This is the second post in our 2 part series about coming up with your Perfect Day. In our previous post we shared a powerful visualization technique where we designed a perfect day in our life 5 years from now. With that exercise, we can instantly bring up feelings of excitement and motivation whenever we need it. Today, we will go over actionable steps we can take to turn the perfect day that we’ve described into a reality.
In order to turn this ideal day that we’ve designed into reality, we have to ask ourselves three questions:
1. What’s stopping me?
Go through the items written in your perfect day list, and ask yourself what’s stopping you from carrying out these tasks. The most simple reason might be ‘I just don’t have the time’ – with all the work we have in our typical day, how might there be time to prepare a meal for ourselves and improve our cooking skills like we always wanted?
Other reasons might emerge that may be more complex. ‘My parents wouldn’t like me to do this’, or ‘my partner doesn’t enjoy it as much as I do’ are all valid reasons for why we can’t do the things in our perfect day. However, this gives us a great opportunity, because when we list it out on paper like this, we can clearly see the things that are holding us back from our greatest desires. Now, we have a reason to bring it up in a conversation with these people. We can let them know what we think, while finding out their reasons. We might even find out that what we thought was simply an assumption, and there was no such thing holding us back.
Image by Tadeusz Lakota on Unsplash
Once we go over the initial hurdle of finding out what’s stopping us from doing what we love, we want to start to challenge these obstacles. After all, these obstacles are between us and what we want most in life.
2. What should I do more of?
Now we begin to look at our perfect day, and compare it with a current day in our life. Are there certain themes, goals or ideas we want to achieve in our ideal life, but not doing enough of currently? For instance, we might have a goal of running a marathon in 5 years. Well, to do that, we have to improve our fitness and constantly exercise. If we don’t exercise enough currently, then we clearly have to work on that if we want to achieve our perfect life.
Of course, it can be extremely easy to get lost in the trap of writing down a list of never ending ‘shoulds’. ‘I should eat healthier’, ‘I should exercise more’, ‘I should spend more time with my parents’. There’s just a million things in life that we should do more of. The key here is to prioritize, and only leave the ones that fit our ideal of what we want to be. After all, we are designing a perfect life for ourselves, so we have to focus on what makes your life meaningful to you. If one of the goals in our life is to bring kindness and joy to the people around us, then we should prioritize the actions in our day to align with these goals.
3. What should I do less of?
Finally, look at a typical day in our current life. What are some of the things that we do daily that we should cut down on? Perhaps it’s the two hours of bingeing Netflix before we go to bed every day. Although we definitely shouldn’t fully take out entertainment from our schedules, we ought to attempt to reduce the time spent and align it closer to our goals and our ideal day. Instead of two hours then, we can limit ourselves to 45 minutes of watching a favourite show.
By comparing what we want and what we have right now, we can start to see the differences and changes in the lifestyle that we have to make in order to get what we want. Starting the change might not be easy, but by taking small steps and building small habits, you can get there. Like a seedling that flourishes into a beautiful tree when nurtured, our plans are what make us great if we stick to them. Stay tuned for more posts in the future where we go over how we can build positive habits in our lives.
Did you enjoy this series of posts where we shared actionable tips to make your life better? Let us know in the comments below! You can also let us know what other topics you’d like to read about. We’d love to hear from you.
BlankSlate Counselling is a counselling agency in Singapore dedicated to help individuals find the inner strength within themselves to achieve what they set their minds to do. Learn more about our trusted counsellors in Singapore and what we do.
