I created this exercise in January of 2000 for a writing course I was teaching at Norwalk Community College in Connecticut. I wanted to inspire my students to become bolder in their lives and braver with their dreams. “Our most important creation is ourselves,” I said to them. “Each moment our stories are being written whether we write them or not. So why not take up your pen? Why not make your story the story you want?”
INSTRUCTIONS
- Imagine you’ve just died and lived the life of your dreams. Pretend you’re the journalist or loved one who is writing your obituary.
- Describe your dream life in the past tense, as if it had already happened.
- Using the 3rd person (“she” or “he” rather than “I”), recount what you achieved and what kind of person you became. Be as vivid and specific as possible.
- Don’t worry about being ridiculous. Just let your imagination run free.
- As you write, follow these four guidelines:
- Imagine living to be at least 90. When you allow yourself the possibility of living almost a century, all sorts of things you thought you were too old to do suddenly seem worth attempting. Just turned forty? Want to learn the violin? By the time you’re ninety, you’ll have been playing fifty years!
- Go for what gives you joy. No sense fantasizing you’re a nuclear physicist if you hate math. On the other hand, if you love wild animals, why not envision going on an African safari?
- Don’t shy away from pursuits that take a long time to pay off. Mastering a difficult skill or earning an advanced degree is not as daunting as it sounds when you take it step by step. Even if you have to pass several levels of remedial math and English before enrolling in a single class for college credit, it’s still only a matter of putting one foot in front of the other.
- Don’t let a lack of money (or anything!) come between you and your dreams. There are all sorts of ways to raise cash or circumvent the need for it. You can take a second job, get a loan from a bank, or barter your skills. It’s even possible that some distant relative will die and leave you the exact amount necessary to fund your endeavor. Stranger things have happened.
Although this exercise comes with no guarantees, doing it myself (as a model for my students) awakened my desire to be a writer. Four years later I published my first book.
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To learn more about my book or see more exercises like this one, visit my website or read my blog |
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i use a combo of shea butter and aloe vera moisturizer. Works great. I use shea butter on my lips, around my eyes and nose (dry areas), My father swears by vasoline.
p.s. I dropped your name on Gina's post, Barb. ;)
I am in total agreement with Prill. Being a psychotherapist, teacher for 35 years and now a life coach, what I have observed and know from the inside out, is that if you let yourself dream big and take the time to go over many possibilities through writing or if you do not like writing, talking into a tape recorder, you will be amazed at what might might come up for you.
I like all her exercises and have used them at various times with clients.
What I like doing now is is also offering people the opportunity to spend some time practicing mindfulness — as as tool for change.
A friend just sent me this poem by Jon Kabbat Zinn, that i love which i want to share:
A Taste of Mindfulness
“Have you ever had the experience of stopping so completely,
of being in your body so completely,
of being in your life so completely,
that what you knew and what you didn’t know,
that what had been and what was yet to come,
and the way things are right now,
no longer held even the slightest hint of anxiety or discord,
a moment of complete presence beyond striving,
beyond mere acceptance,
beyond the desire to escape or fix anything or plunge ahead,
a moment of pure being,
no longer in time,
a moment of pure seeing,
pure feeling,
a moment in which life simply is,
and that is-ness grabs you by all your senses,
all your memories, by your very genes,
by your loves,
and welcomes you home,
that is a taste of mindfulness.”
Reading it again as i just am posting the poem, made me do the next thing that brings me into the present moment to enjoy what is in front of me: taking a breath and then another….what about you?
Thank you, Lauree. What a beautiful poem. The Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh also speaks about the practice of mindfulness. He has written several books that you might enjoy reading, including The Miracle of Mindfulness. You sound like a wonderful teacher/psychotherapist, etc.
Thank you Prill. Your response made me feel very warm inside. I do know about Thich Nhat Hanh and I love his poems, writings and his work. Once I took a silent mindfulness walk around the UCLA Campus walking behind him with 1000 other people and i was amazed at how powerful it was. I had never done this. Then we had a mindfulness silent lunch. That was harder but very compelling.
Maybe today I will eat my lunch in silence and savour every bite as I mindfully care for each morsel I chew.
Hi Prill,
This is a wonderful exercise and I just did something similar recently when my Mum turned 90 – just wondering what I can look back on when I get there
At the moment I am very much into living life to the fullest through learning and helping others do the same – creating a lot of life sayings!
Anne
This dialogue is great and inspiring–thanks all! I know a minor variation of this exercise that helps you take concrete steps. You start the same way, i.e. “when I’m 90, I see myself doing/being/having…” but then the next thing you ask yourself is this: “If when I’m 90, I do/be/have (whatever), then when I’m 80, I will have to be doing/being having…”, and then “If when I’m 80, I will be doing/being/having…then at 75, I will have to be doing/being/having…”, etc. You walk this backwards to your own age at whatever intervals are motivating to you (i.e. if you’re 60: 90. 80, 75, 70, 65, now.) That way, you’ll know what it is you could/should/want to be doing/being/having today: your concrete first step.
Thanks, Carol, for sharing your variation. I’ll try it out the next time I do a workshop, giving you some of the credit of course.