by Phillip Day

 Most live their days ‘on the fly’ with no real plan­ning – I did it for years. Got up, had some­thing to eat, went to work, came home, watched TV, went to bed. These days I’m more of a fan of imag­in­ing every day as a life. Mine. It has a begin­ning, a mid­dle and an end. I do the fol­low­ing every morning:

• I wake up (always a good idea)
• I lie in bed and con­tem­plate the day ahead
• I ask: What do I wish to accom­plish by bed-time tonight?
• How will I feel if I succeed?
• Which of these things do I per­son­ally want?
• Does the day I am plan­ning impress the heck out of me?

Today, I will not worry about the G8 sum­mit, a Mar­t­ian inva­sion, sui­cide bombs in Bagh­dad, Third World hunger, an aster­oid strik­ing the Earth, or what David Beck­ham wore to the Met Bar last night. Today I will leave the TV off, the news­pa­per in the cor­ner store, the radio silent, and clean up my input. I can be the archi­tect of this new day which has been given to me. I intend to raise my stan­dards and live them well.

THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS

• I will write the first page of my new book. Just one page
• I will speak to one per­son who thinks I’ve for­got­ten them
• I will prac­tise what I am good at
• I will dom­i­nate my day and care­fully steer it
• I will sim­plify, sim­plify, simplify
• I will guard what comes out of my mouth
• I will do no harm to myself or others
• I will eat food that nour­ishes me
• I will rel­ish the free­dom from neg­a­tive input

Rep­e­ti­tion in a state of emo­tion forms the atti­tude pat­tern. Every day I do this makes the fol­low­ing day eas­ier. Six days of accom­plish­ment means a whole week I have lived well. So much done in one week! Neg­a­tive input was out, all the pos­i­tives in. I ate sim­ple, fresh, nutri­tious food. I drank clean water. I breathed. I did not watch King of the Hill.

GIVE YOURSELF A BONUS!

I agree to enjoy at least one over­whelm­ing, opti­mistic expe­ri­ence (placebo) every day.Each day is planned around this event. If all else fails and the Mar­tians invade, Saman­tha and I will still take Daisy for a walk in the for­est. The dog’s tail drums in antic­i­pa­tion. I know things about Labradors. They are not wor­ried about their bank man­ager or a Sarin gas attack on the Bak­er­loo Line. It’s about rab­bits chased, the swim in the pond and aroma plethora.

Set­ting daily goals has great advantages:

• You agree with your­self in advance what you are going to do. This makes unwel­come chores easier
• Dis­trac­tions are kept to a minimum
• You cus­tomise your day to suit you, not the other way around
• More of Oprah’s qual­ity time is packed into the day
• Longer tasks are easy when kept tightly on target
• You agree with your­self the day will have the out­come you desire
• You can ‘debrief’ your day back in bed again to see if it went accord­ing to plan
• You can expe­ri­ence suc­cess in a sin­gle day

Set­ting goals and debrief­ing takes me sixty sec­onds flat. I do not micro-manage, just get a clear, men­tal image of what I wish to accom­plish by day’s end. If I did it right, there’s sat­is­fac­tion by night­fall. If I didn’t do it right, there’s always tomor­row for another go.

DISTRACTIONS

Impromptu events can take the best-planned days well into the hedgerow:

• The water main blew out­side in the street
• You had an accident
• A phone call forced you to re-prioritise your day
• You had an unex­pected visitor

If dis­trac­tions force you to re-plan, sim­ply amend the ques­tion to: What do I wish to accom­plish with the day I have left?

UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, DO NOT SHELVE YOUR OVERWHELMING, OPTIMISTIC EXPERIENCE!!

FURTHER RESOURCES

The Lit­tle Book of Atti­tude by Phillip Day

Down­load­able version