Big Book of You Blog

Well, the main practices I have is when I get up in the morning, I meditate for about 20 minutes and sometimes longer if I have more time.  I have cards, one for each of my goals.  I have goals in seven areas of my life.  I have goals every year.  And so there’s financial goals, career goals, there are goals for my body and fitness and health, goals for my relationships, goals for what I call personal, just things I want to do, possessions, places I want to go and visit, etc. and fun and recreation goals which most people don’t have.

Mine has included things like taking improvisational theater class, learn to play the guitar, things like that.  And then I have goals for making a difference in the world, goals for legacy and contribution.  So I have 21 goals.  I look at the card and on one side is the goal with a date.  I teach how much by when so that there’s a time and space to the goal.  And on the other side I write an affirmation.  I might have an affirmation that God is my infinite supply and large sums come to me quickly and easily under the grace of God as I earn $8 million-a-year income.

And then I close my eyes and I visualize that goal as if it’s already achieved and I feel the feeling I would feel if I already had it.  Sometimes the feeling is appreciation.  Sometimes the feeling is a feeling of power or a feeling of security or a feeling of love or a feeling of joy, a feeling of enthusiasm or passion, whatever it might be.  It takes me about 30 seconds per goal to do that.  As I tell people, when you first create a visual image for your goal, it’s like making a movie.  It takes, on average, 22 weeks or longer to make a movie, but it only takes an hour and a half to two hours to watch it.  So once you put in the time to create that vision, then it takes very little time to bring up the picture.  It’s more like a little slide show of moving pictures.  And then after I finish that, I exercise.  I do yoga in the morning.

I do all that, I take a shower and do my normal day.  At the end of the day, I do a thing called the daily review and this is a very important practice that most people don’t do.  I sit down and I just take a few deep breaths and get into a more center place, and I ask my unconscious mind to show me images from the day where I wasn’t who I would choose to be.  Now I can do that a number of ways.  I could say if I’m working on being more loving or appreciative in my life, I could say show me where I could have been more loving and appreciative.  If I’m working on saying no, which is actually something I’m working on right now, having more boundaries so I won’t commit, and so I would say where could I have said no today that I didn’t?  Where did I give away myself, my time, whatever?  And then images come up of all these memories of when you could have been more loving or when you could have been on purpose or whatever words you’re working with.  And then I will visualize doing it the way I would have liked to have done it have I been more conscious.  And what that does is it lays down a blueprint in the mind for the next time so that we’re training ourselves to respond from a place of intention rather from a place of reactivity. 

In the evening, I will also do a little meditation, a little more yoga before I go to bed.  I have something I call the hour of power that I teach and I usually live it, which is you want to spend 20 minutes a day minimum meditating, 20 minutes a day minimum exercising and 20 minutes a day reading something uplifting and empowering. 

I used to read a book a day.  I took a speed reading course and a photo-reading course and I figured we’re living in the information age and I was doing Chicken Soup for the Soul books, I was reading lots of stories.  But I found that I was not retaining as much as I wanted to.  I go back a year later and read my underlines and it’s like I haven’t read the book.