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 50
Gratitude:________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Vision:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Affirmations:______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Action:______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
See a vision. Tell a vision.
They say seeing is believing. Well…just like emotion follows action, sometimes believing can be seeing. It can go both ways. The idea of writing out your Vision each day is to help you more clearly see it and to spend a moment each day experiencing it. You’re practicing so that you can more clearly define and believe in your Vision.
One thing you can do to more clearly see your Vision is to make a literal, visual representation of it with a Vision Board. I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept; a cork board or poster that you create with images that represent your Vision for the future. I have some guidelines that I’d like to encourage to get the most out of this exercise:
- You are writing a fluid Vision each day. There may be subtle or dramatic changes to your Vision daily or over a long period of time. I’ve already explained that this is not a bad thing, it’s actually a tool to help you recognize patterns and preferences within yourself. It’s a path to self-knowledge. And so it should be with your Vision Board. I don’t recommend building a Vision Board annually. Revisit it monthly, or weekly, and allow yourself to change your mind. There need not be any guilt in taking something off the Vision Board even if you didn’t achieve it. It’s your Vision. Own it. And don’t let some silly rule or expectation tell you what success or failure looks like. That’s for you to define for yourself. My wife and I had a car on our Vision Board once, and after seeing one close-up we decided it didn’t really resonate with us. So we took it off. It wasn’t a failure, it was a victory because we were able to learn a bit about ourselves and each other.
- If you have a significant other(s), I would encourage you to make this a family affair. Don’t do this alone unless you must. The vulnerability needed to express your desires will draw you closer, and working together toward a common Vision is one of the most powerful bonds people can experience. The dance works better if you’re not stepping on each others’ toes. If your spouse refuses, then by all means, don’t let them stop you. Kindly ask that they not diminish your efforts through ridicule or criticism, and take action on your Vision. If part of your Vision is that they collaborate with you more, then see if you can find a photo that represents that. Who knows, perhaps if they see it each day it will plant a seed. But don’t you dare wait for anyone else to begin living your dreams.
- Just because this is a visual display, don’t fall into the trap of putting a bunch of materialistic items up there unless that’s what you really want. If a yacht is your thing, go for it! I’m excited for you! Your Vision Board should look a lot like your Daily Written Vision. For me, I dream of spending winters by the fire with my wife, she’s playing cello and I’m accompanying her with my guitar. Stuff like that. (She’s doing her daily Cello Practice next to me as I write this sentence.) So we have pictures on our Vision Board that don’t make sense to visitors in our home, but to us, they represent some facet of the life we are building. We have photos of ourselves writing, riding the motorcycle, and a skoolie (a school bus we intend to build into a mobile tiny-home for us to travel North America and rent out while it’s parked here on the ranch.)
- I see a lot of Vision Boards with words on them. I have no evidence for this, but I think that if you want a Daily Affirmation, it’s far more effective to write it and/or say it daily in this journal than it is to just see the words each day. You easily become numb to the same message that you’re seeing. I’m sure you don’t read all of the traffic signs on your way to work each morning. You’ve been there, done that, and your brain gets bored trying to read the same thing every day. Writing it prompts you to pay attention and subtle changes are allowed to creep in. So we keep our Vision Board strictly visual with images and drawings only.
- Don’t put your Vision Board somewhere that you’ll walk by and not notice. We used to have ours in our bedroom. After we moved, we placed it at the end of a hallway, so we see it each time we walk directly toward it. This isn’t a ‘set it and forget it’ exercise. You should see it as often as possible. Stop once in a while to meditate on the feeling of living out your Vision. And update it every time you notice that you’re not “feeling it” any longer.
Today I have a small Action step to give to you:
Schedule a date with your spouse, or with yourself to set up your Vision Board. It’s easy to read this, then move on with your day and forget about it. Refuse to do that. Take out your planner now, your phone reminder, whatever tools you need to remind yourself and make this happen. Do this now, before you journal any further.
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!
