13333_c.jpg
Building
Your Best Life
A Young Person’s Guide to
Creating the Life You’d Love to Live
MERIE WEISMILLER WALLACE,
MFA, SMPSP, CBCP
Copyright © 2024 Merie Weismiller Wallace, MFA, SMPSP, CBCP.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Illustrations by Cassie Alisande Wallace
Cover photographs by Merie Weismiller Wallace
Author portrait photograph by Alexander Schottky
Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
ISBN: 978-1-6657-5431-6 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-5433-0 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-5432-3 (e)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023923737
Archway Publishing rev. date: 5/8/2024
To my eighteen-year-old self, what no one ever told me.
To my innovative daughter.
To all the young people of the world. May you actualize and meet your full potential.
Contents
Forward by Jack Canfield
Acknowledgments
Introduction by the Author
Chapter 1: What No One Ever Told Me
Don’t Just Wait for Change
What No One Talks About
Let Your Emotions Be a Guide
Intention + Action = Results
Repetitive Thoughts Are Self-Fulfilling
The Tools of Change
Your Building Your Best Life Workbook
Why No One Told You
What’s Working for You and What Isn’t
Interest Is the First Step
The Goal of Happiness
Open Your Mind to the Possibilities
What Seems Right to You?
The Satisfaction Is in the Process
Life’s Ups and Downs
Onward!
Chapter 2: Starting Where You Are
Five Steps to Assist Change
The Way It Was
Take a Break
Our Thoughts Are a Force in Our Lives
An Important Tip: Be Nice
Self-Awareness Is Key
What Is Unacceptable? What Is Acceptance?
You Are What You Think
Claiming Your Happiness
You Are More Than Your Circ*mstances
So Who Are You Anyway?
When You Are Not in Charge
A Quick Glance at College
You Are Truly Unique
Money Can’t Buy Happiness
What Are You Attracting or Broadcasting?
Act As If
The Complexities of Personal Problems
If It’s Happening, You Can Handle It
Finding Faults Doesn’t Serve You
Going Forward
Chapter 3: If You Had a Magic Wand
Imagine You Have a Magic Wand
The Power of Asking Questions
A Quick Look at What’s Bothering You
The Pros and Cons of Now
Sustained Thoughts and Emotions Create Results
Imagine It the Way You Want It
If You Don’t Know What You Want
Your Workbook Is Your Magic Wand
Chapter 4: What Really Matters?
This Matters
Feeling Grateful Matters
Providence Is Moving
Make It Happen!
Your Unique Talents
Your Unique Interests
Of Longing and Discontent
What Is a Feeling Actually?
Taking a Look at Bad Feelings
Feel the Positive Emotions
Worry versus Brainstorming
Down with Stress
The Restorative Power of Sleep
Back to Positive Emotions, Have You Tried Love?
Chapter 5: Keeping It All in Balance
The Areas in a Whole Life
Defining All Areas of Life
Relationships: Family and Friends
Creative You
Intellectual You
Employment
Financial Well-Being
Contribution
Recreation
Your Favorite Parts of Life Now and Intended
Chapter 6: Cleaning Up the Messes
The Many Messes
Cleaning Up Physical Messes in the House
Concepts for Happy Spaces
Cleaning Up Your Physical Health
Cleaning Up Financial Messes
Cleaning Up Messes at Work or School
Cleaning Up Relationship Messes
Blame Is Focus Outward
You’re in Charge
Cleaning Up Mental and Emotional Messes
Self-Talk
Words Matter
Monkey Mind
When Bad Feelings Get in the Way of Moving On
Cleaning Up Your Life
Chapter 7: Overcoming Obstacles
Try Another Perspective
Trust Your Instincts
Obstacles Are Guides
Solution Techniques
Eliminate Competing Goals
Life Happens for You, Not to You
The Yin and Yang of Progress
Limiting Beliefs
Stigmas and Prejudices
Doubts as Obstacles
Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
Unblocking the Obstacles in Your Thoughts and Feelings
Looking at Wanting, Wishing, Need, and Intention
The Energy of Emotions
Fear
Resistance to Change
What Do Essential Oils, Music, and Pets Have in Common?
Don’t Move to the Back of Your Own Ship
If You Aren’t Sure
When Your Old Patterns Persist
Chapter 8: What Is Your Calling?
Life Purpose and Calling = Your Talents and Your Interests
Do You Fit in or Stand Out?
