Brian Swan’s Ideal Average Day Exercise, Step by Step

Brian Swan had the six-figure engineering job, the company car, the insurance, the whole version of success he’d been handed a checklist for in high school. Two weeks of vacation a year. A closet full of things he’d acquired to prove the plan was working. And underneath all of it, a quiet, specific discomfort he couldn’t quite name.

As someone who has done everything the plan said to do and still feels a low hum of dissonance under the surface, you already recognize that discomfort. Brian spent years inside it before his wife handed him the exercise that finally forced him to name what was actually missing, and this session walks through that exact exercise, step by step, the way he still uses it today.

What happens if you never once ask what your ideal day actually looks like?

Brian’s honest starting point is that he thought this exercise was hokey the first time it was handed to him, and he sat on it for months before he actually wrote anything down. That resistance is worth naming, because most people carry the same skepticism into any exercise that asks them to slow down and think instead of act. But the absence of the exercise has a cost too. Without ever defining what an ideal day actually looks like, you default to whatever day your circumstances hand you, and years pass while you accumulate the trappings of a life you never actually designed on purpose.

Brian describes exactly that pattern in his own life: bigger houses, more cars, more stuff to fill the houses, and a growing sense that none of it was closing the gap he felt inside. As he puts it, “when you’re on your deathbed you never wish that I just had more things”. The things were never the actual goal. They were a stand-in for a life he hadn’t taken the time to define.

Why does accumulating more stuff make the discomfort worse, not better?

This is the part of the session that separates it from a typical goal-setting talk. Brian and Rhonda went through a period where they lost nearly everything they’d built, and it was that collapse, not another acquisition, that finally pushed him toward defining what he actually wanted his life to look like rather than what it was supposed to look like. Once the external markers of success were stripped away, what was left was the actual question underneath all of it: what do you want your average day, not your one perfect vacation day, to actually contain.

He frames this with a simple formula he picked up from someone else and has carried for years: experience plus identity equals your life. Not the stuff you own. The way you spend your hours, and whether the person doing the spending is actually you or a version of you built to satisfy everyone else’s expectations.

What does the exercise actually ask you to write down?

The mechanism itself is direct. Brian has you sit down with a pen and paper and answer a specific list of questions about an average day, not a single extraordinary one: where you’d live, what your house would look like, what time you’d wake up, what you’d eat for breakfast and who you’d eat it with, how you’d spend your mornings, who you’d work with, and what your relationships with your family would actually look like day to day. The central instruction is the one that reframes everything else, the question he says you have to ask yourself directly: “if there was no limitations or consequences what would your ideal average day look like”.

Brian is careful to note the word average. Not a single peak day you could never sustain, but the kind of day you could live on repeat without burning out or getting bored. He shares his own answer in detail: mornings surfing in Hawaii, breakfast with his family, a few focused hours of work, more time in the water before sunset, and dinner together at the end of it. It isn’t a fantasy year off. It’s a Tuesday he actually built his life around.

Why does the math on how many days you actually have left matter here?

Before handing over the exercise, Brian runs a piece of math that reframes the whole thing. Assuming another fifty years of life, he breaks it down into a specific number of days remaining, and the size of that number is the point.

we’re looking at eighteen thousand two hundred sixty two point five days left of my life

Once your life is a finite, countable number of days instead of a vague stretch of decades, spending years of them on a version of success you never actually chose starts to feel a lot more expensive. That urgency is what makes the exercise worth doing today instead of filing it away as something to revisit eventually.

• Write your ideal average day down on paper, not just in your head.
• Answer the small, specific questions, not just the big abstract ones.
• Measure your life in days, not decades, to feel the actual cost of delay.
• Design around experience and identity, not around accumulating more things.

Create your free account to watch Brian walk through the complete exercise and share his own written answers in full. Download the audio and actually do the exercise with pen and paper the way he describes it. Get started at empowernetwork.com/watch.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

How to create your perfect day every day and we're going to have Brian Swan from the Unstoppable Family break it down for you. Now, in general, only about 1-2% of the population ever writes down their ideas and goals on a regular basis. Yet, among those who become famous or successful, writing about their goals and ambitions is a very common trait. Now, let's take Bruce Lee for example.

