the place to be to create a business and life you love, and today, I have got a question

for you. Does goal setting burn you out? Do you ever feel like you're on achievement autopilot

constantly striving for more and never feeling fulfilled? Even if you love goal setting,

you're about to learn a revolutionary new way to set and reach those goals. No stress,

striving or affirmations required. My guest is about to show you how.

Danielle LaPorte is the creator of The Desire Map, a guide to creating goals with soul;

author of the Firestarter Sessions and soon to be publisher of Danielle Magazine launching

this spring. An inspirational speaker, former Think Tank exec and business strategist, her

site daniellelaporte.com has been deemed the best place online for kickass spirituality

and was named one of the top 100 websites for women by Forbes.

Danielle! This is your second time on MarieTV, the first time live because we did all kinds

of Skype before.

Danielle:     I got on a plane just for you.

Marie:                     I love you for that. I know you're going to

take us through this incredible process and I am so excited about it, and I have to say

here right now, we're going to talk a lot about The Desire Map. If you do not have this

book, you need to get your hands on it ASAP. We're going to teach you a lot, but it goes

so deep. Just trust me on that one. Before we get into the all the nitty-gritty,

I want to know from you what made you write The Desire Map? How did it come about? Why

is it so important?

Danielle:     I wanted to feel good and I wanted to feel better about what I was going

after and the way I was going after it. All this started on New Years Eve writing some

goals out, watching Ryan Seacrest by the fire. It's like "pay off MasterCard, lose the

baby weight, get to Hawaii," all that, and I looked at my goals completely uninspired

and I thought how do I really want to feel, and then it was like "sexy, affluence, abundant,

earth" all of that, and I could breathe. In that whole process, I looked at how I related

to goals.

Set a goal, go after the goal fiercely because I'm an ambitious cat and not hit the goal.

Not only not hit the goal, totally bomb so I feel like a loser. Set a goal, go after

the goal, reach the goal but I'm three months late or six months late or three years late.

I got there but I still feel like a loser because I'm late to my goal. Set a goal, go

after a goal, something shinier, and something truly better over here, mid course correction,

I'm going that way. I still feel like a loser because I changed my mind. Set a goal, go

after the goal, not just reach the goal, exceed the goal, out of the park like super success

and I think I still feel like a loser because I should've thought bigger because I was

thinking so small and I should've asked for more. Contentious relationship around

goals and not loving who I was in that striving. That striving for the goal really brought

out what I call Connie; she's my alter ego and I like Jersey but she's a Jersey girl

and Connie is really fucking pushy.

My inner Jersey girl had to talk to a Buddhist about this and I had a conversation with a

llama and I said "I'm interested in this tension between just accepting what is and

presence, and the striving and attaining and going after stuff. Where is that middle ground?"

He said, "You're always going to have desires. There's always going to be a reaching. You

just have to ask yourself if you're being pushy about it." I was like pushy and I'm

done.

Marie:                     You had that idea come into you and it was like

"pushing, don't want to do that." Was it immediate link up to this concept of desires

and feelings coming first?

Danielle:     Light bulb, I want to feel good, I want to feel better than I feel. Light

bulb, it's not about the goal. I am wanting to feel a certain way when I get there. It's

not about the goal; it's about how you want to feel when you get there. I made a little

post-it note, put it in my Day Timer, and this is eight years in the making, and I would

ask myself "what am I going to do today to feel this way." Then I started asking

myself "what am I going to do this quarter to feel this way," and was like "what

do my yearly goals need to look like to feel the way that I want to feel?" It changed

what I went after, it changed how I went after it, and I felt more the way I wanted to feel.

Marie:                     That's so beautiful and I love one of the things

that you share in The Desire Map and all throughout your work. It's like we have goal setting

and achievement backwards. We have it inside out because if you break any goal down and

you go "why do I want this, what am I really going after," I think it's so genius and

so simple and so profound and how you articulated it is beautiful. It really is about the feeling

and that desire. And so, you've taken in the personal development world, goal setting

has been talked about a zillion times and put it inside out and I mean, people love

this stuff. I love it; I just think its genius.

The Desire Map and the core concept of this is really, what?

Danielle:     It's about what I call your core-desired feelings. I'm going to give

you the steps; we're going to do the reveal now. Step one of this is let's concentrate

on just three areas. In The Desire Map process, there's about five or six areas to look at

in life, but it you're at home doing this and grab a pen, you can write this down, you

can do this in meditation or do this on a walk. Go through lifestyle and livelihood,

go through body and wellness and go through what I call relationships and society, and

do a stream of consciousness about how you want to feel. Just rift and don't hold back.

If you want to feel vitality, if you want to feel energized, if you want to feel connected,

so many people just want to feel connected, if you want to feel spicy, just write spicy

down. Write down "blue," I want it.

With that no holding back, then you do need to move into that phase of this second step

which is about eliminating what you're not resonating with. It's really about pattern

recognition. You go through that mish mash, that outpouring of feelings and then the intention

is to get that down to three, four, maybe five and this is an art; this is not a science.

If your lucky number is seven and you want have seven core desired feelings, you can

have seven core desired feelings. You're going to narrow it down and what I encourage people

to do in that honing end phase is to stay away from the big audacious words like confidence

and success.

Marie:                     How come?

