Morning Journal

Good morning!

That is how my morning journal starts every morning for the past 5 months.

I have made a habit that at first seemed impossible to sustain into something that I can not live without. This journal that I continuously expand and improve allows me to not only improve my self-consciousness and dig deeper into myself, it also allows me to store data for reference in the future.

Review

The most important and beneficial part of journaling is doing weekly, monthly and yearly reviews. Something that I have been neglecting very dearly in the past.

The reason why the review is so critical is that it is easy to forget the bad memories and is even easier to overemphasise the little good things.

While it is good not to be fixating on the bad things and being happy about the good things, in the long run, that doesn’t help anyone. If you don’t learn from your past mistakes and if you don’t break down the good things that have happened, it is as if you haven’t achieved anything in the first place.

Causation

The thing that I have noticed while writing this journal is that the tone of the whole journal that is at least 600 words, is totally dependent on the things that are around me.

How I slept is number one influencer that basically dictates if I will be happy, thankful or extremely anxious in the morning.

The second thing that clearly influences the way I feel is the weather that is outside. Something that usually does affect our mood and is mostly noticed at the extreme weather but the dark sky compared to clear blue sky will produce two completely different pieces of writing.

The third thing is having an actual nature in front of my eyes, even through the window. This one deserves a little more explanation.

You see, in these 5 months that I have been writing I have travelled around a little, and I have written in many different places starting from dark hotel lobby to the balcony with the sea view. When you have direct sight of nature and the beauty that is outside you somehow get this lifting up feeling that propels you forward and lets you really work at your fullest.

The fourth thing that also can be neglected is how much light is available. Also, something that I wouldn’t think did influence anything, but in reality, it does. We, humans, tend to be always needing extra light. That can be seen by the scarcity of vitamin D that our bodies have all around the world. The craziest part is even those that are constantly outside in the sun in the tropical countries still have a deficiency of vitamin D.

This is because when we go inside our houses, we tend to get only 10-15% of the light from the outside. Even during the day, we get a maximum of around 30%. What does that mean? Our body is constantly panicking. It knows and sees that it is bright during the day, while the body tells it that it doesn’t receive enough light and it can potentially be a night time. Our energy levels are messed up.

This battle between the body and the brain can be exhausting, resulting in less energy that the brain is giving you. That is why turning on lights even during the day is something that you must do in order to improve your productivity.

There are still many things that are going on and influence the tone and the feelings that I describe in the daily journals. Heck, you can even look at the articles that I post during the day, and you can see for yourself that the writing changes drastically.

Even if you don’t write daily, the things above influence your life and everyone's lives that you interact with. Keeping these things in mind and trying to optimise for the best mood and productivity can make or break your overall life.

On top of all of the said above, I have a project that I should finish in the coming month. I want to take the data that I have written, put it through the text mood analyser and plot the mood compared to the weather that was during that day. I feel that it will be a very interesting read, and maybe I can gain other insights.

Thank you for reading, and I hope I made your life a little better with my own findings.

Klim Y