Can You Really Have A Perfect Day? (Not Just In Your Head)

Have you heard about the perfect day exercise?

It’s a simple little thing that allows you to visualise what the ultimate, most delightful, most perfect day would be. And it can bring you one important step closer to being able to actually live that perfect day. More than once, perhaps! I think that the perfect day exercise is one that we really all must take time to do, at least every couple of months. I’m not alone in thinking this – it seems it doesn’t matter which productivity expert you talk to or read, at some point they’ll all mention the perfect day exercise.

It’s really easy.

All you have to do is take a few minutes to write about your dream day. I’m not talking a one-off dream day (although that’s a great exercise as well), but how your typical day will go when you start to really grab hold of your big goals and live the life you dream about.

the power of your intent

Notice how I said ‘how your typical day WILL go’, rather than ‘would or could go’. It’s important to think, talk and write about your goals in the definite tense – assume that these goals are your realities rather than simply a wish that you one day hope to achieve but kind of don’t really believe you can.

I’m going to start you off by writing my perfect day in a moment, but in case you don’t make it all the way through let me give you a couple of tips for writing your own.

1. Write without restrictions. The two most common restrictions would be to hold back in case someone else ever reads what you write, or to hold back because you think what you’d like to put down is either silly or unachievable. This is your PERFECT day, not your ‘okay’ or ‘not bad’ day.

2. Write it EXACTLY as you’d like it to be. Now obviously your dream life would not involve every day being the same as the next so if you really want to get carried away you could write a couple of different scenarios, but I think one is enough to set the tone for how your perfect life will pan out. But the real purpose here is simply to get excited. To get carried away on your own dreams. And – even more than that – to truly visualise; to FEEL what it would be like to live on your own terms. For you that might mean running your own business entirely from home and speaking to nobody for days on end, or it could mean being out and about and constantly on the go. It could mean writing about relaxation and social engagements, or it could be work-based. Or it could be just whatever starts to come out once you get going.

3. Don’t limit yourself! Go with your own flow and try not to overthink what’s coming out. This is a fun exercise designed purely to get your mind whirring with possibilities. What you do with it from there is up to you.

i’ll kick things off

This is my perfect day …

I wake up with the sun, after a deeply refreshing night’s sleep. I’m not really in a great rush so I take the time to lie in bed and let my mind slowly come to life as I consider the smaller details of my loosely planned day. My daughter typically sleeps until 8.30am, and I really value this early morning time for myself. I find that starting the day purely in my own head and company energises me for the hours to come, and means I stay unfrazzled even if plans go astray. It’s a work day for me (I only work 2-3 days a week), and my husband is home until my mother arrives at 9am to look after Alyssa, so I down a couple big glasses of water with some glutamine and primal greens, load up on alpha gpc and carnitine, and then head straight into town to get a jump start on my day.

After a cruisy drive on the freeway I stop at my absolute favourite early morning coffee shop to start the day with a perfect macchiato. I can see that the day is shaping up to be a perfect sunny one, and I love that early morning crisp feel the air has. Over coffee (okay two coffees) I quickly draft out a blog post for Woman Incredible, and fine-tune some content for the Woman Incredible membership site.

I find that the creative work I do in the early mornings seems to be at least 3 or 4 times as efficient as what I might do later in the day, and so I’ve really learned to take this time first. It’s made a huge difference in my life in terms of not constantly worrying about squeezing important writing or projects in between clients or into my personal/family time, and also just plain makes me feel happy to start the day doing something that I love.

After this the city is really starting to come to life.

I spend a very quick few minutes scanning my emails and deleting or archiving the ones I don’t need to answer. Time to ‘officially’ start the day. These days my office is a veerrrrrrry swanky 2-bedroom apartment on Flinders Lane. I share the apartment with a friend who also consults out of there (we’ve each set up a bedroom as our office). I’ve had this dream of having my own city office/apartment ever since I first visited my business mentor at her then new location, which was a similar set-up. The lounge of the apartment is heaven come true for me. We’ve lined pretty much every available wall space with bookshelves (you know those cube ones with all different shaped holes), and have book after book after book interspersed with the occasional piece of art or memento. I even have a pair of Eleiko dumbells on display 🙂 The kitchen is another little piece of heaven, with a fabulous home coffee machine, although I must admit I prefer to go out into the city for my coffee! In the fridge I always have berries, cream, green vegetables and a few other healthy snacks to offer clients (or myself). The set-up of the apartment is really just perfect. I was lucky enough to get a top-notch designer fit-out for rock-bottom prices, as a client of mine runs a post-display-home furniture store. The apartment has views over a decent part of the city, and is in a very pretty art deco building. Nice and quiet ….

your turn!

Hmmm, I was getting right into that. I think I could have kept going for another couple of thousand words,n but I’ll stop and hand over to you. You can see, I hope, from reading mine, just what a powerful exercise this can be. It really starts to come alive, and – as the saying goes – what your mind can perceive, you can achieve. If you can’t do it right now, perhaps you could plan to set aside some time to write your perfect day.

To really perform this exercise in detail can take a good 30 minutes or even more – but man do you feel great afterwards!

Please share either a paragraph of your perfect day in the comments below, or at least the highlights. I’d love to feed on your dreams!

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