Chapter 12

Step 8: Live with Vision and Intention

Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.

—Japanese saying

Up to now, we have introduced you to several mindfulness skills that you can use to address the assortment of mental barriers that reactive mind throws in your way as you make your journey toward a vital life. These are undeniably important life skills, and, just used on their own, would probably improve your quality of life. However, at heart, ACT is a behavior therapy. We are in the business of helping people create radical change in their lives. So, there is a little more work yet to be done, if you will bear with us. This involves helping you accomplish the eighth step on your quest to transcend depression: forming a powerful life vision and developing your intention to live according to that vision. If learning to live mindfully is the means to the end, then being able to live your life vision is the end.

Think of your life vision as the amalgamation of all of your values projecting out to the end of your life. In this sense, your life vision is the “grand plan” that you intend to follow in your life. This important and often overlooked aspect of mindfulness is experienced as a dreamy quality of knowing something without your being able to readily explain how you know it. It doesn’t come from your verbal, reactive mind. This sense of life mission is anchored squarely in the wise mind and is associated with intuition, premonition, preconscious awareness, and inspiration. It’s a kind of awareness that allows you to see the future not in the rigid, evaluative terms of your reactive mind but rather in an idealistic, positive, and intriguing way. In contrast to the quest for the illusion of control over life that is the hallmark of reactive mind, the visions, intuitions, and premonitions of wise mind can draw us into an unknown future with a sense of curiosity and eagerness. On more days than not, this allows you to wake up to a distinct feeling of being alive and well!

To achieve this positive state of mind, we’ll help you envision the life you want to live, first at the level of basic qualities and then at the level of intention. This involves developing a life vision based upon intuition and inspiration with the aim of defining the themes for the rest of your journey through life. Then we’ll help you plan the actions you intend to take to realize that vision. Taking specific steps to live out your vision is done with full knowledge that your reactive mind will undoubtedly attempt to stop you in your tracks with those all-too-familiar emotional barriers. When it does, your wise mind will tell you what to do: Be willing to accept these barriers for what they are and keep moving in the direction of “true north.”

As you work through this chapter, we have an important request: The vision exercises we will take you through require you to leave the familiar, day-to-day world and let your mind travel to places you may only know in your imagination. We’ll ask you to be open to a metaphorical world, where you can listen for pieces of wisdom to help guide you on your life journey. Accept any gifts you receive the same way you would an unexpected birthday present. Be amazed and thankful for wonder in the universe. Accept what comes to you with grace.

What Is a Life Vision?

A life vision involves having a clear, consistent image of your overall purpose in life. While it doesn’t usually include a step-by-step guide, it does provide a sense of continuity and direction as you proceed through the typical stages of life: birth, childhood, emancipation from your parents, formation of a family of your own, aging, health problems, and death.

So how do the concepts of true north, life vision, and intention connect with each other? To create a memorable life journey, you need both a destination, which is what goes into a life vision, and a course to follow, which you create on a daily basis by sticking to your true north. Intention, as we use it, is the act of being and acting in the present moment each day, keeping in mind your life’s destination and the true north course that will take you there. Intention guides you through the seconds of your life, and as the Buddhist saying goes: If you take care of the seconds, the years will take care of themselves.

In contemporary society, we often develop a life vision in a haphazard way, if we develop one at all. A variety of factors may contribute to this clouding of life vision, including messages received from relatives, teachers, and other authority figures. As we grow up, most of us receive a mixture of optimistic and pessimistic predictions from various authority figures, and many of these people may not be purposeful in their delivery of these messages. Various personal qualities may create an imbalance in feedback that favors negative predictions about what a child can expect from life, often creating a self-perpetuating cycle. This unfortunate experience makes forming a vision of a meaningful life particularly challenging.

