Making habits, in this way I kind of feel bad for the kiddos. We experiment alot. But when you think about it aren’t we all a bit of an experiment?

Creating habits is hard. But it helps when you have others that support you. This year for Christmas my kids received a journal. Yes they have had journals before, but this one was given with a specific intent. To give them a place to write their good thing for the day. The good thing for the day habit started probably 5 years ago, and I really don’t remember where I first saw the idea. The concept is every day to write down a thing that was good from the day. The ‘thing’ could be something that was good, a blessing, or something that you are thankful for. We strive to do it every day by putting the “thing” down on a post-it and then put it in a jar. Then at the end of the year, pull out some and read them. Do you have any idea how many post-it accumulate for 5 people over a year? It’s a lot! We had to find a better solution. Now that the kids are older a journal made perfect sense. In the front of the journal is a note that says.

“Use this journal to write down your good thing for the day. Also, consider what went good, what could have gone better, what did I learn and what can I change. I love you. Never stop growing or learning. Now go be amazing love MOM…”

Magically we have a spot for the good thing for the day, and now we are reflecting on the day, so we can try again tomorrow.

What went good?

I chose those questions purposefully. “what went good?” We need to reflect on what actually went well. Honestly some days it could be that God allowed you to wake up. Even if that’s the only thing, it’s something. Good happens every day, we need to be intentional in finding the good and being thankful. Being thankful goes along with gratitude and being grateful for the little things is important.

What could have gone better?

“What could have gone better?” This is important. This actually isn’t about negativity at all. It’s about learning. And understanding what we can control and what we can’t. This is going to be a simple example. So say my “thing” that could have gone better was that my feet got soaked going in to work and now I have blisters on my feet. So wear rain boots next time right. Possibly, but let’s look deeper.

  • Why did my feet get wet?
    • It was raining and I stepped in a puddle – can I control the weather? No. Can I control the puddle? In most cases no.
  • Why did I step in the puddle?
    • I wasn’t paying attention to where I was walking. Ah, can I control my attention, Yes! ( I have ADD with inattention) Yes, I can control my attention!
  • Why wasn’t I paying attention?
    • I was in a hurry because I was late
  • Why was I late? So now we can get to something I can control, maybe I hit the snooze button too many times, yes it has happened. Maybe I got stuck in traffic (need to keep asking why). Maybe it was we didn’t get our things together the night before.

My point here is that we ask the question “why” until we arrive at a problem that we can solve. We own our fallibility. I can’t take credit for this technique, it stems from my problem-solving training using a technique called “5-Why’s” (credit to Sakichi Toyoda who is considered the author of this technique”

If we can do this for little things then we can learn to do this for the big things.

“What did I learn and what can I change”

This is the learning step, this is where we reflect on the day about what we learned, and what we would like to do differently tomorrow. It is extremely important that we continue to grow and get better at being us, at understanding us, who we are and what we do. In a way, we are setting mini-goals for ourselves every day.

This has become a daily habit for us. So with that, we shall try again tomorrow.