The truth is that our story is just that --- a story. Our stories are not a guarantee of how the day will progress. We can tell ourselves a story that today will be amazing and watch in horror as each interaction causes our day to be anything but amazing. Or we can say that the story for today will be terrible and we won't accomplish anything, but instead have a pretty decent and productive day. The story can only accentuate what we're experiencing; it can't predict what we will experience.
-Rather than being attached to these grand stories we can focus more on the things that we love about the present moment. Instead of saying that we're going to have an amazing day we can say that there are things that we are looking forward to in this project and we hope we can work on them soon. Instead of filling your day with stories of dread and doom you can focus on the little victories along the way. (Yes, even something as small as "my computer booted without crashing" can be a victory.) A little victory could be setting an intention to remain focused and curious for the next 10 minutes (the focus container from previous chapters) and celebrating that you made it through that intention. You can get more little victories as you keep working with that intention throughout the day. Our little victories won't all be perfect (perhaps your computer is being extra stubborn today) but we can re-calibrate our day for the next 10 minutes to find out if the next 10 minutes can be another little victory.
+Rather than being attached to these grand stories we can focus more on the things that we love about the present moment. Instead of saying that you're going to have an amazing day you could say that there are aspects of this project that appeal to you and that you hope to work on them soon. Instead of filling your day with stories of dread and doom you can focus on the little victories along the way. (Yes, even something as small as "my computer booted without crashing" can be a victory.) A little victory could be setting an intention to remain focused and curious for the next 10 minutes (the focus container from previous chapters) and celebrating that you made it through that intention. You can get more little victories as you keep working with that intention throughout the day. Our little victories won't all be perfect (perhaps your computer is being extra stubborn today) but we can re-calibrate our day for the next 10 minutes to find out if the next 10 minutes can be another little victory.
Giving ourselves the power to focus more on the present and the very next steps we're about to take gives us the freedom to re-calibrate as the day progresses. We can focus on the positive aspects of what we're doing instead of worrying how reality is diverging from our internal stories. We can course-correct throughout the day and keep trending towards a more productive day rather than fretting about how distant we are from our ideal day.