In reading the exerpt of Tom Ferry’s new book – LIFE! By DESIGN, I realized a few things about myself and my life – both good and bad.

It appears that the focus of this book is to take control of your life by focusing on the things that you are not doing by choice or by design, and I realized as I read this chapter, that I am guilty of this in some areas of my life.  Recognizing this allows me the opportunity to begin to change that.

However, one of the questions of the book, also gives me the opportunity to remember that I already have somebody in my life who lived hers by design and gave me many of the tools to do the same if I simply choose to apply them.

One of the questions Tom asked was “Who were your most positive influences growing up?  How did they influence you?” 

Each time I hear a question like this, I think of my grandma.  She was born in a time when most women didn’t do things outside of the home and family.  However, in addition to raising four children, my grandmother was a part time primary school substitute teacher.  She took the money she earned from this and instead of using it as her “pin and curtain money” as my grandfather expected, she used it to “play” the stock market.  Once she had earned enough money from her stocks, she would put a down payment on another property.  She did this numerous time, and by the time I was born, she and Grandpa owned several properties throughout Southern California, including one on the beach.

She taught me much about what it means to be a strong woman, simply by being who she was.  She also taught me lessons about business without my even realizing I had been taught until many years later.  In teaching me to run a lemonade stand, she taught me how to keep my costs down and my profits up.  For more on this lesson, please see Our Lemonade Stand.

Between my Grandma, my paternal grandmother and my own mother, it was many years until I realized that a glass ceiling even existed.  All three of these women designed and ran their own lives, but of the three, my grandma was the one who always seemed to do things by her own design.

If I can simply remember to live by her lessons, I will take a huge step towards living my own life by design.

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As an aside, I came to the realization in reading this book, that though I have been working hard on my business, I have not been living by design in other areas of my life, particularly the personal side.  I appreciated having this brought to my attention as I realize there is more work and design needed in this area, especially for my family’s sake.

I look forward to reading the rest of the book and making some positive changes in my life as a result of what I learn.

This post is to help promote Tom Ferry’s upcoming book, LIFE! By DESIGN. The contents of my post are the result of some self reflection the preview chapter of the book asks us to do about ourselves.

You can Pre-Order the book now by visiting TomFerryBook.com. You can also participate in the promotion being done by ActiveRain for a chance to win some great prizes and 2500 points by visiting the promotional post here.

Everyone that orders a copy of the book between now and April 23rd, 2010 will also receive one ticket to attend Tom’s Success Summit, August 24-26th and the MP3 audio role play program: Objection Handling for Buyers, Sellers and Short Sales.

In exchange for writing this post, I could win an iPad or other cool prizes, and this is to let you know so the FTC doesn’t fine me.