Written by: Shehnaaz Elahi, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
There are many theories out there that claim to make you progress in your life through coaching. However, the main problem with coaching is that you stay dependent on your coach to push you and reach your goals. To tackle this problem and make you become more self-sufficient and self-reliant a new theory is developed, called Life Design Psychology.
How come people are struggling to put things into practice, even though they talked about it with their coach or counselor? How come ideas stay merely impractical philosophies and ideas and barely reach the concrete reality? How come people build all kinds of fantasies and have little energy left to actually execute their desired dreams?
Through following and combining different teachings, I developed a new way of looking at the problem “How to go from theory to practice?” We all know that you have to apply what you learn or know before you can actually book results. Still, people are hesitant to actually get out of their comfort zone. In reality, it means to make the steps smaller, and the goal by itself is too intimidating. As the saying is, “Rome wasn't built in one day,” which means that you have to be modest and take small steps towards a bigger goal. Even if you are quite ambitious, sometimes it is better to not be too ambitious and start with actually executing the small steps that make you reach the first phase of your goal.
Life Design Psychology is all about making the theory as concrete as possible. To shape your life, there are 12 different areas in life that are addressed by proper questioning and self-reflection. Asking the right questions is crucial to understand how to improve a certain aspect of your life and why sometimes certain aspects are not working out as you planned or hoped for.
“Life Design Psychology is based on 12 different areas of your life that are equally important”
Life Design Psychology is based on the 12 houses in the theory of Astrology. If you look at the deeper meaning of these areas, these are actually all psychological areas that you can work on in your life, regardless if you use astrology or not. By asking the proper psychological and self-reflection questions per area, you can gain a sufficient amount of insight and with your free will to determine what you want out of each area you can direct yourself to make progress by becoming more aware of each area and its current state. The first step of changing something is becoming aware something needs to change. Also, you come to realize that different areas of your life actually influence each other, so one area can get better once you work on another area in your life. For example, your job satisfaction might not be what you expect, but you can balance it out by finding a passionate hobby that you can grow in and eventually use as a side project. Sometimes the skills you learn at your job or through your hobby are useful in both areas and you actually can progress in both areas that way.
“The Theory of Life Design Psychology actually stems out of the Ancient Spiritual Astrology”
Keeping in mind that perfectionism and high ambition can be pitfalls as well as great motivators, it is important to keep your balance and peace of mind. Acceptance of any progress, even if it means staying stable at where you’re at, and a Positive Mindset are both important to keep yourself going. By just being critical of yourself and others you demotivate yourself or can run a risk of burnout. It is important to pace yourself, not have too high expectations, but still have some out of your comfort zone goals to reach, so you will grow at what you are doing.
“Even as a high achiever it is important to keep your balance and take some gas back sometimes!”
Looking at your Life Design Plan by envisioning and answering the right questions makes you aware of how and where you can book your biggest progress in your life, and what really
matters to you. You can not start young enough with Designing Your Life, and it is actually fun to understand your life and organize it accordingly so you feel purposeful, meaningful and guided.
If you are interested in Life Design Consulting, feel free to drop me a message through email or through the website iluminavida.ca ‒ Shehnaaz Elahi
Shehnaaz Elahi, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Shehnaaz Elahi is a leading professional in Holistic Counselling. After her Master Studies in Psychology, she delved deeper into Alternative Medicine, Spirituality and Wellness to understand the deeper connection between Body, Mind, Emotions and Spirit. Her perspective on mental health care can be seen as revolutionary different than the mainstream popular western psychiatry. During her life, she developed her own vision and treatment plans to help people with different mental health disorders to recover and/or reduce psychiatric medication. The mind is capable of healing itself with the right holistic and natural treatments. She is an author of several autobiographical informational books and wrote many informational blog articles. Her mission is to help people alleviate their mental and emotional burdens with holistic and natural treatments.
