Imagining your ideal day is a powerful way to begin inviting your dreams into your life. It’s a core exercise in many a self-help book and definitely in a coach’s magical toolkit. Here’s how to do it.

Imagining Your Ideal Day

Give yourself some quiet time to sit down with your journal and your imagination. Take yourself to the very first moment of your ideal day. How, when and where do you wake up? When you look around, what or who is there? What are you going to do with your day? Start to write about it in great detail. What do you eat for breakfast? What do you wear? Do you get dressed at all? Follow the narrative of the day and let yourself feel into it. Steep yourself in the day and let it become a part of you. Write down and experience what it feels like, looks like, sounds like, smells like.

Knowing what we want is the first step in welcoming it in.  Picturing your ideal day tunes your inner compass so that more and more you’ll find yourself naturally steering towards the life that you’ve imagined.

What else can you do to encourage your ideal day vision to come to life?

What elements of your ideal day can you live (or are you living) right now?

Once you have your perfect day on paper, look through all of the broad strokes and all little details of your ideal day to see what you can start living right now. And I mean right now. Today.

Did you wake up without an alarm clock? Could you do that tomorrow? How about Sunday? Go to your datebook and choose a day for “No alarm.” Write it in.

Did you do some yoga? Take time for some yoga today.

Did you go to a coffee shop and write? Do that.

Did you start your day with a green smoothie? Start doing that.

We underestimate how many of the little pieces of our big dream we can and even do have right now. Look for all the ways that you can start living your ideal day right now – and also to acknowledge all the ways that perhaps you already are.

Moving Closer to Your Ideal

Next, a look at the things that are slightly more out of reach and  start getting creative with all the ways you can get as close as possible to these things within your current resources .

In your ideal day vision, did you wake up in 200-count Egyptian cotton sheets?  What would be as close as possible? Fresh clean sheets? A well-made bed? What was the feeling the sheets gave you? Was it the sensory pleasure? How can you create that? Was it luxury? What feels luxurious that you can have today?

Did you wake up in Paris? What is it about Paris that’s appealing to you? Is it the beauty of the French language, the coffee shops and galleries, the sense of style? How can you bring those elements of Paris to your life right here and right now?

Look for the essence of the ideal elements and see how you can have and experience more of that starting now.

Inviting Your Ideal Day Closer

As well as living every bit of our ideal that’s available today and then getting as close as possible to that ideal wherever we can, how can you begin to bring that ideal day ever closer?

Did you wake up and get ready for a photo shoot? What’s one thing you could do to get closer to that? Do that today.

Did you wake up beside the love of your life? What’s one thing you could do to get closer to that? Do that.

For many of us, putting aside some savings is a key element. Start that today.

We can get shut down by making a project too big, by deciding that we need a complete itinerary to get to our destination. One way to get closer to your ideal day today is to brave taking whatever next step is in front of you. Trust that next steps and next steps will reveal themselves.

Start Living Your Ideal Day Today

We are often so much closer than we think to what we dream of. Instead of letting your vision of an ideal day become a dusty treasure written in your journal, use it as a road map, one that step by step will get you closer to your dreams.