Be sure to scroll to the bottom of this post for a PDF version and other notes.
If you’re new to Daily Prompts, you may want to start at the beginning of the series here.
Year______ Month_______Day______Consecutive Practice Days_____Missed Days______
Day 39
Gratitude:________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Vision:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Affirmations:______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Action Determines Decisions
Which means: instead of trying to predict the future through step-by-step goal setting, you can use hindsight to make decisions on how you choose to proceed.
I call this the Fire, Aim, Ready method.
If you Ready yourself, Aim toward your target, then Fire the gun, the only way you can expect to hit the bulls-eye is if you’ve already practiced and the gun has already been sighted in.
To “sight in” a gun means to adjust the sights for distance and other factors that affect the trajectory of the bullet. To do this, you have to shoot toward the target, observe where the bullet hits, then make adjustments, and try again.
When you start a daily action habit, you begin to see where you’re headed by observing the results you’re getting from those actions. Then, you can adjust your actions to better serve your vision. You fire first, re-aim, then you’re ready to continue the experiment to get ever better.
Take a look at the word DECIDE. You might notice the root is “to kill”. (Suicide, genocide, patricide, etc…) When you make a decision, you kill the alternative. Knowing this on some instinctive level can make it very difficult to make decisions. With the traditional goal-setting mindset, we’re tempted to think we’re locked into our choices. We’re taught to make decisions on where we’re going, then take action to get us there. Any alteration from that initial decision can feel like a failure or lack of commitment.
This do-or-die mentality is intimidating. It can lead to a lack of decision making because it fosters fear of making the wrong choices right up front.
Instead of killing alternatives, we can start practicing a daily action habit and treat it as an experiment. See where that action is leading you, make adjustments as needed.
Proceed to dance in the direction of your dreams.
Action:______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Daily: (The pdf version below contains three lined pages for your daily journal)
NOTE:
The above is an excerpt from the upcoming The Lyceum Course Journal. We will be releasing it here for free as a Daily Prompt blog post. If you would like a physical copy, we will link to it here once it is released.
Suggested Use:
I realize a daily journal prompt on a blog is a little weird. This is how I would suggest using it: Open your favorite note-taking software such as Evernote, copy and paste this post into it, and write your daily entries there.
OR
Download a PDF version of this post here. Feel free to print it out, or access it through a PDF editor where you can type in your daily entry.
Collaborate With Me!
This post series is a first draft of the future book. If you have suggestions, comments, or see errors, please reach out so that I can make the final product more valuable for you and the rest of the community. Your feedback is greatly appreciated!
