Week Two with the Theme System Journal...1/2 way through the week I started thinking about what I wanted this blogpost to focus on. I’m really interested in what I’m doing with the Theme System Journal so I decided that this is the direction I would go in. After figuring that out I had another decision...what “angle” was I going to take with this week’s post? Take a look at the following image...
This is what my daily themes page looks like two weeks in. I thought I’d go a little meta on what the data is showing me. The obvious stand out is “Right Speech.” Only once in the 9 days I’ve been using the journal did I feel that I could color in the entire circle...back on the 24th of September. The other 8 days see me only coloring in 1/2. This is clearly an area that needs “improvement.” By “improvement” I mean I think I could be doing a better job. The number 1 reason I give myself only 1/2 is because at work I can tend to mentally think negatively about some of the people I work with and at times the internal thinking leaks out to trusted colleagues. I know this is not professional but as my data shows...it’s apparently hard to keep that stuff in. Letting off steam about things others do around me is something I need to work on.I’m wondering...if on the days I gave myself 1/2 a circle for “Right Speech” should I have been harder on myself in other areas? Like...should “Right Action,” “Right View,” “Right Effort, etc” all suffer because my speech is not in check? I honestly don’t know. Yesterday I gave myself a full circle for “Right Effort” because I thought I did a really good job of handling a situation with 3 of my students...during that situation...my speech was “really good, focused, calming, and help de-escalate a traumatic event for these students!”No one is perfect and that’s not what I’m striving for. The whole reason I’ve focused this journal on these 8 daily themes is that I want to...over time...get better at being mindful about each of them at any given moment. I love that using this journal is allowing me to “go meta” and reflect on myself through each of these 8 lenses.