Here’s a Great, Little Practice to Create Your Ideal Day.

Unique Perspectives: Here’s a Great, Little Practice to Create Your Ideal Day.

By Kim Stevens

Did you know there’s something called The World Happiness Report that’s released annually each year? (Fun fact: in 2023, for the sixth year in a row, Finland was found to be the No. 1 happiest country in the world.)

I’m not so much interested in the results of the report, fascinating as they may be, but in the fact that there is a happiness report in the first place. Why would Gallup Poll and Oxford University and Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Development – among many other notable institutions – spend time putting together a massive document on the state of the world’s happiness? 

Because they believe, just like I believe, happiness is what most of us seek in life. I know I want to be happy. Don’t you? 

I also think happiness is often seen as this vague, amorphous thing with no tangible ways to achieve it. 

Until now. 

I got this idea from a life coaching class with Martha Beck (PhD, Harvard-trained sociologist, best-selling author, among many other accolades), who explained that happiness starts with your ideal day. 

Martha said take the time to think about your perfect day and all the tiny details that would go into it: 

How would I wake up? How would I feel when I wake up? Where will I have my coffee? Will I meditate? Do I want to be out in nature? Do I want to go to the gym? How do I want to feel when I’m getting dressed? How do I want to feel when I walk out the door? Will I go out to lunch or pack a lunch to take to the office? When do I want to leave work? 

There are a million different decisions I can make throughout my day, and I imagine myself experiencing all those things. In Martha’s class, the exercise was completed as a meditation, so we’d picture how we wanted our ideal day to be and try to really feel those feelings, smell those smells, taste the tastes and hear the sounds.

As I’m thinking through my ideal now, I write everything down. Then, I find little ways to incorporate what I’ve written into my life. And because I’ve already articulated the details, it becomes so much easier to sprinkle them into reality.

Maybe I’ll buy the expensive sheets with the high thread count because I want to feel great when I’m sleeping. Maybe I get better coffee so I’m comforted in the morning as I sit in the early day’s sunlight and take my very first sip. Maybe I block out 15 minutes between meetings to meditate. 

All of these small things I do start to create the vision of my ideal day, and what is life if not a bunch of ideal days strung together? 

In creating my ideal day, I’m actually creating my ideal life, and that is a great, little practice with big results.