Many of the messages originating in contemporary society about how to live “the good life” are often just socially inculcated rules about how to live without upsetting the tribe. We are promised rewards if we follow the “rules.” Unfortunately, all of the reactive mind power of the entire tribe doesn’t eliminate the basic flaws of reactive mind; it just enhances them. So, while some socially transmitted rules are helpful, others are problematic. We recently asked several college students about their visions for their life at this early stage in their life journeys. Here are some of their responses:

Rules about acquiring things that symbolize success are common in modern society, but as the Dalai Lama notes, attachment to worldly things also can be the source of great suffering (Dalai Lama, Lhundrub, and Cabezon 2011). It creates the illusion that the roots of happiness lie outside of us, not inside of us. And, in the world of worldly things, bad things can happen just as easily as good things. What happens when the Great Recession hits and you get laid off from a job that you’ve had for twenty-five years, and you suddenly discover that the company pension plan is bankrupt and your retirement savings have vanished? Even if you pass the cultural litmus test and become a “success,” a nice car, a nice house, and a good job may not translate into a vital, purpose-driven life. Even with all the trappings of a “good life,” many people feel empty and wonder why their lives lack substance and a deeper sense of purpose and meaning.

If you developed a vision about your life when you were young, think for a moment about that vision. Would the people around you now recognize that vision being actualized in your daily activities? If you didn’t have a life vision when you were younger, do you have one now? If you do, who in your life supports your efforts to live according to that vision? Has your vision for your life changed over time? How? Why?

All too often, people climb the tall ladder of socially defined success only to find that the prize at the top isn’t really what they set out to attain. Don’t worry if a vision for your life has not yet come to you. You aren’t alone. Right now, many others like you are trying to form a life vision, while others are seeking to clarify, refine, or revise their vision. Life takes many unexpected twists and turns, creating a need to evaluate and update your vision on a pretty regular basis. In truth, pursuing your life vision is something you’ll do every day for the rest of your life. The fact that you’re reading this now means you’re ready to come closer to a more meaningful and deeply experienced vision; it means you’re preparing yourself to live the life you want to live.

NeuroNotes: Imagination is the Most Complex of all Brain Activities

A life vision necessarily involves using the imagination to assemble mental representations of the future, creatively develop different means to imagined ends, and problem-solve imagined barriers via different brain simulations. As might be expected, imagination is an extremely complex brain activity. One recent study found that no fewer than eleven distinct regions of the brain become sequentially involved during an imagination task. This broadly distributed pattern of neural activity—involving the perceptual, memory retrieval, and self-referential processing areas of the brain—has been called the “mental workspace” (Schlegel et al. 2013).

Another recent study showed that imagination tasks activate a unique neural pathway in the hippocampus, the area of the brain most implicated in memory retrieval and mental rehearsal (Kirwan, Ashby, and Nash 2014). Remember also that activation of the hippocampus is one distinctive feature of the default mode network (DMN). Although overactivation of the DMN is related to failures of present-moment awareness, mind wandering, and depression, appropriate levels of DMN activation are associated with imagination, social reasoning, self-awareness, and creativity. It appears that in daydreaming and mind wandering, the coordinated sequence of brain activity that leads from memory retrieval to formulating and testing new mental representations of future events stalls out. In this sense, you might think of rumination as your imagination gone bad.

Imagination relies on using perceptual information, such as visual and spatial inputs, to create mental images that often are analogies for physical relationships (Schlegel et al. 2013). Coming full circle, this is why the visioning exercises in this chapter ask you to physicalize your life vision rather than think about it in the abstract. It is easier for the imagination network of your brain to develop a vision of the future this way.

Vision Plateau

This exercise invites you to use your imagination to clarify your life vision at this point in your life and to generate information that will help you make plans that support that vision. We recommend that you download the audio version from http://www.newharbinger.com/38457 so that you can close your eyes and be guided through the exercise. Before starting, find a comfortable place to either sit or lie down, like a quiet place at home, or at a local park. We want you to be in a state of mental quiet, so you can stay focused on this guided meditation, which will take 15 minutes or so.

