New Release: Author studied life so that you can love yours

SHERMAN, Conn. - April 25, 2017 - PRLog -- There was nothing Cheryl Marks Young wouldn't do—including joining 13 dating services at one time—as she gathered evidence for a self-improvement program that she has incorporated into her new book, "Love Your Life," released on April 25, 2017.

"Love Your Life" offers a program that anyone can follow to identify and achieve personal goals in pursuit of lifelong happiness, just as Young did.

"You go in search of your goal and find yourself," Young says of her approach. "It's a self-management system to create your ideal life."

Young's message in "Love Your Life," published by Emerald Lake Books, is relentlessly supportive, pushing readers to "own what you do well" and create a list of strengths that will serve as a foundation for new achievements.

"These aren't transactional skills like wordsmithing or number crunching," Young says. "These are experiential skills developed through life lessons, some of which may have included a few hard knocks."

Young developed a "technology" for improvement—and bouncing back from the hard knocks—based on techniques she developed when, in her 20s, she realized that although she had a good job and supportive family, she wasn't happy.

"I took out a notebook and started talking to people," Young says. "I asked them about their experiences and successes. I explored and traveled. In those travels, I was figuring out what I wanted."

She ventured from the Caribbean to Antarctica and although Young was trained in finance, she tested several other job fields, including hiking guide, travel writer, matchmaker, jewelry designer, professional coach and author. And while interviewing her subjects, she began to develop a list of her own goals.

At one point, as she counseled women on how to develop better profiles on dating sites, Young joined the 13 dating services as part of her research. She corresponded with 3,000 men and went on 150 dates—and on the last one met the man who would become her husband.

Her training in finance helped her keep track of the "data points" of all the men she met, and led her to conclude that at the beginning of the experiment she didn't have enough information to make good decisions.

"I realized you need to develop a complete picture of what you are looking for," Young says. "At first, I had a short list of what I wanted and the deal breakers that I wasn't willing to put up with—along with what would be nice to have but wasn't crucial."

Just having a list was not enough, though. The men she talked to and dated were not meeting her expectations. She wanted to meet men who were "independent," for instance, but it turned out that her dates had different ideas about the meaning of independence than she did.

"I realized in addition to my list, I had to write paragraphs and create pictures," Young says. "I described what independent meant to me: I could go to a party with a person and we would both be comfortable talking to different people at different sides of the room. And then we could come together in the middle of the room and talk together to another group. But we didn't have to be at each other's side the entire night."

Adding the details to her journal worked.

"Once I wrote that down, that's who started to show up," Young says. Her future husband, by the way, "had everything on my list. Everything."

She has since used the same process to find the perfect home and, before she became a full-time coach and author, a high-paying job with a successful nonprofit.

"Love Your Life" guides readers through the same process with questions, writing exercises, and an emphasis on the power of a positive attitude.

"If you expect to be passed over when your boss is handing out the best assignments, I can guarantee you will be," Young says. "If you expect to fail at something, you'll likely set yourself up to fail. I'm not suggesting you do this consciously. You don't. Expectations operate under your conscious radar, but they do operate. Once you recognize them, though, your thoughts have the power to unleash your power and success."

Young now lives in New Jersey with her husband, a son, 11, and a daughter, 6, but she grew up in New York in a family of many teachers. As a child, she says, people approached her for advice.

"I was an old soul in a tiny body," Young says. "Even adults would come to me and I would help them with their problems."

Now as a full-time coach, Young guides her clients through the process of writing and talking to envision their goals.

"People find themselves in their own stories as I give them back to them," Young says. "You go in search of your goal and find yourself."

She wrote "Love Your Life" to guide readers through the same process.

Press release distributed by Emerald Lake Books. To interview Young or for more information on "Love Your Life," contact Paul Steinmetz at Paul@EmeraldLakeBooks.com.