If you’re new to Daily Prompts, you may want to start at the beginning of the series here.
Be sure to scroll to the bottom of this post for a PDF version and other notes.
Year______ Month_______Day______Consecutive Practice Days_____Missed Days______
Day
Gratitude: (Spend a few moments writing about the things you’re grateful for. Lined pages are on the PDF below)
Vision: (Write out your vision for the future you want to live. Lined pages are on the PDF below)
Affirmations: (Write out 1-5 affirmations of who you want to be. Lined pages are on the PDF below)
Action: (Write out one simple action step you can take today that brings you closer to your vision Lined pages are on the PDF below)
Assessing the results of your actions is, of course, valuable.
But as they say, a watched pot never boils. There is a real danger of skewed pessimism if we’re looking too closely, or too often. The water may be heating up, but we can’t see the progress until it actually starts to bubble.
There’s another saying I like; people usually overestimate what they can accomplish in the short term, but underestimate what they can achieve in the long term.
This is usually used in the context of goal-setting and looking toward the future, but it holds just as true with The Lyceum Method when we’re assessing our Practices and looking back at the results we’re getting.
I’m guilty of this. It’s not uncommon for me to start a new practice and immediately look at what I just did for results. I’ll start a new marketing push for my business, then log-in to social media five minutes later to see if it’s working!
I remember the first time I implemented The Lyceum Method and one of my practices was meditation. I couldn’t really tell it was doing anything for me for what seemed like the longest time. It was somewhere around the 70th consecutive day that I had an experience that reinforced that the practice was, in fact, working. I was talking with someone and had a distinct feeling of being present, clear-headed, and aware. It’s difficult to describe but I knew at that moment that the past 70 days of meditation had changed me.
It’s important to zoom out, look at the big picture, and remain focused on the Practice. I would encourage you to not assess any single session. There will always be outliers. Even a pro has off days (and exceptional days). So viewing a small window of results will almost always be inaccurate. Track what you do somehow. Journal about it, video yourself, find some way of assessing. For my Keystone Practice of writing, this is easy. The writing itself is a record. Since I don’t know what your practices are, I can’t tell you how to track or assess them. Just make sure that you’re not taking a narrow snapshot to determine your progress. Get the broadest picture possible.
The most important results from all of your practices are the changes that happen within you.
Are you becoming the person who lives your Vision?
You are.
Keep going.
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!
