Psychology
25 November 2020, 18:01
- What it is?
- How it works?
- How to keep a diary?
- Happiness is somewhere nearby
Everyday life does not always leave room for optimism. Workdays, household chores, stress - all this is emotionally exhausting, causes negative thoughts, and even leads to depression.
To avoid missing out on the happiness that fills every day, you can start a gratitude journal.
Success diary - as a cure for depression
I started keeping a success journal during my most difficult times.
You know, this quote is floating around the Internet: Do you have a dream? Go to her! Can't go? Crawl to her! Can't crawl? Lie down and lie towards your dreams!
So, this was the period when I lay in the direction of my dreams for a long time and hopelessly. I understood that I had to somehow get out of the swamp of depression, but I had neither ideas nor special strength for this. Today I can no longer remember how the idea of starting a success diary came to me. But it turned out to be what was needed.
What did I write down? When you are severely depressed, any step is an achievement. Anyone who has encountered this disease will understand me perfectly. I recently read an article that called depression an invisible disability. You can't say it more precisely. What is common in everyday life (brush your teeth, blow-dry your hair, go to the grocery store) for a depressed person is akin to conquering Everest. So I simply listed in my diary everything I did that day. The most ordinary things and steps, without dividing them into important and unimportant.
Surprisingly, thanks to this simple ritual, my condition improved every day.
Looking ahead, I will say that the success diary did not heal me completely. There is no point in idealizing this tool. The diary helped me get out of the most severe stage of depression and get to the point where my soul is still cloudy, but I already have the desire and strength to do something and move forward. Later, I turned to the help of a psychotherapist.
What it is?
A gratitude diary is a personal notebook or notebook where the owner writes down people, events and phenomena to which he is grateful. You can buy ready-made or make it yourself.
Thanks to regular journaling, even those people who have long forgotten about these feelings feel a surge of strength, energy, and optimism. Seeing that the world is beautiful and diverse is not so difficult; the main thing is not to spare literally 15 minutes a day for this. Once you turn this into a healthy habit, your life will sparkle with new colors.
What is a gratitude journal?
Success diary and feeling of life
I thought for a long time about what to call this point, but I never found the “ideal” word. Awareness, meaningfulness, the ability to see joy in ordinary life “here and now”, the ability to appreciate the small steps of every day - all this together is my number 2 reason. When I keep a success journal, I notice more happy events, good people, pleasant little things and steps taken. You don’t have to wait long for this effect; it manifests itself from the very first days. It was this feeling of life that I first began to miss when I abandoned the diary.
If you are often overwhelmed by thoughts that life is passing you by, that nothing changes around you (and neither do you), that you are not moving towards your goals at all, a success diary very quickly helps to cleanse your soul and mind of such viruses.
It's not easy to live with such thoughts. This condition can especially become aggravated before the New Year and birthday, when we, wittingly or unwittingly, sum up the results of the past year. Until I started keeping a success journal, summing things up like this would send me into a state of complete collapse. It seemed like nothing was done or achieved.
A success diary is like an evidence base where everything is written down. When I record the steps I take each day and then add them up at the end of the week and month, I see that I am moving forward, growing, and that my life is not a “Groundhog Day” at all.
Success Diary and Imposter Syndrome
Imposter syndrome is a mental condition in which a person clearly does not see his achievements and cannot assess his professional level, even if it is very high. No matter how much you do, it’s never enough, you still don’t deserve the title of expert, you still don’t reach the required level.
The “imposter” puts all his effort into his work so that no one suspects him of being an unprofessional, constantly studies and lives in anxiety that someone is about to understand that he is nothing special. The reasons for this condition come from childhood, when many demands were made, and praise could not be expected at all.
Thanks to the success diary, I was able to see how much time and money I invest in my training, how much I do to be a good specialist, how hard I work on the quality of my work. Gradually, day after day, it was as if the blinders were falling off my eyes and more and more respect for my work appeared.
Now I feel confident in my professionalism, I feel that I occupy my important place. A success diary helped me a lot with this and I believe that it is the best cure for impostor syndrome.
So, today I want to talk to you about gratitude.
This is one of the keys to a happy life. Very simple, but incredibly effective. Although I admit, I myself discovered this key and began to use it regularly not so long ago. You understand that just knowledge is not enough, for real changes you need regular practice - I wrote about this recently.
