A Dog Walk & A Joy First Exercise

What does your joy first life actually look like? Here's the exercise I'm doing right now.

Today I’ve got a quick little ‘talk and walk’ for you.

I’ve been doing some visioning work lately (I’ve even pulled my husband into it too, which feels like a win). For years I’ve played around with a lot of the classic ‘visioning’ exercises, the vision board, the ideal day, the five year plan, the gratitude journaling from some future version of your life where everything you wanted has already arrived…

I’ve always really loved that last one especially.

There’s something about writing in the past tense from the future that just unlocks something. The feeling of it, not just the thinking.

Lately though I’ve been noticing my thinking has gotten a bit smaller. Not in a dramatic way, just... sort of, contracted. And I’ve had a few moments of catching myself and going, oh.

We could be thinking so much bigger than this.

Not bigger as in more, more, more.
Bigger as in: what’s actually possible here?
Where am I making assumptions about what I assume isn’t possible?

Over the past week or so I’ve been doing a specific version of this visioning work, one I’m calling my ‘Joy First Life’ exercise, so I wanted to walk you through it, because if you’re in any kind of planning or goal-setting headspace right now, I think you’ll find it useful.