The Desire Map Course with Danielle LaPorte
Return to your heart. Choose your feelings. Create your life with intention.
Overview
About

01: Welcome
The Desire Map was created out of a goal setting session. Danielle sat down, wrote out her list of goals, and was completely underwhelmed. It felt like a laundry list of chores instead of a roadmap to living the most compelling and fulfilling life she could. But when she switched from setting goals to focusing on how she wanted to feel, the lights turned on and everything changed. Her to-do list had morphed into an invitation to something bigger. She discovered a new paradigm for living, unbound by what if’s and the daily grind. It was all heart, all desire, all love.

02: Day 1: Part 1: A Prayer for Reflection
Desire Mapping is all about the landscape in your heart. Take a moment to honor presence and space before we start this journey.

03: Day 1: Part 2: How This Works
It’s all about living through the heart. Our Core Desired Feelings are a daily check in for leading from a place that is feeling, intentional, and heart-centered. Creating our world starts with a feeling — it starts in the heart.

04: Day 1: Part 3: Let’s Begin
As we embark on our journey together, it’s important to remember that this is a practice for living. We set no expectations for how quickly or slowly you’ll move through, because the only metric that matters is how you are connecting with your feeling, intuitive self...

05: Day 2: Soul Limber
Our imagination shows us how we perceive reality. Soul Limber is meant to get you out of your head and more into your heart space. Less logic, more . . . liminal. Don’t worry about what’s right, lean into what feels good.

06: Day 3: Gratitude
Appreciation is a form of wellness. It’s also what keeps us moving through difficult times and what brings us back to love time and again. More importantly, when we tie our gratitude to the “why” of it, we develop new forms of appreciation and depths of connection for living.

07: Day 4: What's Not Working
We’ve all heard the old adage, “where attention goes, energy flows.” We all have things in our lives that aren’t working for us, so why devote unnecessary focus and attention to them? It only breeds stress, discomfort, and negativity. We need to get real about what’s not working, so we can make changes and step into our true power.

08: Day 5: Past and Present Feelings
There’s a difference between ignoring something and choosing not to engage it. One is involuntary and rooted in fear, the other is all about self-agency and choice. Impactful and ongoing experiences create “feeling pathways” in our nervous system. We want to clear the overgrowth and find the road to more positive feelings.

09: Day 6: Desired Feelings
Let’s dig into this: Core Desired Feelings are your most preferred states of being. They are life-affirming, positive, and expansive. They are the various expressions of love and vitality. They are qualities of the heart, they pull you in the direction of your Highest Self into gratitude, compassion, inclusivity, and generosity — finding joy and peace in many forms. Support Tools: Positive Feelings List & Negative Feelings List

10: Day 7: Part 1: Inner Selves
See your feelings through your different inner selves — your tenderness, your strength, your trust. This is the roadmap for showing up for different situations and different experiences in your past, future, and present. When you’re aligned with what feelings you want to live through, you get clarity on acting with agency and purpose.

11: Day 7: Part 2: Make Your First Picks
This is the space where we start to set down concrete versions of our Core Desired Feelings. This exercise has two objectives: to identify the way we want to feel, but also to see what that says about us. What patterns are we noticing? What future are we choosing? What are we allowing into our world that doesn’t need to be there? Focus increases your potency.

12: Day 8: Word Exploration
Every word is a universe and every choice we make for how we feel unfolds a world of possibility. The beauty of words is their ability to be descriptive of so many levels of the human experience. When we really go deep, we realize the ways we choose to feel are evolving targets, reflecting the beauty, love, and depth of our humanity.

13: Day 9: Declare Your Core Desired Feelings
As Carl Jung put it, “Only the dreamer knows the dream.” You know what your Core Desired Feelings are. The meaning of each word or phrase is for you to own and interpret. It does not have to fit a formula. It doesn’t have to be workable or realistic for anyone else—not even your best friend or therapist. Feel your feelings. Aim. Live from the heart.

14: Day 10: Word Blessing
One thing we keep returning to is the inherent power in our feelings and how we describe them. Creating your Word Blessing is a mantric way to carry this power into your world, letting it saturate every part of your being while becoming a shining beacon for the community around you.

15: Here's what's ahead in Parts 2-4.
We’ve learned so much together, but the journey has only just begun. Now that you’ve identified your Core Desired Feelings, the next step is to put them into action. In Parts 2-4 we'll learn how our Core Desired Feelings can be used as a life-planning tool to hone our goals, craft our inner-world and lift up the larger community around us.

16: The Desire Map Course Part 2: Inner World
Now we’re heading into the terrain of Intentional Creation. Your tool and your magic formula is your Core Desired Feelings. We create now from the heart – and it changes everything. The question we have to ask is: what does our inner world tell us about ourselves, what messages is it sending us, and what narratives are we buying into? When we learn to act with agency in our inner world, joy unfolds.

17: The Desire Map Course Part 2: Outer World
In terms of creating your ideal life, what you decide to stop doing is as important as what you start doing. When we identify the actions, thoughts, and feelings that are not serving us, we can mindfully remove them and tap into new levels of agency and intention.

18: The Desire Map Course Part 3: Dream Analysis
Now that we’ve identified our Core Desired Feelings, we can start aligning our actions with them. Where goal setting can feel like a chore, when we connect our goals with how we want to feel, we get the ultimate pathway to achieving success with purpose and meaning. We use our FEELINGS to inform our PERCEPTION which inform our ACTIONS, and then, our outer reality begins to take shape.