Empower to the People
Inspired Action
Enjoy the Process
Imagine Your Options
Think Outside the Box
Search High and Low
They Want to Pay You to Do What You Love!
Back to Your Interests
It’s Time to Be Interested in You
Act with Confidence
If You Still Don’t Know, It’s Okay—You Are on Your Path to Find Out
About Your Professional Life
Chapter 9: Planning Your Great Life
What’s the Plan?
You Are in Charge of Yourself
In Support of Education and Training
What Do You Really Want in Your Life?
Indecision Brings Mixed Results
Commitment Generates Relevant Results
Going Forward from Here
Predominant Thoughts Manifest
In with the New, Dreams Come True
Dream Board
Creativity in Life
Life Shows You Yourself Every Day
It Has to Be Believable to You
The Love Exercise
Do unto Others and unto You: Respect
Give but Not to Your Own Detriment
What Looks Bad Could Be Good
Step by Step by Step
To Do or Not to Do?
Chapter 10: Make It Happen
Your Ability
Manifesting: Making It Happen
Use Your Dream Board
The Hour of Power
The Science behind the Unseen
Healing on All Levels
Forces Greater Than Our Circ*mstances
Synchronicity, Coincidence, Passion, and Inspiration
Increase Your Resources and Abilities
Ask for Help
Affirmations
The Book of You
Your Words Have Power
Do It Nervous or Excited
Motivation and Inspiration
Act as If You Are Successful
Make Time in Your Calendar
The Purpose and Power of Meditation
A How-To for Prayer and Meditation
The Grounding Power of Nature
The Power of Happiness
Create the Shift
Live Your Life Fully Today
Empower Others
The Concept of Structural Tension
Trust Your Intuition
Have Confidence
The Law of Attraction at Work
Stick to Your Plan
Make Your To-Do List Inspiring!
This Has Always Been True
Chapter 11: Forward from Here
Begin to Live the Life You Envision
Act on Opportunities
Becoming Who You Really Are: Healing Emotional Baggage and Family Patterns
The Quantum Field at Play
Be Aware of Your Thoughts
The Power of Your Feelings
Meditation Quiets the Mind So You Can Hear Yourself
When Your Vision Doesn’t Fit Your Current Life
Make a Difference
Aim for Neptune
This Dream or Something Better
Honor Your Individuality, Unique Perspective, and Interests
Have a Broad Vision
Life
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
About the Author
Forward
Congratulations! You are holding in your hands a life-changing book—one I wish I had had when I was younger. Building Your Best Life by Merie Weismiller Wallace is an inspirational and empowering exploration of your innate ability to create a healthy, meaningful and fulfilling life. While Merie mainly wrote it as a guide for teens and young adults, it is applicable to anyone at any age and any time when you are looking for direction in your life.
In a rapidly changing world where being inexperienced can seem daunting, this book serves to normalize the many concerns and questions you may have about what the future will bring.
Merie has had a very successful career as a still photographer in the film industry, and many of the iconic images you’ve seen are hers. Included in this book she shares what it took to achieve her success, and then she shows you how to personally customize it so you can follow your own unique path.
Taking concepts from many eras, cultures and strategies, and translating them into clear tips and tools for making personal choices, Merie lays the foundation for you to create a fulfilling future in all areas of your life, not just professional. Between the tools she describes in this book and the workbook she also offers, you will be empowered to take responsibility for building your own best life while enjoying the process.
If you are a young person, this book will help you bypass some of the more common mistakes most people make, and more easily take positive action toward creating your own rewarding future while at the same time contributing to the betterment of life on earth.
Here’s to your success!
— Jack Canfield, New York Times bestselling author of The Success Principles™: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be and the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my support team during the process of creating this book:
Cassie Wallace for her thorough, scathing, applauding and detailed editorial work, and her serious push for objective integrity.
Georgia Sargeant, initial substantive editor.
Beta readers Tal Wallace, Jenny Newell, Jessica Keesler, Donna Pace, and Tawnee Hensel.
Partial beta readers Kimberly Hunn and Amanda DeMaria.
Mariana Chaffee, final read-through adviser.
Barbara Laing, Karen ZoBell, and Ellen Freund for their sincere and detailed support efforts.
Jack Canfield, Katheryn Trestain, and the 2021 Mastermind Group of friends, advocates, and accountability partners who encouraged me as I wrote the first draft.
