Okay, it’s time once again for our weekly catch up on how we can improve aspects of our selves. This week I thought it would be good idea to talk about a technique we can use to make better sense of our day to day lives.

Now, seeing how you are viewing this on a digital device of some sort, that means that there are no costs preventing you from starting. I know it might sound pretty by the numbers but this technique, in many respects is just a form of journaling.

Essentially what you need to do is open up some program for taking down notes, in my experience I use Microsoft Word as it is the easiest and most common word processor. All you need to do, is at the end of day write up all that happened during the day, make sure to properly date each entry.

These can be minor events like the rude way someone served you when you bought your lunch or it could be something major like finding out a relative has injured themselves. Either is fine, it’s important to understand that no one else is going to see this so it can even include embarrassing things as well, like falling over as you tried to board the bus. All are welcome.

Being as descriptive and detailed as possible really helps when it comes to this technique, as it’s hard to understand the happenings of your day when you only have two sentences written down. Remember, this isn’t a chore or something you have to do just to cross off a to do list; it’s about conceptualising the events that have occurred over the past 24hrs and being able to map them out.

What’s the benefit of following this habit? Well, to take the example of the rude server at lunch, by writing it down you may realise that the event put you in a standoffish or pensive mood; and that might be why you were mean towards your coworker when you returned from lunch and they asked you about the progress on some project.

By understanding the events of our lives, we can better anticipate our behaviour and emotions. With that knowledge we can go about preparing to respond appropriately when similar events occur in the future.

This technique is different to the page of conscious thoughts that we should be writing each day, even though similar topics or themes may appear in both. The cause of this difference, is that the self authoring is about observing yourself from the perspective of your past, while the conscious thoughts is about where your mind is at in the present moment.

Hope this helps.

Like always, more to come, and thank you to all the Hedites that regularly come on down to this blog to pick up tools and ideas to better their lives. You are all awesome.