What To Tell Yourself When You Wake Up?

A choice is life’s golden ticket

I remember waking up as a kid, full of joy and optimism. Nothing could stop me. I was going to go to school and get an A ( Yeah I was a big nerd). I was going to talk to the cute girl who I liked, and I was going to watch Pokemon from 5–5:30 in the evening.

7 year old me had priorities and worked towards them. Every single day

That realization lit a fire within me. For the past 200 days or so, I have been constantly working on figuring out what little changes I can make in my life that will over time compound to give me the life that I know I deserve.

And I’m here to share my findings with you.

The 7 Min Model of ‘Life Calibration.’

Calibration, I am in love with that word. Calibration isn’t about making a huge or big change. It’s about making those small incremental changes and constantly striving for perfection.

After experimenting with various time lengths, from 5 minutes to 15 minutes, I figured out that 7 minutes works best for me. Feel free to adjust it according to your needs though.

Beep Beep, Your alarm goes off. You get up groggy and confused. as you attempt to figure out what time it is.

Pause. At this very moment sit up and close your eyes. If you’re sleepy that’s perfectly fine.

If you can visualize great, If you can’t even thinking about the powerful stuff that I’m going to share with you will suffice.

Gate# 1: Compassion

The way to enter Gate 1 is by recalling instances where you were emotionally moved by what you saw or felt. It is about being aware that all of us are human after all. We have our gifts yet we have our curses.

I personally visualize being a compassionate person throughout the day who is calm, No matter what. I repeat the following mantra to myself:

“No matter what I will always see the good in my family, friends and everybody else. They are all great people and being compassionate will help me more than it will help them.”

I then continue walking on to the next gate-

Gate#2: Gratitude

When we are in a state of gratitude, we are operating at another level of consciousness. A grateful person is a happy person. And happy people get more done in their life.

I follow a 3 incident recall technique. I simply recall 3 incidents, that happened yesterday, which had a tangible impact on my life and which I am blessed and fortunate to have had happened to me.

And yes, this could be something as simple as getting a fan on Medium.

Gate#3: The 10-year reflection

“We overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in 10 years.” -Bill Gates

-Bill Gates

At this point, I think and visualize about what I am 10 years from now. And please, do not limit or restrict yourself. Thoughts like:

“I’ll never be this rich”

or

“I don’t have the talent”

need to be limited as much as possible. Instead, go crazy with whatever your dreams are. I see myself on an island mansion, chatting with my family in exotic locales yet constantly adding value to millions of people.

If your vision won’t inspire you, your work most certainly won’t

The brain doesn’t know the difference between the real and the imaginary. If you constantly feed it with images and thoughts of what you want, it will over a period of time, force you to become the person capable of achieving all that and much more.

On to the most important and final gate.

Gate#4: Today

Gate 4 is where you get down to the brass tacks. Time to do the heavy lifting and sweat it out. What activities can you do today, given your circumstances that will help you move closer to your goal?

Baby steps are fine, any sign of progress is to be treasured.

Make a list of what all you can do and write it down. At the end of the day take an accountability assessment of how true were you to yourself.

If you make a mistake initially it’s fine.

Today is for making mistakes, Tomorrow is for learning from them

The best part. With practice, this will take you only 7 minutes or less.

So do these exercises every day. Walk through those gates again and again.

And one day, you’ll walk into the life you have always envisioned. Bewildered how you got there.