EXCERPT – Find Your Strongest Life by Marcus Buckingham

The conventional image of a successful woman today is that she's a virtuoso juggler, somehow moving fast enough to keep all the many aspects of her busy life in the air at the same time. Conventional it may be, but it's also quite sad. The core skill of juggling is throwing, not catching. To keep every object in the air, you have to get rid of each one as quickly as possible, barely allowing it to register on your fingertips before you toss it up and away, preparing for the next object to throw.

A strong life is the opposite of juggling. Juggling requires you to keep everything at bay, up in the air, away from you. The secret to living a strong life lies in knowing how to draw a few things in toward you. It asks you to be discriminating, selective, intentional. You can find energizing moments in each aspect of your life, but to do so you must learn how to catch them, hold on to them, feel the pull of their weight, and allow yourself to follow where they lead.

The aim of this book is to teach you this life skill.

This book will show you how to start your life strong and then, more importantly, how to get stronger as you get older. It will help you set a direction for your life without fearing that you've chosen the wrong one. It will reveal how to handle all the responsibilities on your shoulders without feeling spasms of guilt that you aren't doing enough, or that what you're doing you're doing wrong. It will guide you toward building fulfilling relationships with your boss, your coworkers, your spouse, and your kids without letting resentment of what they are demanding from you, or what they are not doing for you, slip in.

Of course, this book won't answer all your questions nor will it solve all your problems, but it will show you how you can use life to strengthen you, rather than break you down. It will show you how to find your strongest life.

You'll begin by taking a test, the Strong Life test, that measures you on nine life roles: Advisor, Caretaker, Creator, Equalizer, Influencer, Motivator, Pioneer, Teacher, and Weaver. More than likely, your life calls on you to play all nine roles some of the time, but, even so, you are not a blank slate—your personality doesn't shift and morph according to the demands of every unique situation. Instead, as we all do, you have some consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving, patterns that are distinctive and that remain stable across time and situations. These patterns come together in a Lead Role, a role you return to time and again, a role that you and your closest family and friends recognize as the core of who you are. It is the role in which, today, you feel most authentic, in control, and effective. Here, in this role, you are versatile and resilient and courageous. Here, you learn fast and easily, and are always hungry to learn more. here is the source of your genius, at home and at work.

Next, you'll learn how to accept your Lead Role and build your life around it. this doesn't mean you have to abandon the grand dreams you have for your life—on the contrary, more often than not acceptance is the necessary precondition for discovering exactly how you can live out these dreams. Acceptance does require a clear head, though. You are surrounded by so many different people, each with their own expectations of you, each placing their demands on you, each competing for your attention. You need the right mindset to cut through the clamor of these competing voices, and take a stand for who you really are.

Finally, you'll learn how to intentionally imbalance your life. So often you are told to strive for balance. But balance is the wrong target—it is almost impossible to achieve and unfulfilling when you do. Study the happiest and most successful women and you realize that they ignore balance, and strive for fullness instead. They deliberately tilt their world toward those few moments that genuinely fill them up. This isn't self-centeredness. It is the strong life practice that gives them the strength they need to provide for all those who rely on them.

To help you put this practice to work in your own life, you'll end the book with a series of Strong Life tactics. Here you'll get down to brass tacks and learn how you can use this practice to find your strongest career, to strengthen your relationships, to raise strong kids, and to build a stronger future for yourself. I arranged it in a simple question-and-answer format so you can pick which areas you want to dive into more deeply and find the practical tips you need to take control of your life.

However, it's impossible to begin any journey unless you know where you're starting from, so, before you launch into the Strong Life test, it's worth taking time to pinpoint where you are today. By which I mean, are you happy? Are you fulfilled? Are you clear about which direction your life should take? Do you know what success would look like and feel like if you were lucky enough to find it?

If you are a woman, the chances of you answering 'yes' to these questions are lower today than forty years ago, and lower than if you were a man. After forty years of research into men's and women's happiness, the evidence reveals that, though both men and women can suffer under life's pressures and uncertainties, women seem to be suffering more. To discover why, we're going to head to Chicago and a frigid Fall morning . . .

Excerpted from Find Your Strongest Life, © 2009 by One Thing Productions, LLC. Published in Nashville, Tennessee by Thomas Nelson. Used with permission. All rights reserved.