The First Steps

Each of these DIAMOND HOUR pieces, of necessity, will address multiple arenas.  It’s that “psychotensegrity” thingie we mentioned a while back--everything connects to everything.   So if you commit to five minutes a day (and EVERYONE has five minutes) one of the first things you have to do is disarm the part of your head that says: “I don’t have time.”

When I taught writing at UCLA, one of the things that happened in one class is that the students complained of not having enough time to work.  So the next week, I started by asking who had seen X or Y television show, discussing them in turns of character, plot, and so forth.  Once I had engaged everyone in the room, I reminded them that every single one had confessed to watching at least seven hours of television a week.   And that if they had seven hours, they had enough time to execute their projects.  The average person watches MUCH more than an hour a day.  You have time.

If not, that’s your first goal--to find yourself an hour a day to invest in personal development. You owe yourself that much.  And your first step is that first five minutes. By breathing for sixty seconds five times a day (the “five minute miracle”) you begin the process of converting stress from strain to motivating force.

Here are some things do do during that first five minutes (and don’t even TRY to tell me you don’t have five minutes, if you had the time to read this. That is simply a lie.)

So...WHILE YOU ARE BREATHING DEEPLY for sixty seconds...

1) Identify the three most important things to accomplish today.

2) Identify three reasons to accomplish each of them.

3) Imagine three people or causes OUTSIDE YOURSELF you will benefit by accomplishing these things.

4) Identify three new resources you can investigate to help you.

5)  Three people you can contact to brainstorm more efficient ways of accomplishing your intents.

6) Visualize your “end state” in your primary goals in body, career, and relationships.

7) Imagine three times you succeeded in the past, and fully associate with them.

8) Three reasons to have faith you can and should do this.

9) Three ways you motivated yourself in the past to do things that weren’t intrinsically “fun.”

10) Three ways you are in alignment with BOTH  your childhood dreams and deathbed values.

Write down your results.   Review your previous day’s notes.  Walk the Thousand Mile Road.

Namaste,

Steve

www.diamondhour.com