My life since my last post really hasn’t changed that much. At all, really. A few minor additions and subtractions. A lot ended up happening under the surface.
This is the problem when you end up hermiting instead of just going outside. I had a few low days that lead to a lot of self doubt, impostor syndrome, and general worry. Even though I planned my current unemployment as best as I possibly could, sometimes you just can’t talk Anxiety Brain off that cliff.
The good mixed days are when Rational Brain steps in and gives Anxiety Brain a good ol shove off that cliff. Have a screaming match with each other. Whatever it takes to get Anxiety Brain to just. shut. up. Some days Anxiety Brain is a force to be reckoned with and will evade all of Rational Brain’s usual tricks.
The key here is to remember during the lows that highs will follow; everything is cyclical, including your levels of anxiety. This is something I’ve dealt with all of my life, and it took a long time to work on anxiety management and put together safeguards to help those low times. Part of one way to deal with this is to manually track all of those highs.
In order to start keeping track of this, I bought a cheap pocket calendar and began writing down all of my wins for each day. My little pocket calendar started to have too little space for me, so I now have a dot journal. I tried getting into the proper ways to bullet journal, but there are a lot of parts that aren’t for me. I won’t proselytize the life of BuJo, as I believe not one thing works for everyone, but if that works for you, keep at it.
My bullet journal is quite minimal; I didn’t want to bog down my bastardized concept of a gratitude journal with pressure of coming up with lovely DPS concepts, even though I have well defined artistic styles and a degree in art to back that up. If I wanted the main point here to be a win tracker, well that’s what I’ll do.
I fell off the wagon with my journaling just as I didn’t post here for a few days. I think the main point was the pressure to fill out my mood and habit trackers. I like the concept of each, but having a record of how good or bad you’re feeling, or if you got in a rare day where you accomplished everything you wanted to do doesn’t necessarily aid in the kind of progress I want to make.
February is here in a few short hours, which means a new month to try out new things. I’m going to keep with the minimalism, but I’m dropping what continues to be a blank page and its mirror page, the habit tracker. I’m continually adding in new ideas to grow, and I think that’s the most important part right there. A tracker of what I did and didn’t do doesn’t amount to much in the long run.
My main goal each day is to be a little better than I was the day before. This can be measured in anything: do I know more MySQL today than I did yesterday? Did I hear a new story that allows me to be a better ally today than I was yesterday? Have I put forth the effort to be a better listener today than I was yesterday.
Self-inspection, reflection and adaptation is key. Be just a little better today than yesterday and count your wins.
hello_patsy 