Journaling

Day 9–Wednesday 1 April 2020

I’m still taking Pip the Dog on the same walk every morning at 7am. I’ve noticed that she’s becoming quite familiar with the route as normally she would be running most of it, even whilst being on a flex-lead. But after 9 days she’s walking most of it. So I’m resorting to calling out Go! Go Pip!

In fairness she does react to that and does a hop and skip and a litte run.

So, last week I signed up to a series of webinars via Zoom promising to help our mental health during this period. It was promoted via someone I trust implicitly, I have witnessed his work for at least 15 years and he’s awesome.

I signed up immediately, didn’t read it properly and they did ask for a donation or whatever we could afford. So I did pay $10, just $10 not a lot of money, I did feel bad but I suspect my business is going to suffer during this period, like so many others, it’s inevitable.

I joined the first one on Monday 30 March 2020, full of expectation, but the person I was hoping for wasn’t there, instead someone I didn’t really know. Yes, I was disappointed for sure but stuck with it. A guest appeared who was going to take us through a Yoga Nidra exercise. I am very familiar with it and definitely not what I expected but I stuck with it.

Day 2, I joined also but it was late evening and I was feeling tired already, this time it was covering healing crystals. I’m not a non-believer but felt more uncertain as the webinar went on, so felt quite low and disappointed. I asked for my money back. I know it was only $10, I felt bad, I should have just let it go. Oh well, I did it and just will have to let it go. The person I was expecting is due to be on at the end of the week Friday 3rd April but I won’t be joining of course seeing as I asked for my money back.

So what is this telling me? There are so many do-gooders at the moment, including coaches, spiritual people and many other genres giving stuff away to try and help. The trouble is just as much overwhelming as the news media, the fake news and round robin hug messages via Facebook messenger.

It’s too much and has to stop. It has to stop with me, people are free to tout whatever they wish, I should just stop reacting to it. So this is my new habit along with the other one I adopted the other day.

Habit 1: Stop judging people who are not adhering to the social distancing rules.

Habit 2: Stop reacting to all the so-called useful content and let them go.

Michael de Groot

Today’s U.K. government data sets:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/877458/2020-01-04_No10_Comms_Slides_Tableau_Version.pdf

Decision

I recently interviewed Harun Rabbani on my Share Your Story Podcast. In fact I interviewed him twice as we ran out of time on the first episode. The second episode allowed us to go into a lot of depth on his expert topic, ‘decision making’.

I highly recommend a listen. Harun explained in intimate detail what it takes to become more conscious in making your decisions. I loved his insights. All of us look back at decisions we’ve taken and usually with some regret or doubt. Doubt whether we’ve actually made the right decisions in our lives. We also know without a shadow of doubt some of the decisions that have landed us into trouble, whether it be with our family, our work colleagues and our spouses and children.

It’s not easy to make the right decisions and as Harun explains decisions are just like any muscle in the body. If you wish to grow a muscle you have to exercise it. If you want to make better decisions and know that they are the right ones, you have to exercise that process too.

Harun explains many different options to improve the art of decision making and one of those is journalling.

I had never heard of this previously, so I am delighted that I learnt this from Harun. I started the same day.

The premise is very simple. At the end of each day, reflect on the decisions you have taken in the day. Identify one major one that deserves being recorded in your journal. Write why you took that decision and how it made you feel. I have to say having started this just a few days ago, it’s making me feel much better about my decisions already and I feel in such a short time more confident about the decisions I will take in the future.

One of the better side-effects of reflecting on your decisions is that you will slow down a little before making decisions, you start becoming a conscious decision maker.

Happy decision making!

Michael de Groot