Seeing the Deeper Nuances of Your Day
Keeping a daily log of the inner and outer movements of your life can be a profoundly deepening experience. Whatever you strongly notice in your outer life will tell you something about your inner life.
As you start to take note of what feels meaningful to you each day, you bring the edges of your unconscious mind into conscious awareness.
Detailed in the classic book, At a Journal Workshop by Ira Progroff, I offer you a few suggestions for keeping a daily log of the meaningful inner and outer movements of your daily life.
Reviewing Your Day
"To follow the movement of our emotions allows us to retrace the formation of our lives from the inside. Thus, you will begin to recognize how your day unfolded from within yourself."
~ Ira Progoff
At the end of your day, before bed, sit in stillness and look back on your day.
1. Waking Up: Start by remembering the beginning of your day. How did you feel upon awakening? What did you dream about? Recording even the slightest fragments of your dreams will help you to see how your night moved into your daytime theme.
2. Strongest Details: Contemplate the inner (feeling) movements of your day. With your eyes closed, also revisit the outer events of your day. What details stood out the most? Write them down as they pop into your mind.
3. Main Feeling-Tone: What main emotions, desires, anxieties, and hopes did you have throughout your day? Describe, in a few sentences, what the main feeling tone of your day was.
4. Relationships: What stood out the most about your relationships today? Were your relationships loving or frustrating? What emotions did you feel as you encountered other people? What people came into your mind, and how did you feel when you thought about them?
5. Main Insights: Once you finish writing, close your eyes, breathe deeply and let your whole being absorb the feelings and events of your day. Write any additional thoughts that come to you.
6. The Daily Theme: As you record each 24-hour block of your life experience, you will start to sense how the movement of each day feeds into the larger themes of your life. See if you can name each day's theme before you go to bed. Let yourself integrate the movement of your day as an integral piece of the larger theme of your life.
With love,
Shelley
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