No 1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Ford's The Best Year of Your Life is a call to action to stop pretending that the future will bring you the life of your dreams and to instead start living your dreams in this moment and for the rest of your life. The Best Year of Your Life provides the reader with the blueprints to create the life they always wanted. This is a highly practical, detailed map for becoming the 'you' you have always wanted to be. Many of us spend our days thinking, talking and dreaming about what our lives could be if only... We make New Year's resolutions, we follow a new diet, we start exercise routines, we get to work on our lifelong goals and then...we give up, get too busy and move on. Our dreams still well out of reach. Yet all the while the life we always wanted is right in front of us, well within our grasp. In Debbie Ford's most practical and inspirational book to date, she offers a clear blueprint of how to make today, this moment be the beginning of The Best Year of Your Life.

Debbie Ford is a #1 New York Times bestselling author whose books are translated into twenty-six languages and used as teaching tools in universities and other institutions of learning and enlightenment worldwide. Her first three books, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, Spiritual Divorce, and The Secret of the Shadow, teach readers how to access their inner wisdom and receive insights about their lives by going within. Her fourth book, The Right Questions, shows readers how to turn their insights into action by giving them the practical tools to make life-changing choices. In this book, The Best Year of Your Life, Debbie unveils the proven formula for creating an extraordinary life, guiding you to step into your greatness and develop the aspects of yourself that will ensure your success. Her desire is to create a worldwide movement, enrolling millions of people to make this the best year of their lives. Please visit www.bestyearofyourlife.com for details. Debbie earned a degree in psychology with an emphasis in consciousness studies from JFK University, and in 2001 received the Alumni of the Year Award for her outstanding contribution in the fields of psychology and spirituality. She was awarded an honorary Doctorate from Emerson University in 2003, and in 2004 she received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the John F. Kennedy University Board of Regents. As the founder of the Ford Institute for Integrative Coaching (www.integrativecoaching.com), Debbie has developed ground-breaking coaching techniques that have been studied and used by individuals across the world. She is the creator and leader of the Shadow Process (www.shadowprocess.com), a three-day life-altering workshop that has transformed the lives of tens of thousands of people worldwide. Debbie has been featured numerous times on Oprah and Good Morning America, and is a welcomed return guest on radio and morning shows across the country. Her insightful teachings and revolutionary inner processes, combined with her intolerance for mediocrity, have made her an internationally renowned coach, motivational speaker, and seminar leader. To arrange for Debbie to speak at your conference or event, go to www.debbieford.com. To receive her action-oriented weekly Best Year of Your Life e-newsletter, please register at www.bestyearofyourlife.com.

The Best Year of Your Life
Dream It, Plan It, Live It

Chapter One

Creating a Powerful Intent

Imagine waking up each morning with an excitementand passion that you haven't felt in years.

Imagine going through each day, enjoying every moment,feeling purposeful and fulfilled. This is what you canexpect if you live each day, week, and month of this yearto its fullest -- if you show up at each moment with thecommitment to use all of your gifts, talents, and brilliance.This is exactly what you will experience if youbring forth the intent to have the best year of your life.

Like all great accomplishments, this life-changingjourney must begin with a single step: You must create aconscious intent for this to be the best year of your life. Anintent is a commitment to yourself to bring into existencea particular result. It is the driving force, the hiddencompass, that directs your daily behaviors. A consciousintent acts as an organizing principle, guiding you tomake empowering choices. It ensures that you are indeedthe captain of your own ship, and it gives you thepower to choose your destination. Intent precedes manifestation.With a powerful, conscious intent, you canchart your journey through life with clarity and focus,and choose the particular reality you want to create.

Intent is to humans what software is to a computer.When installed into your psyche, intent gives you accessto new capabilities, which opens up new realities. Suddenlyyou are able to see your life through new eyes.When you powerfully choose to insert into your consciousnessthe intent to have the best year of your life -- to load it into your hard drive, so to speak -- you will seeyour life as you never have before. You will instantly haveaccess to making changes instead of just talking about them. When you load the intent to have the best year ofyour life, you are choosing to bring into existence a lifefilled with love, laughter, success, and fulfillment. Followingis an example that beautifully illustrates thepower of intent.

Julia is a talented, vivacious woman who worked formy coaching organization for over two years. She likedher job and was good at what she did. She was happyand healthy, and had wonderful friends. By anyone'sstandards Julia was living a great life. Then, a year and ahalf ago, I offered to lead my staff through a "Best Year ofYour Life" training. In the course of the training, Julia,along with the others, created the intent to have the bestyear of her life. Looking through the lens of having thecoming year be her best year yet, Julia saw that shewould have to make some immediate changes. Her firstrealization, which came as a surprise to both of us, wasthat she would have to quit her job and create a newcareer doing exactly what she loves to do: coachingothers and playing golf. She also saw that if she wasgoing to live her best year she would have to move to aplace that inspired and uplifted her. Just by taking an hour to explore what her finest year would look like,Julia saw that she would have to make some majorchanges in two key areas of her life. Her new intent hadallowed her to see what she couldn't see before. Withgreat enthusiasm Julia explained, "I feel like I've been livingin a little box and somebody just took the lid off andsaid, 'Hey, there is a whole big world out there and thereare a thousand other options that you've never even considered.'"

Six months later, almost every aspect of Julia's life wascompletely unrecognizable. Her intent to have her finestyear yet inspired her to move to a quaint little coastaltown that she adores and to follow her passion for golf.She is now the founder and president of ChampionshipInner Golf, where she uses her coaching skills to supportpeople in bringing forth their full potential in their golfgame and in their lives as a whole. She works every dayat some of the most beautiful golf courses and drivingranges in Southern California, doing what she loves todo. Both of these changes unfolded as the result of herinserting the intent to create the best year of her life. Shelooks back on the changes that have taken place so quickly and effortlessly with a combination of disbeliefand immense gratitude. This is the inexplicable power ofliving inside a conscious intent.

If you take only this one step and do nothing else,you will unleash the power to change your life. Theintent to live your best year yet will generate an energeticforce that will pull you toward the results you desire.This intent holds the power to change the fallow soil ofundirected energy into potent, fertile ground where youcan plant the seeds of your desires and watch them blossominto reality.

To create the best year of your life, it is essential thatyou understand that you are being guided either by aconscious intent that you create on a daily basis or by anunconscious intent from your past. There is always anintent operating behind the scenes, whether you areaware of it or not. If you're like most people, you areprobably unaware of the intent that is currently guidingyour choices, actions, and behaviors ...

The Best Year of Your Life
Dream It, Plan It, Live It. Copyright © by Debbie Ford. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from The Best Year of Your Life: Dream It, Plan It, Live It by Debbie Ford
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