By Linda Feinholz

I truly believe that each of us can create and live our ideal life.

Our Ideal Life is the life that meets our Core desires and provides an outlet for our Gift - our innate skills and intuition. It’s the life that allows us to recognize our unique gift and use it - to purposefully choose work that lets us live our deepest self. It’s the life that inspires those around us to do the same with theirs.

Can you describe what yours looks like? Would you say you’re living it now?

All too often we have a clearer sense of our Core Desires when we’re children, yet lose track of them as the world around us bombards us with messages full of “should” and “have to” and “can’t”.

We have hints of our Gift, using it unconsciously and tuning it out, waving it out of sight because it's so easy for us to use. It doesn’t look anything like the effortful activities we’ve been told any valuable effort must be.

Imagine the life you’d create if you founded it on having every one of your Core Desires and using that effortless Gift. Wouldn’t that be a fabulous life? I think so!

You don’t have to walk away from the life you’ve built to live that Ideal Life. My client Shannon felt out of sorts most of the time – dealing with complex international business logistical issues and fractious personalities from three different generations. She’d risen in her career based on opportunities that presented themselves and she was ready to walk from it all.

When we uncovered her Core Desires to be a peacemaker and to nurture people early in their career, she deliberately shifted her focus from managing the logistics of an international business to solving strategic partnership challenges for the company and mentoring new members of the team.

The High Payoff results were that Shannon loved her work, the company saw turnover drop 30 percent in the first year among junior staff, and management was able to retain all  the knowledge and experience Shannon had built in her career.

So, tell me, are you living your Ideal Life now? Or have you spent a lifetime being sent off down other paths?

Fear, opinions of others, self-doubt have gotten in the way of your living your ideal life with ease. They’re no longer reasons for suppressing who you are. Think of them merely as the creative entertainment provided by the society you live in.

If you have fear or doubts about living from your Core, tell yourself, “Fear is no longer an excuse.”

You have a purpose in being here, and your only responsibility is to bring your gifts to the world to enrich it and create a vibrant life for yourself and for others.

If you're ready to bring your Core Desires and your Gift into focus, here’s a technique I use with my coaching clients and MasterMind members. It will take you less than 1 hour and can unveil the stepping stones to your Ideal Life.

• Take 2 pieces of paper and something to write with. Divide each piece of paper with a line down the middle, top to bottom.

• On the first page, label the left-hand column “What I loved at that job…” and the right hand column “… because it let me…”

• On the second page, label the left-hand column “What I hated at that job…” and the right hand column “… because it prevented me…”

• Starting with your first ‘job’ fill in all 4 columns. Do all four columns for each job you can remember right up to today. If you need the space, carry your notes over to additional pages. Even if the answers seem similar from one job to the next, write it all down.

• When you’re done writing, read your answers out loud and listen to the pattern that will reveal itself in the answers you’ve recorded.

Even better - take this exercise into a group of others, who know you well, to do it as a group. Pair off and have one person prompt the second person with the phrases over and over and act as the scribe of what is said out loud for them. Then reverse who is talking and who is scribing.

Then, as each person reads their own responses out loud, as partners you can listen and suggest patterns you’re hearing. The listeners will also be able to suggest what they’ve experienced as the other person's Gift – "the thing you do with such ease that is so uniquely you."

Engage your Core, your Gift, your entire self and watch what you can create in this life, through your work, our relationships, your play.

I so want to live in the world you’ll help create for all of us.

© 2008 Linda Feinholz  Management expert, consultant, and coach Linda Feinholz is "Your High Payoff Catalyst" If you're ready to focus on your High Payoff activities, boost your professional and personal results and have more fun, get her FREE audio mini-course "7 Quick & Simple Steps to Increase Your Focus, Ease Your Effort & Accelerate Your Results" and the free weekly newsletter The Spark! Visit http://www.YourHighPayoffCatalyst.com