**For UPDATED Life Handbook post CLICK HERE!**

The Life Handbook - from PE.  Photo credit to Personal Excellence

I stumbled across a blog post about a year and a half ago about a life handbook. I found myself on a bit of a spiritual/personal development journey and looking for something really pivotal out of life, and I thought that this was a publication of life hacks, adages, etc.  But, it actually turned out better than than that.

Introducing the Life Handbook (LH).

Now before I go any further in describing this, I want to make sure I tell you that credit for this idea is entirely due to Celestina Chua. Check out her blog/website/description at the link below.
http://personalexcellence.co/blog/create-your-life-handbook/

The LH is an accessory that sort of developed out of PE's program, 30 Days to Live a Better Life (or 30DLBL).  If you have the time and the inclination, I highly recommend you partake in this program.

If you don't have time to read her whole post - let me break it down for you.  An LH contains anything and everything pertaining to your life.  Everything you've ever been inspired by, yearned for, wanted to achieve, wanted to remember, needed to say, etc.  It literally can encompass any and every aspect of your life.That's the overall point of an LH.

Now, let's talk about format.  The LH is exactly as it sounds - a book. I found that as much as I liked the idea of having a book, it wasn't practical to carry around an additional book.  We've discussed - I'm in graduate school! My backpack is full of enough other crap! :-)  So, I have found that the soft copy format works best for me.  If you're up in the air, I would start with the soft copy version. You can always transition later to an actual hard copy book, if you'd like. If you want to do a soft copy, you could use any program that works most feasibly for you - Excel, Powerpoint, Word, etc. I love One Note for this.  As someone who really liked the format of a hard copy, but didn't find it feasible, One Note is a good intermediate. It is formatted very much like a notebook, but with the convenience of a soft copy.  I have Outline+ on my ipad (to be discussed in a future post about best apps for graduate school!!), and Outline 2013 on my laptop. I save my life handbook to Dropbox (best apps for grad school!!), and am able to access it seamlessly between my ipad, which I have with me all day, and my laptop when I get home in the evening.

Now, it took me a while to format my life handbook and to really fill it with applicable content that fit my life and my goals.  I've broken my LH into some rather unconventional section, at least by the standard of what was original described by PE.  These sections are broken up as follows:

Just Me
By far the most comprehensive and personal section of my LH.  This section contains the following, each as its own individual section to allow for future editing, and some of which are sections that I created without the guidance of PE...
Mission Statement
My Values
Ideal Life
Vision Board
Character Board
Role Models
My Ten Commandments
20 Things
Strengths
Weaknesses
Bucket List (& of course a subsection of completed bucket list items)

Extraordinary Life
This section contains all things pertaining to my goals, plans, etc.  Such things include a Life Map of 1, 3, and 5 year goals, as well as 10 year goals.  Also, I have plans of action for some of my more specific and continuous goals, each with fun little names pertaining to the goal - these include my career/education goals, "LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE" (my personal goals), my fitness and health goals, and my financial goals ("Operation Financial Stability").

Who needs talking...

My wonderful iPad set up and how I stay up to date on my LH

I'm a big writer. I love journaling, writing poetry, and songwriting as an emotional release. As such, I find that I'm very comfortable alone, in silence, sitting with my thoughts.  Hence the name of this section. It includes all of the aspects of my LH that are meant to be reflective.  I have a journaling section (yes - I'm finally transitioning to going paperless), which is dedicated to the sorts of reflections that are done out of necessity - when I'm having a bad day and need to vent, or release all sorts of negative emotions. This is the section that isn't meant to have a positive resolution.  Let's face it - sometimes you don't want things resolved. You just want to vent about them.  The other part of this section is the Self-Reflection section.  Self-reflection, as demonstrated in 30 Days to Live a Better Life, is an absolutely crucial part of bettering yourself. If you don't reflect on what you did and what you did wrong, or could improve on, how will you ever know your strengths and weaknesses?  This is probably the most extensive portion of my LH.

Lastly, there's the Pick Me Up section.
Just like it sounds, this section contains my inspiration - quotes, images, poetry - motivation, songwriting, life adages, and workout motivation.  This is the section I go to when I need a pick me up.  The poem "Invictus", which I shared with you in a previous post is at the very top of my inspiration, along with quotes from Steve Jobs, the Dalai Lama, and Panache Desai.  Anything that makes you feel good goes in this section, for me.

So, that's my life handbook!  It's constantly changing!  That's what's so amazing about it, because it is such a true reflection of your life and what you want! Make it your own! Personalize it to no end! It is you in a compiled document, so do what you will with it!

If you want more information, I encourage you to check out Personal Excellence, specifically her post on the life handbook!

Let me know, and definitely let Celes know what you think and how you formatted your life handbook! She would love it!  A truly great person!  Follow her on facebook as well! She's a great resource and is constantly posting inspiring quotes and stories!

Until next time!