Seven suggestions for self-reflection as a start to each new day
by Roland Böhringer, Germany
As a suggestion, go through the questions when and where it
fits best into your programme. The morning would be ideal, and a quiet circumstance
definitely helps. Feel free to take out of the following what catches you or
modify the questions according to your needs.
You will also find these questions listed separately after this article. If
you wish, you can copy these so you will have a template to use, and by spending
a few minutes every day on each question, you will find that you become closer
to yourself and what is happening in your life.
- What is the nature of the day?
What do I see and feel when I look out of the window? What kind of energy
do I feel today (quiet, heated, dampened down, mental, emotional, indifferent)?
What might be the cause of that (the weather, the season, the general mood
as, for example, that Monday morning feeling, or the Friday afternoon feeling,
football triumph, the general economic situation and so on)? Do I wish
to be influenced by this mood or basic atmosphere today?
- How do I feel
in my body today?
How do I feel mentally? How do I feel emotionally? How close do I feel
to myself today? If you don't feel especially well today, don't expect
to break any records, just be the best you can in the circumstance.
- What
is important to me in my life? What about my values? Can I name them?
Try to touch aspects of this each day. So your life will become a nice continuous
story instead of, perhaps, a day to day collection of unrelated bits.
- How
do I want to be today?
Do I wish to try to embody a certain quality in my daily ongoing?
E.g. optimism, clarity, wit/humour, thoughtfulness, tolerance, generosity,
sense of community or ..?
- Is anything left over in me from the day before?
Are there some things that are bothering you, that keep turning up? Here
are 3 suggested steps to deal with these:
a) Try to clear up the matter, if possible within 3 days;
b) if this is not possible, decide upon a date to re-approach this;
c) or classify it as insignificant and forget about it.
This helps toward a sensible housekeeping with your time and energy.
- What
things need to be done practically?
What are the demands? Which energies
and what kinds of power or muster do I want or need to generate to get
my tasks done?
Project yourself through the day so that you still have some energy left
for yourself in the evening.
- Do I take my life and my existence for granted?
Every day is a gift. Do I take the earth, the air, my heartbeat for granted?
It took evolution and creation half an eternity to bring us humans of today
to the stage of Homo sapiens.
To allow ourselves a moment to pause and feel this awe harmonises us to the
fact that there is something great that keeps our even imperfect world together
at its core.
Such an attitude sparks the flame of our joy at being alive and grows an appreciation
of our situation, enriching our internal life and therefore also the other
people with whom we deal and come into contact.
Just imagine, dear reader, millions of other people feeling the awe of something
greater than themselves and then taking a step outside to feel the atmosphere...
I will be writing an article for a future edition of Topaz about the other
end of the day, with suggestions on how to bring the day to a smooth and useful
close before going to sleep. If you have any feedback on this article, I would
be pleased to hear from you, please write to the editors who will pass it on
to me.
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