Who is designing your life?
Have you ever thought about that? It might seem like a strange question, but most of us never think about it. And because we never think about it, we allow any number of other people to design our lives for us.
Most people think the journey from where they are today to a place of personal clarity about who they are created to be is a straight line. But it’s not. It’s really more like a spiral. As we move through the different imperatives of life design, we gather information and gain insight all along the way as we circle in on our God-given design.
The first master tool of the Younique process is the Clarity Spiral. It introduces the 4 Imperatives of Life Design: Courage to Know, Experience to Grow, Value to Show, and Risk to Go. Each of those imperatives includes multiple elements and tools to help in the discovery and articulation of who God created you to be. Not only that, but these are the principles that guide a lifelong practice of life design, principles that we return to again and again in the process.
What does all that have to do with the question of WHO is designing your life? Everything.
If you are not proactive in understanding who God created you to be, you’ll end up simply reacting to the people and circumstances around you. And without realizing it, you’ll give the people and circumstances in your life the power to shape you into something you were never created to be—leading to a life of growing frustration, bitterness, and lack of fulfillment. We’ve identified 5 Barriers that have the potential to design your life if you aren’t aware of them and can’t overcome them.
There are many ways you can go about taking back control of your life. Younique is built on a proven combination of teaching and tools to guide you in a process designed to increase both your self-awareness and your God-awareness.
As your self-awareness and God-awareness expand and deepen, you can co-create your future with the One who made you. That’s what the whole Younique process—what we call gospel-centered life design—is all about.
In the Clarity Spiral online teaching included in our FREE Starter Kit, we share 5 barriers to self-awareness. These 5 barriers are some of the most powerful forces in our lives that have the ability to keep us from discovering who God created us to be.
Five Barriers to Life Design
Barrier 1: The Me Others Want Me to Be
The people in our lives have all sorts of expectations for us, don’t they? Family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, people we randomly meet as we go through life—they all have expectations of us. We’ve probably all experienced what happens when we don’t meet the expectations of people in our lives … they can get angry (especially family!). If we let them, these expectations can become a barrier to knowing who we really are meant to be.
Barrier 2: The Me That’s Sexiest to Be
This barrier is about the imitation of success. We see other successful people around us and think, “I should be just like them.” So instead of trying to understand and own who WE are—our unique abilities, experiences, and passions—we spend time researching and watching these successful people and trying to model our lives around theirs.
Barrier 3: The Me People Pay Me to Be
Of all the barriers to self-awareness, this is one of the easiest to succumb to in our society. We all need money to live, right? So it’s far too easy to slide into a life where you stop thinking about who God has created you to be and focus your time and energy on who your boss pays you to be. Many times, you will even be financially rewarded for giving in to this barrier to self-awareness, which can make it so deceptive and attractive.
Barrier 4: The Me Time Makes of Me
Life today moves at 100 mph. If we don’t intentionally slow down, the pressures of the moment will drive us deeper into a lack of self-awareness. And these pressures take different forms during different seasons of our lives. You may have the time pressure of being a parent of young children or of trying to start a business or focusing on finishing school. These things, in themselves, are not bad things, but we shouldn’t let them come to define who we are.
Barrier 5, The Ultimate Barrier: The Me I Want to Be
In some ways, this fifth barrier can be seen as the intersection of the previous four. Most of us have an image in our minds of what we wish we could be, what we want to be. Unfortunately, this projection of self can be distorted and fractured because of our brokenness and inability to discern the negative influences that shape us into something we weren’t created to be. If this is the only picture we have in our minds as we think of who we are, we will always fall short and experience the pain of disappointment over and over again.
What if there’s a way to overcome those barriers and discover The Me God Created Me to Be?
That’s what Younique is all about. We’ve guided thousands of people through an intentional process of discovering, validating, and articulating the unique way God has shaped them. The freedom that comes from knowing and understanding your purpose is really incredible, because you begin to take back control of the design of your life rather than succumbing to the pressures of the people and circumstances in your life.
The list of 5 barriers to self awareness is just ONE of the tools we use in the Clarity Spiral teaching delivered in our FREE Starter Kit to help you identify what may be holding you back from living into God’s dream for your life.
Don’t let someone or something else design your life! Register for the Starter Kit today.
And, if you’d prefer to read more about the Clarity Spiral, we’re offering a free copy of the Clarity Spiral book here. Enjoy!