At this moment in time, you are going to take a journey to Vision Plateau. Inhale deeply and allow yourself to relax as you exhale slowly. As you breathe, prepare yourself to receive something important. Breathe in the air you need to sustain you, and breathe out any reservations. Feel your body as it warms and becomes heavy and soft. This is the nature of relaxing and a helpful way to prepare to receive something you need. Breathe in and out, and know the breath for what it is—a bridge between your body and mind. Walk that bridge and strengthen the connection. Be here and be now.

As you are ready, begin to imagine that you’re walking on a path. Everything is new on this path, yet it seems familiar. It is as if you’ve been here before, but you have no conscious memory of it. The path goes through the woods and comes out at a river. The river is wide and the current swift. You sit down to watch the water. You wait and watch and breathe. The sun is high in the sky and it warms you. The sunlight plays on the water, and the current takes the light, and together they create shapes. While you don’t understand this, you sense that the sun and the water are working together to give you something, something to take with you. It may be a shape, a texture, a sound, or a color. You will know it when you see it. Name it and take it, because it is for you.

When you’re ready, you can leave the river. It will be time to move on. Now you’re going to Vision Plateau, where someone is waiting for you—a special person who has known you all your life. This person has heard every affirmative statement made to you. This person knows your strengths, your vulnerabilities, and your values. Breathe in and out, and know that you will soon shake hands with a person who understands and loves you.

The plateau is only a few hundred yards ahead. Take your time. There’s no need to rush as you climb to your final destination. When you reach the top, you sense the presence of another being. You sit down on the plateau. It feels good, solid, and warmed by sunlight. This is a good place to rest and wait. Your back is straight, and you feel relaxed, almost like you’re floating. You can see a long way in every direction from Vision Plateau. You stand up so that you can turn in all directions to appreciate this extensive view. You look to the east, to the south, to the west, and then to the north.

Having taken in so much, you are satisfied, and you sit down again, now facing north. You close your eyes, and you can easily see moments from your life, from the beginning of your consciousness to this very moment. Some are pleasant, some less so. They are all just moments, memories, and images. Take them in and let them go. Breathe in and breathe out. Walk the bridge of the breath, connecting mind and body.

As you watch the picture show of your life and breathe, someone approaches you. You sense the presence of a friend and feel no need to open your eyes or stand. You wait for this friend’s touch, and you know that it will be a loving, gentle touch. You feel soft, warm fingertips on your forehead, and you know that this person is here to help you see your life vision clearly.

Remember the gift the sun and river gave you, and tell your wise friend about it. This will strengthen the work you do together now. Talk it over. Breathe in and out. Allow silence. Pay attention closely. What does your friend do with the shape, sound, or image you were given? Does your friend change it or simply mirror it back for you to see? How does this relate to a vision for your life? Accept anything your mind says about your vision—good or bad, desired or not desired. Accept it as mental activity; then accept your evaluation of mental activity and return to the moment and your friend and your work together on Vision Plateau.

When your friend is ready to leave, stand and express your gratitude. After your friend departs, look to the east and imagine a future that includes your past. Then look to the south and imagine a future that includes the present and the courage to pursue your life vision. Then look to the west and imagine a future that includes the present and the ability to plan activities that fulfill that vision, even when there is no specific reward for doing so, and perhaps no end to the suffering of pursuing your vision. Finally, turn to the north and see that wise people are there to help you now and always with your life vision. Look into their eyes and thank them.

You can now prepare to leave Vision Plateau. This is a place you can return to. Your experiences will differ each time you go. Say good-bye and take the path down and around, back into the forest, past the river, and back to the place where you live day to day and where you are resting and using your powers of imagination to create a vision for planning a vital life. Breathe in and breathe out, walk the bridge between your body and mind, and when you are ready, open your eyes. You are seeing a new world now—seeing a new world with new eyes.

As soon as you complete the Vision Plateau visualization, answer the following questions. You can also record them in your journal or download the worksheet from http://www.newharbinger.com/38457.

Vision Plateau Worksheet

What did the river and sunlight offer you? Was it a shape, an image, a group of words, or something else?

