Recently, I got an eviction notice pinned to my door of my apartment. I'm
serious. I'm not making this up. I paid my rent eventually
and it wasn't. I didn't want to pay my rent, but new management company
and things got lost in the shuffle. And anyway,
if you want to check out that story, listen to the previous episode. But the
thing that impressed me about it is I didn't. I didn't hide the fact that
I went through this experience. I felt a lot of shame for a couple hours,
a mistake. I've lived there seven and a half years. I've paid my rent every
time. But this happened and I was kind of embarrassed.
But one of the reasons that I was able to go ahead and talk about
it and not get stuck in shame after having this experience, not a big
deal, although I didn't want to get kicked out of my freaking home, is,
is that I have some practices in place that help
me to stay grate.
And that's what we're going to talk about today is a practice called the Daily
Action Worksheet that will help you stay grounded in adversity and help you stay
focused on the good stuff in your life. So welcome to the Decide youe Legacy
podcast. Today's episode is on using the
Daily Action Worksheet. Three keys that will help you
to make this a habit. And you're going to want to do this. So by
the end of this episode, you're going to want to make this a daily habit.
I guarantee it. Because you're going to see so much benefit
from engaging in a habit that keeps you focused on the good stuff in your
life. Big time progress is made
as we channel our energy towards our opportunities. Not the obstacles,
the benefits and the gains, not the gap.
Okay, so by then you're going to grasp this and understand how to use it.
I want to talk about a fear I faced recently because nothing is more important
to your mental health than facing your fears. And nothing is more damaging than playing
it safe. I. I had a hard conversation with
an employee and it was good and was positive. And I learned. I
have had multiple hard conversations recently because I
love reminding myself that the quality of my life is directly connected
to my willingness to have difficult conversations
where I could be rejected, judged, laughed at,
cast aside. Cast me aside. Okay, so I've had
some. I want to challenge you to do the same. So I'm your host. My
name is Adam Gragg and I've been a family therapist for
over 25 years. I'm a Legacy Coach founded Decide youe Legacy
in 2012. My purpose in life is to help people
and organizations live with courage that connects to your
mental health, that connects to having practices in your life like this
Daily Action Worksheet. My struggle with this
is like everybody's struggle with starting a new habit of gratitude
in your life. It's kind of cliche. It's something your grandma would tell you
after she pulls her teeth out. Get it? So. But it's
true. And simple stuff is so needed in this world.
The simple things are what keep us grounded in this
complex world. And you can go to this. And in the hardest times of my
life, I could still take hope in the fact that I could grasp
onto some good things in my future in the darkest days. And I've had some
very dark days. Just ask my buddies. I've had some very dark
days. I've always been able to grasp onto some kind of hope that it could
be better in the future. I'm going to give you that hope, some of the
hope that I have today. So I asked my team today what makes
it difficult to start a new habit of gratitude in your life like this Daily
Action worksheet. And everybody on my team is trained to train our new clients and
our prospective clients and the businesses we work with on using this worksheet.
This is where we start. We. In fact, if somebody can't do this
worksheet consistently for a week, they're not going to get.
They're not going to be able to benefit from what we're teaching at Decide youe
Legacy with Living With Courage. They're not going to be able to grasp it.
Some of the things I heard from my team is the tendency to procrastinate gets
in the way because we don't want to start something and then fail ourselves.
And we want to live in excuses. We make excuses like we don't
have time. It just takes you. And it will take you just 10 minutes a
day, 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the afternoon as you make
this a daily practice. People don't want to grasp the truth.
So Kelsey on my team, she says she just makes
excuses to forget how beneficial it is for her. Come
on, Kelsey. You know, so it's going to take some energy. It
takes. The pain people experience when starting a
gratitude practice is pretty extensive at first because they're
letting go of those worries that give them a sense of safety. I know that
pride doesn't make sense for you, but we're used to thinking in a certain way.
Keeping it, thinking it will keep us safe. So if I look at all the
bad things, I'm going to be prepared for those bad things happening. And so we
zero in on those things, on what could go bad
and we forget what could go right. We're letting go
of a safety blanket by choosing to be grateful. The worksheet.