In 1969, he wrote out his goals, what he wanted to accomplish in Hollywood before he was a big shot. How much money he wanted to create, he wanted to become the best oriental actor in Hollywood, and the kind of life he wanted to live after. And he did just that before any of this actually happened. And you know, it's always those crazy ones having all the fun and changing the world.

Hola, this is Brian Swan coming at you from Bocas del Toro, Panama. And I'm just part of the Unstoppable Family. I'm sure that you've seen my wife Rhonda, also my little baby girl, running around. So…

Somewhere around the world. So, what I'm going to share with you today, I want you to suspend your beliefs, just for a bit. Because when I was introduced to this, probably five and a half, six years ago, I thought it was kind of hokey pokey. It's really transformed my life, and that's why you're here.

So, I'm going to share this with you, and I want to let you know, it's not going to cost you anything. So, relax, sit back, chill out just like myself here in my funky picture that I got behind here. I don't even know what it is. Enjoy it.

I'm going to give you a couple disclaimers. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a physician, lawyer, whatever. So, take what you like, leave the rest.

Alright, so there's a reason that you're here right now with me. You're searching for experience, I don't know. I want to give you a little background about myself. You know, I went to high school, from there, met with a counselor, suggested…

to go into engineering, because I was good at math, so I went to university. From there, I interviewed, got a corporate job. Tell you what, I had a six-figure job, coming out of school, had a company car, insurance, so-called American dream, or wherever you live. It doesn't matter.

This is, you know, the so-called ideal lifestyle. One thing that I knew was when I watched people who've been in my position for, let's say, 15, 20 years from now. From then, I could see that they were not happy, and I made a decision, five years into my corporate gig, that I was not going to be one of those people. I had no idea what I was going to do, but I knew that this was not my passion, and I'm going to come back to this.

This is, you have to be passionate about what you do. For me, calculating numbers and doing engineering was not passion for me. Surfing. Dreaming about that, then realizing, also, while I'm working this dream corporate job, I only had two weeks of vacation per year, so now, that's all I dreamt about.

I had no passion for what I was doing. Now, the gift that was given to me, and I'm going to give you a little hint, it was actually not me that took the action. My wife had the higher power there. She shared this with me.

After she knew she wanted to go and get something better, so this exercise that I'm going to share with you today, it will change the way that you view life, and it will alter the way you think. This, when I experienced it for the first time, I had a new passion about myself. For instance, I wanted to travel the world and go surfing all the time, and by what I got to experience. What I'm going to share with you has allowed me to do exactly what I want to do, and that's live my passion.

So it may not be surfing for you, it may be just staying at home with your kids, it may be playing guitar, it may be playing Wii with your kids, I don't know, going camping. You've got to find out what that passion is, and what we're going to go through here will help you understand how to get there. When you tap into the real you, you're going to find out what that passion is, and what we're going to go through here will help you understand how to get there. When you tap into the real you, there's going to be a sense of calmness.

Before, I used to be Bryan Swan, The Engineer. Now, I'm Bryan Swan, the guy who's traveling around the world with this family, surfing the world's best waves, enjoying life, and seeing the cultures of everywhere. I'm just me. I'm no guru, I'm me now.

In life, there's a balance. And when you have that balance. Would you believe me? Track the right people into your life. Five plus years ago I was introduced to this exercise, and the first time I actually got to visualize what my ideal day would look like, this was the first time I ever put pen to paper to write out what is my ideal day look like. This is why, I still had a job, corporate job, is an engineer, we were on the path of accumulating houses, bigger houses, cars, more cars, house stuff to put in your houses to fill that house.

And I tell you, the more we accumulated it was more of a sense of false being for me. I wasn't totally happy, even though I thought the more I, the more I make, the more I spend, more I accumulate, and that's just the way it is. But there was something inside of me that wasn't all the way connecting. It was, it was almost like a lie to myself. And I tell you what, we had to, you, we had to lose everything, go through bankruptcy, and really get hit to the wall with, wow, you know, you can have everything, lose it all, but what do you have? And it's the inner peace within yourself that I'm going to share with you on this exercise, that comes from within.

