A Simple thing I try to do sometimes. It makes my day go better — by orders of magnitude.
How did you decide what to do today?
Some of us made to-do lists as our literal first thing upon waking. Some of us beat our heads against the wall while downing 3 cups of coffee — just to get the blood flowing to our brain. Then we looked at our emails and got swept away. Others were woken up by screaming children and followed them around all day picking up whatever mess was made — all in an attempt to keep up some semblance of order.
Many of us feel like we don’t make decisions about what we do each day, but we do — every single one of us. In many cases (perhaps the majority) we simply decide to let go and forfeit the right to decide what to do. We throw our hands up and let the day take us where it will. Often times, that is when we feel the most stressed — which is weird because usually we think of having to make a bunch of decisions as really taxing.
Take heart, friends. This happens, and will continue to happen here and there. The problem, though, is when things go this way on most days. That is when you begin to feel like you are not yourself. You live each day feeling like you’re not making progress, and thus you end up feeling like you’re out of touch with yourself. Maybe you haven’t even dissected the feeling that deeply — you just feel off.
It’s Goals All the Way Down
In a perfect world, you would wake up every day with a well-defined goal or set of goals already written down somewhere. Your day would then be structured in a way where your to-dos all work toward said goals. This doesn’t have to be high-level. Whatever your goals are, this holds true. Here’s an example:
Goal: Get child to school on time and in a condition ready to learn.
Like many goals, this one has a parent goal and many child goals (no pun intended). The parent goal is probably something like raise a well-adjusted, intelligent, loving child. The child goals are even smaller things you’re looking to do in order to make that goal happen. This can get pretty granular, like: find both shoes before the kid gets downstairs, so it doesn’t take twice as long to find them.
If you’re the person getting the kid (or kids) ready for school today, things will either all fall into place for you or they won’t. The world turns despite your plans, and the chips fall where they may. Often times, that is what makes us feel good or bad about that part of our day.
This often extends to the entire day — regardless of what else we end up tackling. We end up hitching our wagon to circumstance — how we feel about the day becomes dependent on how things unfold. The same then becomes true for how we feel about ourselves, because how we feel about ourselves is so often dependent upon what we feel we’ve accomplished.
That’s a perilous choice because things have to end up just so in order for you to feel good about yourself and what you’ve done. Avoid this as much as you can. You can be proactive — even just a little tiny bit. It will make all the difference in how you feel about your days, and ultimately, about you.
Here’s My Humble Suggestion
Take a few minutes (literally, a few minutes) and align whatever you anticipate today with your overall goals — as much as possible. The best way will always be by committing this to writing, but even just thinking about it in this way should help you feel better.
You’re not changing anything in terms of what you’re trying to do. You’re not making a classical “to-do list” of things that you feel you need to accomplish. That is often a great way to end up feeling bad about yourself at the end of the day, rather than the beginning. What you are doing is crafting a lens through which to view your day — one that has a much better of chance of making you feel some semblance of control, direction, and progress.
It can make all the difference in the world.