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 35
Gratitude:________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Vision:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Affirmations:_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Action Creates Confidence
There’s an interesting thing that happens when you begin a daily practice of working on your vision. When you take action towards accomplishing something, you demonstrate to your subconscious that you must be able to achieve it. Or at least, it’s a possibility. Otherwise, why would you be working for it? You bolster your belief in your own abilities by acting as if you are capable—even if you don’t initially think so.
It’s as if your daily action is a demonstration to your subconscious that says, “Look! We’re doing this!”
It’s obvious to most people that working on a daily action habit for something will make you better at doing that thing. Practice doesn’t make perfect—it makes progress. But as powerful as progress might be, just the act of trying will boost your confidence as well, perhaps even before there is any tangible improvement.
You may be quick to point out that taking action can demonstrate just how terrible you are at something. If we go back to something tangible like learning an instrument, it’s very likely that your initial actions will produce some terrible sounds. This doesn’t seem like it would foster confidence.
To maximize the confidence-boosting effects of your daily practice, you have to remember to shift your thinking from results-oriented goal setting, to a practice-driven focus. If your goal is to play beautiful music, you’ll spend a lot of time in failure mode as you struggle through the journey from messy to melodic. But if your objective is to practice for ten minutes, it doesn’t matter how horrible it sounds. It might matter to your neighbors, but as far as your intention—as long as you set the timer and clock in your practice, you’ll have succeeded!
When you’ve been practicing and that timer alerts you that ten minutes have passed, you may be able to see the humor in just how terrible your practice sounded, but you will be able to revel in the small victory. You did what you set out to do! Don’t underestimate the power of this. You’ve just demonstrated to yourself that you’re the type of person who does what they set out to do. This is how self-empowerment is fostered—through action.
Focusing on results-oriented goals almost destroyed my confidence. Focusing on actionable practices has shown me that I have what it takes to live the life I want.
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!
