Living Your Best Life : Work, Home, Balance, Destiny: Ten Strategies for Getting from Where You Are to Where You're Meant to Be [Hardcover]

Laura Berman Fortgang (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 3, 2001

A prominent personal coach describes how we can attain our "best life" at home and at work-one in which we are more flexible, feel more in control, communicate more effectively, and work less hard but more productively.

"The insights she shares will help you reach the success and fulfillment you are destined for."
-Ken Blanchard

A founding member of the International Coach Federation and the president and owner of InterCoach, Laura Berman Fortgang is at the forefront of one of the fastest-growing consulting disciplines in the world. Teaching advanced communication and living skills, Fortgang has helped thousands of clients find more rewarding careers, make more money, and exchange a stressful daily treadmill of endless goal-seeking for a life in which gains come easily.

In Living Your Best Life, Fortgang shares her secrets of personal and professional satisfaction. She offers ten tried-and-true strategies to lead readers to what she calls a "best life"-one in which we've learned to honor our true desires and work with our individual talents rather than exhausting our energy on a traditional model of achievement. Instead of frenetically trying to have it all, she suggests we focus on asking ourselves what we really want. Her techniques teach us to ask questions that move us forward, not backward, to discover our own unique "lucrative purpose," and to design a "magnet" life plan that draws to us the more fulfilling existence we deserve. Notes.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

com, believes that an intuitive approach is the best way to get to one's "happy place" in work as in life. She advocates a "Reckoning, Doing, and Being" process, where "Reckoning" is learning cognitive tricks to decrease negative thoughts; "Doing" is coming up with and carrying out action plans; and "Being" is identifying and working with intuitive processes. Also like Whyte, Fortgang's approach is a variation on the "Do what you love and the money will follow" philosophy. Unlike Whyte, however, Fortgang doesn't weave a prose poem for readers to meander through; instead, she offers practical exercises and checklists, dos and don'ts, and, despite her sometimes New-Agey ideals, very concrete methods that readers can use to change their lives. She points out that people don't often know what will make them happy (a fact that a lot of self-help books ignore), and she gives suggestions on how to identify exactly what that certain something might be. For all public libraries.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

A brilliantly written, indispensable guide that touches and expands the very best of our hearts, minds, and spirits. -- Harold Bloomfield, M.D., Author of Making Peace with Your Past and How to Survive the Loss of a Love

Beware-this thought-provoking book will put you on a one-way path to a more creative and fulfilling life. -- Kyle MacLachlan - Actor

Fortgang generously offers glorious, refreshing guidance to help us each find our unique path in life. -- Jennifer Louden, author of The Woman's Comfort Book

Fortgang's Wisdom Access Questions have the makings of brilliance-simple, easy to use, hugely effective, and humblingly obvious. -- Judy George, founder and CEO, Domain

Laura helps you organize information... so you can move your life forward in positive ways. I can't recommend this enough!" -- Julia Sweeney, Actress

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Tarcher (May 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585420921
• ISBN-13: 978-1585420926
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,433,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wisdom Speaks, November 30, 2002

By 

Tracy Robert (Albuquerque, NM United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Living Your Best Life: Fortgang's insights will help you reach the success and fulfillment you are destined for (Paperback)

"Living Your Best Life" is a practical guide on discovering what you want while presenting the skills it will take to get it. The foundation of the book is the belief that each person has their own innate wisdom that can be used as a resource. Once you have tapped into that resource, a change in attitute and perspective can help you create the life your wise self desires.

I purchased this book as an informational companion to my role as a coaching client. As someone in the midst of many personal and professional decisions, I found the client success examples illustrating each idea to be energizing and inspiring. Fortgang's perspective is a breath of fresh air in a world that tells you to push for your goals. Fortgang supports allowing your innate wisdom to pull you toward your passion and purpose.

"Living Your Best Life" is not about making lists, or even making plans. It is about knowing what you really want in life, instead of what you think you can have. It is about being who you are so you can do what you are meant to do in order to live your best life.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-have resource for personal enlightenment!, May 7, 2001

By 

Lisa Taylor Huff - See all my reviews

This review is from: Living Your Best Life : Work, Home, Balance, Destiny: Ten Strategies for Getting from Where You Are to Where You're Meant to Be (Hardcover)

"Living Your Best Life" is the key to tapping into your personal inner wisdom. As a personal coach, I often partner with my clients as they learn to create balance, connect with their intuition and inner voice, and design lives that are truly expressions of who they are and what they really want, and I am always on the look-out for tools to guide my clients through their own personal development process. Laura's book is a wonderful resource for doing just that! Through a 10-step process, complete with client success stories and exercises, she will guide you to uncover your personal Life Blueprint, which you can then use to create the extraordinary life you were meant to live! I will be using this as a coaching tool with many of my clients! (www.coach2success.com)

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to tap into your inner wisdom, December 2, 2001

By 

Carlton Soohoo (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Living Your Best Life : Work, Home, Balance, Destiny: Ten Strategies for Getting from Where You Are to Where You're Meant to Be (Hardcover)

This is the second book that Laura has written based on her years of experience coaching hundreds of clients. I'm a firm believer that real life experience is the best teacher and in this book, Laura has shared great wisdom with us. Often when we are faced with problems or difficult situations, we feel isolated and think we are the only ones in the whole world who are suffering this badly! The more accurate reality is that there are many others who have gone through what we feel. As a life coach, Laura has guided hundreds of people towards uncovering their inner wisdom. In this recent book, she shows you her 10-step process of using your inner wisdom to manage your most difficult life situations. For example, instead of saying "woe is me", isn't it more powerful to ask "what can I do to get myself out of this situation?" In the back of the book, Laura's includes a whole list of empowering questions to ask yourself. If you're facing tough times or want a better life for yourself, go to the bookstore, and look in the back of this book for those questions that will get you results.

If you are a personal, business, executive, or corporate coach, you will benefit from this book because it takes all your classroom learning, and puts all the theory into practical real life coaching experiences. Specific examples of situations that clients are facing are detailed, along with the approach that worked to get them unstuck. You'll be able to appreciate how Laura constantly uses the right tools for each client situation. You'll find yourself saying, as I did, "ahhh, so that's what my teleclass instructor meant when she said ...".