What does the gift mean to you?

What do you recall seeing from your past as you waited on Vision Plateau?

What did you feel when your friend touched your forehead on Vision Plateau?

What happened to your life vision as you talked with your friend about your gift from the river and the sun?

What did you say in expressing gratitude to your friend?

What did you see when you looked to the south and saw courage to pursue your life vision?

What did you see when you looked to the west and saw the ability to plan activities consistent with your life vision?

Who did you see when you looked to the north and saw wise people ready to support your life vision?

Further Exploration. How did you fare during this exercise? Were you able to put yourself into the images that were created? Were you able to stay present with the guided journey? Did you profit in some unexpected way from just allowing yourself to roll along with the exercise? For many people, this is a very powerful experience that produces a wide range of emotional reactions. So if you experienced a mixture of sadness, curiosity, regret, or anticipation along the way, that is pretty commonplace. If you found this exercise emotionally meaningful, you’ll want to save your responses and review them from time to time. You may find that you understand your answers differently as you go further with planning directions and changes in key areas of your life.

Example: Ruth’s Experience

Remember Ruth from chapter 10? A survivor of sexual violence, she had struggled with forming a close and lasting intimate relationship. Although she wanted a lifetime partner, she eventually concluded that this simply wasn’t in the cards for her. After all, her parents spent most of their relationship in a cold war and finally ended their marriage when Ruth was fourteen. Even if she could get over the trauma of sexual abuse, how would she ever learn the skills needed to stay in a close relationship?

Ruth’s life vision included being an artist: a person who could arrange colors and objects in ways that were esthetically satisfying. As a child, she had shown talent and found that drawing helped her escape from the silent suffering she sensed in her home. She downplayed the fact that she drank a little too much in the evenings when she was feeling particularly blue and reasoned that it was okay because she could stop drinking if she wanted to and had few other bad health habits.

Ruth was a little apprehensive about the Vision Plateau exercise, but she truly wanted to deepen and expand her vision for her life. She decided to take a walk to the park to settle her mind and connect with nature before doing the meditation and answering the questions. Here’s what she came up with in response to the questions above:

Ruth’s Vision Plateau Worksheet

What did the river and sunlight offer you? Was it a shape, an image, a group of words, or something else?

I saw a rainbow.

What does the gift mean to you?

It means good luck to me. It also means diversity and unending transitions.

What do you recall seeing from your past as you waited on Vision Plateau?

I saw myself standing alone in a room with a lot of people who were talking to each other. It was kind of loud and I wanted to leave.

What did you feel when your friend touched your forehead on Vision Plateau?

I felt relieved, like I had been waiting for her forever. And strangely, I didn’t feel like we needed to speak.

What happened to your life vision as you talked with your friend about your gift from the river and the sun?

I saw myself being in a group of people—artists with things they were making. They were interested in each other’s work and committed to their own; they were serious but fun-loving artists. I felt like I belonged.

What did you say in expressing gratitude to your friend?

I said “Namaste,” meaning “peace for both of us,” and told her I would return.

What did you see when you looked to the south and saw courage to pursue your life vision?

I saw a little girl holding up a picture she drew; she was proud of it and wanted people to see it.

What did you see when you looked to the west and saw the ability to plan activities consistent with your life vision?

I saw myself taking an art class and meeting people who were artists. I saw myself supporting their work and taking chances in showing mine.

Who did you see when you looked to the north and saw wise people ready to support your life vision?

I saw people who didn’t shame me for using alcohol to escape my pain, but who instead wanted me to treat my body and mind with respect and kindness. They wore blankets the color of golden corn, and they had green eyes and sweet smiles.

Ruth felt that the exercise helped her expand and clarify her vision. She felt more optimistic, and she decided to spend a few minutes every morning drawing with charcoals and considering her life vision further. She bought a new journal with a warm yellow cloth cover and named it her rainbow journal. In addition to drawing, she planned to make notes each morning about her life vision and her plans for that day.

