Sunday Blog 161 – 1st December 2024
Being a constant consumer of self-improvement, I’m always looking outside myself for advice. I am aware of the irony of writing a Sunday Blog about trust beginning with me. But isn’t self-development is an endless round of remembering, then forgetting, then remembering? A regular podcast reminder of the importance of connecting in with my own values and living them is a must for me.
This week I listened to Ep. 497 of Rangan Chatterjee’s Live Better, Feel More, and I was washed through with the moment of remembering what I’d forgotten. The importance of building trust in yourself.
I am blessed to be (blissfully) unaware of feelings of anxiety or fear during the day. Nothing especially enlightened about that, I think it is just a neuro-quirk. It’s during my middle of the night wakefulness that I can often access that spot of depression, the twist of unease. And it is almost always the pressure of undone things. Things I said I would do, and haven’t.
Rangan talked about his three questions each morning and I paraphrase slightly: 1. What’s one thing I’m grateful for? 2. What’s the most important thing I need to do today? 3. What quality do I want to bring to the world today? And his three questions at night: 1. What went well today? 2. What did I do for someone else today? 3. What can I do differently tomorrow?
The simple act of deciding the one most important thing I need to do today, and reckoning with whether I did it, is building and re-building trust in myself.
Now the big question is, do I buy his beautiful journal just for the 3 questions each day, or do I squeeze them into my regular diary?
In the end, isn’t all self-improvement about justifying stationery purchases?