Desire mapping is the simple process of exploring how you want to feel as a guide for how you will act + what you will do to get closer to those feelings. It's taken me some time to come to a place where I'm able to quickly navigate through desire mapping prompts. I keep it simple by using Danielle LaPorte's Desire Map Planner. ) I believe you can still grab one at 50-75% off using the code: MANIFEST18. This journal changed my life so significantly.
But HOW Grace? you may be wondering. Like most changes in life, it starts with pain. After I got laid off from my last full-time position in November 2015 I was just a few weeks out from finding out I was pregnant. I was journaling at the time, but that's nothing new I've always journaled. It started with panic. Within two months we'd finished up the meager emergency fund we had at the time & we were in financial free-fall. Here's what pregnancy does to your emotions: SEEK.KILL.DESTROY. This was right around the time Big Dogg fell into a massive depression which essentially showed by becoming verbally abusive & mean as hell. At that point, we'd only been married 5 months and my confusion was palpable. I was looking for a job, applying all over the place while juggling horrible morning sickness. In other words: it was the worst of times. The absolute worst. The fear of being homeless + rocking the boat on my existing custody arrangement with my ex was enough itself to leave me sleepless let alone everything else I was navigating.
Enter the Desire Map Journal. In an effort at sanity, I picked it back up & followed the prompts: "what are your core desired feelings for today?" At that point it felt simple: "I want to survive. I don't want to be homeless. I want my husband to be a normal person again. I want to be able to buy groceries. I want to find a job." If you notice, none of that was an actual desired feeling. It took some time for me to work out how I wanted to feel vs. my immediate & very real needs. I decided to start borrowing her suggested core desired feeling prompts.
For example:
* I desire plentiful resources to support my well-being in every possible way.
* I desire my life lessons to come with grace.
* I desire my body to be energized, vibrant with health, light-powered & strong.
* I desire deeply restorative sleep & space to rest when I need to.
* I desire my relationships to be soul-soothing, life-affirming & full of mutual joy & supportive insight.
* I desire full-force protection from anything that is a lower vibration, harmful or oppressive.
(For a full list drop me a line & I'll send them to you)
Once I started writing her suggestions daily it became easier to access my frustration at the situation I was in. How I wanted to feel at the end of each day no longer became a nice suggestion nor a superfluous journaling prompt. I began to DEMAND that my life go in a different direction. What started out nicely as "Today I desire peace," morphed into "I DEMAND peace! I REJECT toxicity & misogyny because I NEED to feel safe!"
Everyday as I wrote out my core desired feelings I realized just how far my life was from being a healthy woman or even a functional woman. It became clear that in order for me to ever have peace again: something needed to happen in ME regardless of what was going around me. Even if we got evicted. Even my husband left me while I was pregnant & broke. Even if I lost my custodial rights. It was hard not to think in worst case scenario's but I had to follow it through. Every day, I figured out a little bit of a time, how my mindset needed to drastically shift.
From there, I followed her prompts to delve deeply into gratitude lists. Also, something I'd done off & on, but not in the context of core desired feelings & desires. And from there, I began to follow Danielle's other daily prompts: What do I need to change? What do I need to add? What do I need to stop doing? And the biggest question of all: What will I do today to feel the way I want to feel?
After making this a daily habit something deep & beautiful crystallized in my brain. I found myself changing what I needed to change, adding what I needed to add, rejecting what I needed to reject, actually doing what I needed to do to feel the way I wanted to feel...love, hope, peace, provision.
Mapping out my desires day-to-day became an actual map for my life. I can honestly tell you that every single thing I was going through in that time has changed significantly. There are remnants of pain, shame & all that jazz. But who I am & who he was, what happened then & what happens now: it is transformed, miraculously or not we are different people.
Me spending the first 20-30 minutes of every day for the past 2 years engaged in desire mapping developed a new level of mindfulness that has healed me. Straight up healed me. It's made me take responsibility for my life in new ways. It's led to meditation, positive affirmations and other forms of mindfulness which are scientifically proven to restore broken synapses in your brain. It's healing brain work. I will never allow a few days to go by without engaging my core desired feelings, my gratitude lists, my soul prompts, my desires, my lists of dreams or anguish.
Another easy way to get oriented into desire mapping is through Danielle LaPorte's book, The Desire Map.