You would still have your ideal day, you can still have your ideal thing, sometimes it's just not going to be the route you, you believed it was actually going to be. Here's where the makeover happened. This is where we started attracting the ideal people we wanted to work with. Before, it was really just attracting people who wanted just things.

Now it's attracting the lifestyle, you know, no more stress of managing multiple properties, no more stress waking up to anxiety of worrying about lawyers, lawsuits, etc. Now it's just being myself, attracting people that are looking for the experience of life, and now money's flowing, it's fun. I get to go live out my passion, go surfing, have fun being with my wife, being with my kids. It's all come back together, and it's from the same exercise, but you just gotta keep on working on yourself and getting to exactly what you want, because maybe the first time that you go through it, you think you want that, but it just may not be that way.

Now, before I get to this exercise, I'm going to go over a few key points. At least in my experience, it is about the experience, and it's not about the things. You can accumulate a bunch of crap, but all it is, is things. When you're on your deathbed, you never wish that, I just had more things. It's always about the time with your friends, family, loved ones, and the experience. And when you're real and you're authentic, and now, with this business being in social media like this, people can see how people are living, and they'll are going to know if you're full of crap. So the main thing here is, be real, be authentic, and it is about the experience.

So now I'm going into the formula, and the formula is to be real and authentic, and it is about the experience. And let me just back it up from, from when you first started watching. I am no guru, I didn't make up any of this stuff. This is something that I heard from somebody who heard from somebody else who heard from somebody else, and I have no idea, this has probably been for thousands of years. I'm passing it on to you, I'm paying it forward, so enjoy it. Here it is, the formula for happiness and effortless cash flow, the formula for happiness and effortless cash flow. Now I'm not going to take credit for this, I'm actually going to give it to Frank curtain, but I know he took this from somebody else who took it from somebody else who took it from somebody else. It gels with me and I like it, I'm sure you'll like it too, and this will help explain where we are at.

It is E plus I equals L, E plus I equals L. So what does E stand for? Experience. To me, experience is about everything in life. Experience is about everything in life. Experience is what we do from day to day, every day, how we experience it with our friends or family. Experience is the key. I stands for identity, this is, this is, this is very important. The identity is, is it somebody that you think is you, or is it the real you, just being you? So you have the experience, you have your identity. And that L, what does it stand for? It stands for life. And what do we want in life? It's the combination of the experience in our identity, actually, that equals our life. And when you think about that, that's a big aha moment. Glad to share that with you, don't know where it came from, but I love it.

So here's the good news, drumroll please, you are dying. All right, so now let's just look at this. Most likely, we're gonna have 50 more years left of our life, now, not for everybody, but I'm gonna say I'm gonna at least live 50 more years in my life, hopefully. If I calculate that out of days, we're looking at eighteen thousand two hundred sixty two point five days left of my life. I used to be an engineer, okay, so I, I got that calculation down. So now, your life is made up of, into it, individual days. Now, how would your life look like if you had your ideal average day?

So now, this is the one question that is going to change your world, now, that, yes, this possibly is getting into the, to the hokey pokey: if there was no limitations or consequences, what would your ideal average day look like? And I'm gonna repeat that: if there was no limitations or consequences, what would your ideal average day look like? Ok, language is very important, so what does this mean? Let's use myself an example, because this is what I like to do, i like to serve, I'm a surfer. Ok, so we have some limitations with this. Financially, if I'm gonna go travel the world, serve the world's best ways, I have to have finances to hop on a plane, have my wife, have my little baby girl jump on a plane, right, gotta have the finances to do that.