Jack Canfield and Deborah King for their important support and focused dedication to the wellbeing and advancement of others.
The Archway Publishing team.
Emmet Sargeant and Beagle Sound Studio in Santa Barbara, California for the Building Your Best Life companion audio book recording and production.
Thanks to Tal Wallace for believing in me and supporting my efforts when I doubted myself as a young photographer, and again at the beta-draft stage of this book.
Introduction by the Author
I was a young person who didn’t know what I wanted or what I could do with my life when I grew up. Like so many, I walked through schools and unskilled summer jobs reacting to what life presented. I saw others who seemed to know what they wanted, but I didn’t know what I was good at or what mattered enough to me to pursue. I didn’t have a clear idea of how I’d love my life to be. On the outside, I was happy and gregarious, yet inside I didn’t have confidence in my abilities. I didn’t know that my individuality and authenticity were strengths. I had no idea how to look for an interesting job, build a meaningful career, or why someone would want to hire me. I knew I’d have to work for a living, but I was a creative person trying to pour myself into a linear education and business model. I was a young woman who wanted a husband and children but not to be dependent or underactualized. Deep down, I felt like there must be more to life than what I was seeing around me in the rat races of competitive schools and scarce or harrying jobs.
So I started searching. I was driven to travel and adventure, to read books and take workshops, and to live in other cultures. I came across ideas and facts that no one had ever told me and practices I’d heard people put down because they didn’t actually understand them. I picked and chose what made sense to me and finally started making authentic choices and meeting kindred spirits whose ideas astonished me and opened my eyes and mind.
The results are in this book.
Have you ever felt that you are unusual but trying to conform? Do you know what you want to do to support yourself financially—or with your life? Maybe you have an idea, but you’re not sure how to get there. Are you among the many people just trying to handle your circ*mstances, sensing that there is more you want out of life than what seems available to you?
If you said yes to any of those questions, then this book is for you. You can explore it with the secret knowledge that it is one way to get where you belong. Let me support you on your path toward meaningful work, improving family dynamics, achieving personal growth, inspiration, and self-actualization—now and as you continue to grow through your years.
What you’ll find on these pages has been drawn from many cultures and perspectives. Some ideas are obvious, others are obscure, some are counterculture, some are philosophical and spiritual, and some are misrepresented in Western culture but eye-opening. I want to empower you to make positive changes while strengthening the parts of your life that you already love. Like any good toolbox, this book is filled with diversity so that you can pick the right tools for your unique interests and circ*mstances.
You might be surprised to know how many people pick their heads up late in life and ask themselves, How did I end up here?
and they begin a path of personal work to find themselves and their happiness. I’m giving you a heads-up and head start to make choices that will help you claim your life—starting young! Building Your Best Life will help you discover your authentic self and break through uncertainty. It will help you tip the scale toward new thinking so that you can bring value into your life.
May you become your authentic, inspired self, living happily in active support of a flourishing planet.
Enjoy the read, enjoy the process, and think for yourself.
Sincerely,
Merie Weismiller Wallace
www.BuildingYourBestLife.net
Chapter One
What No One Ever Told Me
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
—Writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
Y ou are not adrift in the sea of life. In the best way, your life is up to you.
Right now, that may sound like freedom to you or like a daunting responsibility. Either way, imagine that there are important and exciting ways to actively build your life—one that you will love to live and that will allow you to experience happiness and fulfillment no matter where you are—starting today.
And you are the right person to do it for yourself.
This book holds concepts and methods I learned during the adventure of my life, things that no one ever told me about: interests, talents, imagination, choice, and intention, including truths I definitely learned the hard way. It really started when I was failing in junior high because I wasn’t interested and didn’t care, and one day I imagined with displeasure where that was leading. Then I imagined exactly what I would prefer, and through an odd series of events, I found myself in a progressive and rigorous high school, which changed my life. No one told me I had used a technique of visualization that successful people use purposefully. No one was even talking about ideas like that for me to overhear. I never knew most of the ideas and techniques in this book existed, yet somehow I had a gut feeling that there was more to life than people were talking about in my early schools, jobs, and family.
I’m talking about things here and now in your life that you too can use to create a happy and fulfilling life.
Look around you. There are people who live their whole lives working jobs or staying in relationships they don’t enjoy, simply reacting to what happens around them, overeating or drinking to relieve boredom or assuage pain, and not making their own choices. They live like anchorless ships adrift at sea, reacting to the winds, storms, and the doldrums of life.
