Designing Your Self: Blocking Out External Noise

 

What choices are you making today that define who you are? Designing your life enables you to identify exactly who it

is you want to be and what it is you want to do. Your life is the greatest thing you will ever manage. You are the CEO 

of your life. You are responsible for the majority of the choices you make.

Designing Your Life

Designing your life demands that you have an open mind. It bestows power and trust in the palms of your hands to 

construct your life and live it the way that is best for you and not so much in the way that others might expect or want 

you to live it.

Imagine this process as being somewhat similar to flipping a house. Sometimes you have to take a home down to 

it's studs to rebuild something better.

Here are a few actions you can take to design your life and block out the external noise.

Demolition Day

Designing your life emphasizes the need for a wee bit of demolition. It may require you to break down a few walls, 

break up a few floors, and evaluate a few things about our foundation.

You very may have to consider what is working for you and what it is that is no longer working for you start to examine 

what it is you need to change. Demolition day requires us to question everything we know and whether or not it’s still 

the right answer.

Values Interior

Designing yourself cannot take place with a self-assessment of your values. Instead, you have to turn inward to assess 

those values you hold dear and habitually practice, and which values are merely wallpaper on the wall that you is not 

an accurate representation of you at all but an unattainable aspiration.

Renovation

After it’s this process of self-reflection is complete, you are ready to begin the renovation process. You are now prepared

to move and think differently whether how it is you engage people every day or your degree of dedication and 

performance in the workplace.

Other Actions to Design Your Life

There are other actions you can take to design your life despite the circumstances that may be influencing you.

Establish the Meaning of Your Life

Bill Burnett of Stanford University suggests that we must identify the meaning of our life. This step entails examining 

what it is we believe, the job we do, and who we are as examples of steps within this process. This step encourages 

us to find meaning by making vital connections between our life and work.

Make a Plan

What’s your three to five-year plan? You may scoff at this question because you are merely trying to make it through 

today but having a set of ideas can help you to ensure that what you are doing, the people you are around, and the 

plans you are making each day are designed by you to ease into your future.

Accept Those Things You Cannot Change

Another aspect of designing your life is accepting those areas of it that you cannot control or change. People often tell 

us that if we do not like something that is happening, it is in our best interest to take steps to change it.

What about those things we cannot change?

What should you do? You may have to make the hard decision, for example, to move away from a city if you loathe the 

traffic, or you may have to change your job if there is no path to happiness with the current work you perform.

What Impact Do You Want to Have on the Lives of Others?

The critical thing to consider with this question is understanding what role it is you hope to play in the lives of others. 

The decisions we make or actions we take can have a considerable effect on another person. We can be a source of 

positive energy, and we can sometimes be a source of negative energy.

Take a Chance

Finally, do not miss an opportunity to take a chance. Designing your life does not mean you have to build rigid walls 

around everything you do or draw a hard line for the decisions you make.

Planning your life should also include an escape-hatch of sorts where you permit yourself to take a chance and try 

different things. It is your chance to take a risk and step outside of your safe-haven known as the comfort zone. Doing 

something different enables you to not become too stagnant in your life.

Remember, you own the blueprint for your life, and only you have the power to design your life.