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 29
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)
Dancing the Dance
The Lyceum Methods’ four-step journaling process won’t change things overnight. It will, however, set a process in motion that will gradually change the way you maneuver each day. You’ll become clearer in your intentions. If you’re not already one, you’ll become more of a doer. After this daily practice is firmly rooted as a habit, it will feel uncomfortable to not be working to live your dream life. Anything that doesn’t match what you’re writing about will begin to feel out of place. This daily practice will shift the resistance in your life.
In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield describes resistance as that thing that stands between a writer and sitting down to write. He says, “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two, stands resistance.”
When I was setting “SMART” goals, I would resist the work. I would procrastinate. I would look at the steps needed to achieve my goals as the unpleasant part of the process. And, since I had come to expect failure, I would avoid this unpleasant work because I had little faith that it would all be worth it.
But I found a hack.
When I began to cultivate the daily habits of noticing all I had to be grateful for, envisioning the future I wanted, affirming who I wanted to be, and identifying what immediate action looked like, I was programming my mind to enjoy the daily processes so it felt more uncomfortable to avoid the tasks than to do the work. I put the resistance on the other side of action.
When you’re looking at your own potential every day, it gets really uncomfortable when your actions are incongruent with your vision. Taking on a task that I’ve identified as a next step toward my dreams feels great. There’s an immediate payoff. I don’t feel that I’m delaying gratification, because I’m getting the instant gratification of seeing that step taken.
One step closer to the life of my dreams.
Your turn.
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!
