00:01 Hi, this is Katie and thank you for joining me on the My Senses, My Space podcast. And this is a podcast about feeling the world intensely, evaluating and processing your needs and planning your space and life to fit you.
00:16 Today I wanted to talk about reflection. And taking time to reflect upon your life. It's hard. It's hard to in these busy times, I guess we're always busy.
00:35 Is there a time to slow down? I hope so. I really hope so for you.. During busy times, it can be very hard to take a pause and look back.
00:48 This is something I have learned from, to me, it, it was more of a practice that I formulated these past couple years.
01:01 By using the Moxie Life Planner, and this is not like, I don't have an affiliate link right here or anything, but the process of going through every week and at the end of the week, looking back and reflecting upon how that week went, was, was a jank, was a gank.
01:21 Aim changer for me. And sometimes I, And this was a game changer for me. So I would use their pages so they have like a week that you can plan out your week.
01:55 And then they have two pages, one side where you can go through and kind of, Note how things like the good things that happened or things that you need to adjust for the next week.
02:08 And then you can go ahead and plan for the next week. And I know some of our audience here is like, I don't plan.
02:18 It's really hard for me to plan. And I don't think that you necessarily, necessarily have to have a certain planner or that you have to plan out for the week or the month or way ahead.
02:29 But we do have to set appointments and we do have to have some kind of plan of when we're going to eat and when we are going to sleep and the very basic.
02:41 And I think it is appropriate to start small, to start small, to go that small, especially if you're just like, I am completely overwhelmed by life right now.
02:54 Look at the day. Just look at the day. And that's it. And add a lot of buffer space to your day.
03:02 Too, especially if you're feeling overwhelmed. Like, it's really important to have that flexibility throughout the day. So as I was using my planner the Moxie Life 1, I also added in another planner.
03:21 It's more of a journal. And for me, I have memory issues. My neurodivergency is like, I don't like to put a certain label on it, but I have trouble remembering what happened the day before.
03:38 So for me, it's really important to jot down just some highlights. Just so I can, like, remember what day was what as I look back.
03:48 And every evening, I'll, like, take out my journal. And it's, it's kind of a planner, but I use it. It's has, like, horizontal lines so I can kind of journal in it.
04:00 And I hit, you know, what I'm grateful for. Although I look at it more as what went really well. What is kind of my highlight reel of the day?
04:13 What are my wins? But I, I also need to kind of jot down. Well, what really didn't work as well.
04:19 So in that evening, and you can do this the next. Morning, it's, it's up to you. But for me to be within that day, like once I go to sleep, I forget a lot.
04:30 So doing it at the end of the day to capture those moments and go, okay, I, I'm looking upon this day and looking at it as morally neutral, like.
04:43 There is no, this is better than this or how dare I do this or get down on myself about this.
04:52 This is just what happened. This is me observing and seeing things that worked and seeing things that didn't work. And I'm not like, looking at it.
05:03 Being at this as like, oh, I have to fine tune this and I have to like optimize myself every night.
05:09 It's not that. But as I capture these moments and especially like these moments with my son, you know, as he's growing up and seeing us as a family right now.
05:24 . It's important to me to kind of just reflect, take that moment to kind of reflect. Because I can look back on these a month from now and go, oh, that's how I was that last month.
05:39 And look at where I am now because for me, it's hard to tell. Where the progress is, if like, it's hard to put on a graph or a chart, your life, like growth, like the growth is happening.
06:00 Like, you can put social media. Numbers down or like business sales down or something like that, or you can, you know, balance or chart your bank accounts, whatever.
06:14 Those are arbitrary numbers, right? They live in their own little worlds, but your worth and your growth, there is no chart for that.
06:23 It is. Your experience and it's a beautiful one. And it's also really interesting to look back at time passing and seeing how you are growing because, you know, a year from now, I'll be like, oh, is that how I was?
06:44 This time of year? I didn't remember that. So reflection can also bring this, like, you may want to drift into, like, comparison of, like, oh, I didn't know better.
