Excerpt from the Book Proposal by Tom Ferry and Laura Morton
LIFE! By Design: 10 Steps to an Extraordinary You is based on methods tested over nearly two decades of Tom Ferry’s work as a success coach to more than 100,000 sales people, executives, entrepreneurs, realtors and lenders, who are also husbands, wives, mothers, and fathers, ready to make the shift from living and working by default to living a life By Design. Tom is dedicated to teaching and working with people to resolve TODAY’s real challenges, helping us identify and overcome four universal “addictions”—not to drugs or alcohol, but a mindset that encourages too many of us to live our lives on auto-pilot; to settle for less than we’re capable of; to be averse to change. Understanding these issues is the crucial first step along a path to greater joy and fulfillment in various arenas of our lives—money, relationships, health and vitality.
Tom Ferry’s advice and experience is especially germane in the face of the devastating economic climate we face today. Tom has spent his entire career helping “A-list” corporate executives stay at the top of their game; mid-level executives correct flaws and improve results as they work their way up the corporate ladder; and top performing sales professionals break their own records.
As a frequent lecturer for major businesses and their executives, Tom Ferry has blazed a trail in the fiercely competitive field of success coaching, helping many thousands of clients double the number of transactions and income they were making within one year of working together while creating a better balance in all areas of their lives. His success is predicated on helping his clients regain their quality of life by addressing the personal lives, career, health and vitality, all of which impact their overall performance.
After years of sharing his secrets to living an extraordinary life By Design to his exclusive list of clients, Tom has finally decided to write the manual so that everyone can benefit from his masterful expertise. LIFE! By Design: 10 Steps to an Extraordinary You is a self-help success book filled with fresh contemporary anecdotes, candid dialogue and a no holds barred approach to waking people up from the coma they’ve been living in and getting them to live their lives By Design.
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Most of us overcompensate in one area of our lives as a way of masking problems in other arenas. I have dozens of clients who throw themselves into work as a way of avoiding dealing with troubles in other quadrants of their lives, such as their marriage, relationships and health. When I ask if they know why they do that, most of them come back with some excuse or another, but never a reason.
But there is a reason; there’s always a reason. For most of us, it’s easier—or, anyway, we imagine it’s easier—to keep slogging forward, on autopilot, what I call living by default—than to ask ourselves the hard questions. Which means that most of us choose to live with pain and disappointment, falling short of our potential in every sphere of our lives.
Why do we choose this? Is being stagnant really easier than change? How easy is daily struggle, self-pity, and failure?
Here’s the thing. To achieve real change and growth, you have to decide what it is you’re not taking responsibility for in life.
What are you avoiding?