by Lori Milner
What will it take to create your ideal average day? Notice I didn’t say your ideal day because that probably involves being on a beach somewhere sipping cocktails. Those are the exceptions throughout the year, but what if you could get better at creating your ideal average day with work commitments, school runs and the usual in-betweens?
I’ve asked this question to thousands of people to share with me what an ideal average day looks like, and amazingly, I get the same answers:
They want to wake up a little earlier feeling refreshed
They want to include themself in the calendar for a self-care activity that brings them joy
They want some quality time with the people they love
They want to feel more joy and less worry and anxiety
They want to have an evening routine that has fewer screens, more reading, and more family time, rounded up by a healthier bedtime and sleeping soundly.
Not one person has ever told me that an ideal day would be when I get called in for a promotion or a raise. This is exciting news because this scenario requires someone or something external to make these circumstances happen. In the above scenario, it is all within your control.
Let’s look at a few habits you can adopt to move you closer to creating your ideal average day:
Schedule yourself into the calendar.
How you schedule your day is how you spend your life.The question is, do you schedule yourself in the calendar, and if you do, do you keep the commitment to yourself? You wouldn’t miss a meeting with your boss, so why do you have a double standard for yourself? If you struggle with this, perhaps you are thinking too big. Think small, as in five to fifteen minutes a day.
If you consistently spend fifteen minutes doing some exercise, yoga, meditation, journaling, reading, prayer – whatever – you will start to change your day. It doesn’t even have to be in the morning, but it’s highly recommended as your morning unfolds more predictably than the rest of the day.
Stop waiting for things to be perfect to make these fifteen minutes a reality. In a recent workshop, I asked the group to commit to one thing they wanted to introduce into their day, and we met again two weeks later to gauge progress.
The people who succeeded kept it small and even used group accountability, like park runs, to make it happen. Rather than going to the gym, they did a simple routine in their lounge using an app.The group that didn’t succeed in even starting said it was because of work pressure and a lack of time.
Here’s the truth – you will always have work pressure, and it will never feel like the right time. The world will not shift in fifteen minutes; your work world will not collapse if you borrow fifteen minutes or even an hour, for that matter. If you continue to take fifteen minutes away from your personal time, it will have severe consequences. You will feel more stressed, less energised and less optimistic. You will feel more resentful, exhausted and overwhelmed.
Can you carve out time for yourself in the calendar so you can begin to feel more whole? Two cliches we can learn from are: You cannot contribute from an empty cup, so ensure yours is full, and always take your oxygen mask first before you help others. What is your oxygen mask, and how can you get better at introducing and maintaining this in your calendar?
Treat the people around you with kindness.
Sometimes, defining what an ideal day doesn’t look like helps you clarify what it really takes to feel like it’s been a successful day. I know when I get triggered and lose my temper at my kids or say something that feels like it came from another person, I feel like I failed the day.
To create an ideal average day, develop the meta-habit of self-awareness. When your patterns and triggers remain invisible, you have no control over correcting them.
When you’re tired and stressed, your higher self generally does not emerge in the situations you need the most. Rather, your grumpy and resentful side shows up, and who knows what they are going to do and say when triggered.
Using a tool like The Enneagram is helpful to identify your habitual patterns of thinking and behaviours. For example, I am a Type One. My invisible behaviour is resentment, but not outwardly. It’s more about trying to suppress it, and it leaks out as irritation. Once I could see this, I could then question where it was coming from. What am I focusing on, or what is the story I’m telling myself to create this emotion?
If you don’t know your type, don’t worry. Think when you tend to get triggered. Do you tend to unravel in the evenings when you have your family to take it out on, or is it in certain situations or with certain people at work?
The most powerful tool is naming the emotion when it comes up. When you feel anxious, name it. As soon as you identify it, it loses its power over you. When you ignore it and fear the anxiety lurking, you are now identified with the anxiety and start behaving accordingly. The same goes for anger, frustration, fear, guilt, shame, or any of the lower-level emotions.
If you stay stuck in these states, it’s hard to see the opportunities, make good decisions and see what you have rather than what is missing.
When you feel triggered, interrupt the pattern and do the exact opposite of what you would like to do at that moment. Instead of shouting at your kids to get off their video games, go and hug them.
I’m not saying allow video games without boundaries, but they are so used to you getting grumpy with them. Surprise them, and they will probably get off without you having to nag. (hint…you teach what you most need to learn).
On the days I do this well, it fills my heart to know that everyone has gone to bed with love in their hearts. This makes an ideal average day for me. What about you?
Let go of guilt.