Now, geographically, I'm gonna use this example, 20 years, the first 20 years of my life I lived in Illinois, and if I was surfing Lake Michigan, that's one thing, but typically you're not gonna get any surf there. So geographically, I could not be a surfer who lived in the state of Illinois. So, for all the people around the world, in Australia, Europe, Illinois is in the middle, called the Midwest of the United States, it's just not really possible. Health, if I don't have the health to do it, I'm gonna drowned out there, so I got to eat right, I got a exercise right, I got to have that health to do it. And then also, they're gonna be around the people that are gonna benefit me, and it's support me in this, right? So you have that, how many people are limiting in what you want to do, probably a lot of people back from where I grew up thinking, I'm a surfer, it's great, crazy, if you want to do it, go do it, whatever it is.

Now, also, I'm constructing this ideal day, there's gonna be consequences, so it's not like I'm gonna be riding 100 foot waves every single day, it's just not possible, you're gonna have some consequence. I'm talking about your ideal average day, stuff that won't kill you, so now, average stuff that you could do on a daily basis and not get bored. I can't surf, I can't surf, I can't surf, I can't surf, I can't surf, I can't surf for 12 hours a day, I want to be able to do some other things, and so this is your ideal average day, not just your one perfect day, does that make sense? All right, now I'm gonna put you guys to work, here's the exercise.

So what I want you to do is go get a piece of paper and a pen, or, well, if you're in the computer, put this up into the window, and if you want to write it down here in the email or text edit message, whatever, you want to write this down, because I've been doing this for a long time and I believe, and don't take me for every single word, but I believe, it's somewhere, I've read this multiple times, it's 70 to 80 percent more likely for things to happen when you write them down or you can type them down versus when you don't. And this goes with goals, anything.

So here's the exercise, go get yourself a piece of pen and paper. All right, here's the first question: where would you live? I'm talking geographically, United States, Australia, Asia, you name it, where are you gonna live? It's gonna be by the coast, I don't know, big town, small town, out of the country? Now, what would the house look like that you're living in? Two bedroom, three bedroom? Are you overlooking the ocean? Are you overlooking a cornfield? Do you have a big apple tree in the back? I don't know, this is your vision, this is your ideal average day.

And what time would you wake up in the morning? Are you gonna have an alarm clock? Heck, I haven't used an alarm clock for over six years now, except for when I'm going to the airport, and I still miss flights. So anyway, what time would you wake up? What would you do in the morning? What would it look like? Is it, how, how I used to do it when I was in corporate world, have an alarm clock, I used to be able to walk, black blindfolded, with my eyes shut, take a shower, brush my teeth, eat breakfast, and get out to work on without even thinking about it. Well, what would it look like? Just let you know, I'm reading all these questions, I can't remember every one of them, so it's important to have these details. Now, do this, now pause it, now rewind this if you have not already wrote this down. This is key, absolutely key, think about these things, just little things.

What would you have for breakfast? Would you even eat breakfast? Are you in such a hurry to work you have to eat a pop-tart going to work with a cup of coffee? I don't know, these thoughts that you'd be having in the morning, think about these things. How would you spend your first half of the day? What would you have for lunch? This is something that you'd be having at a side corner, or would you be having, like, that on the street, five minutes to do it, having it at the office, or would you be having it with your family, with your kids, sitting down, having a meal? Who would you be eating it with? It's gonna be co-workers, these people that you love, friends and family? What would your friends be like? Tip: think about this.

Now, I'm scrolling down on the computer, so I have a lot of questions here, and I want to make sure I get to all of these. Here, would you be having with people you love, or versus people that you just have to work with? You spend a lot of time, most people in the corporate world spend about eight to nine to ten hours a day with co-workers, and that is more time than they actually spend with their family members. What would you talk about? What would your conversations be if you are actually with like-minded people, your family, your friends, versus just having some ordinary job? I'm talking about deep stuff, so this may be just going, wow, he's getting out there, this is stuff. When I heard this back five plus years ago, what are you talking about, this is this possible?

