Day Dreaming: Writing the story of your perfect day.
This article is for those readers interested in storytelling as it is applied to personal development and productivity. Focusing on how to write the story of your perfect day, which can be found at the bottom of the article.
It’s 05:30 and I can hear my alarm clock ringing.
I look to my partner on my right, she’s still in a deep sleep. I smile, knowing just how lucky I am to wake up next to her. Not wishing to wake her up at such an un-godly hour, I silently remove myself from the bed.
Wanting to attend to my physical health, before anything else, I put on my running clothes. Trail running connects me to my body and the natural world around me. It’s a spiritual experience, reminding me of how connected I am to everything and just how alive I am.
It’s far from easy though. I have to keep telling myself, “Just get outside, just get going. You’ll thank me for it later.” Despite the struggle, I feel a sense of gratitude to myself for deciding to start my day this way…
YOUR LIFE IS A STORY
You are a character on the journey of life, facing obstacles and challenges at every turn. Wading through the unknown, on a quest to attain what you think is the purpose of your struggle.
The plot of your story, the things that happen to you, are merely there as a means to bring about a needed change within you. The pot of gold that you seek is merely an external tool in your internal development.
The age olf dictum, “It’s not about the destination, it’s about the jouney.” is steeped in truth. Any story that is worth it’s salt is centered around a change that happens within the protagonist, a dynamic character, as a result of everything that happens to them.
The reason that Neo from The Matrix was able to delete Agent Smith, and gain a truce with the Deus Ex Machina in the process, was that he realized the power of his choice. Throughout the film he is given choices, seemingly feeling at the whim of external forces and cause and effect. However, once he understands the power of his choices, he chooses to be deleted. As Mr. Smith attempts to assimilate with him, Neo irreversably transfers his choice to be deleted onto Smith, causing both of them to be destroyed simultaneously.
YOU THINK IN STORY
According to Lisa Cron in Wired For Story, there is an evolutionary purpose to story, “We think in story. It’s hardwired in our brain. It’s how we make strategic sense of the otherwise overwhelming world around us.”
Learning about the dangers of the world, through the stories of others’ experiences, is a far more effective means of surviving than learning from your own. Storytelling is a practice in empathy and theory of mind, it helps to teach us about other people.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest surviving work of literature, is a poem engraved on ancient Babylonian tablets 4,000 years ago. King Gligamesh was a stereotypically powerful man of his time, in brains and brawn. However, he was a womanizing, egotistical and selfish tyrant. Luckily for him, after being challenged by a total stranger in Enkidu, he changes his ways and learns to have respect for others as a result of his acceptance of his own immortality.
People through the ages have adapted this story to pass down the value, no matter your standing in life, of friendship, wisdom and kindness. The inevitability of death, the one inescapable fact of life, is also passed onto readers in a visceral and relatable way.
WRITE YOUR OWN STORY
If you think in story, and your life is a story, why not be the author of your own story?
We need to see ourselves as the authors of our own story, we need to think about our life as an epic adventure. Seeing yourself in the context of story is not an exercise in vanity, but a tool to better understand yourself and become a more functional member of the world.
Writing out the story of your life is a fantastic idea, everyone should try to do it at some point. However, as you could imagine, this would take a very long time to do.
THE STORY OF YOUR PERFECT DAY
The smallest, most practical unit of story that you can use is the ‘Day’.
For most people, your day can be seen as your default mode, the thing that you try to repeat over a long period of time. Repeating your days successfully, continuously, is the surest way you achieving most ideas of success.
Structurally it has a very defined beginning, middle and end. It is short enough so as to go into detail on the specifics, yet long enough to highlight your general habits, emotions and routines in a tangible way.
You begin to understand yourself better as you can step back and highlight your priorities and what you value. You can become more productive as you have an ideal ‘template’ to aim for, an emotive and exciting goal in the form of your perfect day.
Now that we’re all on the same page of why we should write out our perfect day in the form of a story, here are some tips on how to do so.
TIPS TO WRITE THE STORY OF YOUR PERFECT DAY
- Tell A Story: Stories are the means with which we make sense of the world. Through identifying with the challenges and changes of the protagonist, we find ourselves empathetic to their journey. By casting ourselves as the hero of a story, our days are given an extra sense of meaning and adventure. Where is your adventure taking you?
- Prioritize: There are only so many hours in a day, limiting your choices for how you will use them. Cutting out the ‘fat’ of your day involves narrowing down on the activities, projects and people that you must focus on every day. What and who are you going to choose?
- Go Deeper: The purpose of this exercise is not to merely list an order of events. Use emotive writing, describe what it is that you’re feeling and sensing throughout your day. How do you want to feel throughout the day?
- Start With Why: For each intentional action or activity in your day, desribe why you’re doing it and what you hope to get out of it. Do you really know why you do what you do?
- Define Your Essense: Looking back on this day, what character and theme do you want to stand out? After reading your story, do you see ‘The Grind’ or the ‘Call To Service” that you hope to?
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