A few weeks ago I was faltering and fading fast. I had a list of 10,000 things to do, and was so overwhelmed that I didn't know where to begin. I knew that if I started doing anything on the list, I'd never stop. So I didn't start anything on the list. I lived the sweet life of the unemployed: sleeping until the afternoon, surfing the internet, masturbating, scratching my ass... basically getting nothing done in the least attractive manner possible.
Then the self-loathing begins to set in. You wake up, piddle around, and in the blink of an eye, it's the middle of the night, and you've done nothing but soak up everything the Internet Movie Database has to offer on the entire cast of HBO's Deadwood. "Where the fuck did that day just go?" You feel awful and lazy and stupid, and the only available remedy (if you don't drink or use drugs) is to go to bed and get no less than eleven hours of sleep. And the vicious cycle begins, and rolls merrily forward until you wake up to discover that the month you gave yourself to accomplish your to-do list has become what scholars like to call "last month."
I went to Coach and told her my problems. In a nutshell, I said I felt like I needed my mom to say "Clean your room," and stand in the doorway to watch and make sure I didn't get distracted.
Coach informed me that I was living without purpose, and introduced me to a few tools to help me get motivated and get balanced.
The first piece of the puzzle is her own device called "The Positive Living List." I'm actually going to hold off on giving you the full scoop, because it's her professional property, and I don't feel right putting it on the internet for anyone to Google for free when she earns her living developing such helpful tools. The gist of the list is that rather than have a huge, intimidating taskmaster list, you break your life down into bite-sized bits, and start each day with the question, "What can I do today to be able to say to myself tonight, 'This was a great day'?" And more importantly, the list MUST include things that refill your stock of precious, positive energy. Some people have this simple organizational skill already in their arsenal. Me, notsomuch.
I have to tell you, the first day of using this list my body woke itself up at 6:30 in the morning after only 5 hours of sleep (it's not like I wasn't well-rested after sleeping 16 hours/day for the past two weeks) ready to take on the world. And even though I only scratched the surface of my big, bad, scary to-do list, I accomplished almost everything on my Positive Living List, and was able to spend most of the day in complete joy.
The next thing she told me to do was to go home and watch "The Secret." I had already watched "What The Bleep Do We Know," so "The Secret" was really just a Cliff's Notes refresher course of that, with much smaller words. Always good.
She also mentioned, as did the folks in The Secret, Vision Boards. This was a new one on me, but I knew as soon as I heard about them that they worked, and I'll tell you why in a minute.
You can find all kinds of information about Vision Boards online, especially on YouTube. And since Oprah has had them on her show as well, I assume everyone on the planet has had one for years, and I'm just now hearing about it. (You know you're in a social coma when something is on YouTube AND Oprah, and you've remained oblivious.)
There's nothing magical about Vision Boards - they won't automatically conjure up anything you'd like without some work on your part. What is fascinating and completely functional about them is that they reign in your focus and energy on what you desire most at that moment in your life. The sales pitch for Vision Boards is that they can give you your dream house, fast cars, beautiful women, and all just by thinking about these things for a few minutes a day. And I would not argue that. My argument is the same argument that I have with prayer: people who pray to god for a mansion and a Porsche seem to be pissing away a limitless source of divine power. People who pray for a cancer-free human race and an end to famine have a much smaller chance of their prayers being answered, but at least they aren't asking god to perform parlor tricks for their own amusement. Soap box finis.
As soon as I heard about Vision Boards, I instantly knew they worked, and would work, for absolutely anybody. The proof was in two absolute douchebags with whom I attended college, Adam and Tom. Adam and Tom spent their entire adolescent lives surrounded by posters of beautiful, mostly-naked women. They were creepy little perverts that weren't much to look at, didn't date much, didn't have a sophisticated set of social skills (Tom kept his farts in a Gatorade bottle), and snuck porn magazines into class to look at during lectures. I'd watch these guys and laugh, knowing that they'd be sorely disappointed when they got out of college and realized they couldn't land a girl hotter than a 4. Of course, when I bumped into each of them at separate industry functions several years later, and they were married to a couple of the hottest women I've ever seen. You think all that time staring at the high-quality poon-tang on their bedroom wall didn't somehow manifest a hottie for each of these mental midgets? I'm not saying that with these hotties comes complete bliss, happiness, and fulfillment. But on the surface, douchebags 1 and 2 got exactly what they'd always wanted, exactly what was on their Vision Boards.
I get plenty of high-quality, naked hotness, so right now my vision board is all about the half-marathon, with a plan to include some business structure in the very near future. My Vision Board has to be able to go on the road with me for six weeks, so making a huge poster to put up by my bed or in my office is not going to help much. My Vision Board is completely digital, and thus, completely portable. It's just a Photoshop document, which is great because I don't have to scour magazines for images, I can use anything I can find on the interweb. It's also completely editable from anywhere in the world, no magazines, glue or scissors required. I can also have multiple copies of my Vision Board - one on my desktop computer, one on my laptop computer, and one on my iPhone. The ability to put your Vision Board on the iPhone is fantastic - I can take it with me anywhere, and look at it anytime. I can even play meditational/motivational songs on my iPhone's headphones while focusing on my goals, and all in complete privacy, even in the most public of places. Ain't technology grand?
Last night was my first night with my vision board, and I looked at it for maybe 8 minutes before I went to bed while listening to a mellow mix of music that I threw together just before 1:00 a.m.. And again, my body woke itself up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 6:00 am with a desire to conquer everything in my path. The shift in attitude is almost completely unconscious at this point, and I'm loving it! I mean, obviously, this power lies within me without these "tricks," but the Positive Living List and Vision Boards are fantastic tools to minimize the emotional effort needed to stay in the game.
The important thing to note in this post is the overwhelmingly powerful effect that focus can have on your energy. I'm a long way from having my Vision Board spring to life, but just having these tools at my disposal has made a huge difference in my motivation. I'm looking forward to continuing this experiment.
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