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Is Emotional Planning the Key to a Great Day? Before you went to sleep last night, you probably had a pretty good idea of what you were planning to do when you woke up. Did you do a little mental review of the next day’s activities?
Because most of us have some kind of schedule that we try to keep it is perfectly natural to give those activities some thought ahead of time. But let me ask you this: did you also give some thought to how you’re going to feel when you woke up this morning?
It is one thing to consider what we are going to do, but it’s quite another to consider how we are going to feel.
Emotional planning
The reason you knew what you were going to do when you woke up this morning is that you gave it some thought. You considered how your day was going to go beforehand. Why not do the same thing with regard to your emotional state?
When you take the time to visualize yourself waking up in the morning feeling great after a wonderful night’s sleep, fully energized and ready to go, you are actually planning for tomorrow. Now, instead of planning your activities, you are planning your emotions!
How can we do that?
First, take a few moments to visualize a pleasant morning experience. Then indulge yourself in those good feelings, actually allowing yourself to get all wrapped up in how wonderful it is to wake up feeling really good.
When you go to bed with positive thoughts about the next day, guess what? Chances are you will actually wake up feeling good because you have already experienced it in your mind. You’ve already been there once and your mind doesn’t know the difference between the actual experience and the imagined experience.
When you wake up tomorrow your mind is going to recall what you already programmed into it. As far as your mind is concerned, you’ve already had this experience once and it felt great. It is exactly what your mind expects to happen.
Planning your emotional experiences
Why not give some preliminary consideration to how you are going to feel, not just tomorrow morning but every morning? In fact, why not take it a step further?
If you are going to work tomorrow, why not stop and imagine yourself going to work and feeling absolutely wonderful about it? See yourself in an unexplainably good mood all day long. Consider any activity that’s going to affect your day and feel yourself enjoying it! When you actually have that experience, you will be preprogrammed to enjoy it.
Use your emotional leverage to create an enjoyable reality
The fact that your mind records your “visualized experiences” as real gives you a wonderful opportunity to master some very useful advanced life skills. All you need to do is practice these skills to benefit from them.
Thousands of scientific studies over the last 40 years have proven that athletes can radically improve their performance using this technique. Why not use this same approach to improve your perception of tomorrow?
Take control of your attitude
We have much more control over our feelings and moods than most people give themselves credit for. I invite you to start exercising that control immediately. I encourage you to start planning ahead by making an emotional schedule for a great day – no matter what activities you will be involved in.
You already know to some degree what you’ll be doing. Why not choose to also know ahead of time how you’re going to feel about it?
Emotional planning means giving some forethought to how you are going to feel about upcoming activities and events.
