Design Your Daring Life Workbook

Achieve Confidence, Success, and the Courage to Have it All!

Young Adult - Non-Fiction
118 Pages
Reviewed on 08/04/2021
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Author Biography

Connie M. Leach is a college and career coach, currently working with young adults who struggle to figure out what they want for their future often feeling stuck and discouraged.
Prior to Connie's training as a coach and counselor, she was a public school teacher and administrator. Throughout her career as an educator, she helped students uncover their greatest potential and explore possibilities for their lives.
In her doctoral research, Connie examined the difficult issues facing teenage girls and what schools and communities could do to help them. As a counseling intern, she worked with young women to overcome emotional barriers that kept them from achieving their dreams.
Connie wrote, Design Your Daring Life as the book she wished she had when she was a teen and young adult, desperately needing a roadmap for life. Many of the strategies, activities, and stories she included in her book came not only from her own early life struggles but also from the challenges many of her clients face today.
It is the author's hope that readers will discover something new and exciting about themselves and ultimately create their own unique path to success and happiness.

    Book Review

Reviewed by Joe Wisinski for Readers' Favorite

Design Your Daring Life Workbook: Achieve Confidence, Success, and the Courage to Have It All! is a self-help book for teens or young adult women. Chapters included are Dare to Dream Big, Dare to be Confident, Dare to Build Successful Relationships, Dare to be Fearless, and Dare to Have It All. Author Connie M. Leach, Ed.D. is a former teacher and wrote the book to help young women design a roadmap for their lives. Each section begins and ends with a quiz. Leach encourages readers to take both quizzes so they can see their progress. There is also a summary of key points and the end of each section. Leach uses numerous examples of women who have used her advice to improve their lives. There are also quotations from successful people, such as actresses, singers, and authors.

This book is terrific. I wish I had read or, more accurately, experienced a book like this one when I was a late teenager. Author Connie M. Leach, Ed.D. provides a comprehensive blueprint to be used to change young women’s lives for the better. They’ll find out who they are, what motivates them, and how they can change. Her target audience should go beyond simply reading the book and thoughtfully answering the questions. If they do, they’ll find their lives improved as they learn lessons that will stay with them the rest of their lives. Using this book as intended will be hard work, but that’s one of its most valuable features. I highly recommend Design Your Daring Life Workbook: Achieve Confidence, Success, and the Courage to Have It All! Even though I’m not a young woman, I found the information inspiring, informative, and invaluable.

Tiffany Ferrell

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.

Asher Syed

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.