Form Your Life Vision

Elements of your life vision often come from your wise mind and may appear in many different forms: images, pictures, gut-level feelings, intuitions, or sudden insights. Similarly, values originate in your wise mind. They aren’t derived logically; rather, they are more like intuitive ways of knowing where you want your life to head and what you want to stand for in your life. When you express your values with words, the words are typically action oriented; for example, to be a loving partner, to be a mother who really listens, or to be someone who is devoted to helping those in need. Your values, which we helped you identify and describe in chapter 5, can serve as the framework for establishing a life vision; they reflect what matters to you, and acting according to them can help create a sense of life purpose.

Remember that values typically manifest themselves in the life domains of relationships, work/study, leisure/play, and health. In order to create your life vision, it’s important to revisit your values in these areas. As a reminder, think of health broadly: a state of physical, mental, social, and psychological integrity supported by skills that help you deal effectively with the ongoing stresses in life. The area of relationships involves the way you interact with people—an intimate partner, family members, coworkers, neighbors, and so on—and your ability to be present, honest, and authentic with them. Engagement in work or study activities looks at the specific qualities you bring to the process of working, whether through a job, school, or regular volunteering. Engagement in leisure or play activities concerns qualities you bring to whatever you enjoy: hobbies, sports, leisure activities, and so on.

Now you will create several life vision statements from the information you received in the Vision Plateau exercise. You’ll also identify the underlying values that form the foundation of your vision plan. Before you get started, take a bit of time to review the work you did on defining your true north, in chapter 5. For example, you might benefit from a review of your responses to the Bull’s-Eye exercise. Spend some time contemplating your responses. Make any additions or modifications to your values statements that seem appropriate at this juncture of the self-help program. You may wish to write out more detailed descriptions of your values before distilling them into more concise statements in the worksheet below. If you’re having difficulty linking the vision exercise below to your previous values work, take a look at some of the examples that follow the written exercise to help guide you.

Creating Your Life Vision

This exercise builds on the previous exercise, Vision Plateau, and asks you to connect your visualization with your values. Life vision (the destination) and values (the direction to be followed) are highly personal, reflecting your unique life experiences and knowledge up to this moment in time.

  1. To begin, in the “Life Vision Gift” column describe what you saw or received on Vision Plateau that gave breadth or depth to your vision for your life. Do this for each life domain.
  2. In the “Life Vision Statement” column write one sentence that describes your vision for your life. Do this for each domain.
  3. In the “Values” column describe your values in each of the life domains at this point in time. Each description need not be comprehensive; just write a concise statement that’s representative of your current perspective on what’s important in each domain.
  4. In the “Vision and Values Statement” column integrate your vision and values into one statement of purpose and intention. Do this for each of the four life domains.

Life Vision and Values Statements Worksheet

Further Exploration. How did you do with this exercise? Was it hard to come up with a combined vision and values statement in some areas but not others? This might suggest you have more clarity about your life mission in one life domain over another. You can sometimes use the confidence created by having clarity in one life area to try some new and bold statement in an area where you are not necessarily clear. It’s important to avoid rushing through this exercise; if it takes you more than one sitting to get it fleshed out, that’s preferable. In particular, the vision and values statements can be quite challenging to put into words. Indeed, it took Ruth several days of thinking and contemplation to eventually complete that portion of the exercise.

Ruth’s Results

When she reflected on her inner experiences with the Vision Plateau meditation, Ruth had new ideas about how to better address health, work, leisure, and relationship issues in her life. She spent considerable time writing the following responses on her worksheet, and as she did, the process helped her better understand the gifts she received when she arrived at Vision Plateau.

Ruth’s Life Vision and Values Statements Worksheet

Again, we understand that identifying something as basic and important as a life vision can be daunting partly because, as we mentioned before, we are not taught to think big about our lives. We are taught to think small, to conform to social standards, and to wait for the promised rewards if we don’t rock the boat. It is in this spirit that we offer these examples from a variety of people who’ve completed the exercise, not to tell you what would be appropriate for you but rather to help you grasp the spirit of the exercise.

