The Ideal Day, The Ideal life

Think big. Act small.

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When we think about an ideal life, most of our answers follow a similar fill in the blank exercise:

“Life will be awesome once I make $xx number in my bank accounts. Once I get this job or title at work. Once I have a house that big house. Once I have the $$$ to live a baller life. Once I can forever retire my parents. Once I can travel there.”

Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with any of these. I’ve finally reached the point where I can say I am worthy of and can accept any and all good things that come about (whether it’s via effort, luck, etc).

Still, as a rebel, my internal BS alarm goes red alert at the The Secret-esque manifestation content seeping throughout social media. It’s to the point that I have trouble telling if I’m trying to fight my FOMO or if any of it is what I actually want.

As someone who’s somehow managed to evolve enough in life to say, I have achieved xx and all the goals I’ve tried to “manifest” over the years, I haven’t been able to shake the FOMO or the anxiety of this hedonic treadmill. 

Then, I came across a tweet from Dan Koe about his ideal day:

DAN KOE @thedankoe

My ideal day: - 2-4 hours of focused work - long contemplative walks - intense training session - tight-knit socialization - reading a good book - eating quality food - no meetings Anything that threatens this is perceived as a problem to fix with time and targeted effort.

It’s a simple structure that covers emotional, intellectual, and physical needs and how to he’d like to meet them, daily, consistently. Straightforward.

No mention of any baller houses, extreme fortunes, and IG worthy vacation. Not that any of those are bad or good. Just that for an ideal day, these details aren’t necessary nor as important as the feeling of connection, breath, creativity, intentional focus.

TL;DR a purposeful day.

We don’t often render our days clearly since we’re eyeballs-deep in keeping up with life and reaching the next goal or dream as a professional rock star or personal saint. The days just get away from me is something I hear a lot from folks.

The tweet got me thinking: Instead of just visualizing the big end goal (purpose/why), why not focus instead on smaller, yet equally meaningful things I can touch upon daily (smaller bites of the purpose/why). Call it a framework or a system, it’s what’s gonna keep your perspective on what really matters. And hopefully keep us sane. 

For others, it may be more about when they wake or go to bed. For others it may be more about volunteering or time spent reading. It can be whatever, it just needs to be meaningful to you, not the IG lifestyle influencer. Or your parents (IFYKYK).

Of course, it’ll vary for everyone. There are seasons to life - I see you, parents of young children. We’re human so I accept that 100% adherence likely isn’t possible. 

But consistency is. And we are all worthy of the effort.

I’m two days into this purposeful day thing and still in the glow of honeymoon phase. So, I write the following for my sake as much as yours:

Hey Future Vanessa:
Things will happen beyond my control. Things won’t go according to plan. But if I can stick as close to this framework as closely as possible, I can likely say that no matter what’s happening around me, if I can win my day (or part of it), then you’ll likely be satisfied.

Sincerely,

Past Vanessa

So what’s your ideal day? List our up to 5 things in the comments or in the chat that would give some purposeful structure and satisfaction to your day. 

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