What if you could permanently remove the word guilt from your vocabulary?
An ideal average day is simple: it’s doing the things you want to do, not the things you think you should do. Of course, there are work responsibilities you must attend to, but when you want to work on your tasks because they matter to you, drop the guilt about what else you could be doing.
Block out time in your diary for your work tasks and commit to it. What tends to happen is that you block out time and then feel bad that someone has asked you to work on their task, so you give it away.
If someone came and asked you for money every day, would you willingly let go of it because they asked nicely? You may give them some, but you will make sure you keep enough to pay the expenses so you are not in debt.
In the same way, you have 86,400 seconds every day to invest wisely. Don’t put yourself into time debt because you feel bad. Pay yourself first by working on your tasks.
What if you started your day with a morning walk, yoga, meditation, gardening, whatever – with zero guilt? What if you took action, enjoyed it, filled your cup and then went to work in a peak state, feeling content and grateful? What if the only thing that changed was your headspace? The inbox didn’t implode, no one was upset with you, and the world didn’t shift. What if you set a start time for the day, say 8 a.m. or 8:30 a.m., and then everything before that belonged to you? What if you didn’t make yourself start checking emails at 6 a.m.? How would the day look without guilt?
Exposure is the antidote to anxiety. Decide on something you want to do and then show yourself that taking action on something that matters to you will only make your day bigger and better.
Hold the plan loosely.
What differentiates a good day from a poor day is whether or not it went according to your expectations. In other words, when you have a blueprint of how life is supposed to be that doesn’t match reality, you feel dissatisfied.
I came across the most profound statement in Oliver Burkeman’s book, Four Thousand Weeks. Five profound words that stopped me in my tracks quoted by spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti:
“I don’t mind what happens”.
This made me think that perhaps the reason we don’t experience enough ideal average days is that they didn’t go according to our plan for how it was supposed to be versus what reality decided to present to us.
It’s not giving up, reneging on responsibility, or not taking action. It’s taking action, dreaming big, and following your curiosity, but be open to the outcome—or be open to the fact that there may be more than one way to reach the outcome.
Oliver Burkeman says, “Rather, a life spent “not minding what happens” is one lived without the inner demand to know that the future will conform to your desires for it—and thus without having to be constantly on edge as you wait to discover whether or not things will unfold as expected.”
What if we could plan loosely, without an attachment to exactly how it needs to unfold?
It’s not giving up responsibility, but rather than hold the plan with tight fists that make your hands red, try softening them and hold it loosely with an open mind that something even better may show up than what you anticipate and expect it to be.
Oliver quotes meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein:
“A plan is just a thought.” We treat our plans as though they are a lasso, thrown from the present around the future, in order to bring it under our command. But all a plan is—all it could ever possibly be—is a present-moment statement of intent. It’s an expression of your current thoughts about how you’d ideally like to deploy your modest influence over the future. The future, of course, is under no obligation to comply.”
When the future doesn’t comply, can you trust that everything is happening exactly as it should and that, more often than not, the universe gives us what we need, not always what we want.
Final thoughts.
As Stephen Covey tells us, begin with the end in mind.
What does an ideal average day look like for you?
What is one thing you can do today to make this a reality?
It’s not the big things that make our days special; it is the small moments that truly count because how you do anything is how you do everything. If you’re not sure where to start, consider how you can make these habits part of your daily routine:
Schedule yourself into the calendar.
Treat the people around you with kindness.
Let go of guilt.
Hold the plan loosely.
Here’s to creating your ideal day,
Warm wishes,
Lori
Lori Milner is the engaging facilitator, thought leader and mentor known for her insightful approach to being a modern corporate woman. Her brainchild, the successful initiative Beyond the Dress, is the embodiment of her passion to empower women. Beyond the Dress has worked with South Africa’s leading corporates and empowered hundreds of women with valuable insight on how to bridge the gap between work and personal life. Clients include Siemens, Massmart, Alexander Forbes, Life Healthcare Group, RMB Private Bank and Unilever to name a few. Lori has co-authored Own Your Space: The Toolkit for the Working Woman in conjunction with Nadia Bilchik, CNN Editorial Producer. Own Your Space provides practical tools and insights gleaned from workshops held around the world and from interviews with some of South Africa’s most accomplished women to provide you with tried-and-tested techniques, tips and advice to help you boost your career, enhance your confidence and truly own your space on every level. Own Your Space is the ultimate ‘toolkit’ to unleash your true power. It’s for the woman who wants to take her career to new heights and who is ready to fulfil her true potential.
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