Creating Your Future: Five Steps to the Life of Your Dreams

Ellis (Becoming a Master Student) offers a clear, detailed method to ""thoughtfully choose what you want to do, have, and be during your life."" He contends that people can create (rather than merely react to) circumstances by using ""long-range vision,"" goal setting, prioritizing, planning and visualizing changes on personal, group and even global levels. From losing weight to ending hunger, increasing sales to buying a new car, clear goals are set, written, spoken and broken down into small steps toward their achievement. Employing 3x5 cards, pictures, tape recordings, lists and even songs, Ellis's idea is to ""fill your conversation space"" with more of the desired future instead of the usual regrets or resentments for the past and worries or predictions about the future. The author advises readers to take control of their ""writing, speaking, listening, reading, and thinking,"" in order to ""commit, create, construct, carry out, and celebrate"" the loftiest dreams they can imagine. Ellis commits what many may deem a few blunders along the way, disregarding such formidable obstacles as addictions or childhood traumas, denouncing therapy and offering simplistic ""will power"" answers for complex and difficult issues. Overall, however, he provides a useful guide to long-term thinking and goal-oriented living. Author tour. (Oct.)