Daya

Techniques · Abraham Hicks methods

Emotional Guidance Scale

Widespread Beginner 5–15 min as needed

Find your feeling on the 22-rung ladder, then climb one rung, not ten.

What it is

A map of twenty-two emotional states from despair up to joy, used as a navigation tool: you locate where you honestly are, then deliberately reach for thoughts that belong one or two rungs higher (anger up from powerlessness, frustration up from anger) rather than leaping straight for positivity you cannot feel. The counter-intuitive part is that the scale treats anger as an improvement on despair, which is why people who find gratitude practices insulting on a bad day often get on with this one. Using it takes a few minutes: name the feeling, find the rung, and write or say a sentence that belongs to the next one up. The test is relief, not cheerfulness. If the new thought produces a small easing, it was the right rung; if it produces an argument, it was too far.

What people use it for

How to do it

  1. Name your current emotion honestly and find it on the scale.
  2. Reach for a thought that feels slightly better, one rung, not ten.
  3. Sit with the new thought until it is stable.
  4. Repeat; relief, not bliss, is each step’s target.

Where it comes from

From Esther and Jerry Hicks’ "Ask and It Is Given" (2004).

Worth knowing

The specific ladder and its ordering come from channelled material rather than from research, and emotion does not actually arrange itself in a single line. You can be angry and hopeful at once. Read it as a rough tool rather than a taxonomy. What it gets right is well supported: reaching for a small, believable shift works better than reaching for a large implausible one, which is roughly the logic behind graded approaches in a lot of therapy. The scale is not a treatment, and the bottom rungs describe states (despair, powerlessness) that are worth taking to a person rather than to a diagram.

Related techniques

The Daya angle

Daya’s evening journal asks for one word for how the day felt, which is the same first move this technique makes: name it honestly before doing anything about it. A week of those words gives you the rung you have actually been sitting on rather than the one you assumed. The affirmations are pitched at what you told the app you are working on, so they tend to be a nearer reach than a generic high-rung line.

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