#31DayReset Day 12: Craft Your Ideal Life Narrative

This post is Day 12 of the 2012 edition of the 31 Days to Reset Your Life Challenge. Learn more and sign up here.

One of the most powerful ways to get clear about your goals and dreams is to visualize them. It can be incredibly motivating and inspiring to really be able to see your desired path in your mind’s eye, to go to sleep dreaming about it and wake up thinking about it. Over the past week, you’ve started to do a bit of visualizing on paper by creating a life map. Yesterday, you even went head to head with your resistance to dreaming big by writing a letter to your lizard brain. So today, there’s nothing holding you back from getting even more specific in your visual by imagining what your ideal life would really look like once you put it all together. Today, you are going to write your ideal life narrative.

Estimated Time to Complete: 30-45 minutes

Your ideal life narrative is basically you telling a story about the life you want for yourself. It answers questions like:

• What are you doing on a daily basis in your ideal life?
• Who are you spending your time with?
• How are you earning your living?
• Where are you living?
• How are you spending your leisure time?

The only requirement to this exercise is that you use nothing but present tense statements. You should say “I am” or “I have” to indicate that you are already living your ideal life. To complete this exercise, you will incorporate your goals, hopes and dreams from your life map using these seven specific areas of your life:

• Lifestyle
• Work
• Education
• Finances
• Health
• Family
• Relationships

To express your response to this exercise, you should take a fresh look at your life map and write out in paragraph form exactly what your life would look like with all seven areas combined. You should be as specific as possible – you want to paint an inspiring mental picture with your narrative.

As an example, I share my ideal life narrative below.

Rosetta’s Ideal Life Narrative

I am living in Washington, DC, though I spend half the year traveling. I have a spacious apartment in the city with a huge gourmet kitchen. Every month, I entertain various groups of friends with themed dinner parties and fundraising brunches. I spend the summer in Paris and the winter in Hawaii and Jamaica. I am a highly sought-after speaker for national and international conferences and conventions. I also have my own popular annual event where I bring together women of color from around the world for professional development and personal transformation. I have published several bestselling books and they have been translated in over a dozen languages. I earn a million-dollar income doing what I love – empowering people to find their purpose and live out their dreams. I have access to a private jet and a personal driver. I have close relationships with my immediate family. I visit my extended family several times a year to celebrate holidays, birthdays and sometimes “just because.” I have a handsome, loving partner who supports me in my goals and allows me to support him in his. I am healthy both physically and mentally. I exercise daily and have a good therapist who helps me grow and thrive. I am a lifelong learner and I invest in my ongoing education by attending seminars and reading at least one book a month. I also take cooking, writing and dance classes to feed my creativity. I meditate every morning to connect to the God in me. As a result, I spread as much love as possible on the streets of my journey. Every year, I give away at least 10% of my income to charity and I volunteer on a regular basis.

Take Action and Reflect: When you’re done, please share your “ideal life narrative” with us in the comments! Would also be great to hear how you felt as you completed this exercise. Did it excite you? Did it clarify your life map? If you blogged about today’s assignment, please post the link in the comments so we can read it!

Want All the 31 Day Reset Exercises in One Place?

The Reset Workbook contains all 31 daily assignments in one place as well as 28 printable worksheets to supplement the material and help you complete the daily exercises. The workbook is 60 pages long and comes in an electronic, ebook format.

For those who may wish to go at their own pace, this workbook allows you to have all the assignments at your fingertips in addition to the opportunity to connect with others who are doing the 31 Day Reset program here on the blog. There are also a few bonuses, like the full version of the Life Mapping Workbook with a video training!

Buy the workbook here.

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