Daya

Techniques · Modern mindset

Follow Your Highest Excitement

Moderate Intermediate ongoing, at each decision

At each fork: take the option that excites you most, fully, with zero insistence on outcome.

What it is

A compass rather than a ritual: whenever options present themselves, you choose the one that carries the most genuine excitement, act on it as completely as you can, and, the hard clause, attach no insistence on where it leads. Excitement is treated as a signal pointing along your path; outcomes are left to reveal themselves. The formula is usually stated with all three clauses because the first one alone is just following your interests; the "to the fullest extent you can" is what stops it being a preference you never act on, and the no-expectation clause is what stops it being a strategy. Applied properly the choices are often small and unimpressive: which email to answer first, which of two evenings to take. It suits people at a fork with no obvious right answer and frustrates people who need a plan.

What people use it for

How to do it

  1. At any decision point, feel for which option genuinely excites you most.
  2. Act on it to the furthest extent you can right now.
  3. Release every expectation about what it should produce.
  4. Repeat at the next fork; the path is the sequence.

Where it comes from

The core formula of Bashar, channeled by Darryl Anka since the 1980s.

Worth knowing

This comes from channelled material (Bashar is presented as an extraterrestrial speaking through Darryl Anka), which is worth stating plainly since the formula usually circulates detached from its source. As advice it has an ordinary and defensible core: intrinsic motivation is a decent predictor of what you will actually sustain, and it is a reasonable tiebreaker when the analysis is inconclusive. The limits are the obvious ones. Excitement is a poor guide for things that are dull and necessary, it can be indistinguishable from avoidance, and "no expectation of outcome" is a hard clause to apply honestly to decisions with real consequences.

Related techniques

The Daya angle

Daya asks what you want each morning, which is a different question from what excites you most right now, and the two do come apart. If you follow this formula, the useful move is to type in the excitement rather than the plan and see what the scene looks like. The app does not weigh options or advise, and the no-expectation clause is not something software can hold for you.

Hear it instead of imagining it

Most techniques on this page ask you to hold a vivid scene of your future in your mind. Daya does the holding for you: a new guided audio journey every day, written around the life you are actually building, in scenes specific enough to feel like memory.

Download on the App Store