And you can hit the link right now to Shatterproof Yourself Light. You
get access in the bonus section to a video that goes over this worksheet in
depth. This is free. Share it with your friends, use it with your family, use
it with your team. Watch that video. Download the PDF of the worksheet. You can
fill it out on your laptop or your iPad or even your phone and
it'll guide you. You fill out one for each week as
you go and I'll share with you what's on that briefly so you
can have that in mind. But that's seven. That's Shatterproof Yourself Light. Seven
small steps to a giant leap in your mental health. Just hit the link to
download it and go through it. And the first part of that
worksheet is you list the good stuff that happened yesterday. So what
happened good that occurred in my life yesterday. So you think about that in the
morning and then what am I excited about during the day ahead? You share some
items. I'm going to go over a Daily Action worksheet that I have completed
at the end of this episode, so you get a real example at the end.
And I'll also share with you that I wasn't evicted, by the way. So good.
I have a place to live and a bed to sleep in. Cool. Great stuff.
So I don't want to leave. And the second part of the Daily Action worksheet
are, well, the things that are exciting today. And then the third part of that
in the morning is what you're going to focus on today. Your key areas of
focus that are going to give you the biggest wins during that day.
So you know if you do these three things, you're going to be able to
look at the end of the day and say it was a successful day. Write
that down. Then at the end of the day, you have this Life Tree. That's
the Decide youe Legacy logo. It stands for seven different life areas.
Spiritual, family, health, intellectual, social and fun,
career and financial. And you're going to shade one of those
leaves in once you have invested 15 minutes of
your time in that specific life area of the Life Tree. I do this
at 8 o' clock at night. Sometimes I do it at the end, at the
beginning of the next day, because I'm not perfect. Make it a seven. We're not
talking perfection here. Then after you shade those areas of the life tree,
you're writing down your three biggest wins during the day. What
happened that you'd say that was a success? I grew here. I learned some things.
Even though it was painful at the time. Emotions aren't facts. I learned and I
grew. And then what you believe are going to be your three
successes tomorrow, put that down on paper, type it in your
phone, type it on the worksheet, the PDF. Do that for seven days in a
row. It's going to impact your life. It's going to show you patterns, areas of
your life, of those seven life areas where you may be neglecting
things. But first, key for you to actually be able to engage this
worksheet is to grasp that it's not about perfection. That's a
huge obstacle that we have. We overthink it. We tell ourselves
we didn't fill it out right or good enough or we missed a day. And
I can't do it now because I missed a day. And it won't be a
complete week. Go back and complete that day, even if it's two days
later. Go back. It'll challenge your thinking. You can remember what happened that
was good in your life from three days ago. I promise you the inner
roommate's gonna tell you you can't, but you can. Psychologically. We know
that most people, 99% of people can go back
even if you have dementia. That's short term memory. Your long term memory
is often much better than your short term memory.
Don't overthink it. Don't make it complicated. This is why it's
intimidating people. You see this complicated worksheet? It looks that way, but it's a really
beautiful worksheet. Thanks to Lloyd, my
guy on the team who does really great worksheets. He's a whiz at that. So
I'm very grateful for my team and what they do. It's a great
worksheet. Download it, check it out, but be
willing to let go of that perfectionism, because
perfectionism causes procrastination. I've never seen a
perfectionist who is not also a procrastinator. If I
can't do it perfectly, I'm not going to do it at all. Living in the
middle is where life is best lived. That is where
relationships are formed. That is where spontaneity occurs. You can
do so much in 15 minutes, including this daily
action worksheet. So the second key to making this a
new habit in your life is to be committed to decide. The word
decide means so much to me. It's purposefully
chosen as a word in the name of
our business. Decide means to relinquish other
options. It means to look and say, this is a good thing and those are
not the best things for me. Good is the enemy of the best.
This Daily Action worksheet is a great thing for you.
This means you're giving up the option to quit. So you have
situations in your life. You can reflect on where you've made a commitment to a
workout, to a diet, to a relationship, to a new habit, to
going to the doctor to get into bed on time, to getting up on time.
Reflect on those times when you made those commitments and I can almost guarantee
you, you will be empowered. And remember that you can make a commitment even
to something like this Daily Action worksheet. You can choose to do things
that are good for you and make those a part of your life. And if
you reflect on that thinking about how you felt, then it'll energize you to
engage in an activity like this today. It's great to set a goal and
then reflect on how you're going to feel when you achieve it. It'll motivate you
to go through the exercise and the pain, because pain is the
price of freedom to get to that place where you've achieved that goal. This
is the same thing. This is an entry point, as I said,
to working with decide your legacy. This worksheet is so foundational. If you
can't do this, I don't think coaching will help you
because you're not willing to make a commitment to your own investment in yourself.
