A success diary is a powerful tool for achieving success. This series of articles was created for those who want to make the most of their own intelligence. This material will be useful to all those who strive for success and want to live an interesting and rich life.
The methods presented in this manual have stood the test of time for thousands of years; the proposed recording systems have been used by outstanding minds of mankind, those who are commonly called Geniuses. A diary can easily be called one of the best simulators for the development of intelligence, as well as one of the most effective tools for time management, life modeling, self-knowledge and self-improvement.
From the author
The idea of describing the recording system was born unexpectedly! I came to the conclusion that the Diary deserves much more than simple advice to “buy a notebook and keep notes.” Looking back, I discovered that I had been keeping a diary myself for over ten years, and my writing system was constantly improving. I know for sure that keeping a diary is very useful, there are ideas and positive experiences, and I am ready to share it! I am pleased to share the best I know about diaries...
What is a success diary
Many people note that their lives are filled with a variety of daily tasks. However, at the same time, they do not move anywhere, as if they freeze at one point without the slightest personal growth and progress. And all this happens because they are focusing on the wrong things. The human mind tends to concentrate and retain in memory negative events rather than positive ones.
Successful people have developed the habit of keeping a daily success diary - recording their achievements and positive situations. And all because they noticed: this activity consolidates and increases their achievements, helps them remember good events and pleasant moments. In difficult times, a diary of successes and achievements helps strengthen the spirit, analyze an unpleasant situation and find ways to resolve it.
The success diary is an ordinary notebook, notebook or diary (you can keep notes in electronic form). In it you note your successes at work or in school, positive emotions, compliments from friends and positive assessments from colleagues, pleasant meetings - that is, everything that lifts your spirits and brings you closer to achieving your goals.
Important! Learn to enjoy even small victories, and not just celebrate great achievements. Happiness is built from small joys. Small victories are the building blocks of great success.
Make it a rule to make at least 5 entries daily. Write down all the positive things your day has brought you: you read a book, went to the park with your children, did morning exercises (or went for a run), refused a portion of fast food, etc. Record everything you have done to become better, feel healthier and more successful.
On the pages of the diary you can write down motivational phrases, affirmations, quotes from famous people, and your revelations. This will prevent them from leaking out of your consciousness and will keep you on the right wavelength.
Finding inspiring moments to write down in your success journal is not difficult. But many people abandon this activity, believing that it does not make sense or they do not have time for it. “Everything that is ingenious is simple, and everything that is simple is brilliant.” Don't be fooled by the simplicity of the activity, there are many benefits to keeping a success diary.
How writing practices helped me
In the end, I settled on the morning pages. And they helped out a lot when self-isolation began due to the coronavirus pandemic. It seems that this daily morning ritual is one of the few things that helps not to go crazy from four walls and the lack of live communication with friends (and the closure of your favorite bars). I lowered the bar a little and started writing an A4 page every day. With full scope for imagination: what she dreamed about, what ideas she found in her head, what thoughts do not leave her, what dreams, what fears.
It became much easier for me to come up with new things. I always considered those who could come up with 10 ideas in five minutes to be gods, because each of my ideas was born in pain. And the diary seemed to throw out unnecessary garbage from my head, which was blocking truly good thoughts and ideas.
I became much calmer. A journal helps you process your emotions. When I feel angry or sad, I try to immediately sit down and write out everything that’s boiling over. And he lets me go. Then, re-reading the notes, I notice that the situation was not so worth the emotional whirlwind. Or I find a solution to the problem in my own words.
Finally, I sorted out many problems and complexes that had been bothering me for a long time. I identified my strengths and developed a strategy to combat my weaknesses.
Benefits of Keeping a Success Diary
By filling out a success diary every day, you will quietly develop a lot of useful qualities that distinguish a successful, harmonious and happy person:
- The ability to think positively is a very valuable skill. Positive thoughts will displace negative ones and erase destructive attitudes that could have been embedded in the subconscious in childhood. This will not only lead to the fact that negative moments will disappear from your life, you will begin to feel more confident and filled with happiness.
