Character Story Exercise
This Practice is to be done after you have completed the ‘AIM’ exercise.
1) Complete the AIM Exercise, and have your paper with the AIM paragraph written out.
2) Review it.
Here’s why this works.
You get what you expect.
By running thru a story over and over again we begin to believe it’s real. And, as we begin to believe it’s real, our mind begins to anticipate environments, people, and experiences from that story. The brain’s predictive model is based on its memory of the past, real and imagined.
To create the life you love, we ask:
How do we train what to expect?
I’ve dedicated my life to learning how to do this. There are some shortcuts!
The first step is to get your story right. What story do you want to live in?
Shortcut #1: Create a character to live from.
Don’t think of this person living this story as ‘You’. In fact, this may surprise you, but the You today is not the ‘You’ of 10 years ago. Yeah, some similar values and thought patterns exist. However, you’re an entirely new atomic mass. Every cell in your body is completely replaced every 7 years.
Shortcut #2: make a story…
We’re going to write out how our character who does all these things you enjoy from your AIM exercise lives their perfect ideal day.
You will give this character a name, and visualize this person in your mind’s eye as you go thru observing their ideal day.
For convenience, you can use this template. Or, you can simply go for it. Have fun! Anything is possible in this person’s world. They have no worries. They are free to do whatever they want without constraints. This is NOT you. This is a character, someone who can do whatever they want and does it whenever and however they wish.
Your character wakes up….
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What is the environment they wake up in? What is the bed/location? Is it comfortable? What is the sensation of the sheets? The pillows? What do their feet feel like?
How is the light or darkness in the room? What texture is the air? Temperature?
What time is it? Are they with anyone else? Many others? Any pets? Plants?
What does the space they wake look like? How about outside the space? What’s the environment outside of this space like?
What are the first thoughts this person has?
What are the first physical feelings and sensations they have?
What are their very first activities and movements?
When does this person drink water? How does it taste? How about going to the bathroom? How does that feel?
What about any nourishment? Food?
What creative activities does this person do?
Who are they sharing their gifts with in the world?
Do they take ‘breaks’ through the day? If so, what do those look like? How do they feel? Who are they with? Where are they?
Its now Noon…..
What has this person done?
What thoughts have they had?
Feelings in their body?
Emotions?
Now, they go on with their day, its 2, now 3…
What are they doing? Who are they with? What are they wearing? What is their objective? How does their smile feel?
Its now 4, 5, 6…
Are they eating dinner? What’s the dinner? With anyone? Alone? How does the food taste? What is the physical atmosphere? The energetic or social atmosphere? Music in the background?
Now, it 7, 8, 9…
What is this person doing? (remember, they can do anything they want. There are NO limitations.)
It’s now 10….
Is this person winding down for sleep? Are they doing incredible creative acts? What are they doing? What is the environment? Who are they with? What feelings do they have inside?
It’s time for sleep again. This person is going to sleep. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? How is their body going to lay down? Who are they with? What feeling do they have in their feet? Head? Hands? Belly?
They go to sleep saying their name. What are their dreams? How are those dreams accessed in their body? What is the imagery of the dreams? How does it nourish them and their goals/objectives in life?
They wake up the next day…. Smiling. ;-)
Now that you have this written down. Re-read it. Anything missing? Any changes you’d like to make? Switch anything up? Take about 5-10 minutes to just sit with this story in your mind’s eye. Or don’t. It’s up to you.
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Grab your phone and make a voice memo. You’re going to be the narrator of This person’s film, of their day-in the life. You open the scene with: This is So and So…. Then you go on to read out your image-strong version of their life. Pause the recording as needed to take a breath. At the end of the recording say the name of this character again and smile to them.
Now, complete/end the recording.
Play this recording every evening before you go to bed, right after your AIM exercise for 45 days. If you don’t have time to play this for whatever reason that’s fine. We can drop this practice in on the next 45 day challenge mode. It should be pretty quick.
Also, if you’re tech savvy, you can import songs/voice memo to iTunes, Sync with your phone, and then set a song ‘Track’ as an alarm to go to sleep with or to wake up with. If not, just do it the old fashioned way or whatever works best for your life. (use earphones for this if you have a partner you sleep with, its private ;-)
If you’re great at memorizing things… you can just memorize it. If you aren’t great at memorizing… try using the memory palace trick (Wikipedia has a great entry on this). Works wonders. Pick a beautiful place you like to spend time in if you do use the Memory Palace.
If you’d rather not memorize it.. just play it back and feel the feelings when you listen to it.
GOOD JOB! This is the first pass. No need to do more at this time.
Shortcut #3: Keep it Secret.
Secrecy has its root in the word ‘Sacred.’ This is a story for you, and you only. It will have 10x the power if you keep it private.
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In a couple weeks. Come back to this exercise (mark it on your calendar), and give it a re-read when you’re fresh and energized, after a workout, sex, or early in the morning. Whatever. Whenever you feel great.
You can DOWNLOAD the template for this Here.