Cornelia Shipley - Design your life : how to create a meaningful life, advance your career and live your dreams

Design Your Life: How to Create a Meaningful Life, Advance Your Career and Live Your Dreams By Cornelia Shipley
3C Consulting

Published in the United States by 3C Consulting
Copyright 2014 Cornelia Shipley

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014938259
3C Consulting: Atlanta, Georgia

ISBN 13: 978-0-9915619-0-2
ISBN-10: 0991561902

Cover design, layout, and typesetting: April Carter Grant
Publisher: 3C Consulting
Cover photo: Milan Carter

To my mother, Barbara Shipley (19412012)

Thank you for always encouraging me and believing that your one and only child could "make a significant difference." I pray that this book transforms lives just as your love transforms mine.

A project like this doesn't just happen. It takes a lot of effort from a lot of people.

First and foremost I would like to thank my husband, William, for loving me to life. Your presence is a gift from God, and your willingness to see me for not only all of who I am but all of who I can be motivates me to take designed action. I am so committed to living our lives together in ways that work for us, leaving the expectations of the world behind! I love you!

I want to thank my parents, Barbara and Anthony Shipley, for loving and supporting me unconditionally and for giving me the courage to live my designed life.

Thanks to Marshall Goldsmith for the great introduction to this book. I appreciate your generosity and support of this project. Thanks for helping me keep my MOJO.

I want to thank the best writing crew on the planet: Sophfronia Scott, my coach, collaborator, editor, and friend for supporting my vision and helping me to share this gift with the world; April Carter Grant and the team at Sugarsock.com for your amazing work on the cover and layout, and the entire publishing team for your work on the production of this book. Thanks to Bryan Neale for being a third eye on the manuscript and for giving your honest opinion.

To the best administrative team in the business: Holly Kile, Amy McKee, Kyna Baker, and Colleen Bedore, thanks for taking so much of the day-to-day stuff off my plate so I could focus on getting this manuscript done. Now the real work begins!

To my colleagues at 3C Consulting for supporting the vision, thank you!

To the Design Your Life Ambassador team for always supporting our students and serving them selflessly.

To my clientspast, present, and futurethanks for trusting me with your dreams and allowing me to walk with you on your journey as you make them come true.

To Maxine Brown Davis, Michelle Berger, and Lyn Allen, thanks for being three of the best coaches and colleagues a girl could ever have!

I am forever grateful for my faith and my Father (GOD) in heaven. For when I cannot walk on my own, you carry me.

Cornelia Shipley's Design Your Life: How to Create a Meaningful Life, Advance Your Career, and Live Your Dreams strikes very close to my heart. In her book, Cornelia will help you rediscover who you are so that you can live the life you've always wanted to live. Is your job also your passion? Do you have meaningful relationships? If not, how do you get there? These are very important questions about which I've held intimate group sessions with some very high-level people and good friends.

The participants at these sessions included leaders from the corporate, military, and human-services sectors, along with entrepreneurs and investment bankers. Some had already made transitions from their "day jobs"; some were near a transition period; and others were planning to continue in their present occupation for several years. The dialogue was amazingly open, candid, and supportive. And here's what we found out: most successful people aren't looking for leisure. Think about it. If you have the ambition and energy to achieve great success in any field, it's unlikely that it will stop because you are thinking of making a change. It's more than just money. While everyone in the groups agreed that money is nice, everyone also agreed that money can't buy meaning or happiness. And while everyone agreed that health is critically important, the people in the sessions were remarkably healthy, so health concerns were seldom discussed. Relationships with friends and family members were very important. Everyone agreed that relationships were a key factor in their future well-being. However, relationships weren't the most commonly discussed theme either.

What was most important to these highly successful people? Contribution, meaning, and happiness. These were so closely related, in fact, that they were almost impossible to separate. Each person wanted to give back and make a positive contribution, to continue to do work that had true meaning, and to be happy.

These people aren't any different from you, the reader of this book. As you think about designing your future, Cornelia will guide you through the process of picturing success as you want to see it and identifying whether or not your career is aligned with your true passion, all while helping you ensure your need for these three most important things: contribution, meaning, and happiness. Life is too short not to! In the new world, we don't have to love everything we do, but we need to find happiness and meaning in most of our professional work and personal lives. If not, it may be time for a change.

If it is time to make changes, let Design Your Life be your roadmap and Cornelia be your guide. You will be glad you did!

Life is good.

Marshall Goldsmith
Author or editor of thirty-four books, including the global bestsellers MOJO and What Got You Here Won't Get You There

Wow, what a journey! Writing Design Your Life: How to Create a Meaningful Life, Advance Your Career, and Live Your Dreams has been an amazing experience. Putting "pen to paper" to share with the world how to design a life that works for you gave me the unique opportunity to look back over the last few years and review the process I used to create the designed life I live today. The process outlined in this book helped me to embrace my true definition of success and abandon the "shoulds" of the world. I gave up what others said I should want, should do, and should have for the amazing life I live today. I left the corporate world, established a successful business of my own, reconnected with friends, and got to create memorable moments with my family. After years of fruitless dating, I used this process to focus on myself and learned to change the way I thought about relationships. As a result I fell in love and married a wonderful man and made plans to begin working on this book upon our return from our honeymoon.

Five days after our wedding, in the midst of an amazing trip in South Africa, we received a call from home with heartbreaking news: my mother had suddenly passed away. My grief wasand still isquite profound, and shifting from being on our honeymoon to planning my mother's funeral was one of the toughest things I've ever had to do. In the midst of the planning, I became acutely aware of how grateful I was that a little more than six years before I had taken the steps necessary to live from my values and standards! I had done the work necessary to be available to my parents when they needed me, to take family vacations, and to fall in love, all while doing work that has both meaning and value. In the face of this tragic loss, the life I designed was structured to support me in my grief and ensure that I could facilitate my own self-care. I learned firsthand that living a designed life enables you to respond to life's circumstances and challenges with grace and ease instead of stress and worry.