Relationships

Work/Study

Leisure/Play

Health

Cultivating Intention

Now let’s learn about the important skill of being intentional. Intention helps us find a balance between imagining and doing, between seeing possibilities and executing various actions. Intention is not the same as action; it normally will precede action. As such, forming intentions involves learning to use your imagination to generate alternative paths you could walk down; to go through a mental rehearsal of the actions needed to go down each path; to conduct a mental evaluation of the different consequences associated with each path; and then to choose a preferred course of action. As this description suggests, intention is a very complex mental process, and it requires you to be present and aware, and make voluntary choices. You can’t be intentional when you are living on autopilot. You need all of the brain resources at your disposal to consistently be intentional.

One of the biggest threats of modern culture is that many aspects of daily living have been made so easy that we don’t really think about what we are doing as we are doing it. Then, when we run into a challenging life situation that requires us to exercise the intention circuitry of the brain, our intention muscles turn out to be weak and flabby from lack of use. We would argue that depression and intentional living are stationed at opposite ends of the life vitality pole. Many depression-producing behaviors are done without any intention. They just happen automatically and with minimal self-awareness.

For example, procrastination, a common problem in depression, appears because there is no intention formed to follow a vision path. You didn’t procrastinate because you were depressed; you failed to follow through on a planned action because you did not generate a strong intention to follow through. The following exercise offers a strategy for becoming more flexible and mindful in planning and living a vital life.

Keeping the Best of Intentions

This exercise will help you form the intention to do something that’s consistent with the vision and values statements you came up with in the preceding exercise. You will go through the entire sequence of steps involved in forming an intention:

  • • Linking vision and intention
  • • Mentally rehearsing acting according to your vision
  • • Mentally evaluating possible outcomes
  • • Imagining barriers to intentional action
  • • Imagining your responses to barriers when they show up

The goal is to stay present and keep your intention flexible but unwavering. If you have any difficulty with this exercise, take a look at the example from Ruth that follows.

  1. To start, copy your vision and values statements from the previous exercise into the first blank column of the provided worksheet.
  2. Now think about something you can do this week that supports your vision and values statement in each life domain. Write it in the “Intention” column.
  3. Now take a minute to imagine that you’re implementing the plan and things are going well. However, something negative and unsupportive happens as you implement your plan, and you feel discouraged. Visualize the details of what’s happening and watch what your mind has to say about them. Write that down in the “Negative Barrier” column.
  4. Now, and this may be the most difficult part of the exercise, imagine that you react to barriers in a way that is positive and supportive of your vision and values statement. It may be that you use one of your mindfulness skills to undermine the barrier, or you enlist the support of someone else if it is an external barrier, or you find a creative way to overcome that barrier on your own. Write down whatever your imagination gives you in the far right-hand column.

Good Intentions Worksheet

Further Exploration. What was your experience with creating an intention? Was one kind of intention easier to visualize than another? Were you able to watch your reactive mind come up with barriers? Did you let your wise mind intervene with some kind of positive or reassuring image of an alternative response to overcome barriers? Did your intention remain solid throughout the exercise or did it waver at certain points? We encourage you to use this exercise on a regular basis, as it can help you develop deeper and more “wind resistant” intentions to carry into your future.

Ruth’s Experience

Ruth started this exercise with a great deal of enthusiasm. Having clarified her vision and values, she intended to begin making changes in her life. Here’s what she came up with.

Ruth’s Good Intentions Worksheet

While this exercise was more difficult than Ruth thought it would be, it helped her anticipate the negative thinking that surfaced as a barrier when she began to implement an important change in her life. It also helped her stretch her imagination in the direction of seeing unanticipated positive events that could support her efforts. She decided that this exercise would be worth integrating into her weekly goal-setting routine.

