Have you ever thought about what your perfect day would look like?

Yeah, I know, you wouldn’t want to repeat the same day every day like the movie Groundhog Day.  But let’s say you did have to do this, and you got to choose how your day went. If your day was on repeat —  What would your “Perfect Day” look like?

Here’s a simple exercise you can do that can transform your life, hopefully as much as it did mine.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Where do you wake up?
• Who are you with?
• What do you see?
• What do you smell? Is it the smell of fresh croissants because you’re living on top of a bakery in France? Or is it the smell of the fresh, crisp, mountain air?
• What do you hear? Is the sound of crashing waves?
• How do you want to wake up? Do your kids wake you up or do you wake up without an alarm worrying about being in the office at EXACTLY 9am?
• What do you eat for breakfast?
• What do you do after breakfast? Do you go for a run? Do you go for a swim? Do yoga?
• How will you spend the 24 hours you have in your day?
  
  

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You don’t have to answer all these questions right now, but start thinking about them. This is the start….to get you consciously thinking about what your perfect day looks like. Then you can take the time to see your entire day laid out the way you designed it.

I personally did this exercise about 6 or maybe it was 8 years ago (I’m not good with time), but let me tell you, it completely changed my life. I was on a long flight, and I took the time on the plane to think about it. I planned out how I would want my perfect day to look like in detail, and I mean in DETAIL. I asked myself all of those questions above (plus a ton more – you can add as many questions as you want, this is your day). I was very, very specific. It ended up being about 4 pages walking through pretty much every detail of my day.

I thought about where I wanted to be when I woke up, who I wanted to be with, how I woke up, what I ate, who I hung out with, and what I did in my spare time. It was a great exercise for me and it was FUN. I could SEE MY LIFE even though I wasn’t living it yet.

Through the years I have told many people about this. I have friends who were able to write it down in 20 minutes of dedicated time, I have others that stayed up all night thinking about it. There is no judgment and it doesn’t need to be shared with anyone unless you want to share it. Just sit down and do it, you won’t regret it.

After completing your task of defining your perfect day, there will be three shocking differences in your current day that will impact all your future ones. You will know this almost instantly and that’s why it’s important to take this Perfect Day task and do it now. Your life and behavior will change, just from acknowledging what you’re working toward and why.

1) Choosing what opportunity is best for your future, will become second nature.

A lot of different opportunities are thrown at you all the time. Some of them you may have a hard time saying yes or no to. With your Perfect Day defined, it makes it easy to choose only the right opportunities.

If you are presented with an opportunity, all you have to do is ask yourself, “Does this get me closer or further away from my perfect day?” If it gets you closer to your perfect day, then you will be willing to work for it and most likely really enjoy it, or at least not dread it as much.

If an opportunity takes you further from your perfect day, then it is easier to say “no.” Every day you know what you are striving for so decisions are easier. Prioritization of everyday tasks is unquestionably easier when you see long-term.

You will find that reading that legal contract for the new deal you are doing with a new fun client isn’t so bad. Yeah, you don’t love reading legal contracts, but you know the client will bring you people that you enjoy working with, on a project that you love; with the BONUS of the added income which will allow you to afford the lifestyle you are aiming to achieve.

When you change your perspective on tasks you don’t enjoy (I think about working out and how when I’m on my first mile of the day, it will be worth it when I still have a healthy heart in 20 years), you change your entire perspective on life. When you change your perspective, you can change your entire life.

It’s actually a lot easier than you think to have a lot of your perfect day, week, month, and year now. You just have to be willing to work for it by being smart about the opportunities in your life.

2) Life goals are always changing, so your happiness today may look different and require a different focus than what you want in 4, 8, 12, 20 years from now.

It’s a process like I said, but if you actually start writing down your perfect day now, you can probably achieve a lot more things than you thought. I know your perfect day will change. I am sure it will be different when you are 20, 50, 70 years old. Don’t worry, you aren’t committing your life to this. I started with my day and then it developed into my week, month, quarter, year, life.

After my perfect day started falling into place I started asking myself, “What does my perfect month look like? What does my quarter look like? What does my perfect year look like?”  

I love going to Abu-Dhabi for a quick little 10-day trip. I love going to the neighboring island of Vieques for 2 weeks. That is definitely part of my perfect quarter. Then, I can build other things I want (maybe I want to sail to the island but need to learn how to sail?) into my perfect NEXT quarter, or year, and then my focus can re-shift on working towards that.

See how easy it is to work for something when you know exactly what that something looks like?

3) Be grateful for what you have today, as they are the results of what you did yesterday.

For me, I’m the most grateful for the technology we now have in this world we live and WORK in. I can work anywhere with internet connection and my laptop, and that right there is the most important part of my perfect day. That was where I personally started, and although my life isn’t perfect yet, I’m personally doing things each day to get me as close to 100% of what I want as I can possibly be.

Every morning I wake up next to the most amazing man in the world and needn’t rush out the door without a kiss goodbye. I go out to my balcony for breakfast with a panoramic view of the ocean, which is only one of all the world’s oceans I have seen on my travels (only need to see the Antarctic ocean now!). I can walk on the beach every day; my office overlooks the water. I can fly home to visit my family for the holidays and not lose vacation days traveling to see them because my life is a vacation! I spend time with amazing friends, I eat good food, I work on my business and I love the clients I work with.

I got here because I focused on what was important to me.

So what are you doing still reading this? Get your perfect day on paper!

Take the time, you are worth it and I promise you it will change your life for the better. It’s a great exercise and I look forward to hearing what your perfect day is, and how we can help you to get closer to that perfect day (so please don’t hesitate to comment below)!

All we want at Lifestyle Workweek is to make sure that the lives we live, aren’t seen as “impossible” by you.

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