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 45
Gratitude:________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Vision:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Affirmations:______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
From here on, you are a person of Action.
Every day, you’ll take a step toward living your Vision. Some days will be one small step, other days will be one giant leap. But every action is a victory.
A few final points about your Daily Action.
- Getting ready to do something is not the same as doing something. Writing a business plan may be a good idea, but it doesn’t count as taking action on your new business. Setting up a new website, or going to Freelancer.com and hiring someone to do it for you is taking action. There is real, tangible progress. Whenever possible, try to take physical action toward your vision.
- As you develop a Daily Practice, you can add a more unique and specific Action for the day. Once I developed the Keystone Practice of writing at least 30 minutes every morning, I began to add one Action to each day that would further my writing business (today I’m posting a job offer on Freelancer to have someone fix my website).
- You can add multiple Daily Practices, especially if they are short and easy to structure into your day. I have a morning routine that knocks out three practices before breakfast: I Journal in the way I’ve described above, I jump on Duo Lingo for a short Hebrew lesson, then I sit down and write for a minimum of 30 minutes. Daily workouts happen in the afternoon. Reading happens before bed. This winter when the ranch work slows down, I’ll add more back in. Meditation, learning courses, guitar, and drawing will all return to my daily life.
- As you develop various Actions and Practices, be on the lookout for which Practice is your Keystone Practice. What is the one Practice that will help facilitate all the others and have the most impact to lead your life into your Vision? Make sure that if you falter on your practices, you know which one to return to in order to start again. Then start simple, with a low barrier, a short and easy practice of just that one Keystone Practice. Only build on it when you’re feeling energetic and victorious about your Daily Practice.
- The difference between your Daily Action and your Daily Practice. When we started the process of implementing your Action step into this journal, you were trying to find the one thing you can do today that will lead you into your Vision. As you repeat this exercise, you’ll begin to identify Actions that are needed repetitively- a skill that needs practicing, or a long series of actions that will eventually accumulate into a finished project. When you identify Actions of those types, you’ll move them into the Daily Practice category. Daily practices are not to be results-oriented, but rather a Daily Timed Practice. You put in the time – you are victorious. Your only objective is to Practice for a specific amount of time, and to see how many days in a row you can keep up that practice. Once your Daily Practice has become part of your routine, part of your life, part of who you are, you can then begin to identify an Action that may fall outside the Daily Practice that you will take today. No action is too small.
From here on, we’ll split up the Action section from the Practices section.
Your action can be something unique and novel, or something that is a short term series of steps (but only plan on the smallest step possible in any given day). Any Action you can take today to move you toward your vision. Avoid a to-do list, just choose one action for today.
Your Daily Practice will be a timed practice session where you will be doing the things that you are doing in your Vision. If you want to be a pilot, you’ll enroll in a course. If you want to be an artist, you’ll set a timer for 10 minutes and in those 10 minutes, you will only create art. Your Daily Practice is you living your Vision.
Action:______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Daily 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!
