In Connie M Leach's Design Your Daring Life Workbook, you have all the tools and exercises to help you navigate and discover the future you want to build for yourself. Some of the activities include a dream board which helps put your dreams about what you want to do into words and pictures, as well as questions to answer to let you really think about why you chose what you did, and what it tells you about yourself. There are also exercises to tap into your multiple senses and create a life list. The other parts of the book tackle subjects like gaining confidence and what that means when shaping your future as well as using the things you are good at to help boost confidence. It discusses building healthy and successful relationships to develop interpersonal skills, recognizing the things that are holding you back or blocking you from reaching your full potential, and how to get rid of them, especially your inner critic that can sometimes be hard to tackle. Finally, designing your life the way you want it to be to have a happy and successful life where you reach your full potential.

I thought Design Your Daring Life Workbook by Connie M Leach was a very eye-opening and educational read. It would have been nice to have a book like this to work through when I was a young adult trying to figure out what I wanted to be in life. I'm not saying it would have changed the way my life is now, but when I was just graduating high school and in college, my thoughts were everywhere and I didn’t have any kind of focus steering me in any particular direction. This book is filled with easy and fun activities that make looking into the future and planning it not seem so daunting or difficult. It tackles serious subjects, but at the same time, it’s in a way that is laid back and entertaining. It also had subjects that I didn’t even think would matter as part of the process such as confidence and building healthy relationships, but thinking about it in hindsight, it does make sense. It’s a great book for young adults who are trying to find themselves. It would be nice to see a book like this in high school or a college freshman class. Overall, an enlightening read.

Design your Daring Life Workbook: Achieve Confidence, Success, and the Courage to Have it All by Connie M Leach, EdD is a self-help guide for young women who are at a stage in life where the world of opportunity has started opening up for them in one of life's greatest milestones. Leach presents an inspiring, encouraging outlook, and a whole host of tools are provided in five distinct and interconnecting parts. Each chapter begins with a nod to the titular expression of daring, with Dare to Dream Big, Dare to Be Confident, Dare to Build Successful Relationships, Dare to Be Fearless, and Dare to Have it All. From here, Leach expands on the section, incorporating thought-provoking worksheets, key points, fun and anecdotal facts, stories, and many, many other targeted interactive elements.

There is little question that matriculation from high school and college is, for most, a singular time for young adults. The world feels like it is on a string and the possibilities usually feel endless. Somewhere between this golden slice of life and true integration into civil independence, this optimism is frequently crushed and replaced by the two most dreaded words in adulting: real life. But it does not have to be this way. In Design your Daring Life, Connie M Leach takes readers through the foundational structure with the highest potential for success. Young women desperately need to understand the depth of their personal power, and this is only achieved through actual empowerment. My favorite section is in Dare to Build Successful Relationships, where the art of conversation is covered and an entire piece is dedicated to listening. Leach is clear about our tendency not to actually listen to engage - and really not even listen at all - but instead wait for our turn to talk. This isn't groundbreaking, but it was accompanied by a vigorous head-shake from my teen daughter in acknowledgment, and any book that gets pulled from my hands by a young woman about to step out into the world is one that's worthy of a read.