- Confidence and self-esteem comes with the awareness of your success. Increasing self-esteem is necessary, since most people have incorrect attitudes about themselves and their abilities. Particularly destructive to a person is grief over one’s insignificant (from a subjective point of view) successes compared to others. A success diary will help you get rid of the bad habit of comparing yourself to others and teach you to concentrate on the steps to achieve your goals.
- Internal motivation is the most stable force that can move us towards the realization of desires. Inspiration cannot be constant; sooner or later it evaporates and then the moment of decline occurs. When despondency, apathy sets in and the desire to do anything disappears, your entries in your success diary awaken internal motivation. You will realize how far you have already come, and you will have the strength to move on.
- High self-esteem, self-respect, the presence of internal motivation - all these new qualities change you as a person and correct your worldview. You have a different attitude towards life, your surroundings, the events that happen to you. Look at all situations through the prism of positive emotions and expectations. Even in failures you see opportunities for growth. This helps us move forward where we previously gave up or gave up. As a result, you become a winner. Now you control the circumstances, and not they control you.
- Keeping a journal of successes and achievements, in which you focus exclusively on your strengths, achievements, skills and abilities, helps to attract even more successes and successful accomplishments to you. After all, we attract what we focus on.
Features of human memory
Can you remember exactly what you looked like yesterday? And a month ago, and a year, and ten years ago? Can you remember what your family and friends looked like yesterday, a year ago, ten years ago? For short periods of time, most people remember what and who looked like. For long-term ones - most likely not. Especially if you remember not hairstyle and clothes, but, for example, facial expressions, facial expressions, age indicators.
Therefore, when looking at photographs from ten or fifteen years ago, one is surprised to discover age-related changes, changes in facial expression, and facial expressions. Changes occur so smoothly and gradually that the brain is not able to track them. We think we look about the same all the time.
Similar situations occur when achieving goals. It seems that there are no achievements, the efforts spent are meaningless, and there is no change. But when considering large periods of time, it becomes obvious that changes are present. Sometimes they turn out to be significant. For example, over the last ten years of your life, many goals were achieved and desires came true, but your consciousness did not track this, something was erased from memory. There were “fewer” achievements, and the feeling of inability to achieve set goals increased.
A little trick for positively programming your subconscious with goals: use a wish map - it’s quick and effective.
Recording Success: A Practical Exercise
How to start keeping a success diary? Write down your first 10 merits (skills, skills, talents) that you think will help you achieve your goals. Here are some examples of positive statements depending on your goals:
- If you want to get a highly paid job, list your qualities and skills in your diary: “I communicate well with people,” “I am an attentive listener,” “I am committed, executive and organized,” “I always do more than is expected of me,” “I have excellent persuasion skills,” “I dress stylishly and look attractive,” etc.
- If you're looking to get into a relationship or start a family, write down all your talents: “I'm confident and always make a positive impression,” “I'm caring and considerate,” “I have a great sense of humor,” “People enjoy hanging out with me.” , “I am an excellent housewife”, “People around me are crazy about my charisma”, “My last boyfriend always said that I have very beautiful and expressive eyes”, “Girls always say that I have an athletic figure and an attractive nature”, etc. .d.
You will always find something to praise yourself for. Look at yourself in the mirror without focusing on what you don't like about your appearance. Find what you like. Remember the compliments of friends and colleagues. Praise from partners and bosses. Without hesitation, acknowledge your merits and write them down on paper.
Who needs to lead it?
A journal of luck and success is a must-have for people with low self-esteem. It records all the achievements of a person for a certain period. Subsequently, he notices that in small steps he is approaching his desires and is able to achieve success.
A gratitude diary will help the following categories of people realize their intellectual potential:
- housewives;
- businessmen;
- creative people;
- entrepreneurs, etc.
For people with mental disorders and deep depression, keeping a success diary is an excellent way to heal. This action is a preventive measure for burnout syndrome.
A success diary will help housewives avoid emotional burnout
Why is it effective?
Even the smallest achievements in your opinion activate the part of the brain that is responsible for reward. At this moment, the body begins to release chemical compounds - hormones, which give us feelings of happiness and pride in ourselves.
