How are you feeling?
When people ask 'How are you feeling?', the only answer I can normally muster is 'fine'. And that is also fine, but I find I can normally not be more eloquent, not even to myself. Because I normally simply do not know the answer. So I looked for ways of solving this.
Every morning when you wake up, note in a diary how you are feeling. Just need to be one word. Happy, Content, Anxious, Agitated ect. If you struggle to find a word start by describing it in a more verbose manner, but when you are done try to distill it down to one word, if you still can't keep being more verbose till you are clear enough to yourself to use one word. Write it down in a place in context with a date.
Observe the pattern over time. This makes it much easier to discuss your feelings with others, and with yourself. Our general impression of trends frequently tend to be wrong. Paging through your dairy will give you a very good idea of what your mind space has been over a period, not clouded by how you are currently feeling.
If you are feeling geeky you can make a spreadsheet and input the data from the dairy to display a graph. No, you don't need to build a software project out of this, 10 minutes is fine. I prefer to keep it as simple as possible by using a dairy as the primary capture mechanism. When I use electronic input only it feels disconnected for me and I tend to stop doing it after a while. I use my dairy every day for other things also and so I just add on to that. Try it out and find what works best for you.
You will over time start to see a pattern maybe, a baseline definitely. This will answer the question of how do you feel most of the time. This makes you more conscious, more aware of how you are feeling. And even if you do not actively do things to change how you feel in the beginning, it will set the subconscious to work. In time you will realise in what current you are, and if that is not where you want to be, you will start the change.
Every morning when you wake up, note in a diary how you are feeling. Just need to be one word. Happy, Content, Anxious, Agitated ect. If you struggle to find a word start by describing it in a more verbose manner, but when you are done try to distill it down to one word, if you still can't keep being more verbose till you are clear enough to yourself to use one word. Write it down in a place in context with a date.
Observe the pattern over time. This makes it much easier to discuss your feelings with others, and with yourself. Our general impression of trends frequently tend to be wrong. Paging through your dairy will give you a very good idea of what your mind space has been over a period, not clouded by how you are currently feeling.
If you are feeling geeky you can make a spreadsheet and input the data from the dairy to display a graph. No, you don't need to build a software project out of this, 10 minutes is fine. I prefer to keep it as simple as possible by using a dairy as the primary capture mechanism. When I use electronic input only it feels disconnected for me and I tend to stop doing it after a while. I use my dairy every day for other things also and so I just add on to that. Try it out and find what works best for you.
You will over time start to see a pattern maybe, a baseline definitely. This will answer the question of how do you feel most of the time. This makes you more conscious, more aware of how you are feeling. And even if you do not actively do things to change how you feel in the beginning, it will set the subconscious to work. In time you will realise in what current you are, and if that is not where you want to be, you will start the change.
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