On my first weeks with the 6-Minutes-Diary
(…and three months later)
The preceding post described in what situation I started out to use the 6-Minutes-Diary: needing a bit more structure and guiding than the Clarity Journal provided. Furthermore I was curious about the psychological backing the other journal from urbestself comes with.
As of today I am using the 6-Minutes-Diary as a daily journal for almost three months and so this is my very condensed article on personal experiences, learnings and some tweaks.
Before sharing the more personal parts, here’s a bit of hard facts on the 6-Minutes-Diary:
- the book is wrapped in linen and comes with some 60 pages of intro with well-researched easy-to-understand foundations (there also a pure edition without the intro pages)
- the intro helps with understanding the structure and the purpose of each daily section as well as it supports building and sticking to the journaling habit (in case you haven’t already created a habitual writing ritual for you)
- like the Clarity Journal, also the daily pages of the 6-Minutes-Diary are split into a morning and a day-end section
- every 7 days there’s a notes page as well as a one-pager with a couple of always-different questions that help you reflect, inspire, harvest, …
- there is a monthly recurring two-pager which is always the same – it helps you to build new habits (by naming and tracking them over 28 days) and lets you gut-estimate where you see yourself currently at various life domains like health, friends, physical exercise, gratitude, etc.
Let’s dive into my personal insights and experiences….
Turning a corset into creativity
First having more structure in the form of a given amount of lines below each journaling prompt felt like a corset, like inflexibility.
Quickly I used the space creatively, ditched that perfectionism voice and also used additional post-it notes on some days when needed.
Meanwhile the books looks really unique, I made it mine – and I love that uniqueness!
Sometimes I even enhanced a couple of days in a row with extra blank pages (that can be stored inside the small pocket at the book’s back cover). I used that e.g. for following the weekly inspirations or to include additional daily exercises like the one from the book The Responsibility Process.
It’s about content AND process…
First it seemed like an extra burden that there is “those weekly pages” with “all those questions”. And I heard a voice inside telling me “of course you need to answer ALL of them RIGHT NOW” which seemed to put that burden on me.
Slowly I get to really appreciate those weekly reflection pages of my current journal. They help me to pause, retrospect, introspect and take ‘bigger leaps’ than my daily #journaling practise focusses on. Interesting…
Me (mid December 2018)
It took me a while to give myself permission to find a suitable spot (e.g. in the evening over a decent cup of tea) or to also do them in smaller chunks of 2-3 questions each. And that it is also okay to not answer on question at the moment…. because it just doesn’t fit (now).
Once again I loved those weekly extra questions. This time I already started a day earlier with them… just because I can and I wanted to. 🙂
Me (end of Dec 2018)
TL;DR: The weekly questions itself and also the process of answering them had an impact. Who would have expected that? 😉
Two personal & surprising insights
Before finishing this last article of my blogpost series, here are my two most valuable, most surprising insights I had so far:
- The “How to make this day wonderful” section helped me with:
- getting a lot closer to my needs
- uncovering and stopping familiar procrastination situations
- The “What I am going to do better tomorrow” section:
- triggered me A LOT at first sight
- then I needed some time to feel and sort those emotions until I figured out that I need to rephrase the section it to get value from it. I now use: “What I am going to do different tomorrow”.
The “how to make this day wonderful” of my #6minutesdiary helped me (once again) to tackle hard parts first (so no procrastination anymore!) and then BE PROUD of myself
Me (mid Jan 2019)
and celebrate.
Now it is your turn…
What would you like to read about next when it comes to journaling, resiliency and positivity methods?
Take care,
Cosima