Tell you what, I will share with you what I wrote down the very first time when I did this exercise. It's amazing when you write it down, and just do it over and over, what things can possibly happen. So this deeper stuff, what would you do for personal fulfillment? What kind of books would you read? Would you fill your news, your, your noggin, with negative news and watch media and stuff and negativity all the time, or would you fill it with good stuff? What would your life purpose be that you're striving towards? You have somewhere that you vision that you want to go. Now think about, what would your business be? Is it just to make money, or would you do something that you actually love to do?

I can share with you, I was an engineer for, well, nine and a half years out in the field. I had to go, went to four and a half years, the reason I went to four and a half years was because I wanted to make money, I wanted to make money. Half years because I went to Australia for a year, and that's actually where I learned to serve, so I had to go for an extra semester, so I spent almost 15, 14 years of my life just in engineering, not even like to do it, but it made me an income, and I thought that's what you're supposed to do.

So now, what hours would you work? Are you just gonna work the typical nine to five, or you're gonna set your own hours based on, if you want to go to, for instance, I went to yoga class today at nine o'clock, that's what I like to do, there's surf, I'm gonna serve if the winds are right, tides right, when the waves are up, I'm gonna serve. Are you gonna base it around when you have to versus when you want to? And I'm not saying about not just, you know, doing no work, I'm talking about you are creating your own day. So now, what are you, people like that you're working with, so your clients, who are your business partners, who do you want to work with? Think about that, do you want to work with people that are like-minded, have the same beliefs, something to think about?

Let's even get even deeper, I'm gonna scroll the computer down just a little bit more, because this is some good stuff here. Let's get into relationships. What is your relationship look like right now? What is your relationship with your family, your significant other, you may be single? What's your relationships with, if you have a girlfriend, boyfriend? What about your kids, are you there to when they wake up, are you there when they're going to bed, or do you miss that part of it all together? What would you do for family time? Is it only on Saturdays, on Sundays, maybe just on Sundays, maybe just at the night? What is family time, winding down up, how are you gonna be winding down, is it just to get home, fall into bed, set the alarm, and wake up, or can you actually just wind down peacefully, have a beautiful dinner, go to bed, think about these things here?

What would you do at night? What would you do it during the day? What would your life look like, where would you be, that's about just before you go to sleep? Are you stressed out about making deadlines tomorrow, or you got to be jumping on a plane flying to the next city? I don't know, these are some things that you are creating your ideal day. Now remember, these are all just based on desired experiences, not things, I'm talking about having a whole bunch of houses, cars, I'm talking about something that's really important, and it's just about the experience.

Now, now, when I heard this the first time I thought it was a bunch of BS, right? Now, here's what the, here's what the reality is for myself. I go out, and when the surf is good, I go surf, when I want to go do yoga or whatever it is, I go do it. I still have structure, now don't get me wrong here, I have structure, I have discipline, I'm very persistent, consistent, but I'm doing what I love, I'm focused. And when I spend my time working, it is very focused, but it's based on around the lifestyle that I want to live.

Now, here's the greatest thing, what I thought was a bunch of bullshit, I actually didn't put it, my pen, pen, pen, and paper, probably for six months, and I saw my wife doing this, and I want to do, because I was so scared, because I didn't even want people to read, if somebody was to get my journal to read what I thought my ideal day would look like, I thought maybe they would laugh at me. And finally, I got enough courage to write this down, and I wish, well, I'm in Panama right now, the focus del Toro, my journal is back in storage in San Diego, so I can't show it to you, but I'm going to show it to you right here. But I have it memorized and grained in my brain, then I can tell it to you what it looks like. There may be a few things off, like I said, don't, you know, I'm not, no lawyer, whatever, and don't believe every single thing here, but you're just going to be, I'd say, 98% spot-on.

So my ideal day was, I wake up in Hanalei Bay, and that's Kuala Lumpur, it's a very special place for us, my little girl, she's now almost four years old, and I wrote this before she was even conceived, so we got married there back in 2003.

