Capitolo 1
Feeling Your Way to Success: The Revolutionary Approach to Goal-Setting
Have you ever achieved something you thought you wanted, only to feel strangely empty afterward? Or perhaps you've diligently followed all the "right" steps toward success but still felt disconnected from your accomplishments? If so, you're not alone. Danielle LaPorte's "The Desire Map" has become a cultural phenomenon precisely because it addresses this common disconnect. Endorsed by celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Elizabeth Gilbert, this book has sparked a global movement with thousands of certified Desire Map facilitators worldwide. What makes LaPorte's approach so revolutionary is her simple yet profound insight: we've been setting goals backwards. Instead of chasing external achievements hoping they'll make us feel good, what if we first identified how we want to feel, then created goals aligned with those desired feelings? This perspective shift has transformed how countless readers approach not just goal-setting, but their entire relationship with success and fulfillment.
Capitolo 2
The Revelation That Changed Everything: A New Year's Eve Epiphany
It all began on a quiet New Year's Eve. While others were celebrating at parties, LaPorte found herself at home with her sleeping baby and then-husband, creating traditional goal lists on poster boards divided into life categories. As she wrote down typical aspirations-trips to take, possessions to acquire, career milestones to reach-something felt hollow about the exercise.
Then, almost instinctively, she began scrawling feeling words across each section: "Freedom! Abundance. Sexy. Connected. Creative." In that moment, everything shifted. Instead of focusing on external achievements, she and her husband began discussing how they wanted to feel in various aspects of their lives. The planning suddenly felt more engaging, more beautiful, and infinitely more meaningful.
This simple shift evolved into an unofficial process that transformed LaPorte's approach to life planning. She abandoned traditional goal-setting systems and discovered that focusing on desired feelings created more liberated energy. Even when specific goals weren't met, she could recognize how other experiences fulfilled her desired emotional states.
What began as a personal revelation eventually evolved into The Desire Map-a system that has resonated with countless others seeking a more meaningful way to create their lives. The core premise is deceptively simple: What if, instead of chasing external achievements hoping they'll make us feel good, we first get clear on how we want to feel, then use those desired feelings to guide our choices?
This approach helps us make more empowered choices-both making more choices in our lives and making choices that are more aligned with our deeper selves. When we keep our core desired feelings in mind throughout daily decisions-from planning goals to sending emails to shopping-we create a reality that genuinely reflects who we are and what matters most to us.
Capitolo 3
Desire: The Pounding Heart of Liberation
Before diving into the mechanics of desire mapping, it's essential to understand desire itself. Many of us have complicated relationships with our wants and longings. Some spiritual traditions suggest that desire leads to suffering, while consumer culture constantly tells us that satisfying our desires will bring happiness. So what's the truth?
LaPorte offers a nuanced perspective: desire is the engine of creation and the apex of our expanding consciousness. It infuses us with courage for noble acts and sacrifice, yet can also drive us to madness and doubt. Through our wanting, we come to know ourselves more deeply.
When LaPorte emailed a Tibetan Buddhist lama about the "right" energy for desiring enlightenment, he responded that desire is at the heart of liberation-we naturally desire things, and deep desire for freedom moves us in the right direction. The key is examining how neurotic our actions around liberation are. The lesson: Want it with all your heart, but don't get attached to getting it.
Something remarkable happens when we look desire in the eye-we get closer to both our current reality and our potential. We see the dark side of clinging and the purity of our longing. Desire forms the foundation of our will to live; when we cease to desire, we cease to evolve. Even with liberated consciousness, desire remains the mesh underlying both material existence and spiritual growth.
Desire hurts so good-an ache we'll never escape if we want to be fully alive. Our desires reveal what will make us feel complete, powerful, or free. And behind every desire is a feeling, and our feelings will lead us to our soul.
Capitolo 4
The Magnetic Power of Feelings
Everything we do is driven by the desire to feel a certain way. What we buy, eat, say, who we choose as friends, what we make, who we love-all go back to the desire to feel good. This applies across all circumstances, whether surviving is our definition of feeling good or thriving is.
Sometimes even feeling bad feels good when negative emotions become comfortingly familiar. Awareness means realizing life could always be better; growth means doing what it takes to improve it. When we prioritize feeling courageous over checking accomplishments, feeling free over pleasing others, and feeling good over looking good, we align with divine priorities that steer us toward the life we deeply long for.
Despite their importance, society constantly tells us to suppress our feelings: "Don't take it personally," "Keep your feelings in check," "Don't let your heart rule your head." This disconnection leads us astray. Our feelings aren't necessarily facts about external reality, but they are facts about our personal reality-and that matters profoundly.
