Designing Your Day
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About six years ago, I wanted to change my life in a big way. I read up on so many women entrepreneurs who had done what I wanted to do. I signed up for all their newsletters, read books they recommended or wrote, did exercises they had done themselves, and attended workshops they were running or they had gone to, including online teleseminars and talks. From them I found more successful people, more interesting ways to live my most authentic self, to get my message out, and to live a positive and fulfilling life.
Most of my life, I have loved to sing. When I was a teenager I started singing at sports games and weddings and loved it – and still do. Throughout the years I sang in theatre, in concerts, in bands, even wrote my own album, and always knew I needed to keep that love alive. It was just a feeling that wasn’t going away any time soon.
I’ve also lived with yoga and mindfulness for most of my life – always an on-going practice – just like anything else. I practiced sitting still in meditation when I was a little girl, and then formally practiced yoga for over a decade, starting just before my 20s. I deepened this practice in many ways throughout those 10+ years and then became a teacher, as I was yearning for something more.
But before I started teaching, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place and had to create some space in my life to be able to fit in this teaching lifestyle. I spoke with dozens of yoga studios and studio owners, networking with people, attending workshop after workshop and training after training, adding layers of knowledge and experience onto my canvas (my Jennie Life canvas). And one day I scheduled a free call into my week on the subject of Coaching. This particular Coaching call was about designing areas of your life. Wow, did this speak to me.
I had been stuck in a job that at first I had liked…but realized now that I had stayed for all the wrong reasons. I had dreamt of being a yoga teacher, and to use my voice not only for singing opera and the National Anthem at sporting events and cover songs at bars, but as a vehicle to get across a message – my message – to those who needed to hear it and to those who appreciated it.
The call was one hour long.
We were to write our dream. Our big dream. But we were to write it in the present instead of the future. We were to write it as if we were already living it.
After we wrote our dream, there was another question: “Where are you today and why hasn’t it turned out?”
Some of the things I wrote down were:
1)the security of a job holds me back
2)I haven’t made enough money
3)I have too many interests and can’t focus on one
(among a longer list of personal and familial reasons)
Then we were to take one of these excuses and to see how we could turn it around, because guess what??? WE ALWAYS GIVE MORE ATTENTION TO OUR EXCUSES THAN TO OUR DREAMS.
And then our coach said something to us that resonated so deeply that I wrote down and continue to look at it over and over to this day: “You’ve gotta be willing to make a mess and take a risk to make your dream a reality.”
I looked at my excuses and I made a new list that was called: “Solutions to my B.S.”
1)Quit my job
2)Work hard a a part time job, but work harder at my music and my yoga
3)When I think of an excuse, immediately turn it around into a positive, actionable item
Early last year, I came to another fork in the road. I looked over all my coaching notes from all my trainings which at this point was about a foot high (yes, I’m old-school and visual and still print on physical paper) and found that original “Design of my Dream.” It was 100% true. I had quit my job. I had gone through two yoga teacher trainings. I had written and recorded my album and was singing out everywhere as a solo artist. But on top of all this, I now had a part time job and was looking to make yoga, music, teaching, and wellness my full-time gig with absolutely nothing to fall back on. I did it. I left my part-time job without a fall-back job (at which point doTERRA came into my life which is an entirely new blog post) and I started singing and teaching yoga and wellness (and music!) full-time.
I started living for my dreams instead of making B.S. excuses.
All because I designed it.
And now?
I design my day on a daily basis. I have an accountability partner and every single day, I send her a text in the morning. I write the energy of the day. I write three things I want to accomplish that day. I write one piece of magic that is to happen to me that day. But here’s the catch: it all happens in the past tense. Here’s an example:
Today was FOCUSED:
1) I meditated for 15 minutes
2) I called a new venue to see about hosting a Mindfulness Retreat
3) I sent essential oil samples to my cousin who was feeling sick
Magic: I unexpectedly received a check in the mail for over $200.
Every.single.day.
At the end of the day? Write what you actually accomplished, even if it wasn’t in the list, and if you didn’t get to something in your list…write you haven’t accomplished it yet.
Sometimes if I’m really wanting a vision to come true, I might write a longer, detailed day, describing the feeling with which I wake up in the morning at the precise time, then what I ate for breakfast, what I did directly after breakfast, and on and on and on. By designing our days, we get out of the anxiety of what-ifs and of negative thinking. We start to get rid of the menial tasks we sometimes fill our days with. We definitely start to get rid of our B.S. excuses.
So, what if you could be the designer of your day?
I’m here to tell you – you CAN.
Sometimes our designs don’t work out exactly as planned. But these days, I also get to help coach people on this very subject. So by designing our day and taking those risks that start with small, actionable items, other doors always open for us.
I can’t wait to see which door you walk through.
Om namah