What happens if you record your achievements every day?
By writing down your progress every day, you'll begin to notice all the positive things that don't usually stick in your mind. One of the qualities of human thinking is focusing on the negative. We tend to mentally replay unpleasant memories in our heads over and over again. But reconfiguring your thinking and constantly searching for the positive will reveal to you that life, it turns out, has more positive moments.
By writing down everything, even the most insignificant achievements, you will raise your self-esteem and learn to find positive things even in mistakes and troubles. After all, thanks to failures we gain invaluable experience.
What is the best thing to write down?
You keep a diary for yourself, because there are no restrictions on what you write there. Desires come true, pleasant moments that lifted your spirits, compliments, even a great time spent in idleness - write everything that gives you pleasant feelings. For example, you overcame some of your complexes, learned something new, signed up for a gym, increased your profits, forgave your offender, helped your neighbor, left your comfort zone, prepared a new dish.
In your diary, thank people who have done something good for you, thank yourself for being such a great person. Let this be a diary of success and gratitude - it will help you become not only more confident in yourself, but also friendlier, and will attract new interesting people into your circle.
Success Diary Template
If you still don’t know how to keep a success diary, where to start, you can take this example as an example:
Template in Google Sheet Gradually, you will become comfortable in recognizing your merits and will be able to easily notice the positive moments in life, without relying on any success diary templates.
A little history or how a diary helps deal with stress
An interesting fact: at the moment, about six thousand personal diaries of people, famous and not so famous, written from the mid-8th century to the present day, are presented in the public sphere. And 450 of them are diaries kept by residents of besieged Leningrad. For many of them, the diary became a kind of antidepressant in conditions of constant danger and uncertainty.
To be fair, let us clarify that the recommendations to keep a diary were voiced by the leaders of the besieged city. Was this done out of concern for the mental health of the townspeople, or out of a desire to preserve as much evidence as possible of a truly unique historical situation for future research? In any case, this practice has borne fruit in both directions.
Psychologists have long recommended pouring out your thoughts and experiences on paper for a variety of reasons. This helps, firstly, to more clearly formulate your thoughts and understand yourself, your true desires and aspirations. Secondly, by sharing emotions with paper, a person relieves himself of a significant amount of stress, which is good for health. However, the functions of the diary are not limited to this.
How to start keeping a success diary
Buy a nice notebook or notebook with a lot of pages. Write “Success Diary” or “Journal of My Achievements” on it. You can even paste your photo - this will make the diary even more personal.
It will be good if at the very beginning you describe your motivations, why you started keeping a success diary, and what goals you want to achieve. You can also record achievements electronically by creating a digital diary. The main thing is to start without delay, right today, without waiting for some global events that can be recorded first in the journal.
Summarize your results for the week, month and year. Choose your top 5 accomplishments for the week, then the month, and then the year. You will again feel pleasant emotions from previously experienced successes and will be surprised at how much you have already been able to accomplish.
Rules for keeping a diary
Stock up on multi-colored markers, pens, and pencils with which you will highlight and mark achievements that are especially important to you. Make your journal colorful so that you enjoy holding it in your hands and looking at it. To get the most out of keeping a diary, follow these rules:
- Make notes daily, otherwise you will not make progress. By recording achievements once every 3-4 days, you will miss many positive moments; they will simply be “erased” from your memory. And such irregular feeding will not be enough for the brain, so you will not feel any progress either in your attitude or in life.
- Write down your progress in the evening before bed or throughout the day. The second option is even more preferable, because this way you won’t miss a single positive moment.
- Carry a small notebook with you so you can take notes wherever you go. Thanks to this, you can immediately enter into it an idea or a goal that has arisen in your mind. In the evening, you will simply rewrite these entries in your success diary.
- Don't keep your achievement notebook in plain sight, keep your notes private.
- The minimum number of entries is 5 per day. Gradually, you will begin to record more and more successful cases. Structure them, highlight the most important and important things in color - this will improve perception.
You can divide the areas of life into separate categories: “family”, “health”, “career”, “habits”. This way you will see which area lacks your attention, and you will be able to develop it more fully.