What's fascinating is that emotions aren't located in our heads but in our hearts-our fourth chakra. The heart generates an electromagnetic field 60 times greater than brain waves, with a magnetic component 100 times stronger than the brain's, measurable several feet from the body. Feelings are how we perceive life, and perception shapes how we live.
Our productivity-obsessed society pathologizes feelings, especially in business and academic cultures. We grind toward goals, telling ourselves "it'll be worth it when we get there," valuing outer attainment over inner attunement. We justify soulless pursuits with phrases like "It was the right thing" or "There was money on the line." But this approach never truly pays off.
When we decide the journey matters as much as the destination, we must radically alter our definition of success. Core desired feelings are generative, not reactive-they're what Jung analyst Marion Woodman calls "the soul cry." Unlike fleeting emotional reactions, core desired feelings originate deep within and remain relatively constant. They're sparks of divinity that illuminate our lives, giving us a sense of coming home to ourselves.
Capitolo 5
The Liberating Benefits of Clear Desires
When you get clear about how you want to feel, you liberate yourself from proving yourself to everyone. You might discover that what you thought you needed-six figures, marriage by thirty, prestigious titles-isn't necessary to feel the way you want. As author SARK told LaPorte at a cocktail party: "No striving." She runs her publishing empire by unconventional means, declining flashy offers that don't align with her core feelings: "I gotta feel juiced. Juiced is the goal."
With clear desires, you can say yes to the right opportunities. When you're clear on your desired feelings-perhaps adventurous, love, energized, and prospering-you might find yourself attracted to opportunities that don't match your mental checklist but deliver exactly the feelings you crave. Like falling for someone who doesn't match your "ideal partner" criteria but makes you feel exactly how you want to feel.
Being anchored to your desired feelings while remaining open to unexpected forms allows life to deliver something even better than you imagined. In difficult moments-when you're angry or disconnected-recalling your core desired feelings can provide immediate relief. Rather than spiraling through self-criticism or forced positivity, simply thinking "I desire light" or "I prefer communion" interrupts mental complaints, points you toward what you want, allows optimism to enter, and opens your heart.
The most practical reason to clarify your core desires is that you can make small, daily improvements without dramatic life changes. You don't need to quit your job, learn a new language, or adopt a seven-step system. To feel how you want to feel more often, you simply need easy, natural practices that generate those feelings every day.
For example, to feel "divinely feminine," you might text your partner something sweet, read empowering literature, keep a tea date with a friend, or simply choose a skirt over yoga pants. When feeling broke instead of affluent, sitting on an expensive Italian sofa at a high-end store can shift your mindset from lack to possibility. Small, deliberate actions aligned with your desires create meaningful shifts in your daily experience.
Capitolo 6
Embracing the Full Emotional Spectrum
Negative emotions serve as valuable indicators that we're out of sync with our soul. Getting off track isn't just natural-it's inevitable and essential for growth. Each wrong turn teaches us more about ourselves and life. Rather than judging these feelings, we can reframe them as wake-up calls reminding us of our innate magnificence.
Every emotion has value when we fully feel and accept it without judgment. Negative feelings often point directly to what we truly desire: anger reminds us of peace, sadness of happiness, fear of faith. By recognizing this relationship, we can use difficult emotions as guideposts toward our core desired feelings.
Our feelings are fluid and multidimensional-like an ocean that can be turbulent on the surface yet calm in its depths. What appears as a negative emotion might actually be expressing something hopeful from deep within. An angry outburst could be creative energy seeking expression. Grief might be tender compassion stirring. What looks like fear might actually be excitement without proper breathing.
Every unwanted emotion serves as a stepping stone toward what you truly desire. Restriction can lead to freedom, shame to pride, and weakness to integrity-but you must stay in motion, constantly checking your inner emotional GPS. Abraham-Hicks describes "rockets of desire" that launch not only when we consciously want something, but also whenever we experience something unwanted. This liberating concept means all experiences contribute to progress. Every negative emotion represents a wish for something better, bringing you closer to joy with each desire.
Paradoxically, we sometimes push away good feelings because we don't feel worthy, because we're focused on pleasing others, or because we're operating on others' reward systems. Joy can feel vulnerable and powerful-it threatens the status quo and can shake our emotional structures. We muffle happiness because we fear it won't last or because positive emotions might threaten those around us who prefer miserable company.
