Travis - Design your next chapter: how to realize your dreams and reinvent your life

PRAISE FOR

DEBBIE TRAVISDESIGN YOUR NEXT CHAPTER

One of the most difficult things humans face in their lifetimes, and sometimes more than once, goes something like this: What do I do now? How do I find my new purpose? What really makes me happy? Debbie Travis new book, Design Your Next Chapter, is the perfect literary companion to help you take the first step to actualizing your passions. Right from the opening paragraphs, you get a real sense that Debbies experiences, both good and bad, will shine a light on taking chances and understanding that you, too, can take a leap towards new adventures in your own life. This book is not only inspiring but very funny, whimsical and infectious, and I know it will light a fire and motivate you to embrace the best things in life!

JANN ARDEN , singer-songwriter, and author of Feeding My Mother and Falling Backwards

In Design Your Next Chapter, Debbie shares her courage, strength, beauty, confidence, experience and heart. I want nothing else in my own life than to surround myself with positive and inspiring people like this incredible woman. How wonderful that in her book shes offering us real ways to create a future for ourselves that is exactly as we dreamed it could be.

LYNN CRAWFORD , chef and cookbook author

Honesty, passion and humourthese are the words I would use to describe my dear friend Debbie Travis. She pours her heart and soul into everything she does. This book exemplifies exactly that. Design Your Next Chapter takes you on a personal journey, in which youll discover your own destination just as Debbie discovered hers. You will laugh and you will cry. And if you are searching for that missing piece of yourself, her book will throw you a lifeline.

MARILYN DENIS , television and radio host

Debbie Travis combines her business, design and life experience in the most enjoyable, practical and stylish self-help book youll read this year.

TRISH HALPIN , editor-in-chief, Marie-Claire

Engaging and inspiring from start to finish, Design Your Next Chapter is a powerful reminder that when we have the courage to speak our truths and step fully into our dreams we can find the motivation to live our best lives. Diving into Debbies new book is like spending a day with a really inspiring friend.

CATHY LOBLAW , CEO, Ronald McDonald House Charities Canada

Let Debbie Travis be your guide, guru or best friend. She knows how to live life to the brim. In these pages, she shares both her secrets and practical steps leading to her formidable and inspiring successes. This funny, touching and smart book will surely propel readers to make startling changes in their lives.

FRANCES MAYES , author of Under the Tuscan Sun

I loved it. Design Your Next Chapter is wonderful in its honesty, freshness, self-irony and vital spirit.

PATRICIA REINMANN , publisher, DTV

I laughed, cried, nodded my head in agreement and had countless Aha! moments. The honesty with which Debbie shares her personal journey is the magic of Design Your Next Chaptera must-read for anyone looking for something more to life and having trouble turning the page. Through story-telling, humour, practical suggestions and encouragement, Debbies book provides both the proof that monumental change for the better is possible and the guidance to make it happen.

STEPHANIA VARALLI , Co-CEO, Women of Influence

PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA

Copyright 2018 Debbie Travis

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2018 by Random House Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Travis, Debbie, 1960, author

Design your next chapter : how to realize your dreams and reinvent your life / Debbie Travis.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 9780735274761

eBook ISBN 9780735274778

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

BF637.S4T73 2018 158 C2018-902693-6

C2018-902694-4

Book design by Lisa Jager

Interior art: (Moroccan pattern) ColorJuli / Shutterstock.com; (damask pattern) courtesy of the author

v5.3.2

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TO MY BOYS, HANS, JOSH AND MAX, AND TO ALL THOSE WHO HAVE DREAMED IT, DONE IT, AND LIVED IT. ESPECIALLY TO THOSE WHO ARE PRESENTLY AT LIFES CROSSROADS HOPING TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PLEASE WRITE AS YOU READ

This is your virtual handbook, both practical and personal. As you read this, keep a notebook at the ready and write the truth to yourself (Ive included a little section at the end specifically for prompting that!). Put the book away for a while and absorb the ideas. Allow them to work on you. When you pick it up again, look to see whats changed inside you, and in your life.