Want to feel good all day? This simple to-do list formula can keep you feeling good all day.
It’s a fact, when you accomplish tasks, you feel good. But, sometimes you just can’t get that task accomplished. Often, it’s not the strategy to get things done that fails. It’s the inspiration to get going, and keep going that falls short.
How to use your own inspiration to feel good all day.
If you really want to get inspired to tackle your to-do list, then you need an infusion of positive feelings. And, you need to keep them up all day long. This leads to a positive attitude. When this is the case, your productivity will soar.
Rob Markey wrote the following in Harvard Business Review blog post,
“It’s one more sign of the growing recognition that happy, engaged employees are more productive and generate better outcomes for their companies.”
Here’s the thing:
Don’t wait for the positive feelings related to accomplishment to show up on their own. When you set up your to-do list for the day, take a lesson from NLP and program them in! The to-do list formula in this post will show you how. It’s all in the set up.
Five Steps to Feel Good All Day Long
1. Identify the positive feelings you want to feel during your day.
Be intentional. Write down a list of feelings you want to feel as you accomplish each task during the day.
Finish this sentence- “I want to feel _____________ today.”
Here are some examples:
- Proud of yourself
- Responsible
- Relieved
- Excited
- At Peace
- Self-Assured
- Grounded
- Balanced
- Joyful
- Inspired
- Worthy
- Calm
- Love
2. Attach each task on your to-do list to a specific feeling from your list.
In other words, identify specifically how you will feel upon completing each task. This means that each item on your list gets an extra designation. For example:
Take out trash: I will feel responsible
Complete proposal for (so-and-so): I will feel excited
Finish my taxes: I will feel relieved
Exercise: I will feel proud of myself
Attaching a specific positive feeling on your to-do list programs your mind and body to actually feel that feeling at the appropriate time. This is a huge step toward living a conscious and intentional life.
3. Dip your toe in the water.
You can drive your inner expectation home by imagining the completed task and getting a sense of the positive feeling in your body. Do it right now. For example, imagine completing a task that you’ve attached to a feeling of relief. Do you feel the slight sense of relief in your body? If you, you should if you’re doing it thoroughly.
When you imagine something well, your body responds. When you’re getting ready to order at a restaurant, your mind goes through a similar process. You’re imagining the foods you’d like, and your body responds to the images on the menu or in your mind. You may even salivate.
Prime your emotional pump by imagining your task completion and getting a slight hit on the positive emotion that is sure to come. This will increase your level of motivation.
4. When you complete a task, take a moment
It doesn’t have to be self-indulgent. You don’t need to pretend that taking out the trash is a great gift to mankind. Yet, if you’ve set your to-do list up right, you’ll feel positive. Take a few moments to acknowledge the feeling before moving on to the next task.
5. Let it snowball.
If you follow this formula, you will absolutely arrive at genuinely positive feelings and feel good all day. Let it work, let the effects snowball. Before long, you’ll wake up in the morning with a positive expectation of getting to feel good throughout your day.
When you anticipate what you have to do, you’ll see the positive feeling potential. You can then work from positive feeling to positive feeling all day long.
