Guest post by licensed Right-Brain Business Plan® Facilitator Cass Mullane
At the end of every day, what do you do? Do you flop into bed exhausted and grumbling about the day? Do you settle in for an hour and a half of mind monkeys swinging around inside your head chattering so loudly that you cannot turn your mind off and get to sleep? Do you toss and turn berating yourself for all the stuff you didn’t do?
How about this instead: Lay yourself down and comfortably drift off to sleep with a smile on your face and a calm peaceful mind. How can you do it? By balancing your To Do’s with Ta Da’s! Here are a couple of tips.
Tip #1: At the end of the day, take a few minutes to be still and to journal about the day.
This is your chance to do a brain dump into your journal and then hit the sack with a clear head. Like the other two tips, your mind will relax more once you get the nagging things, both good and bad, out of your head and onto a journal page where it can be held until you’re done with it. It’s a great place to record what’s bothering you and then to balance it out with what’s awesome about the day.
Tip #2: At the end of the day, take stock of what you DID do during the day. This is a Ta Da! List. Put together a Ta Da! List and drop it in your Cool Stuff Jar.
We tend to forget about what we did during the day because were so busy looking at the next thing on the To Do List or the next hottest fire to put out. A Ta Da! List has so many benefits. For example, once you start making a Ta Da! List, you’ll quickly realize that you really did get a lot of things done over the course of the day. You can also celebrate the Ta Da’s on the list and recognize your hard work by giving yourself a pat on the back.
One side effect of having a Ta Da! List is that you’ll stop saying, “I didn’t get anything done today,” as often. That’s going to be replaced with, “I got a lot done today!” Check in with your body and see which sentence gives you a boost when you say it out loud.
Another thing you’ll notice a sense of accomplishment and that you feel better and more relaxed when you go to bed. And when you’re more relaxed, you get to sleep quicker and experience more sound, restorative sleep.
Tip #3: At the end of the day, make a list of the top three things you need to focus on tomorrow. That’s it, just the top three, then put your pen down and go to sleep.
What this does is relieve your mind from the not-so-productive routine of mentally reviewing all the things that need to be done, without regard to priority. By reducing it to your top three To Do’s, you set the priority and you turn off the habit of spending your precious sleep time thinking about everything that’s still left to be done.
This is the mental equivalent to throwing those mind monkeys a banana! Listing the top three lets your mind relax, and allows you to settle into sleep more quickly. It also sets you up for the next day because when you wake up, you already know what you’re going to be doing. You’ll be more productive because you can go right to work on the priority activities and not waste time on the less than important tasks.
So what will you do at the end of the day today? How about keeping the balance with a little journaling, the three To Dos and a Ta Da! List.