For a long time I was a typical hungry ghost
Are you familiar with the Tibetan Buddhism diagram of the universe?
According to the Tibetans, trapped in the wheel of rebirth, we are forced to wander through the six realities of the universe, as depicted in the diagram: man, hungry ghost, hell, animal, demigod and god. We won’t go into detail now, this topic deserves a separate post, but pay attention to the third sector clockwise. This is the sector of hungry ghosts. Traditionally they are depicted with a large belly and a very thin neck.
Of course, this is a symbol: no matter how a hungry spirit tries to get enough, it will never satisfy its greed - it will always not be enough.
That's how I was
- When I studied at MGIMO, I did not value this time, all my thoughts were turned to the future - passing exams, finding a good job, etc.
- And when I worked in an office and had everything I dreamed of as a student, I again couldn’t be happy about it, because I was focused on what I was missing. I didn't know how to be happy with what I had. There is always something more to strive for.
Now I understand that the currently widespread ambitious life principle “sky is the limit” (there is no limit to perfection) is the motto of hungry ghosts and a direct path to the abyss of dissatisfaction. I know from my own experience this neurotic state, when no matter what you achieve, it does not fill you, but on the contrary, it only kindles the inner fire - “more, I want more, I’m not enough!” Hungry ghosts will never go to the North - they are ungrateful and do not appreciate what they have.
How to stop being a hungry ghost?
The key I have found is gratitude. I noticed significant changes for the better in my life after I began to regularly and consciously practice gratitude.
Gratitude is the most powerful means of changing our reality. This is jet fuel, allowing you to instantly be transported to the other side - to a happy, harmonious and abundant life.
This may sound too esoteric, but my experience confirms this: when we feel gratitude, we send out a powerful positive signal to the Universe, thereby attracting even more reasons to be grateful into our lives. The outer world is nothing more than a reflection of our inner world. If you don’t like what’s on the outside, look inside and see what’s wrong.
Gratitude is the antidote to negative states such as dissatisfaction, envy, competition, feelings of lack, feelings of inferiority and lack of acceptance of oneself and life. The more often we practice gratitude, the less likely negative habits of mind are to take over our consciousness. We can’t feel gratitude and dissatisfaction or gratitude and envy at the same time, can we?
What is gratitude?
Gratitude is first and foremost an acceptance of what is. Agree, we are often not even ready to clearly see where we find ourselves now; we are too hasty in the future. We don't like the way things are now. We are dissatisfied with the world, with ourselves, we would like to be in another place, transported to another time (to the past or future), to be with other people, to look different, to do something different, to be someone else.
But it’s not just that we ended up exactly where we are. It is our karma to be where we are. Only from the point where we are now is any movement possible. We cannot begin the path of change from some fictitious point, but only from where we are now.
We are not ready to accept what is right now - it does not satisfy us. And even more so, we are not able to see something positive in our lives. Many of us are accustomed to noticing only the bad, only the negative - this is what society teaches us, all the news is built on this. And we are accustomed to taking good things for granted. We have forgotten how to appreciate the good things we have.
Gratitude is the ability to see something good in our lives. Perhaps right now everything is not as bad as it seems. Right now you have every reason to be joyful and happy. Gratitude changes our perspective from a negative aspect of life to a positive one and teaches us to notice the good in our lives, and not only in ours, but simply the good around us - in this Universe.
Success diary and achieving goals
I am already leading more than one project. An endless field of tasks and plans always stretches before me. And no matter how much I do, this field does not get smaller. Every day brings more and more new questions. Not to mention the fact that new projects constantly come to my mind and they all ask to come out.
If you always look at this abyss of tasks and plans, you can go crazy. I get the feeling that no matter how many things I finish, it’s still not enough, I still don’t get anything done. Life turns into sheer stress, and everything inside is compressed from constant tension and anxiety.
I found a way out for myself - try to concentrate on what has already been done and passed. Thanks to the success diary, I can see how much important and useful I am doing to achieve my goals. And this is a completely different state of mind. Instead of powerlessness, fear, tension comes satisfaction and joy from what has been accomplished. Sometimes it turns into excitement and then I want to do a little more to add it to the collection of my achievements.
And I have a separate time for going to my pile of endless tasks. This is planning time. When I make a plan for the day, week, month and choose those steps that are now important and relevant.
