The idea of Life Sculpting

So as I'd been thinking about these concepts of change, and the fact that we
change our lives by systematically beginning a process of incremental
change, which starts by systematically changing the our regular thought
patterns, I began to get this idea of life sculpting.

It started when I was chatting to someone who was into body building, and
he spoke about doing exercises that "sculpt" certain muscles.  You would do
a certain amount of repetition of a specific exercise, every second day, and
these exercises apparently had to be quite precise.  This would develop the
muscle in exactly the way you want it to develop, and so you would sculpt
this body you want.

So I began to realize that this is what we need to be doing in our lives.  If you
really want to become all that you could be, if you really want a life that is
exactly the way you want it to be, then you have to begin to sculpt your life.

And how does one do that?

You have to begin to ask yourself what it is that you want from your future.  
You have to do what I call a "dreamstorm."  Most people have heard of a
brainstorm before.  A brainstorm session is where you get a bunch of people
together, or you can to it by yourself, and with regards to a specific issue or
problem, you just start coming up with ideas.  There is no judgement at this
point, you just come up with all the ideas you can, and later you begin to sort
through them, to look for the good ones.

Now a dreamstorm is more likely to be a solitaire exercise.  Find yourself a
quiet spot, and begin to imagine your future.  Begin to build that future.  See
who you want to be, what you want to do, where you want to go.  Have no
reserve at first.  Be as outrageous as you want to be.  Write all your ideas
down, or draw pictures, or do whatever you do to remember your thoughts.

From this now, pick the items that you like in that future.  

Now begin to ask yourself, what skills, abilities, values, characteristics and
resources you need to make those dreams a reality.

And once you know that, the process is really simple.  Make a decision that
from this day onwards, you will spend some time, every day, working on
developing those skills, building those values and characteristics, finding out
more about those dreams, learning where one obtains the kind of resources
you might need, and so on.  

And then simply do that.  Have some time - even if it is just twenty minutes a
day - that you spend on your life sculpting activities, to begin to move your
life in that direction.

It is my experience that once we start doing this, then over time, our lives
begin to move more and more in that direction.  I call this the principle of
"Walking the Land we want to Possess."
The Idea of Life Sculpting