“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” — Aristotle
I adore stationery. As a child, I used to spend hours in stationery shops longing to buy all the notepads and pens that adorned the shelves.
As an adult, I do buy more stationery than I probably should and when I came across self-reflection journals, I became truly addicted.
When I was tidying my house recently, I found some old journals and flicked through them. It’s so good to read through and see the thoughts and feelings I was having back then, it’s really interesting to see how much I have grown over the years.
I complete my self-reflection journal each morning when I get up and each evening before I go to bed. I try my best to make sure each morning and evening is filled in, even if it’s a bit later than anticipated and I do take it away with me on holidays.
After spending a lot of time scouring the internet, I chose the 6-minutediary for my next journal for the following reasons:
It’s split into morning and evening reflection, I think it is good to reflect on your mood first thing and then the last thing at night, sometimes there is a big difference and by reflecting on this, you can learn how to improve your days in the future.
There is a section in the morning to list 3 things you are grateful for. Gratitude can be life-changing, there is always something to be grateful for and for me, practising gratitude increases positivity and feeling positive can, and has led me to so many amazing things.
You also list how you can make the day great. This is the same as setting an intention for the day, which gives me focus for the day.
The last thing you do in the morning is writing an affirmation. I have previously struggled with speaking affirmations as I felt weird about talking to myself! Writing affirmations is a lot better for me and I have a few lists of positive affirmations I like to use pinned above my computer screen for inspiration.
There is a daily inspirational quote, or if it’s the 1st day of your week, a weekly challenge.
In the evenings, you write a good deed for today. I am often surprised at how I am always able to fill this in, sometimes, we don’t see things we do as good deeds but most people do at least one small thing each day.
There is a section to say how you will improve. This is not for you to compare yourself to others, but to what you have been doing in the previous months/days/weeks. It could be as simple as saying you will be kinder to yourself going forward.
And lastly, you list 3 things that went well that day. This is such a positive way to end the day and rather than going to bed thinking about all the things that went wrong, which we often do, you go to bed thinking about all the good there was in that day, it’s surprising just how much there is.