07:02 How, like, cringe, you know, I, And just embarrassed by that person in the past, but if there isn't a little bit of cringe, then you aren't really kind of growing, right?
07:15 There isn't, It's okay to kind of feel that way about your former self. But then in the process of reflection, that's when you go, Oh, well, I did the best I could then.
07:28 I don't have to look at that as cringe, right? Or cringeworthy, or just kind of have this uncomfortable feeling.. In the process of reflecting is the self-compassion as well.
07:43 I'm saying, Yeah, that's the best I can do. And I don't have to expect the world from me, and I can see that little minute steps along the way can bring this beautiful growth in my life.
08:00 That the smallest little things. And then sometimes, yeah, there's these leaps where, you're processing information and you're going, oh, wow, now I kind of can embody that value now.
08:13 Because as we learn, we learn how to embody our values and take those steps to go, okay, no, this is how I'm going to act in the world.
08:23 And this is how I'm going to, I'm going to leave my life. But if we aren't reflecting on where we've been, then how do we know we're growing?
08:33 I think we can feel it. I think we can have this innate sense of going, okay, I am different from a year ago.
08:38 But I love to go deep. I love to be introspective and I love to, kind of think about how things were and then think about how things can be in the future.
08:51 And I don't know how the future's gonna be. I don't know. Which is exciting and a little terrifying. But I think that's how life goes.
09:04 So, I have my own ways of reflecting daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and I enjoy that. And for some, that's overwhelming.
09:17 And I would say, if it's overwhelming, don't force yourself to do any of this. But if you are in, interested in starting some reflective techniques you can start as soon as like, oh, how did my morning go?
09:35 If it's afternoon, right? Or at the end of the evening, just kind of go, oh, how did my day go?
09:40 And you don't have to write a single thing down. It's the practice of just kind of looking back. It's, that pause and just kind of looking and taking this observational view where it's not good or bad.
09:58 What happened? It just is what happened. And if that's too much, if there's something that like really, was super emotional that day, then don't go there.
10:10 Try it the next day. Try it at a different time. You don't have to. There are, There's no rules to this.
10:18 And as you do start reflecting and taking that time, you're giving yourself space. To look at yourself and go, I'm really cool, aren't I?
10:32 I'm really this amazing human being who's doing amazing things, who comes up across amazing challenges and has, There are hardships.
10:46 There are hard things that come along and there's hard things that we're all dealing with. And the scales aren't equal.
10:54 The scale of each, you know, thing that happens to you as an equal. And the scales of society are not equal.
11:03 And I'm not going to pretend that they are. All I can do is look at my own life and way what is the most important thing.
11:15 And as I reflect upon it, how can I show up in my values and show up in the way that I want to?
11:24 And for me, that it's that process of, reflection, that process of processing my emotions and how I felt. It may be that you need to reevaluate or reconnect to some of those emotions that happened earlier in the day or the week and actually process them, cry about it, be angry about it, be happy about
11:46 it. Our bodies sometimes can't contain all that energy of those emotions in that time and you have to revisit it and re have everything kind of bubble back up in a safe environment.
12:00 Many times where I would go to school or I know this with my son going to school, there's just so- much emotion during the day.
12:09 You can come home and just break down because you're taking off your mask. Especially with neurodivergent people, it's just, it can be so hard to just put on masks throughout the day.
12:25 And when you come home, you can just whew. Let it down and there can be a lot of emotions there.
12:32 And then after we can have those emotions, we can look back more objectively and go, okay, these things happen. And what can I do tomorrow to help myself or to, just allow this processing to happen in these breaks, in the evenings, whether they're on the weekends or whatever it is.
12:58 Where can I allow this reflection to happen in my life? So I'll leave you with that and. And I reflect upon this time that I get to share my feelings here with you as a really special space and a way for me to process my own thoughts and feelings.
13:21 So thank you for listening and I will catch you next time on the My Senses, My Space Podcast.