Life design - what is it and how does it work?

The Life Design approach aims to make your dream life and career a reality. This article shows how this works or whether - as is unfortunately all too often the case in the coaching market - these are just empty promises.

Design thinking and life design

Life Design is a coaching approach that has developed from Design Thinking and findings from positive psychology.

If you haven't heard of design thinking yet: It's a currently very hyped innovation method for working on complex problems. In order to find the most creative ideas possible as a solution, a multidisciplinary, diverse team goes through the following process steps:

Gaining empathy (= understanding the problem and the situation)

Definition (= defining the problem and goal in concrete terms)

brainstorming

Prototyping (= creating prototypes)

Testing (= testing the prototypes)

It is assumed from the outset that iterations will take place. This means that there are loops in the development of solution ideas. This is an important basic principle that life design has adopted.

Positive psychology is a branch of science that emerged in the 1990s with the aim of using psychology not “only” to help people cure illnesses, but to a certain extent to help people lead happier and more fulfilling lives.

Both together result in Life Design. As with design thinking, there is a predefined process (which we go into in more detail here) that is run through in several loops. Through this process, you get to know yourself better loop by loop and get closer and closer to your dream career and general life design.

Compared to the misconception that you can only climb the career ladder with a “master plan” and only become happy that way, the design thinking approach is much closer to reality. The current situation and possible new needs and insights are always taken into account. In this way, life designers are constantly creating their perfect everyday life.