This Day, This Precious Moment

We’re drilling down into the “Diamond Hour” Concept, because almost everyone can find a single hour a day to claim as your own.   In general, a writer might spend twenty minutes a day on each of three different things:

1) Twenty minutes meditation
2) Twenty minutes exercise/incantation
3) Twenty minutes focused writing, FLOW STATE FIRST DRAFT.   On alternate days, polish and edit.  (Or something in alignment with deepest personal values and goals)

Here’s another:
1) Fifteen minutes meditation
2) Fifteen minutes planning
3) Fifteen minutes exercise/incantation
4) Fifteen minutes FLOW STATE writing (or something in alignment with deepest personal values and goals)

Here’s another:
1) Ten minutes meditation.
2) Ten minutes planning
3) Ten minutes exercise/incantation
4) Thirty minutes FLOW STATE writing (or something in alignment with deepest personal values and goals.)

Don’t do more than four basic things in your Diamond Hour, and don’t let any of the pieces get smaller than 10 minutes.    But you can mix and match a bit to find the best pattern that works for you.
In combination with the Five Minute Miracle (Five sixty-second “breathing breaks” distributed through the day) you are kicking yourself into ultra-high gear.  You are focusing your mind, raising your energy, moving toward your destiny, protecting your health, engaging your fitness, mastering stress, aligning with your “inner child”, creating a Daily Ritual of power, and far more.

EVEN IF YOU ARE TOTALLY BUSY THE REST OF THE DAY, you have moved toward your deepest goals. 

And even more importantly, you are answering the two most important questions in life: Who Am I? And “What is true?”

Who are you?  A moving, living, evolving being.  One in alignment with your values.  What is true?  That the world can be navigated with joy and power, that every day has meaning and significance.   That you have FAR more control over your life, destiny and emotions than 99.9% of the people around you believe.

Remember the idea that information is not power?  Only information that causes or changes ACTION is power.  If your emotions truly change, your actions will change.  If you see the world more clearly or accurately, your actions will change.  IF YOUR ACTIONS DO NOT CHANGE, YOU HAVE NOT CHANGED.

On this level, behavior is truth. 

On the worst day of your life, you can “fall back” to the Five Minute Miracle.  But NO ONE has fewer than five minutes of guided breathing time in a day.   You are simply lying to yourself.   And if you do that…you have just learned a bit about how you lie, how you distort your reality map. 
Imagine you are on a road trip between birth and death.  Is it valuable to know that your map is distorted?  You think?

Musashi’s First Principle: “Do Not Think Dishonestly.”   Until you stop lying about the fact that, barring serious illness, your adult body, adult relationships and adult careers are created by our consistent behaviors, and our behaviors are created by our beliefs, perceptions, value hierarchies and emotions.   ADULTS TAKE RESPONSIBILITY.  Children blame the world, their parents, their pasts.  Either take responsibility, or the metaphorical “children” of your dreams and goals will simply wither and die.
“If it’s to be, it’s up to me” has to become your mantra, if there is any part of you that is still blaming the world.   The world is just what it is.  It is up to YOU to learn to read the map of that world, to align your values with your goals enough that just practicing or working toward them brings you satisfaction.

Why?  Because no one is guaranteed a tomorrow.  Live so that even if you die tomorrow, today was a triumph.

TODAY you expressed your dreams.  TODAY you learned more about your mind, body, and emotions.   TODAY you told your loved ones that you adore them.   TODAY you celebrated your life.   TODAY.   TODAY.   TODAY.

This day.  This hour.  This five minutes.   This sixty seconds. This breath.  This moment. The macro in the micro.

Perfect moments make a perfect minute.  Perfect minutes make a perfect hour. Perfect hours make a perfect day.  Perfect days make a life of mastery.

You will have ups and downs.  Days when your head is full of fog, or your body is full of fire.  Days of depression and those of exaltation.  Days when your tasks seem like stones, and others when your goals are like wings.

But up or down, we must move forward, even if only a single step.  Every person you’ve ever admired has their “down” days, their challenges, their flaws and heartbreaks. EVERY ONE OF THEM.  
This is one of the most important things you learn if you study success.   They ALL had their “dark nights of the soul” and one of the worst myths is that somehow they didn’t know about failure.  No, they know more about failure than the people we call “failures.”  Why?   Because they got up and kept going.  Which means that

1) they understand failure from both sides and
2) they fail more often.

Your ritual of daily action, even a piece as small as five minutes, will change your life.  Begin today. 
Continue tomorrow.   Build the live of your dreams.   Ask “who am I” and “what is true” with every act, every breath.

One step at a time, walk the Thousand Mile Road.

Pierce the illusion.  Embrace your destiny.  Live this one most precious life you have to live.


I close with the Sanskrit expression that means “the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within you,” the same idea as the West African term “Num” which means that there is one spirit peering out through many eyes.


Namaste,
Steven Barnes
Www.diamondhour.com