My ideal day was waking up, just hearing the waves crashing, I motion front, I wake up while the light is still hazy, paddling out into the lineup, surfing for two hours, getting double over head, which is about 12 foot on the face, six foot Hawaiian, and so spending a couple hours, coming back in, having breakfast with my wife, my children, I didn't have any kids at that time, I only have one at this time, having breakfast, relaxing, doing maybe two to three hours of business, after that, have some lunch, spend some time, maybe going to check out some sites around the island, you know, maybe having my wife do some shopping, whatever, coming back before sunset, the last two hours surfing again, double overhead waves, coming back in, after that, having some cocktails, going out to dinner with my family, putting them to bed, making some whoopee, and then doing it all again the next day. That was my ideal average day. Now I'm not making whoopee every single day, but I tell you what, my ideal day, it's pretty ideal, and that's what I'm living right now. Now, I'm not just doing it in Hanalei Bay, it's actually doing it all over the world.

Okay, now I'm going to talk to you about my cover identity versus my real identity. Now, when my wife got started six plus years ago, and then I came in after, I had this cover identity from what the internet showed, and it portrayed people in front of their houses and cars, and it was about the money, money, money, and I tell you what, something didn't gel with me. Don't get me wrong, I actually, I did the same thing, because I was just learning from the people that did it before me, we're coachable and trainable, we had pictures in front of house for the cars and stuff. I knew something wasn't right, it didn't click with me, and I remember, I was actually in New Zealand, sitting with my wife, and I was having conversations with people, and it was really focused just on material things, and for myself, even though we had these things, I wanted the experience, and I wanted people to know who I was, and really know who I am, the real identity of myself, the real identity of myself.

I like to have your lifestyle, you probably can tell that we've been traveling for over two years, living in different cultures, enjoying, you know, the cultures of the world, it's been just an absolute pleasure. And now, the way that this industry is going, social media really exposes people behind who they are and who they're not, you just can't hide behind a website anymore. And finally, I've actually became my real identity. I'm no guru, I'm not even gonna pretend that I know how to market, because, you know what, I don't know how to market, all I am is a guy that had a vision, and now I'm shaping it to what we really want, and are tracking the people that have the same mindset, it's not just about the money, yes, you have to have the money to do things. That is a key, but it's about the experience.

I've let all my stuff go in the past, and it's just, to me, I've actually got to fall in to my real identity. So here's an exercise of how to attract your ideal business partner. Now, is it going to be with somebody that's going to be cocky and arrogant? No, no, no, no.

I'm attracting people that are like-minded, just like myself. People that are coachable and trainable. They have fun. They are driven.

They are entrepreneurial-minded. They have personal development in their mind. They follow the principles. These are the things I write down, and I've written this down many of times over the last few years.

I've actually just went through this exercise before I'm doing this video right now. Who do I want to attract? Who do I want to work with? I want to work with people.

I want to work with people that are like-minded, like myself. Somebody, when I meet them, I'm going to have a cocktail with them. I'm going to have dinner with them. I can sit down, and we just flow.

So you want to look at who do you want to work with. Because in our business, the people that we're working with, we're attracting people just like ourselves. So let's put these exercises together. What is your ideal average day?

What is your ideal customer? This is something for these exercises that we have been over and over for the last five-plus years. Even in this economy, in January of 2011, we hit the $50K mark. Our expenses are only traveling the world and being in great locations are under $10K for what we do.

And we're able to put away for education for my little girl. We're able to do some investments. This is possible. You've got to do these exercises.

And you can really want it bad enough. I want to thank you for sharing this time with me. This is a gift that was given to me five-plus years ago. I'm giving it to you.

What I really would like for you to do, if you didn't take that piece of paper and pen out, or writing it on your computer, go ahead and do it. Because right now, you can choose today, either I'm going to take action and create my ideal. Or you can just go about and keep everything the exact same. So, from me to you, enjoy it.

It was a gift. And if you really want to know the nuts and bolts about what our business is, click the link below. If not, enjoy this. Once again, it's a gift.

And I tell you what, please share this gift with somebody else as well. This is Brian Swan from The Unstoppable Family. And I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

I am behind, once again, the crazy, weird picture. But I'm overlooking the Caribbean Ocean. Or sea, actually. Of Panama and Bocas del Toro.

Cheers.