Do you feel some longing or discontent with your life today, or with where it looks like you’re headed?
If you start paying attention to what really matters to you, if you notice what comes your way and consider if it fits into what you want for yourself, and if you choose things that make you feel good, you can create a great life. Maybe you already know what you want to do for paid work, fun, interests, and to fix problems you notice. And maybe you don’t. Either way, what you will discover in these chapters are ideas and techniques for building a life where you wake up happy, healthy, and fulfilled.
And the best part is that you can start from exactly the point in your life that you are at today, no matter what that seems like to you right now.
Sure, there will be ups and downs; that is a real part of life. But did you know that the down times are an important part of growing and learning to make important choices? Next time you are feeling low or irritable, ask yourself, What would I do differently if I were in charge?
Imagine clearly how you would prefer things to be. It is a beginning, and there are tools throughout the book to keep you going. As you grow through ups and downs, rain or shine, being solid in yourself and in your balanced life will allow you to see the gold nuggets in your problems, handle the storms of life, and keep you sailing ahead on your authentic life course.
Many times when I was young, I experienced being a creative, unique soul trapped in a life where I felt powerless, reactive, and swept in directions I did not want to go and didn’t belong. I felt it when I was memorizing facts in school, instead of understanding the remarkable life contexts they fit into. I felt it when advertisem*nts glorified people and possessions I didn’t have or couldn’t relate to. As a teen, I experienced depression to dangerous depths, like when my boyfriend broke up with me and it hit me too hard (unknown to me, it was an echo from my childhood), and I thought my life was lonely and horrible. Yet I also knew deep down that something else was wrong that I just couldn’t put my finger on. My problems were covered up and shoved down year after year, until one day, in my first year of college, struggling with an eating disorder and trying to study, something started to dawn on me Wait a minute. On the outside, I’m gregarious and doing well in a good school. I have a great boyfriend. I have so much going for me. And at the same time, secretly I have bulimia, I feel blind and worried about my future, and I feel debilitating jealousy when my charming boyfriend shines around other people. Something is very wrong here.
That is what started me on my journey out of the box.
I share that with you only to say that is where I started. Each one of us starts with our own problems and circ*mstances. It is what we do with them that matters.
Fast-forward to today, where, despite ups and downs, I have a family I love deeply, I love where I live, I have a remarkably successful and fulfilling career as a photographer (one that I surely didn’t see coming!), and I’m certified in energy release work so that I can help other people in a way I find fascinating and rewarding. My life has not always been easy, and the path here wasn’t clear, but it has been an exciting and remarkable journey. Using the tools I discovered along the way, I am happy now most days, and when I’m not, I can look at my turmoil for the truths about myself that I need to learn. I’m still on my path and persistent in my commitment to strengthen my life in all areas. I am not adrift in the sea of life. I am embracing my life as I develop my potential and enjoy the true alternatives available to us all. You can be engaged, fulfilled, and happy, too, starting from right where you are today.
Nobody spoke to me like this when I was young and starting out. No one ever told me what was possible. It seemed like they thought in another way, with cans and can’ts, shoulds and shouldn’ts; they saw the world in black and white. This book shares the tools and techniques I learned during my unexpected and remarkable life so that you can choose the ones that make sense to you and build your own life the way you would love it to be.
Don’t Just Wait for Change
You might be surprised at how many people are simply waiting for their circ*mstances to change, waiting for a better day. They react to life as it comes, putting one foot in front of the other, and they do not have an awareness of what other possibilities are available at every moment. Or they think their situation is too difficult to get out of or that they don’t actually deserve something better. Their burdens obscure their vision.
Yet there are many ways to think differently and change circ*mstances. For example, most young people probably assume that if all goes well for the next several years, they will end up with a steady job and a roof over their heads, right?
But what if you were to make which job and which roof your priority? What if you decided with certainty that you want a nice, affordable place to live in a town or district where you would really enjoy living? What if you had fun exploring where that might be and what kind of living situation suits you best? Maybe you’d like a dynamic apartment complex with a pool and gym, or a cool little private guesthouse with a beautiful backyard. Maybe you’d like to stay where you are and save money for an adventure. What would you choose? What would you choose?
Do you see how there is a difference in thinking? One is like a ship at the mercy of the winds, tides, and doldrums; the other is the course set by an
