Our days have a habit of blending together. Before we know it, we have more of our life behind us than ahead of us. We wonder what happened and how we could have let it slip by so carelessly.
One way to help stop your life from slipping by is to take a look at yourself each day.
We do sometimes sit and reflect on what is happening. But we do not always make it a habit and we do not always do it deeply and purposefully. If we can bring self-examination into our daily life we can live with more awareness, more mindfully, and we can build a bridge between today and tomorrow that leads us to a better future. It will also lead us to a better us.
We can look at ourselves twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening.
At the beginning of the day.
We all know that how we start our day is important. The morning is a moment of creation. As the new day dawns, we too are at a fresh beginning. Yesterday has passed, tomorrow is in the future. We have today only. What will we do with it?
It is common for people to be taught to create a to-do list each day.
I personally love to-do lists. There is no better feeling than scratching off a completed item and being happy with yourself. It brings up the question, what do I need to do today? This question encourages us to look at our priorities and make meaningful decisions about how we want to live.
But I often mention that there is another question that we should ask ourselves each morning.
We should ask, who do I want to be today? I believe that if we know who we are, we will naturally know what we need to do. It shifts the anchor from a focus on all of our tasks to our self-identity, who we really are.
Have you ever had a moment when you were doing something and you had a self-realization that prompted you to say, this is not who I am or I am not happy doing this? If so, that is your soul speaking to you. It is reminding you that you are more than your work. It is reminding you that you will never be happy until your heart, soul, and hands are working in unison and synchronized with your true destiny.
At the end of the day.
We can end our day with a simple end of day review. The idea is straightforward. We want to see how our day went and think about how we can do better tomorrow. So, we might ask ourselves a few questions like: Did I accomplish everything I wanted? What could I have done better? What lesson did I learn today that I need to carry forward into tomorrow and the future?
But life is more than just whether we accomplished all of our tasks.
We can also examine how we lived. We know we can work hard. But can we live fully? We want to reflect on the quality of our life. Problems are easy to remember, we want to focus on the good things that happened and be grateful for them.
Negative emotions tend to be persistent but positive emotions tend to be fleeting, we want to stop and appreciate the good moments in our lives.
When we stop and reflect on good things, we anchor them in our memory and in our emotions. It is money in the bank. We are building emotional capital. We are reinforcing our sense that we are good and our life is good so we can lean back on it when times are bad.
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