Daily Review The key to managing your standards in the most effective way possible is awareness. You know very quickly when you’re hungry or tired, but how long does it take you to realize that you need to spend a little time in prayer or meditation or just reading a good book? The Daily Review program is designed to increase your awareness of how you ignore, use or abuse each standard. As you begin keeping track of your daily, weekly, or other habits, patterns will emerge and the effects of your choices will grow apparent. You will see your needs more clearly and quickly and learn to make healthy adjustments on the fly. As your daily balance improves, you will find greater peace, joy and energy to devote to juggling whatever tasks you choose to take on. Here are the five steps to the Daily Review. (put a big funny picture of a footstep (Amber’s hand print) by each one like it’s walking up the page)
Write up each of your four standards. In other words, record goals or descriptions of what you hope to be and do regarding your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual balance. Revise these at any time as you want something easier or more challenging..
Every day, take at least thirty seconds to quickly review your standards and goals. Consider what your personal standard says you want to be doing, then give yourself a score for each one based on your performance. We recommend scoring yourself on a scale from 1 to 5. One means you didn’t do anything particularly wonderful in that area that day. Three means you put some effort toward your goal but didn’t reach it completely, and five is for days when you do a great job at approaching your standards. If you find yourself continually scoring 1’s and 2’s, don’t worry. The program is still working for you! You will also find your awareness of your goals and possible ways for reaching them increasing. You will probably also find your desire to attain them growing, along with your comfort zones about even thinking about achieving them. Eventually, progress will come. Move at whatever pace you choose. Relax. Be happy. Enjoy your life! At least at first, when your goals are still fresh and challenging, you’ll probably want to score yourself as much on effort as success. If you just spend half an hour really wanting to reach your goals, you’re stretching your comfort zones and getting that much closer to success. You might give yourself as high as a 3 for the mental effort. On the other hand, don’t go too far and give yourself a 5 if you really try to get out of bed, though. Leave room for improvement. And don’t let yourself get away with just wanting for too long – it’ll drive you crazy! If your goals begin to really stress you out, you know it’s time to quit trying and do something!!! There is no substitute for action!
Scribble a few notes about what you did well each day. Whatever you focus on grows. The more you recognize what you do well, the easier it will be to keep doing it. You’ll also find yourself feeling continually more encouraged, enthusiastic and successful.
Scribble a few notes about whatever you still want to do better. This will build your desire and help you find ways to achieve your goals. Don’t confuse notes of what to do better with notes of what you did wrong. Remember: whatever you focus on grows (have I mentioned that already?). You can focus on the positive while remaining honest with yourself and realistic.
We encourage two types of goals. The first type is specific actions that apply to one or more standard. If one standard is consistently lacking, think up something specific to help it out. For example, if you want to improve your Spiritual Standard, you could make a specific goal to read a few pages in the Scriptures or anything you consider inspired writing to help you focus on that specific detail and keep it separate from your spiritual standard daily review in general. The second type of recommended goals is any other thing you want to accomplish. Things you want to enjoy or achieve. Perhaps you would like to get a new job, fix up your house, become a better listener or meet a fantastic girl or guy. Go ahead and set this as a goal, and every day that you do something about it, every time you make some kind of move toward reaching that goal, indicate your effort or success in your daily review. The key to success with goals is this: Never Give Up. Not forever, at least. You can give up for a few days if it makes you feel better. Sometimes you need a break. Just don’t tell yourself "I can’t do it!" because that’s a lie. "I won’t do it" may be true, and whether it is or not is entirely up to you.
The more you surround yourself with balanced people, the easier time you will have keeping yourself balanced. The happier you will be. The more fun and success you will have. You can be inspired by their lives and vice versa (put the coals story on the side here. Also something about how flowers pollinate each other). In other words, if you find this book valuable in helping steer you toward balance, pass it along. Share it with others who could enjoy it and profit from its pages. You’ll be glad you did. One more way you can share is to submit your experience with others (perspective) on the Balancing Act web page. Find it and read other submissions at www.UofLIFE.com/balance. Figure out your RDA of joy/spiritual/physical etc. Take a good risk daily.
Click here once you're ready to print out a sheet to keep score on. First type in your Personal Standards for each standard plus two other goals if you want. Print out the sheet which should last you two weeks. If the page tiles (doesn't fit on one page), look for controls in your Print dialogue box to expand your margins to a half inch or only print one page or scale everything to fit it onto one page. Print Daily Review
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