When we numb ourselves to avoid painful emotions or deflect positive feelings that seem threatening to our habits, we create shallow, narrow lives. To be whole means making space for the full range of human emotion, honoring even our darker feelings without acting them out.
Capitolo 7
Rethinking Goals: From Rigid Plans to Soulful Intentions
LaPorte has a complicated relationship with traditional goal-setting. Despite being ambitious, she's rarely reached goals in the expected way or timeframe-she's failed at some, redirected others, achieved some late, and occasionally exceeded expectations. What she's discovered is that the problem isn't goals themselves, but how we approach them.
When we chase achievements to prove ourselves, we operate from a place of pushing rather than flowing. The key insight: we only want to hit targets if both the aiming and hitting feel good. This means sometimes abandoning fixed goals and numbers in favor of intentions that align with our core desired feelings-making our heart the pilot rather than external metrics.
Feeling good increases flexibility, resilience, effectiveness, and magnetism, while still allowing for hard work-just joyous hard work rather than grinding misery. When LaPorte first held the printed version of The Desire Map in her hands, she ironically fell back into setting traditional fixed goals-making specific financial targets and launch dates-and immediately felt stressed. She'd slipped into default mode and missed her own point: to pursue intentions in ways that feel soul-affirming, not soul-sucking.
Laughing at herself, she shifted from "Make X dollars on X project" to "Get the message out to as many people as possible. Create liberation," and from "Launch by Spring" to "Make it incredibly beautiful. Launch when ready." Without rigid dates and numbers, her shoulders relaxed, her overheated brain cooled, and trust in life returned.
The foundation of a good relationship with intentions and goals is remembering that the primary aim is to feel the way you want to feel. External achievements are secondary goals that lead back to experiencing your core desired feelings.
Whether you desire simplicity or grandeur, quiet or bold, as long as what you're pursuing creates your most desired feelings, you're aligned with your truth. Soulful intentions aren't about austerity or wanting less-if downsizing makes you feel expanded, do it! Conversely, pursuing fame and fortune might be perfectly soulful if that's what genuinely lights you up.
Capitolo 8
The Paradox of Achievement: Fierce but Flexible
There's a powerful paradox in goal achievement: holding single-minded focus while remaining detached from outcomes. This "relaxed determination" works magic for manifesting. First, you need focused determination like a hungry lioness-the power of channeling all your energy in one direction.
Three ways to get focused: 1) Know the meaningful why behind your goal, beyond money or pleasing others. 2) Become acutely aware of your hunger-what are you craving that this accomplishment will feed? 3) Get real about what it will take-dream like an eagle, plan like a mouse.
Then, paradoxically, ease up on expectations, which can distract from feeling good. As LaPorte learned after a high-stakes magazine meeting: "Lay down expectations, take up sincerity." Stay focused on desires while releasing your grip on the future.
When you make positive changes, your brain initially floods you with feel-good neurotransmitters, making new habits feel effortless. But this chemical high inevitably crashes, leaving you struggling around day four or five. This isn't weakness; it's your cells literally reshaping to accommodate new patterns. Sports psychology coach Todd Herman explains that pushing through this sixteen-day biological adjustment period is crucial-after that, habits become automatic.
The epiphany comes when you realize you don't want to work so hard for what you want-in work, love, or life. This awakening is liberating, but dangerous if it leads to dream shrinkage. We falsely believe slowing down means getting less in return. Your heart says "I want to do less" and your head counters "Then you'll get less." We think easing up means settling for less.
But the cosmos doesn't measure sweat and hours for reward-it deals in the currency of emotion. When we feel good, goodness flows. You can work simpler for better results, think less for more creativity, push less to go further. Simplifying your output doesn't mean expecting less in return.
Capitolo 9
The Desire Map Process: Finding Your Core Desired Feelings
The practical heart of The Desire Map is the process of discovering your core desired feelings-the emotional states that will guide your choices and goals. This process examines five interconnected life areas: Livelihood & Lifestyle (career, money, home, possessions); Body & Wellness (healing, fitness, food, rest); Creativity & Learning (expression, education, hobbies); Relationships & Society (romance, friendship, community); and Essence & Spirituality (soul, truth, faith).
Through exploring key questions about gratitude, dissatisfaction, and desires in each area, you create a feelings-based framework for setting meaningful goals. The process typically takes a few days, with natural pauses needed for reflection, particularly after identifying core desired feelings.
To begin, you explore how you want to feel in each life area using stream of consciousness writing. Don't censor yourself-desired feelings can be single words or phrases, abstract or specific. Let it flow freely, going deep while keeping it light. You don't need a huge variety of words; sometimes just a few reveal the heart of what matters to you.
