Here's the stuff:
Write down what you want your love life to look like
Write down what you want your family life to look like
Write down what you want your friend life to look like
Write down what you want your vocation/contribution/purpose to look like
Write down what you want your finances to look like
Write down what you want your living environment to look like
Write down what you want your mental health to look like
Write down what you want your physical health to look like
Write down what you want your emotional health to look like
Write down what you want any other parts of your life to look like
(Typing is fine too)
Then...
Choose at least one activity, for each of the above categories, that will get you closer to what you want to have in that category.
For example, let's say you have "happiness" as part of your answer to what you want your emotional health to look like - an activity you might choose to get you closer to that goal is "I will say 10 things I'm grateful for every morning". Choose at least one activity for each category.
If you have multiple things in a category, such as "Physical health: Get great sleep, be fast, be strong..." then choose at least one activity for each goal. You might choose 8 hours of sleep per night for great sleep, running 3x a week for being fast, and weight lifting 3x a week for being strong.
At the end of this process you will have a list of specific activities that will get you closer to your goals. Now create a daily and weekly schedule filled with everything on your activity list. Decide what time of day/night you'll do each activity, what days of the week, etc.
When you catch yourself feeling miserable, make sure you schedule some time to sit with yourself and figure out what you need to add/remove/replace in the above lists to get you feeling better. For example, if you feel miserable at work, you might want to add "feel happy at my current job while working toward a better one" in the emotional health category. Then you come up with activities to produce that result. Maybe wear funny clothes to work, watch comedy stuff on your lunch break, do some stretching throughout the day to ease physical tension, maybe talk with your coworkers about your goals and ask them what theirs are, etc.
Exactly what activities we must do to achieve the results we want will not always be clear. Sometimes they require brainstorming, creative thinking, researching, or asking others for ideas. But if your options are: 1) be miserable, or, 2) figure it out - I encourage figuring it out. Even if it's hard to figure out, it beats being miserable!
Getting a written or typed list of how we want each major category of our lives to look, then choosing activities for each, helps us get more out of life every day. We know what we want, and we know what we're doing to get it. It's a very satisfying feeling.
Enjoy :)
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