Brain Training For Vision and Intention

Like any of the mindfulness skills we have looked at in section 2, the more you practice them, the stronger they will become in real-life settings. Here are several brief vision and intention exercises that you can practice at home. It doesn’t take much time to see positive results, if you just stick with it. Remember that the beneficial effects of mindfulness training occurred in research participants with only two weeks of brief daily practice!

Live with Daily Intention

The main reason we lose contact with the ability to be intentional is because of all the small daily things we do unintentionally and by force of habit. This practice allows you to both form intentions each day and then close the loop on them at night. It will teach you how to use your intention on both a small and a large scale in your life. We promise you: This exercise will make waking up a whole new experience for you!

When you wake up, take a few minutes to formulate your intentions for today. Start by asking yourself:

At night, before you go to sleep, go back to each intention and put a mental checkmark beside each one you followed through on. If an intention escaped you today, maybe it’ll be better for you to focus on one rather than all four areas tomorrow. In that case, choose one for tomorrow and see how that goes.

Awakening and Retiring with Love

This meditation exercise, inspired by Ajahn Brahm, is a slight variation of the preceding exercise. It involves focusing your intentions on being present and acting with love and compassion. When you awaken, and again when you retire for the evening, softly and repeatedly recite the questions and your own answers. The answer to question 1 will always be “now,” but we invite you to vary the rest of your responses based on whatever your intentions are in that moment in time.

  1. What is the most important time in my life? [Now]
  2. How do I intend to make now the most important time in my life today? [Pause and find joy in a little act, be attuned to and aware of my senses, etc.]
  3. Who is the most important person in my life? [Name of person, myself]
  4. What will I show this person? [Love and compassion, honesty, support, etc.]

Deliberance

Deliberance is a funky derivative of the word “deliverance” that a depressed client once used to describe his daily habit of singling out seemingly mundane tasks and doing them very slowly and mindfully. In this exercise, you will mindfully engage in routines that you don’t pay much attention to…but perhaps should!

Targets for deliberance training include routine daily tasks like getting out of bed in the morning, chewing the first bite of a meal slowly, washing dishes, doing laundry, taking breaks at work, gardening and yard work, fixing stuff around the house, and so forth. To do things deliberately requires you to show up, get into the moment, and then pay attention to what you are doing as you do it. Listed next are some possible areas in your daily routine that might need the deliberance fix applied to them. Using the Deliberance Planning worksheet below, pick at least one or two routine daily tasks that you will do deliberately and mindfully.

Deliberance Planning Worksheet

Take Twice As Long

When you are depressed, you will tend to do daily activities automatically and without much awareness. This exercise requires you to break up this behavior pattern by showing up and being intentional. Pick any of the routine activities listed in the Deliberance exercise and try to do it at half speed; this means it will take you twice as long. Your intention while slowing down is to make conscious contact with each action you engage in while you are completing the task. If you pick taking the first bite of a meal as your target, then you would focus on consciously choosing each behavior you engage in to take a bite (reaching for a fork, lifting the fork, opening your mouth, chewing, tasting, and so on). See if you can get into that zone where you are aware of and can study each action, almost like you are becoming aware of the action for the first time.

These slow, intentional movements are quite likely to trigger the chatter of reactive mind, so you might hear messages like, “Hurry up and get this task done so you can get on to the next one!” If you notice this happening, detach from that message and just see it as a message. You can always speed up again in a few minutes after completing this task. However, you might notice that it is actually kind of fun to slow down and get into doing things with more awareness and intention!

Say It Out Loud

This is a slight variation of the Live with Daily Intention exercise. At the beginning of your day, pause for a few minutes and try to visualize opportunities for enhancing something that brings you joy that you want to do more often. You would say out loud, “Today, I’m going to talk with [name] about what brings me joy and how I can do it more often.”

For example, you might have an opportunity to talk with your spouse or life partner about something that made you feel closer and that you would like to cultivate in your relationship. You would say out loud, “Today, I’m going to talk with [name] about how we can create more opportunities to do this together.”

Ideas to Cultivate