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 27
Gratitude: (the free PDF below features lined entries for your journal practice)
Vision: (the free PDF below features lined entries for your journal practice)
Affirmations: (the free PDF below features lined entries for your journal practice)
To Learn What Steps to Take, Take the Next Step
Trying to map out all the steps between where you are and your vision for the future is the same type of future-projecting trap that traditional goal-setting can set for you. When you prompt yourself to ask each day, “What’s the very next step I can take today to get me closer to my Vision?” you begin to distill for yourself what needs to be done and when.
- What do you need to make this real? Fitness? Money? Relationships?
- What skills do you need to cultivate in order to get what you need? Exercise? Budgeting? Vulnerability?
- What practices and habits will lead to the skills needed?
By taking daily action—working out, balancing your books, sharing your emotions—you begin to reveal more of what you need to become in order to live the life you desire.
So then, Action becomes yet another tool for self-discovery. When you ask yourself; if someone were living out my Vision for the future, what would that person be doing? How would they act? What would they have done to get there?
Don’t get caught up in a thousand steps. If you have lots of ideas for actions that could take you toward your vision, that’s fine. Write them somewhere else. An idea book for your business. An art journal. A note on your phone. Or in the Daily sections of this journal. Get that shit out. But not here. Not on your action page.
Having a to-do list a mile long will only serve to discourage and distract you from progress. Having an entire map written out like we’ve been told to is just a thought practice. It’s often a form of procrastination. And, it’s very difficult (if not impossible) to anticipate all the steps anyway. So, if you have a ton of good ideas, find a way to record them where you feel confident at being able to find them again.
All we want to focus on right now is what you can do right now. Or at least, only what you can easily do today. Don’t list five things you can do today. You’ll only beat yourself up later if you do four out of the five.
Just pick one. One thing that is tangible. One thing that will move you even the slightest bit closer to your Vision. One thing you know you can do today.
Action: (the free PDF below features lined entries for your journal practice)
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!
