Skipping along

When I get into bed at night, I often think about the next day. I consider which day of the week it will be, what sort of routine things I have on my schedule and I quickly plan other things I’d like to do or feel I need to do. This all happens in a matter of few seconds without any special effort.
Lately I’ve also set forth intentions for a good night’s sleep, and a wish to wake up with ease. After having lived for many years as a very critical person, of everything, and in particular myself, I had also gathered a tremendous set of negative things to tell myself. I don’t know if you are aware of it, but we all continuously tell ourselves stories about everything. To really notice what you are telling yourself, you need to be aware of your thoughts and pay close attention to how they make you feel. During my grumpy years I used to tell myself all sorts of crappy things about everything. I’d probably not sleep well, I’d oversleep, have arguments with my family, struggle at work, have aches and pains in my body, be unfairly treated and overwhelmed, not appreciated and so on and so forth.
Since I became aware of my private little story sessions, I’ve been working on consciously choosing my new fairytales. Recently I’ve also noticed how much difference it makes to my days, whether I’ve deliberately planed my day as a good day, as I get out of bed and skip along into the day (at least now I do that some days).
So, what on earth does this have to do with the headline of this post, you might wonder. Well, the thing is that when we’ve been going through our lives on “autopilot” for years, not thinking about what we want to get out of our days, we haven’t needed to decide deliberately what we want either. The situation is sort of like if you would all of a sudden go from having all your meals served, every day, to having to figure food out all by yourself. Of course it is possible, and anyone can do it, but it takes some effort, when you’ve never done it before.
So in order to plan your day, you’ll first have to find out what you’d like your day to be like. I find it to be very helpful to pretend I’m already experiencing the next day, and instead of planning everything in details, I decide what I’d like to feel like. And once I’ve found the feeling place of it, I just stay there for a short while for the fun of it. (of course I don’t bother to plan anything else than good feeling things anymore). Having done this, I can enjoy (or not) all the events that lead up to me being happy and content with my day. After having practiced for a while doing this whenever I remember, I've found out that some bumps in the road don’t matter in the long run, as I know things always turn out just fine. Perspective is good to have, and the best way to know what you want, is figuring out what you don’t want.
So now I challenge you to try it out! You don’t have to be in your bed, or any special place to do this, and you don’t have to plan a whole day. It’s just as effective to plan the results of a meeting, the feeling of a conversation or a trip to the grocery store this way.
Oh, and one last warning: It might just work!