You don't have to do it perfectly. But to grasp the fact that something like
this, there's other forms of a gratitude practice. I just like this one
because I understand it and I've been teaching it for decades.
It's the one I know. Committing to something that you can follow through for
yourself. Because coaching is a process of following through on
commitments that you know will benefit you, even if you don't feel like they will
benefit you. Challenge clients, challenge prospects, challenge people.
When I speak to engage in this type of action. So the
third key, and I'll just share a success story. Actually,
somebody that I know and I know very well
drug their feet for a long time and had a lot of excuses on
why they wouldn't engage in the Daily Action Worksheet. I Already do something like this.
I've already made it a practice. But they have made it a practice in various
forms throughout their life. But one thing they had not done
is committed to doing it consistently every day. They committed to
doing it consistently every day. And they noticed that they were neglecting one
part of their life and that was the social and fun area area. They made
it an intention, intentional commitment to shading in that
social and fun goal area. And they started to block out chunks of time where
they spent 15 minutes at the end of the day texting and calling friends and
planning things with friends for the weekend. They noticed
the difference that made in their lifestyle and their weekends. They started to get excited
about. They started to see that they had good things planned and that
anticipatory excitement made the rest of their week more
enjoyable. And they ended up shading in that social and
fun area of their life tree on their daily action worksheet consistently
for the next month. Noticed that it was that it was impacting the other
parts of their life tree. It was making it easier for them to shade
in the area of health because they were starting to exercise and go on walks
with friends. It made it easier for them to shade in the spiritual area because
they were engaging relationships with friends where they were talking about
spiritual type things. It made it easier for them to shade in
the career area because they were engaging in social and fun activities
which were leading to career opportunities for them. They were more excited about
shading in that area as well. That's what happens. That's why this is so
foundational for you. So check it out. So the third key to
making the daily action worksheet a part of your life, a lifestyle
habit, is to remember that a very key psychological
principle that what you put your attention to in
your life grows, that you have neural
pathways, connections of neurons that form based on what you
focus on the most. Neuroplasticity basically means that
you can change those neural pathways through
intentional habits of gratitude and focusing on your
7x vision and focusing on your relationships that you have that are so
positive and encouraging in your life and, and channeling energy into those
things and making sure you invest in areas of your
life which are gonna make positive neurons, neural networks, more
accessible for you to form. And you can actually see this stuff in
brain scans and imaging. We have high powered imaging
that you can access and see stuff start to form. And basically
what it is is that your brain channels in to what you're intentionally
deciding to focus on. So you read a book, you do A gratitude list. You
spend time with your friends sharing what you're grateful for, sharing what you're excited about.
And it's going to start to form new neural pathways
which starts to create even this
cognitive bias that is positive, where you start recognizing the
good stuff in your life and not the bad stuff.
You're going to see the bad stuff when you're grateful.
You're actually much more prepared to be able to handle the bad stuff in your
life because you're accessing resources that you're not able to access
when you're anxious in tunnel vision and seeing how to protect yourself
and how to defend yourself. No, gratitude changes
that. So what you, that key concept of recognizing that what I
focus on grows is going to empower you to channel your focus
towards what is good. And it's going to give you energy
to realize that I have this power to channel my
thinking. There are very few things in your life that you have control over. You
don't have 100% control over your health. You have a great deal of influence on
your health. You don't have 100% control over what other people do in
your relationships, but you have a great deal of influence over how you approach
relationships and your willingness to have courageous conversations. The
thing you do have influence over is your actions,
which means you do have influence over whether you, whether or not you
choose to focus on the positives in your life. By completing the Daily Action
Worksheet, you. You don't have 100% control over your thoughts. You have
intrusive thoughts. Things trigger you, like a bearded man
who reminds you of some abusive person in your past, or
like some situation where somebody approaches you to
ask questions, and in your mind you're thinking they're going to reject you or they're
trying to sell something to you because you've been sold a lot of things in
your life, and they're really just trying to encourage you. That's what happens with
intrusive thoughts. But I will tell you this, the Daily Action worksheet,
it makes intrusive thoughts less sticky.
