• Life Designing, Values Coaching & Goal Setting

“To realise ones’ destiny is a person’s only obligation.”

From The Alchemist | Paulo Coelho

Future Ready YOU | Life and Career Designing

Values coaching, goal setting, and life designing sit at the core of everything we do. Before you can design your ideal business or career, you first need to understand your ideal life. That starts with self-awareness, knowing who you are, what matters to you, and where you want to go.

Clarity about the future begins with understanding the past. Our experiences, values, role models, interests, and passions are the threads that shape who we are today and influence who we are becoming. When we take the time to reflect on these, we gain insight into what drives us, what holds us back, and what success genuinely means for us.

In order to know where you are going, you first must know where you have been. Our stories, values, roles models, interests and hobbies are the golden threads that guide us to who we are today and who we are aspiring to become.

Savickas & Glavin 2020, “As we grow in life, we experience both positive and negative events, from each of these we learn how to move from:

  • Pain to Passion
  • Tension to Intension
  • Symptom to Strength
  • Victim to Victor
  • And finally, we learn how to actively master what we passively suffer.”

They are the stories of our lives that shape us into who we are today, and once we have mastered them, they then become our greatest gift to help others.

Through values coaching, goal setting, career and life designing, we help individuals turn insight into action. By understanding your story and reframing it with intention, you can design a clear roadmap from current you to future you, creating a life and career that is aligned, meaningful, and sustainable. Ultimately, our experiences become not just part of our story, but our greatest asset for growth, leadership, and contribution.

What is Life and Career Designing?

Life and career designing is about intentionally shaping your future, rather than drifting into it by default. In a world where change is constant and expectations continue to evolve, many professionals find themselves pausing to reassess what really matters, their work, their direction, and the life they want to create.

Periods of change often prompt deeper reflection. People begin asking important questions:
What do I want my next chapter to look like? What still fits? What no longer does? And where do I start?

Life and career designing provides a structured way to answer these questions with clarity and confidence. It helps you understand where you are now, define where you want to be, and create a practical roadmap from current you to future you. This process supports better decision-making, stronger alignment with your values, and a clearer sense of purpose across both career and life.

At the heart of this work is the idea of designing a life by choice, not by default. Through self-awareness, values, vision, and practical action, you begin to intentionally build a future that reflects what success truly means to you.

Through the Future Ready YOU program, we support individuals and leaders to gain clarity, build adaptability, and develop the confidence to move forward. By combining proven coaching frameworks with forward-thinking ideas, life and career designing helps people navigate change, create meaningful goals, and design a future that is sustainable, fulfilling, and uniquely their own.

  • “When we use our values to make decisions, we make a deliberate choice to focus on what is important to us. When values are shared, they build internal cohesion in a group”. (BVC)

What are Values and why are they important?

Values are beliefs or ideals about what is good or bad and desirable or undesirable. Values have major influence on a person’s behavior and attitude and serve as broad guidelines in all situations. (http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/values.html)

Our values are important because they define us. They inform our thoughts, words and actions and help us make decisions about how to live our lives. They help us to grow and develop and they help us to create the future we want to experience.

Every individual and every organisation is involved in making hundreds of decisions every day. The decisions we make are a reflection of our values and beliefs, and they are always directed towards a specific purpose. That purpose is the satisfaction of our individual or collective (organisational) needs. (Barrett Values Centre (BVC) www.valuescentre.com)

Why is living in alignment with your values important?

For those who want to be the best version they can be in various roles they have in life, living in alignment is critical.

Living in alignment is about matching your “real behaviors” with your “ideal values.” Living out of alignment is a source of stress, dissatisfaction and poor decision-making. (Think2Perform.com)

Our values often change over time, it is good to redo them each year. It is also a wonderful to share your values with your family and friends. You will be amazed at what you discover about one and another.

Values and vision enable us to cut through the chaos and the noise, to see the opportunities, to better position ourselves, our people, and our business for the future.

What is important about Goal Setting?

Goal Setting is powerful. It helps trigger new behaviours, helps guides your focus, and helps you sustain that momentum in life.

In the end, you can’t manage what you don’t measure, and you can’t improve upon something that you don’t properly manage. Setting goals can help you do all of that and more.

Goal setting can lead to greater success and performance. Setting goals not only motivates us but can also improve our mental health and our level of personal and professional success. (positivepyschology.com)

The Research

The research about Goal Setting from the Dr Gail Matthews of the Dominican University in California USA, clearly shows setting goals does lead to success. The most effective way to achieve this:

  1. WRITE THEM DOWN: Written goals are more successful then unwritten goals.
  2. SHARE THEM: Telling a friend further increases your success of achieving your goal.
  3. COMBINED APPROACH: Written goals + action plan + telling a friend + weekly accountability progress has the highest level of success for goal achievement. dominican.edu/sites/default/files/2020-02/gailmatthews-harvard-goals-researchsummary.pdf

What we know from our own experience of goal setting, is that
people are happier because they feel more in control about their
future because they have a plan on how to achieve it.

Where do I start?

Life Designing is where you start, it is all about YOU. It helps you re-evaluate what is important in your life and at work and allows you to design one that is meaningful to you. It can be run in teams, for businesses, for couples, for individuals, for clients, for retreats, in boardrooms, in parks, face-to-face or via zoom. It all works, and it covers the following 4 key modules:

  1. Your Values (30 mins)
  2. Your Wheel of Life (30 Mins)
  3. Your Goals (30 Mins)
  4. Your Key Motivators (30 Mins)

At the end of our session, you will walk away, knowing your top 5 values, key motivators, with clear goals on how to create a less stressful, and more meaningful, happy, and successful life for you.

Once you have learnt how to use the tools, you can use them with your partner, your family, and your friends. You will be amazed at what you discover and the positive impact it can have on those around you, at home and at work.   It has the “Butterfly Effect”.

What are the benefits?

As an Employer, it is a great way to enhance your people, improve culture and wellbeing, and most importantly show your teams you care, and they matter.

It is a way of giving back and helping them feel less stressed, anxious, and nervous about the current environment and more certain about their future.

When people live more in alignment with their core values, they are naturally happier at home and at work, therefore less distracted and more productive.

When people share their values, group cohesion is formed.

Just reach out if you would like to know more.

We will share how we are currently assisting Individuals, Business Owners, Financial Planning Practices, Corporate and Clubs and discuss how we could tailor it for you.

  • Book your own complimentary 30-minute call to “Chat with Cate”

    If you would like to know more about this workshop, just reach out and connect. We will share how we are currently assisting Individuals, Business Owners, Financial Planning Practices, Corporates and Clubs and discuss how we could tailor it for your needs, your audience, and your budget.

    E: coach@inspirationcafe.com.au.

    Book a call with Cate