Starting the day with water rather than coffee seems to make the wake-up process smoother.
At the suggestion of a friend, I am making two lists: a Fairy Godmother list and a Stop Doing This list. Let’s see what happens.
The Fairy Godmother list is something you wish, however farfetched. Do you want to be king? On the list. Time is irrelevant. Effort is irrelevant. Talent and physical attributes are irrelevant. Do you want to be a nuclear physicist? Done.
He has a way of asking questions—he demonstrated and I don’t remember how he did it—that quickly zero in on what you really want beneath the fantasy of being the king philosopher powerlifting nuclear physicist who is lighter than air and can fly.
The other list, I forget his name for it, is a Do Not Do list. A list of things you never want to do again in your life. This could be fanciful stuff, as above. But most likely these are real things in your life.
So, the extreme poles of dreams of a perfect life. Beneath the dreams is a reality. Find it. within those fancies and impossible whimsies are concrete actions. Do them.
Testing continues for the easiest way to do this. I’m trying simple lists in Reminders on my phone. I want something as low friction as possible.
Let’s see what the lists reveal. Obviously, simple pie-in-the-sky dreams and whiny complaints do nothing. It’s what lies beneath the surface of the positive and negative fantasies that matters, and is actionable. And, when addressed, will make the difference.