You start to get space from them and realize that they're not true much
faster because you have a practice like this in your toolbox that you
can access every morning, every afternoon, or even during the day, because
you want to shade these areas as you go during the day. That's a great
practice as well. So the
challenge for me with something like this is, hey,
if I don't do it for a full week, my perfectionism comes to play.
And I wanted to share. Share my Daily Action worksheet.
This is it reality for me. I'm just going to read it because I filled
it out this morning. This is a Tuesday. So
here, here's my positive, so really great meeting with a client. Potential
new client company, business that's really exciting for me. Getting
a payment that I've been waiting for. Going and
giving my dog a bath was a real positive thing. He's trained to give me
a bath. Meeting with some friends, meeting with the guy that
produces my podcast. Yeah, he made this list, Troy. So excitement
today. Focusing on growing, focusing
on encouraging clients. I had things down there. Recording podcasts, having
some organization I can do later today. Those are really
positive, exciting things. Getting some exercise after work, eating a good meal,
simple, basic things can go on there. Having a cup of coffee, you know, all
these things can make the list. I got a Father's Day card early for my
parents. And yes, I did open it already. I always do because I generally know
they're gonna give me a gift card and I wanna see what it is. So
thanks for the Starbucks gift card. Mom and dad appreciate that. So, and then I
put down that on my today's Focus. Well, recording podcast. Great.
And what have I shaded in on the tree areas? The spiritual I've put in
the work area which most of you, if you work a job, you're gonna shade
that in pretty easily. Intellectual development haven't done anything for health.
I've gotten some social and fun and the wins I'm going to fill out later
today. But my wins from yesterday was new
work opportunities, a great client, progress on their
marriage, getting well, some of the same wins so that it carries
into the next day. The wins from yesterday becomes my positives, often
become my positives the next day that I reflect on. So I start my day
by just copying that and pasting it in the same Daily Action
worksheet. So another opportunity that I had, dealing with the difficult
conversation, that was a win. And then my successes
yesterday were actually just
client progress. Some things with getting more
sleep, some summer activities
that I have done some planning with, taking my daughter to college
in Boston was a win. Getting that planned out and meeting with
some family that live in Boston that I rarely see if I've never met
them, in fact. But that was a win because I got some put some energy
into that. So it's both personal and professional that go on this
Daily Action worksheet as well. So if you've
just in reviewing here basically what I want to the Daily Action
Worksheet three keys to making this stick as a new habit. So remember, it's not
about perfection. That's the first key. The second key is to be
committed. You have the ability. Don't talk yourself out of it. Don't listen to that
negativity. Third key is is what you focus on grows
remembering. That will empower you. If you found this helpful, check out
Shatterproof yourself lights 7 small steps to a giant leap in your
mental health There's a worksheet. The bonus section again has this daily action
worksheet. In a walkthrough video there's another
whiteboard because in the full version I have worksheets and whiteboards that I've used with
clients for 25 years. I give you a walkthrough video on that
and some other content to help you understand it to make it stick. So
shadowproof yourself light an abbreviated version than the
full version you can purchase. Both of those links are going to be in the
show notes today as well. So
nothing will make my day more exciting and
enjoyable than hearing from you on how you've taken action
based on this content. Make a commitment to apply something
from today and apply it today because 80% of
changes is action, only 20% or less is
insight. You gained insight from this content today.
There is no positive change until you decide
to change. Decide today because your legacy
depends on it. To decide means
that you're eliminating other options and your legacy is the
impact your life has on other people. So by the way, with that eviction,
I went in, I talked to management, got it cleared up. It was
probably my fault because I didn't watch how things were coming out of my
account anyway. I decided to pay the late fee
without any kind of grumbling. But you know what? I was able
to channel it towards gratitude quickly and I wasn't evicted and I didn't
catastrophize it. So I'm kind of proud of myself as
well. So do me a favor. One thing is take
action today and then subscribe and follow me
because I want to stay connected with you. I want to close the way I
always do. Live today, your life
today, the way you want to be remembered 10 years after you're
gone. You decide your legacy, nobody else. I appreciate you
greatly and I'll see you next time.