Next, explore these words deeply using dictionaries and thesauruses. Consider how definitions enhance or change your understanding of words. Notice your reactions-do origins inspire or repel you? Add new words that resonate. Remember that dictionary definitions don't always match personal meanings; you can embrace official definitions or create your own based on experience.
Then select about ten words that most resonate with you. Trust yourself-the truth wants to surface. Explore words from multiple angles: how they make you feel, what they look like embodied, how they sound, what life would be like experiencing them.
Notice repeating feelings across life areas-we tend to desire the same feeling states throughout our lives. Focus on selecting three to five core desired feelings that feel electric and precise. Be mindful of words that orient you outward (like "loved") versus inward (like "love"), and words that keep you in "do-mode" if you tend to overgive.
Finally, choose your three to five core desired feelings. While focus helps, choose what works for you. You'll write these feelings repeatedly, both for reference and to anchor them into your heart and mind through repetition.
LaPorte's own core desired feelings evolved over time. She initially identified divinely feminine, connected, innovative, and affluent. After years with these same feelings, she did some psychic spring-cleaning, asking if each feeling was still pulling her forward and if it reflected her current cravings. She realized she'd been phrasing them as something outside herself rather than from within, so she shifted to affirmative phrasing and experimented with nouns rather than adjectives. Eventually, she added joy as her lead core desired feeling.
Capitolo 10
From Feelings to Action: Creating a Life That Feels Good
Once you've identified your core desired feelings, the next step is connecting how you want to feel with what will help you feel that way. This inside-out approach reverses how we typically organize our lives. Instead of chasing external achievements hoping they'll make us feel a certain way, we ask what we need to do, experience, and have to feel how we want to feel.
This process might cause some long-held ambitions to fall away or become clearer than ever. For example, buying a house might feel like a burden rather than creating vitality, or it might perfectly align with feeling connected, vital, loving, and prosperous. The essential question becomes: "What do I need to do to feel the way I want to feel?"
Before moving into action mode, consider this beautiful notion: you already have much of what you want-in places you've overlooked, in different packaging than expected, hidden in plain sight. By finding evidence of fulfillment in your current reality, you remove neediness from your wants, ease up on others, generate transformative gratitude, recognize progress, and loosen your grip on desires-allowing everything to breathe and come to life.
When planning your actions, focus is essential-significant intentions take time, and a year flies by. Set out to do three or four things with gusto and excellence rather than a dozen things sufficiently. The momentum and satisfaction gained from completing a few amazing endeavors far outweighs doing many things halfway.
The most powerful question when choosing which intentions to focus on is what lights you up most. Enthusiasm is special-it stirs up and carbonates all other positive feelings. Additional questions to help clarify your choices include how it affects others, whether it generates multiple core desired feelings, and how you'd feel if you died without doing it.
Remember: everything is progress in an expanding universe. You can change your mind anytime. Just do something-motion beats stasis. When you take action, you learn and get freer; when you stay still from fear, your self-worth wanes and doubts multiply. As Sondheim wrote, "I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not."
Capitolo 11
Living Your Desired Feelings Every Day
Integrate your core desired feelings into daily life by: planning your week by these feelings; reciting them before sleep and upon waking; writing them where you'll see them regularly; using them as mantras during meditation; keeping this book close; reviewing what you wrote periodically; sharing your desired feelings with others; asking for spiritual guidance; and surrounding yourself with positive content that reinforces your intentions.
When life gets difficult, practice these strategies: fully accept what's happening instead of resisting it; say "I'm really looking forward to feeling..." to shift your perspective; use the phrase "I'm clear that I want to feel..." to stay grounded; reframe setbacks as clarity-building experiences; and refer to your positive thought forms as invocations to help you through tough times. Presence is the ultimate vantage point-merging into difficult moments rather than pushing them away often helps them dissolve faster.
Connect with others on your desire journey by meeting up in person or virtually. Create accountability partnerships to help each other follow through on actions and plans. As Emily Dickinson wrote, "I felt it shelter to speak to you."
LaPorte doesn't tell you to "GO FOR IT!" or suggest reward/punishment systems to stay on track. She's ambitious but practical. Some of us truly want to be alive, while others just want to get through life. No system, not even The Desire Map, guarantees you'll choose Life-you are the guarantor of your own bliss.
The invitation is simple yet profound: Be what you want. All that you are. Be what feels good. You are more than your name, your frame, your DNA-you're even bigger than your big wishes. Imagine that.
