How about this. Make a list of the major outcomes you want to achieve in your life. For example, your item of "I should call a friend or family member" may be part of a greater vision of something like:
"I share wonderful relationships with my friends and family. I am respectful, helpful, and I always enjoy sharing my positive energy with them..."
or something like that. So it's more of a vision for your entire life, rather than just "I should call Frank"
You could break down your life into 6-8 categories and develop a vision statement for each one of the categories (Health, Finances, Relationships, Fun/Relaxation, Spirituality, etc.).
Now, every morning, you can look at your vision, and then simply ask yourself one question "What will I enjoy doing in this category today."
For your relationship example, that specific day you may "feel like" and "enjoy" doing something else other than "Call this person today.". Like for example you may know that they are down and depressed right now because their pet died, and you *should* call them, but really you haven't been feeling too good yourself the last few days, and you don't really want to talk to them because you're afraid they might depress you because you're kind of off your game right now, so instead of feeling guilty about not calling them, maybe you would enjoy doing something else. Like, for example, you may write and send them a Christmas card. Or you may write a letter to someone totally different.
I guess what I'm saying is that I've tried all these different "systems" out there, but I always find that instead of doing what I "*should*" do, I always end up doing what I like doing (long term anyways). So instead of looking for the things that I should (and probably won't) do and writing those down, I instead look for what I could actually ENJOY (and probably will) doing that day.
So instead of writing down 30-40 things I SHOULD do, and then feeling crappy because I only did 1 or 2 of those, I prefer to list 7-8 things that I would ENJOY doing today and end up doing 90-100% of those.
If you do 7-8 things you ENJOY towards your 6-8 categories each day, pretty quickly all of your "SHOULDS" will disappear and you'll stack up a lot of positive momentum.
Just something to think about. |