Danielle:     Because it's an epidemic that we have bought into other people's

version and visions of success, and this is one of the reasons that we are disconnected

from our core desired feelings. We are living other people's dreams, we are doing what

we think the Jones' are doing, and guess what? They're not even feeling success. It's

like the ultimate tragedy for tracing chasing other versions of success and they're not

even feeling successful. This goes on lifetimes for people. This is a big, big deal.

Success has a feeling underneath. You might say, "Success is about respect." Go deeper;

what is respect about? Respect is about confidence. Go underneath that. Look up the definitions

of the word; find out the ontology of the word. What's under confidence? Love. One of

your core desired feelings is love.

And then there's one more refinement I would add to this, which is getting clear on your

core desired feelings is not about you setting up the world to help you feel the way that

you want to feel.

Marie:                     I love this. Keep telling me.

Danielle:     This isn't about "I want to feel loved." Of course, you want to feel

loved; we all want to feel loved. This is universal. This isn't about "I want to

feel honored, I want to feel respected." You may need to live with those core desired

feelings for a while and try them on, but this is not about going into the office on

Monday morning and thinking "I know my core desired feelings and I want to feel respected

from this crew." You are relying on outside forces to inform your reality; this is not

good. Knowing your core desired feelings is really about you becoming an intentional creator

of your life. You cannot choose what happens to you, but you can choose how you feel about

it.

Let's say respect is you're playing with this as a core desired feeling. Just let it

be respect or respectful, not respected. You can even feel the difference of the energy

in those words and you will put respect out into the world, you will put beauty out, you

will put energy out.

Marie:                     I love that and I feel like it's such an opportunity

for all of us to create our own game for ourselves of what has to happen in order for me to experience

respect, honoring that it is not about how the outside world treats us, but how am I

approaching the outside world. How can I bring respect to the party, so to speak, or love

or anything like that. That makes me so excited because one of the things I talked about a

lot and people always ask me about passion, how can I find my passion? You've heard

me say this a million times because you and I are such good friends, but it's like passion

isn't something outside of you; passion is something you bring to the moment. You

bring that to the task, you bring that to work and it's this muscle you build it.

I love to hear you say this because I can hear those voices going "people aren't

respecting me or people aren't loving me." How can you set up the rules for yourself

that anytime perhaps I take a moment to pause and really notice the beauty of my life, I

get to experience respect from myself and what I create, or anytime I take a moment

and really notice my surroundings and really appreciate it, I get to experience love in

the world where it's like you setup your own rules.

Danielle:     This is where the rubber meets the road. This is about getting up every

day and saying, "What am I going to do today to generate these core desired feelings?"

It's as simple as "I'm going to make that phone call, I'm going to wear a skirt instead

of yoga pants, I'm going to make sure I get to yoga today, I'm going to sign the contract."

Sometimes being devoted to being this truly creative force in your life means you're going

to make dramatic changes according to your core desired feelings. You are going to sell

your house and go to India or you're going to get out of Indiana and move to New York

or you're going to dump the chump or you're going to commit. It's micro and it's macro.

My version of spirituality has got to be practical. This has got to work in my kitchen, this has

got to work in my bedroom and it's got to work in my heart.

Marie:                     Amen to that. What's step three?

Danielle:     Step three is the declaration of your core-desired feelings. This is it.

This is my three to seven core desired feelings and hopefully it feels like a big righteous

moment and you can experiment with this. Some people do The Desire Map in a weekend and

for some people its months to get clear on their core desired feelings. I worked with

my core-desired feelings five years. Five years I had that same little ratty post-it

note sitting in my Day Timer.

Step four is really where you're going to match your soul with your goals, so you're

going to go through those lifestyle areas that we've already listed. Livelihood and

lifestyle, and body and wellness, relationships in society, and then ask yourself what do

you need to do and have an experience and the stuff you want to get and be in the world

to feel your core desired feelings. You should have your core desired feelings right here,

you're having your experiences and you go "I need to climb a mountain this year, I

need to launch my business, I need to propose," to feel this way, "I need to sign up for

belly dancing lessons, I need to read the books I've wanted to read," whatever it

is that's pulling at you. Narrow that down to your one, two, maybe three goals of the

year and there you have it.

There are lots of layers. You're going to go deep into asking yourself what's really

going to make the final cut for you, but this is precisely where so many of us go into default

and go astray. As soon as we get into that mentality of I'm setting my goals, our psyche

immediately heads externally. "I better make my million, I better get that gig, etc."

You have to come back to center, how do I want to feel? The goal, the intention is to

feel good.

Marie:                     So good. It's really good. I think it's revolutionary.

I remember when you first shared with me The Desire Map and this whole core concept, I

had the feeling inside and I literally got chills and I was like Danielle, this is the

core of your work and of your message and I just think it's so beautiful. I know there

are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands Danielle fans out there and for those who

don't know, I'm curious what your core desired feelings are.

Danielle:     My core desired feelings are joy; it took me a long time to get to

that. I used to think being not fully happy was sexier or something and I was like people

who are a little bit depressive. It's like happy people are so annoying; now I'm just

like joy, true nature joy. Divine femininity, that shakti of just goddess,yes, woman. Creation;

for a long time the word was creativity for me, but I want to feel creation and I want

to make creation. Abundance. Those are my core desired feelings and they guide the restaurants

I eat at and how I parent and how I love and what I say yes to.

Marie:                     I just got chills listening and I've seen you

evolve and I've seen how you've brought those core-desired feelings to life. One of