Daydream Your Way to a Better Life
One of the most popular self-help books ever written on depression isFeeling Good byDr. David Burns. He identifies several cognitive distortions the depressed suffer from. One of them is Overgeneralization. This is the practice of viewing a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. If you lose your job, suddenly you are worthless and you will never amount to anything. If you look at your 401(k) statement and youve lost 35% of your nest egg, suddenly youll never be able to retire and youll have to be a Walmart greeter when youre 85 years old. When things are bad, it feels like everything is bad and theyll always be bad.
One of the simplest, most enjoyable and most effective ways to improve your outlook and rise above the depressing headlines is to daydream visualize a better life. InRobert Coopersbook,Get Out of Your Own Way, he says Brain scans show that simply imagining a complex and compelling goal will actually fire the same neurons that will be required to actually achieve the goal. Daydreaming is definitely not just for kids. Spend a few minutes every day imagining your ideal life. You dont have to write anything down if you dont want to, just visualize it. Make it as real as you can.
If you want to get fancy, I recommend youDreamBoard. Its something Ive written about in The Six Day Financial Makeover as well as my free ebook,Plan Z, but I think it bears repeating. DreamBoarding is the process of creating a visual scrapbook of your ideal life. Why pictures? Our mind thinks and remembers in pictures. We remember faces but forget names. When we read a story, we create a visual image of the characters and the situation. The great communicators use language to create mental images. A picture can communicate much more quickly and efficiently than a word or a thought.
In addition to thinking about taking a trip to Fiji, isnt it more powerful to also look at a picture of a Fijian beach with crystal clear water and palm trees? Does the picture improve your mood more than the thoughts alone? The added benefit of creating a collage of pictures is that they can remind you of your ideal life every time you glance at your DreamBoard.
Heres how it works. As you imagine your perfect future, jot down what it looks like. Then cut out a picture or two from a magazine that represents this life. Take your time finding pictures that get your juices flowing. If one of your goals is to own a new Porsche, buy a car magazine or visit your local dealership and pick up a brochure.
Your ideal life shouldnt just be filled with stuff, either. It should include things you want to accomplish and ideas about the person you want to be. While it is easier to find pictures representing tangible things you want to own, you can also locate pictures representing what you want to accomplish and who you want to be.
If you want to earn a Ph.D., cut out a picture of a diploma. If you want to learn how to play the piano, cut out a picture of a piano or of someone playing the piano. If you want to work fewer hours, take a picture of your office with a clock at 3:30PM with you noticeably absent. You can find a picture for almost anything. For example, one of the things I want to accomplish is to go on an African Safari. There are a lot of places ! I could have gone to get pictures of Africa, but I chose to cut out pictures from an adventure travel brochure because that was more accurate for my dream.
You can even find pictures representing the person you want to be. Do you want to become a better parent? Cut out a picture of your kids on vacation or doing their homework. Do you want to be a better communicator? Cut out a picture ofBarack Obama. Bottom line, no matter what your ideal life, you can find a picture to capture or express it.
Have fun with this exercise get creative. While it might sound slightly silly-like making a collage in elementary school using pictures will bring your ideal life to life.
Once youve cut out all of the pictures, it is time to create your DreamBoard. You have a couple of options. You can either create a portable goal collage by using a three-ring binder or you could create a large poster board with pictures representing all of your goals. There is nothing more powerful than looking at a collection of pictures that represent your ideal life.
Put your DreamBoard where youll see it often. Invest a few minutes of your other 8 hours every day to look at it. Think about what the pictures represent and visualize living it. Then get out there and make it happen!
(Landscape image byvsz,CC 2.0)
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Robert Pagliarini is obsessed with improvement, making the most of his time and energy, and inspiring others to live life to the fullest by radically changing the way they invest their time and energy. He is the founder of RicherLife.com, a community of passionate people who want to learn and achieve more in life and at work and the co-founder of The Band of Brothers Foundation, a non-profit helping kids around the world.
