Pursue Your Core Desired Feelings (Danielle LaPorte)

What emotions do you truly want to experience each day? How can you intentionally create those feelings in your life?

In The Desire Map, Danielle LaPorte introduces a revolutionary approach to goal-setting based on core desired feelings. Instead of focusing solely on achievements, she guides readers to identify and pursue the emotions they most want to experience in their daily lives.

Keep reading to discover how to transform your life by making decisions based on how you want to feel.

Determine Your Core Desired Feelings

After asking yourself a few questions to get into a self-reflective mindset, the next step is to determine how you want to feel. In other words, what emotions do you most desire to experience? LaPorte calls these your core desired feelings.

LaPorte suggests choosing three to five words that reflect how you’d like to feel every day, in all aspects of your life: your work life, your home life, your local community, and so on. To do this, start by brainstorming desired feelings in each life area. Next, look for words or themes your lists for each area have in common. Finally, distill your desired feelings down to an essential few that you want to experience every day, no matter what you’re doing.

(Shortform note: In contrast to LaPorte, self-help author Mark Manson says in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck that focusing too much on your feelings inevitably leads to failure and discouragement. Manson argues that emotions are fickle and unreliable, so the things that make you feel good one day might not have the same effect on the next day. Furthermore, he says that people whose goal is to feel good all the time tend to avoid challenging themselves because it’s uncomfortable, which stifles their personal growth and achievements. For Manson, true happiness can only come from solving meaningful problems. For example, if you struggle with loneliness (a problem), the solution might be to find a loving partner to share your life with.) 

To give a brief example of LaPorte’s process, someone might come up with the following core desired feelings:

• Home: Peace, joy, connection
• Work: Importance, engagement, usefulness
• Community: Belonging, support, fun

The person could then determine that “connection,” “engagement,” and “fun” have a common theme of being interested in what’s around them. This suggests that they want all aspects of their life to hold their full attention. This person might then choose the word interest as one of their core desired feelings. 

(Shortform note: It may be difficult to pin down exactly what feelings you want to experience. Many people lack emotional vocabulary, and thus struggle to identify their emotions. To help you get started, consider some of the words that people most commonly use to describe their positive feelings. For instance, when people feel good about the future, they commonly say they’re feeling optimism or hope. Someone who feels good about someone else often says they feel affection or love toward that other person. Finally, people who feel good about themselves often describe that experience as pride or confidence.)

Pursue Your Core Desired Feelings

Once you’ve identified three to five feelings as your overall goals, the final step is to pursue those feelings. Consider what actions, possessions, experiences, or achievements would cause you to feel the ways you want to feel. LaPorte advises you to come up with a well-rounded strategy that involves yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily actions. 

First of all, set three or four major intentions for the year. These are long-term objectives that will help you to build the life you want and feel how you want to feel. For instance, if you want to feel confident, one of your goals for the year might be to lose 30 pounds. In this hypothetical, perhaps you’ve determined that losing weight will make you more attractive, which in turn will make you feel more confident. 

(Shortform note: When setting your major intentions for the year, don’t be afraid to go big. In The 10X Rule, entrepreneur and business coach Grant Cardone suggests figuring out what a “reasonable” goal would be, then multiplying that goal by ten. Cardone reasons that setting bold, seemingly impossible goals will motivate you to work harder and find creative ways to reach those goals that you would never have thought of otherwise. He also says that it’s better to fall short of a 10X goal than to reach a reasonable goal. For example, if a reasonable goal for you is to save up $10,000 over the next year, the 10X goal would be to save $100,000. Even if you only manage to reach, say, $30,000, you’ve still tripled your original goal.) 

Next, says LaPorte, set a time each month to check in with yourself. Determine which parts of your strategy are working for you—in other words, what you’re doing that actually produces your core desired feelings—and which parts aren’t working. Tweak your plans as needed. 

Suppose that you want to lose weight but find that you dread going to the gym. In that case, you might update your plan by replacing the gym with a more enjoyable form of exercise, such as joining a community sports team or a martial arts school.

(Shortform note: LaPorte suggests these monthly check-ins as ways to evaluate and adjust your plans, but if you recognize that something isn’t working for you, there’s no need to wait for your next check-in to fix it. In The Toyota Way, Jeffrey Liker explains that Toyota immediately stops production for even minor errors in their assembly process. He says this approach is more efficient in the long run than pushing through minor problems because addressing problems improves the quality of the entire process going forward. You can apply this same principle to your strategy for pursuing core desired feelings: If you recognize something is consistently not producing core desired feelings, stop doing it as soon as possible and look for a better way to reach your goals.) 

LaPorte also suggests making weekly action plans for yourself. Remember that you’re planning how you’ll generate particular feelings, not how you’ll accomplish specific goals. So your action plan for feeling confident would probably include a healthy meal plan and your exercise routine for the week, but it might also include going to the library to pick up a book about self-esteem.

(Shortform note: Experts offer various opinions on the optimal timeframe for action plans. For instance, contrary to what LaPorte says here, Roy Baumeister and John Tierney (Willpower) say that weekly plans tend to make people lose sight of their long-term goals. According to Baumeister and Tierney, the best method is to plan one month in advance—they argue that this approach strikes the ideal balance between the flexibility of short-term plans and the goal-oriented focus of long-term plans.)

Finally, says LaPorte, look for small things you can do or experience each day that generate your desired emotional states. For example, if your goal is to feel more confident, you might try intentionally choosing outfits that make you feel attractive—that way, when you catch sight of yourself in the mirror throughout the day, you feel a burst of confidence.

(Shortform note: Some psychologists refer to small, positive experiences (like feeling confident when you look in the mirror) as glimmers: momentary stimuli that cause you to feel happy and calm. Some other common glimmers include the feeling of sunshine, the taste and warmth of coffee, and the experience of petting a dog or cat.) 

Be Self-Assured and Practical

LaPorte encourages you to be confident about your desires and goals: Don’t sabotage yourself (or allow others to sabotage you) with thoughts that your desires are unimportant or unrealistic. Happiness and life satisfaction are always worth pursuing, regardless of what that pursuit looks like for you. Seeking excitement as, say, a traveling performer is just as valid as seeking stability as a corporate CEO. 

(Shortform note: LaPorte says that you might sabotage your own happiness if you lack confidence. In Your Erroneous Zones, self-improvement expert Wayne Dyer discusses this concept in more detail, saying that people typically self-sabotage in one of two ways. First, people get in their own way by waiting for others to give them approval or permission to do what they want to do. In short, they lack the self-assuredness to make and carry out a plan of action until they know they have support from others. Second, people tend to play it safe; they’re afraid of what might happen if they try something new, so they keep doing the same familiar things, even if those things don’t make them happy or bring them fulfillment.)

At the same time, LaPorte says that you must be realistic about your plans. Everybody has limits to what they can do—you might be constrained by your budget, your work schedule, your health, or countless other factors. So it’s important to pursue your core desired feelings in ways that are reasonable given your situation. 

For example, if you work a full-time job and have family members relying on you, then pursuing a feeling of calmness by going on a year-long spiritual retreat is most likely not in the cards for you. On the other hand, you could very reasonably pursue that same feeling by practicing meditation at home, buying a good set of earplugs to shut out noise when needed, and making time each week to rest and relax.