Some of the Daily reminders I use every day

I keep a daily reminder list in Remember the milk as am item in my !daily list. Here are my current reminders.

It is OK to be high energy even when you don't have energy, greet everyone who comes in with the best smile you can muster! Always give your best no matter how much you have left!

Remember resistance is the enemy! if you feel resistance to doing something that is the exact thing your soul wants to do!

Remember to smile big and smile often when people are there and when they are not.
Smile at God and rejoice in the smile you get back from him all the time.

I am God's child and the people I interact with are also God's children.
Love them by listening to them and making that moment about them. Stay with God in prayer and live your day trusting God's glorious will!

Some tools from my Daily routine

Over the last few years there are a number of techniques I have implemented into my daily routine that have helped me with anxiety, productivity, and overall sanity. I keep track of these in Microsoft Outlook and maintain them mostly every day.

Daily Devotional

I want to fill my life with the Lord’s word and stay in it but I find it very hard to keep a Bible on me and when I do I find myself going numb to having it and not making the time to read it. My solution, I added a daily task in outlook to read a daily devotion http://www.lhm.org/dailydevotions.asp and to read a daily bible verse at http://www.biblegateway.com
This has helped me stay active in the word and helps me to make it a part of my life.

Daily reminder

This is simply a task with a list of things to be cognizant about all the time. The items are simple:

• Remember to smile
• Remember to affirm your day (you have an affirmation note category)
• Remember, God's grace is enough and you don't have to worry about this world, just love the people in it.
• Remember, you can always go somewhere else to work for a while if you can't concentrate.

I also have items specific to work, twitter, etc. I read this daily so I try to keep it down to about 4 or 5 items and I update it every day adding new reminders and removing things that have already become habits. This list becomes useful to keep me centered and give me inspiration for Twitter and the Blog.

Gratitude Journal

Every day I write 5 things I am grateful for. This was a practice suggested by my good friend (and big Sis in Christ) Tara Rodden Robinson. This helps me to stay positive, focus on God’s will for me, and it has helped me to remember that even things that have seemed unpleasant in the past have always resulted in good for me.

Daily Affirmation

Every day I write a few words in a note in Outlook affirming what wild success for the day would look like. I close my eyes and imagine myself at the end of the day and I write about how wonderful it is to have experienced what ever joyful thing I envision at the time. I don’t believe for a second that positive thoughts like this make anything happen but I do believe that it keeps me focused, outcome based, and helps me to think in terms of present action towards future goals.

Natural planning model - another tool for fighting resistance

I was walking through my daily checklist today and noticed for the past few days I have been going numb to my gratitude journal and my daily affirmation. I was getting to the point where I looked at those items and went "ugh, I am fine, I don't really need to do these, I am grateful, my days are going well, I don't need them." I shot an e-mail to @tararodden who suggested I mix things up a bit, maybe reword my affirmations as questions, switch to a different model for the gratitude journal (Thanks for the help Tara, you really helped me, you are an awesome coach!) and that triggered my BFO!

I wasn't present I was caught up in working on my lists and not focused on the original purpose of my daily items. I needed to re-enter the basic building blocks of what I was trying to do in the first place. So I delved into the natural planning model.

I questioned:

What are the purpose and principles of the daily task in question?
I stated what the original purpose was; for example I started the daily gratitude journal to help keep me present and aware of the blessings in my life.
I then stated what purposes it formed as I practiced it:
It kept me in perspective as I was brought to focus on things I formerly thought as negative in my life but now would never change. It has helped me to stay prayerful which ties into my current purpose statement bingo, value. No longer numb!

I quickly came up withe a new desired outcome followed by some fast brainstorming, organization and I now know how to reorganize my tasks to keep them vibrant.

My advice here is if going numb to any process in GTD, your system, your projects, etc, try reviewing it with the natural planning model, you can fall upon breakthroughs in your projects and get more creative, creating even better work.

Thanks for the idea of rewording my affirmations as questions Tara, I am implementing that into my daily affirmation.