It’s time to stop aging and start living!

You know who I’m talking to.  You may even be one!  You are the people who talk about where they’ve been,  not where they’re going.  You talk about your health – or everyone else’s – your last doctor visit or your next.  Nothing you say indicates that you have anything to look forward to…  Is that how you want to spend your final days?

Some of you will say, well, I’m trapped.  My partner (my children, my illness, my condition) will not allow me to do anything else.  Balderdash!  You always have a choice.  You can choose to embrace your limitations, or you can plan to exceed them.  Yes, your current condition will affect what you can do today and maybe even tomorrow, but let’s look beyond that.  What can you do today that will make things easier for you to progress tomorrow?

Here’s an interesting exercise:  design your ideal day!  Spend some time thinking about what your ideal day would be like.  Not a vacation day, not a weekend day, just an average get-up-in-the-morning-and-get-on-with-it day.  Start with waking up.  Do you wake up alone in bed or with a partner.  If you wake alone is it because you prefer to be alone or because your partner is down in the kitchen making you a lovely breakfast?  Or because your partner is off on the adventure that defines his or her life and that makes your life all the more interesting?

What does your bedroom look like?  Describe the size of the room, the furniture, the lighting conditions – whatever is important to you.  What do you do next?  Describe each action and each location with as much detail as you can.  Use the present tense in your descriptions.  Not I will have… but  I have; I do; I am…

Move through your whole day in your mind.  Don’t include any “real-world” conditions unless they are ones that already make you happy.  Maybe you’ll do this exercise in your head.  Maybe you’ll write it down.  Do whatever it takes to make it more real for you.  Spend some time each day going through this exercise, either in your head or by rereading what you’ve written.  The ideal times to do this are before you get out of bed in the morning and before you fall asleep at night.

Now it’s time to kick it up a notch!  Once you have your ideal day firmly planned, start to notice when you are actually living your ideal day!  OK, I can hear you say.  There is absolutely nothing in my day that resembles my ideal day!  Not true, I respond.  I can guarantee that no matter how far from ideal your current conditions are, there are portions of your current day that you will continue to do in your ideal day.  You’re probably going to shower on your ideal day, so when you are showering today, say to yourself Ideal day!  You are probably going to brush your teeth on your ideal day…  You get the picture.  The more often you can catch yourself living some portion of your ideal day, the sooner you will manifest even more of it.  It just gets you “in the mood!”

Will it be easy to change the habits of a lifetime?  Probably not.  Will it be worth it?  Only you can decide.  Next week, we’ll add another level to the exercise.  But in the meantime, have fun with it.  Dare to daydream.  Dare to dream.  Who knows where it will lead you?  What do you have to lose except the silent boredom you are living now?