time jobs (her business and her family), but the added pressure of this inner turmoil makes it unbearable. Margaret knows that something's got to give.

Although the details of your life may be different, the feelings of frustration, exhaustion, and loneliness may be all too familiar. For many of us who live in a fast-paced, adrenaline-fueled society, questions about meaning, purpose, and true happiness are faithful companions in the day-to-day creation of our lives. We long for something more. Years of searching for happiness and fulfillment in the external world of work have taken their toll. We've lost ourselves in the daily madness of our busy lives.

As a personal coach I became a partner with my clients, and during our weekly meetings I'd help them to reevaluate their priorities, redefine success based on a more holistic perspective of life, and take the necessary actions to bring about the positive changes they desired. Each week clients would leave with an action plan, and I quickly noticed that the small weekly homework assignments started to make a big difference. One client, who had lived in a chaotic, cluttered environment for years, started creating order out of chaos and regained a whole new perspective on his life. Another client, who had suffered from the heavy burden of debt created by years of financial irresponsibility, began to make small weekly changes that improved her financial health, and her savings started to grow.

During my time working with clients I learned a lot about what prevents us from living authentic, meaningful lives. And as I shifted my attention from working with individuals to working with groups, I received a lot of feedback on what was holding them back as well. In December 1998 I published Take Time for Your Life in order to share this knowledge with a larger audience. In this book I took readers through the same coaching process that I used with clients in my private practice. The steps in the book were designed to help readers take a realistic look at their lives and to help them evaluate what needed to change in order for them to feel happier and to live a higher-quality life.

For example, I encouraged readers to begin making self-care a top priority, so they could make proactive life choices instead of reactive ones. I led them through a process of getting their priorities straight, identifying and eliminating those things that were draining their energy, and investing in their financial health, so they would feel more fully in charge of their lives. I introduced readers to the challenges of living in an adrenaline-crazed society, and I showed them how to slow down and begin exchanging unhealthy forms of fuel, like caffeine, sugar, and anxiety, for healthier forms, like a supportive community and a personalized spiritual practice.

Copyright © 2002 by Cheryl Richardson. Excerpted by permission of Broadway, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Cheryl Richardson is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Take Time for Your Life, Life Makeovers, and Stand Up for Your Life. As a professional coach and speaker, her work has been covered widely in the media, including the Today show, Good Morning America, The New York Times, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Cheryl led the Lifestyle Makeover Series on The Oprah Winfrey Show and accompanied Ms. Winfrey on the "Live Your Best Life" nationwide tour. She lives in Massachusetts.