Baker - Design the life you love: a guide to thinking about your life playfully and with optimism

Copyright 2015 by Ayse Birsel

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

www.tenspeed.com

Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Birsel, Ayse.

Design the life you love : a guide to thinking about your life playfully and with optimism / Ayse Birsel.

pages cm

1. Creative ability. 2. Self-actualization (Psychology) 3. Motivation (Psychology) I. Title.

BF408.B487 2015

158.1dc23

2015014360

Trade Paperback ISBN9781607748816

eBook ISBN9781607748823

eBook design adapted from print design by Kara Plikaitis

v4.1

A + PRH

CONTENTS

All design involves risk and daring. After all, you are creating something new and original. If you are here, you are courageous!

Dear reader,

YOU ARE COURAGEOUS!

If you are reading this book, it means that you want to be the designer of your own life; that you are interested in thinking about your life proactively; that you have things to explore and changes you want to make creatively.

This book is for anyone who, like me, thinks that your life is your most important project. It does not require that you have any design or creative experience, just the desire to explore your life from a new point of view and to learn to think like a designer.

Welcome to designing the life you love.

Design the Life You Love started as an experiment. I had just finished putting my creative process on paper, as a tool to share with my team at Birsel + Seck, the design studio I lead with my husband, Bibi Seck, in New York, and our clients. But first I needed a test project. What better testing ground than my own life, something I have come to consider my biggest project? I first shared it with my friends, whove helped me to fine-tune the steps and given me the confidence to go do it. Then I did my first workshop. And things started to grow from there. Which brings us to this book youre holding in your hands!

Design the Life You Love is the intersection of my design process, Deconstruction: Reconstruction, and my biggest project, my life.

As I was starting Design the Life You Love, I received this message from my friend and mentor, Ralph Caplan, author of By Design.

Dear Ayse, When it comes to life, there is no such thing as design. There is only redesign.

Ralph has been a big influence in my life since the day I met him when I was 24 years old, and his words rang so true to me. Indeed, you will be redesigning your life. Except this time you will have a design process and tools to do it.