“Design the Life You Love” Book Summary + Lessons + Inspiring Quotes

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The book “Design the Life You Love” is an interesting book that helps us build the kind of life that we always wanted using the dedication, thought process, and hard work of an engineer. Through the 4 things mentioned in this book, one can design a life they love.

“Design the Life You Love” Book Summary

“Design the Life You Love” is a book by Ayse Birsel that applies design thinking principles to personal development and life planning. Birsel’s book offers a creative and visual approach to help individuals reimagine and shape their lives in alignment with their desires and aspirations.

The book introduces readers to the concept of “life design thinking,” a process that combines elements of design thinking with personal reflection and creativity.

Birsel provides a series of exercises, prompts, and visual tools to guide readers in exploring their values, goals, and the various elements that make up their lives.

Through a series of hands-on activities and design-inspired exercises, readers are encouraged to rethink their perspectives on life and make intentional choices that lead to greater fulfillment and happiness. “Design the Life You Love” promotes the idea that life is a canvas waiting to be designed, just like any other creative project.

Birsel’s approach emphasizes the importance of self-discovery, iteration, and adaptability in crafting a life that reflects one’s true desires and passions. The book encourages readers to experiment, make adjustments, and stay open to new possibilities along their life-design journey.

“Design the Life You Love” has resonated with individuals seeking a fresh and imaginative approach to personal development and life planning. It serves as a reminder that anyone can take an active role in shaping their life and finding greater joy and purpose through intentional design and creativity.

Lessons from “Design the Life You Love” by Ayse Birsel

“Design the Life You Love” by Ayse Birsel is a creative guide that encourages readers to approach life as a design project and shape it according to their desires. It offers valuable insights into designing a more fulfilling and purposeful life:

  1. Life as a Design Project: The book introduces the idea of viewing life as a design project, where you have the creative power to shape and iterate on your life choices.
  2. Embrace Curiosity: Birsel encourages readers to approach life with curiosity and an open mind, exploring different possibilities and perspectives.
  3. Define Your Values: Designing a meaningful life starts with identifying your core values and priorities. Knowing what truly matters to you is essential.
  4. The Power of Visualization: Visualization techniques help you create a clear vision of your ideal life. Birsel emphasizes the importance of using visual tools to map out your aspirations.
  5. Prototyping Your Life: Similar to designing products, you can prototype different aspects of your life to test and refine your choices before fully committing.
  6. Embrace Constraints: Constraints, whether personal or external, are part of life. Learning to work within these constraints creatively can lead to innovative solutions.
  7. Iterate and Evolve: Just as design projects evolve, so can your life. Be open to adapting, refining, and iterating on your plans as you gain new insights and experiences.
  8. Mindfulness and Self-Reflection: Regular self-reflection and mindfulness practices can help you stay connected to your values and goals.
  9. Embrace Failure: Failure is part of the design process. Learn from your failures and use them as stepping stones to future success.
  10. Collaborate and Seek Inspiration: Drawing inspiration from others and collaborating with like-minded individuals can enrich your life design journey.
  11. Balance and Harmony: Consider the balance between different aspects of your life, such as work, relationships, and personal growth, to create a harmonious life.
  12. Continuous Design: Designing your life is an ongoing process. Stay engaged with your goals, adapt to changing circumstances, and continue designing the life you love.

“Design the Life You Love” empowers readers to take an active role in shaping their lives. By applying design principles and creative thinking to life choices, individuals can unlock their potential, find purpose, and create a more fulfilling and intentional life.

Ayse Birsel’s approach encourages readers to approach life’s challenges with a designer’s mindset, fostering innovation and personal growth.

intuitive Quotes From “Design The Life You Love”

-If you didn’t design your life then chances are that you’ll fall into the plan designed by someone else. And believe me that they do not have much planned for you.

-Designing of your life would begin after you create it.

-You will love your life when it feels good inside. It doesn’t matter how it looks on the outside.

-Your life is created only by you and nobody else.

-She loved her life because she designed it all alone.

-Your life has to be designed by you.

-Take lessons from your past, enjoy your present, design your future.

-Don’t get victimized and let life decide you. You must have an upper hand than life on how to design it.

-We all have two options: Live a life that we are currently living or change it and design it further to make it even more beautiful.

-Your life is your prose. Always keep writing but be sure to make some changes frequently.

-Customize your life in such a way that you never ever have to take a break from it.

-Create a life worth living and make sure that you are proud of it.

-Don’t think too much about earning money or getting employed. Think about how you can design your life a little bit more.

-Have your own freedom and have your own terms and conditions. Not the one that others have written for you.

-Whenever writing troubles me, I think about the speed of a baseball. It’s slow, but still you get a lot of strikes even if you are a great player.

-This project is very dear to me. I want to do all I want, with a little bit of compromise of-course. 

-Designing is really fun and personal if it is close to your heart. Your life is the design that you make. 

-Reveal yourself to the world through your design. Let your creation reflect you and be close to your heart.

-If a difficulty does not get solved in one part, don’t worry. Break it into more parts if necessary and try to resolve it again.

-There is no such thing as nice or not nice but our thought process makes it so. 

-Let’s be honest that you can’t have everything in your life. So don’t try so hard. But try to get what you can and what you truly deserve.

-Happiness is not something pre-created. It comes from what we do and what we are going to do.

-If you don’t get anything about how to design your own life, try writing something to yourself that you love.

-Whenever you are going to start something, star by drawing. It sends informations to your brain to get up and start working. 

-Those who worry about their drawing skills, relax. No one is going to grade you.

-The thing that I like most about deconstruction is getting complete freedom to change anything that we ever wanted.

-Shifting our perspective often gives us a new approach on the way to design life.

-Life is like a soup. You have a lot of varieties. Plus you can invent new ones using your creative skills and knowledge.

-If you have a perfect life right now then don’t even think of reconstructing your life all over again because putting back those pieces together is going to be an immensely impossible job to do.

-Think of a metaphor everyday. That will serve as the summary of your current life scenario.

-My life is a glass elevator that is freestanding, firmly protected with the bond of my family, friends, faith, friendship, peace, design and connection.

-While reconstruction, just stop for a while and look for all the key ingredients that you need to reconstruct your life.

-Close your eyes and imagine about all the things you ever dreamt about.

-Make a record of things you want to complete in the life that you reconstruct. Keep a check on it frequently in case you forget a thing or two.

-Pen down a manifesto for your life which will describe your examples, your opinions and last but not the least, your goals.

-Ponder of a poem about the life you always loved and write it down. Poems are an excellent way to focus on our path of consciousness.

-Everyone is powerful in this world. Some are more, some are less. But together we can solve this if we advise each other well.

-When you try to design something, you get better only by practice.

-Write a Haiku to portray your creativity about life in 3 lines, 17 syllable,5-7-5 structure or the 12 syllables and 3-5-3 structure in the Japanese style.

-The best way to learn designing is to teach the process to someone else and help them design their own lives.

-The point to design a life is to make sure that the life which you are currently in is the same as that of the life which has always been your dream.

-The end is nothing but just the beginning.

-Last but not the least everything seems hard before it’s completed. But once it is, you will receive an eternal level of peace inside of yourself that is much greater than mere happiness.

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