Shift Into Your Ideal Day

This Week In Shift Therapy®

Hello friend,

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Let’s take a long deep breath.

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Set an intention to shift into a deep state of presence with me.

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Relax your shoulders.

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Allow your arms to fall toward the ground.

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Sink into this moment.

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Place 100% of your attention into listening to the sounds of life for a while.

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Just listen.

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What do you hear?

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What do you feel?

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Listen with your body now too — not just your ears.

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Perfect.

Increasingly, I’ve been working with my patients through a process I call: Shifting into your ideal day.

The process begins with a discussion about how we conceive of our ideal day. As we explore the components of our ‘ideal day’ together, it typically becomes apparent that the quality of our day is largely defined by how we felt throughout our day.

So when defining our ideal days we tend to emphasize the state of ‘being’ we expect ahead of what we wish to be ‘doing’. Although both aspects are important, emphasizing the state of being you expect gives you a target each moment throughout your day.

My day feels perfect when I feel connected to presence. So I'm a proponent of placing feeling present at the center of my ideal day.

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Take another deep breath.

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Relax even further.

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Come fully into this moment.

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Remain fully present — right here, right now.

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What do you see around you?

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Can you notice how you begin to shift toward presence as 100% of your attention focuses on seeing an aspect of something that you've never seen before?

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Whether it's an unexpected shadow, or the way some light reflects, or noticing a drop of dew falling off a leaf, feel yourself shifting deeper into presence with it.

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Feel your calm, engaged, connected state — my definition of an ideal day.

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Can you feel yourself shifting even more by leaning into your emerging sense of presence for another 30 seconds or so?

Just listen to all the sounds of life — and all the silences — with all your attention.

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Perfect.

In a future Presence Shift, I’ll walk you though a process for defining your ideal day.

Today I want to highlight that we tend to define the quality our day based on how we feel throughout the day. Meanwhile, we often think of the activities we want to partake in, the people we want to be with, the things we want to eat or drink, the work we want to get done, and the other things we might ‘do’ with our time as the primary elements that will define the quality of any given day.

That distinction is easy to forget.

A great daily habit for remembering that distinction is noticing the first thought(s) that arises in your mind as you wake up. After you take notice of your first thought(s) of the day, let it go by reminding yourself that feeling present today is even more important than whatever you’re thinking about right now.

Doing that before you even open your eyes will plant a ‘presence’ seed in your body and begin watering it for the day to come. Making a habit of doing that is a powerful tool for coming to know yourself even better — and starting your day right.

Let’s listen to life together for 30 seconds more.

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Perfect.

Remember, when it comes to judging how your day went, your feeling state tends to be the biggest driver of your analysis. Prioritizing presence is more powerful for cultivating the kind of day (and life) you want than prioritizing desired outer world phenomena.

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Have a great day.

Stay present :)

Sean