Louise Thompson: Focus on the feeling

Take practical steps towards achieving your vision for the future. Photo / Thinkstock

Last week I asked you to create a delicious vision of the future by asking the future you to write me a letter describing your ideal life as you would love it to be in 2015. I hope you made the time to do this, it's a great way to start creating a big picture vision of where life can go. It's terribly easy to get caught up in the day-to-day rush, trying to keep all the balls in the air as we rush from task to task.

What we are doing in this happiness series is creating a little bit of time and space for you to take a longer term, bigger picture view of where life is headed. Carving out that space for yourself is really important. We can be so focused on making everything we do have an outcome that creating a little space each week to allow yourself to dream is vital.

Pull out your letter from last week (if you missed that article, don't worry, you can check it out here).

What I want you to do is to get a highlighter pen and start to work through your letter, looking for things you can start to integrate into your life NOW. Not when you are thinner, fitter, richer, less stressed, in the new job/relationship/house, but right now.

Will it be exactly the same as what you have written? Probably not, that's not really the point! What I want you to get really clear on is looking for the feeling state, rather then the thing itself.

If you saw yourself living in California doing yoga on the beach in the brilliant LA sunshine, then I want you to try to capture a little of that feeling state. Go find a local yoga class and join up. If you saw yourself cooking delicious meals for your new boyfriend I want you to choose a recipe and invite some friends around and cook that meal; enjoy creating and connecting. If you saw yourself trekking the Inca Trail I want you to find a tramping group, or research trips to Peru online, or buy a "learn Spanish" programme. Anything that will start to incorporate a flavour of what you had in your letter.

Be creative. Remember: focus on the feeling state. How will you feel doing yoga on the beach in LA? Flexible, relaxed, at peace? Okay, incorporate something into your life that will create similar feelings. How will you feel cooking for the new boyfriend? Loved? Excited? Attractive? Be creative and look for ways to incorporate those feelings into everyday life now.

Action step

Grab your highlighter and start marking up your letter and being creative about how you can take baby steps towards making as much of it as you can feel real now.

A certain magic will start to happen when you put this into practice. The more you feel the way you want to feel in the future the more you attract the things you actually want - and the happier you are right now which is exactly the point!

Louise Thompson is a life coach, yoga teacher and corporate escapee. For more from Louise, visit positivebalance.co.nz