Caroline Adams Miller - Creating Your Best Life

CREATING
YOUR
BEST
LIFE

The Ultimate Life List Guide

CAROLINE ADAMS MILLER, M.A.P.P
and DR. MICHAEL B. FRISCH

New York / London
www.sterlingpublishing.com

To my extraordinary familymy husband, Haywood, and my three marvelous children, Haywood IV, Samantha, and Bayard. Their steadfast belief in me and my ability to write this book, as well as their bottomless love, gave me what I needed to pull this off. I am richly blessed and very grateful.
CAM

To Ed Diener, my inspiration, and to my dear ones, Jacob, Ron, and Hope.
MBF

Text from p. 213 (Four Point List) from Changing for Good by James O. Prochaska, Ph.D.,
John C. Norcross, Ph.D., and Carlo C. DiClemente, Ph.D. 1994 by authors James O. Prochaska,
Ph.D., John C. Norcross, Ph.D., and Carlo C. DiClemente, Ph.D. Reprinted by permission of
HarperCollins Publishers.

STERLING and the distinctive Sterling logo are registered trademarks
of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

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Published by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016
2009 by Caroline Adams Miller and Dr. Michael B. Frisch

Distributed in Canada by Sterling Publishing
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Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6K 3H6
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Sterling ISBN 978-1-4027-6259-8

T EXT DESIGN BY P AULINE N EUWIRTH , N EUWIRTH & A SSOCIATES , I NC .

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by Gary Latham

W HAT IS SO wonderful about psychological theory is that it enables us to predict, explain, and influence behavior. Because I am a scientist-practitioner employed in an academic setting, I hope you, the reader, will indulge me a moment while I deliberately write as one. This book is a must read because it brings science to lifeyour life. It explains in everyday language how scientific theories and the empirical research that underlie them can have a positive impact on what you think and how you behave in regard to yourself and those around you.

The first theory, goal setting, which Edwin Locke and I developed, states that (1) a specific high goal leads to higher performance than does no goal setting, or even urging people to do their best; (2) given goal commitment, higher goals lead to higher performance than easy goals; and (3) praise, money, and participation in decision making lead to an increase in your performance only if they lead you to set and commit to specific high goals. Satisfaction comes from the attainment of goals that are important to you. More than a thousand studies conducted between the 1960s and today show the validity of this theory.

Albert Banduras social cognitive theory explains how to get goal commitment. The first step is to focus on outcome expectancy: Discover the relationship between what you do and the outcome (good/bad) you can expect. Change the outcome you expect, and you will change your behavior. Second, find ways you can increase your self-efficacy, a can-do mind-set that a high goal is attainable. This book shows you how to take these two steps.

The third theory is based on Martin Seligmans research: learned optimism. If people can be convinced to confront the evidence by answering three straightforward questions, reality leads to resiliency following the inevitable setbacks life deals all of us: (1) Is the setback temporary or will its effects plague you forever? The answer is that its almost always temporary. (2) Does the setback pertain to everything you do or to just one thing you tried? The answer is almost always one or two things rather than everything. (3) Are you alone responsible for the setback or were there other factors involved such as time, people, resources? Get the picture? Now, get back on your feet and try again. This book explains multiple ways to do this.

As the boxer Muhammad Ali is fond of saying: Its goals that will keep me going. Goals will keep you and me going. Read this book with the confidence that the content is based on solid scientific findings, and then get going.

G ARY P. L ATHAM
Secretary of State Professor of
Organizational Effectiveness
Joseph L. Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto

W HEN I WAS small, I listened wide-eyed to my fathers stories about his uncles, Platt and Ben Adams, and how they had won gold, silver, and bronze medals in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden, as members of the U.S. Olympic Team. Instead of emphasizing their obvious athleticism, my father always focused on how theyd created a mind-set of success that allowed them to become, and remain, the only sibling pair to ever go one-two in a summer Olympic event.

My dads example stuck with me: Set your goals high, work as hard as you can, and then create a positive belief system if you want to create your best life.

My familys natural competitiveness found its outlet in my life through swimming, academics, and then my struggle to overcome bulimia in my early twenties. Success in these disparate areas required that I harness the exact same resourcespersistence, grit, self-efficacy, and the ability to set and achieve short-and long-term goals. I began to experiment with life lists, creative visualization, and related goal-setting fields throughout my early adulthood while I wrote books, started and ran a nonprofit, had three children with my husband, and worked with clients on strategies for how to achieve a healthy mind and body.

My fascination with the pursuit of individual excellence deepened, and I created a niche as a life coach with a specialty in goal setting, devouring all the information I could find to make me better and more knowledgeable at my chosen calling.

Coaching is a thriving profession that differs from therapy and consulting in important ways: Coaches partner with healthy, high-functioning clients to help them strategize and accomplish meaningful goals. For a high-quality coach, I believe that effective goal-setting knowledge is necessary, so this is where I have focused my study and energy for years.

In 2005, I was fortunate enough to be admitted to the first class of students at the University of Pennsylvania for the new masters degree in applied positive psychology, where I was tutored by the best in the world in this subject. It was there that I found a way to marry the science of goal accomplishment with the science of happiness, and my capstone project laid the groundwork for this book.