We all have a passion for something and the question is how does that affect our lives. Today’s guest has a passion for architecture and her name is Karen Otis, and with this passion, she made an amazing discovery -- she created methods for designing and building the perfect life. So in a nutshell, what she does for homes and buildings is what she does for life. Karen will explain the full connection to us in the next ten minutes! When do we know when to rebuild our lives? Karen talks about how she helps change and rebuild people’s lives using these techniques. When we talk about rebuilding -- when do we know when to rebuild our life? To start off Karen says there is a huge epidemic in this country -- only 1 in 3 Americans think they’re ‘happy’ and in terms of the workforce, 52% feel they’re unhappy at work. Those are huge numbers, and you know it’s time to make a change or “rebuild” when one or two things happen: either there’s a social or outside trigger, let’s say a divorce, or you get laid off, or the other one being  when you finally get to a point where you think to yourself, “Is this it?” Even David in relation to this point says that he has made some changes in his life in the last couple years to make sure he was following his passion. Life changing experiences There are a lot of people Karen has worked within the ‘life building’ workshop that have somewhat stumbled upon their jobs just by chance or maybe they went into a field that they studied in school. As an example, Karen has a client that was a contractor salesman who lost his job. He instantly thought that he needed to replace it but through some of Karen’s work, he had realized that he always hated the job. So instead of jumping in and replacing it, he did the first step of Karen’s method -- looking at your life and deciding what is fixed, what is stable, and what isn’t working. Karen adds most people get stuck thinking that everything we have now is how it should be -- but sometimes we need to demolish something or move it so that we can make room for a change. David builds on Karen’s point by mentioning how after getting married to his wife from the Philippines and looking at their lives -- they now want to spend part of the year over there His life took a change at this point and he realized the difference between slowing down and focusing on what’s fun for him and enjoy his life versus what he thinks he was told by his parents to do. Karen claims what we do is create a wishlist for our lives that maybe isn’t even our own. Create, don't react For her when it all came to her was during her divorce -- she didn’t know how she was going to pursue anything especially raising her two little kids. Nothing worked for her, therapy sessions, self-help books, etc. But what she realized as an architect is that she doesn’t ‘react’ to anything, she ‘creates’. This means that you need to be the one to get in the lead and create, not just react to what is thrown your way and that’s how you build your ‘perfect’ life -- your life inspired. Other Techniques as an Architect that you brought over Karen goes through some of the steps she uses to design any home or building - Sight-Study: Evaluate what you ‘see’. - History: Everything in your life does affect you. It’s a matter o of looking at the history where you come from. You need to look to your personal history and see what ‘patterns’ are getting in your way - Envision your vision: Keep your logical practical analytical part of the brain aside. Get into what your ‘soul’ is saying -- because once your soul is involved that’s when something magical happens.   We can’t let fear get in the way. We need to envision it. Karen has a new book and a website: otisarchitecture.com