19: The Desire Map Course Part 3: Intentions + Goal Setting
It’s easy to fall back in the rut of traditional goal setting. We set some arbitrary achievement up as our path to happiness and of course, that falls short. When we focus on how we want to feel and use that to inform our actions, we start to see that these goals aren’t chores to be ticked off a list, they’re our sacred desires made tangible.

20: The Desire Map Course Part 3: Brutal Facts + Fears
Welcome to the darkside. This is about learning to live with process and deal positively with the uncomfortable. Like a dance, when life directs us one way we need less pull, more flow. We may not be able to control the things that happen in our lives, but we do control the response. This is the seat of our power, taking our agency back from the negatives and channeling it with purpose into the positives.

21: The Desire Map Course Part 3: Desire Map Manifesting Practice
The heart is powerful. It’s creative ability is unlimited and it knows the breadth of our lives in a much deeper and intensive way than our brains ever could. It is the seat of our knowing, our imaginining, and our action. All positive, joyous, and love-focused living begins by manifesting in the heart and bringing that energy out to the world.

22: The Desire Map Course Part 4: Desire Mapping as a Life Practice + Support Tools
It’s not enough to just live your Core Desired Feelings. You have to integrate them. Practice them. Bring them to life. In ritual. Every day. Recommended Tool: A little bit of reflection everyday… goes a long way for clearer decisions and breathing. For that, there’s The Desire Map Planner. It’s steady, and soul-directed.

23: The Desire Map Course Part 4: The Heart Centering Practice
This is where mindfulness and heartfulness come together in the power of breath and prayer. This is a practice for cultivating the sacred within us and tapping into it. This is where we commune with our Life Source, lifting our hearts up high.

24: The Desire Map Course Part 4: Core Desired Feelings Blessing Ceremony
A blessing for living in peace, return to your heart, and connecting with purpose.

25: The Desire Map Course Part 4: Future Present
We're living in wild times, and this is why we practice, why we breathe, why we keep coming back to our hearts, and why we must keep showing up with love, for ourselves and for each other. The time is now. Thank you so much joining us on this journey. Please keep coming back to your heart. When you do... you bring all of us with you.

26: Frequently Asked Questions: Q: Is it okay to want it all?
Is it okay to want it ALL? Remember, you are defining success on your own terms. Desire Mapping allows you to return to your heart and define what success looks like for you. The qualities of your own heart will help you to answer this question.

27: Frequently Asked Questions: Q: What if one of your Core Desired Feelings isn't something you've ever experienced?
Focusing on these new, unfamiliar Core Desired Feelings (and choosing to feel them) creates new neural pathways that will help bring these feelings into your life. This concept points our attention the importance of patience as you live into this new Core Desired Feelings. Remember, the beauty of this process is that it's a practice... not a destination.

28: Frequently Asked Questions: Q: What if someone I love doesn't understand my Core Desired Feelings?
Your feelings are yours—and your Core Desired Feelings are no different. This is about self-agency and self-determination. No one can argue how you feel, or how you desire to feel. Stand in the power of your heart, and choose.

29: Frequently Asked Questions: Q: What if I feel guilty for wanting more?
Guilt is a cousin of consciousness. It is inevitably a part of growth and self-determination; there might be some guilt that creeps in as you choose actions that serve your higher self. But guilt can be a source of creative tension, so long as you don't let it steer your away from making choices that speak to your heart.

30: Frequently Asked Questions: Q: What if most of the things I want require other people to do things with me or for me?
While you should strive to find ways to nurture your Core Desire Feelings on your own, that doesn't mean you won't reach out and enroll others in your vision. Perhaps, one of your Core Desired Feelings is about being more extroverted, or asking for what you need. But ultimately, know that YOU have everything it takes to feel how you want to feel.

31: Frequently Asked Questions: Q: What if I want to change my Core Desired Feelings every day?
Don't change your Core Desired Feelings every day. These aren't emotions; they are steady truths to seek out within your own heart. Stick with your CDFs and watch them come true for you.

32: Frequently Asked Questions: Q: I can't pick only 3, 4 or 5 CDFs. How do I know where to start?
Most of us can only hold up to 5 CDFs in our minds at one time. Selecting too many CDFs makes it difficult to choose to feel them in the moments that matter most. Try to leverage patience and focus, and go deeper with each CDF rather than wider. Remember, if your heart calls you to change them later on, you always can.

33: Frequently Asked Questions: Q: I drift away from my CDFs. How do I really live them, day-to-day?
Ask yourself, how bad do you want your CDFs? How deeply do you long for them? There's no life hack with building fulfillment. You simply have to want them, and to pray—for clarity, for support in deepening your commitment to your own value. Want your Core Desired Feelings, day after day, with your WHOLE heart.

34: Frequently Asked Questions: Q: What if I'm judging myself for not feeling my Core Desired Feelings?
Poor heaping amounts of compassion on yourself throughout this process, and remember that we learn through contrast. The pain we feel points us to something we have to loosen in our psyche. Turning towards this pain allows us to create space to feel something different. No judgment: all contrast, all choice.

35: Frequently Asked Questions: Q: In the most practical way, how do you use my CDFs to plan my day?
It's simple: Write down your Core Desired Feelings once per week. Spend Sunday night looking at where you have experienced these feelings the previous week, and look forward... Ask yourself, what can you do in the coming week to bring these Core Desired Feelings into your week? Give yourself time to get clarity on the week ahead and how you can use your thoughts and actions to experience your CDFs.

36: Frequently Asked Questions: Q: I'm feeling fearful of doing the Desire Map because I'm afraid of what it might bring up.
It's normal to feel this way. After all, desire is disruptive. But know: it's so worth it. And, there's a whole community who's done this, and who is there for you.