Journaling to Optimize Your Life via an Evening Review

By: Reese S

We all want to “live our best life.” One tool I might suggest you experiment with, to help do so, is an evening review. Sounds rather glamorous doesn’t it? 😊 Not really, however, it can be an extremely powerful tool for transformation.

The purpose of a daily, cyclic, evening review is help process the stream of life, and to optimize it as best we can. With a daily evening review, you can craft your very own character upgrades, over time, and identify recurring situations (life events) that are perhaps holding you back from your best life. Then plan actions or mental models to overcome those circumstances. An evening review can also help you to slow down and take time out from the busy-ness of your life to focus on - yourself.

There is no hard, right or wrong way to construct an evening review. That said, there are elements that have been leveraged in the past to help individuals advance upon the spiritual path and live their best lives.

There are a lot of systems for setting goals for the year, such as a new year’s practice that can include goals for the year. In order to accomplish goals in life I’ve always found it to be valuable to write them down and continuously visualize what we are looking to achieve. A daily reflection on your goals can help direct your life towards accomplishment, yet of course we must recognize that life, may sometimes have other plans for us. Still let’s focus on what we would like to achieve!

One way to help direct your life towards accomplishment, is to get ahead of the day by forecasting the energies that you may encounter. Tarot cards, or oracles cards, can provide a way to get ahead of the day before it unfolds. My recommendation is to shuffle the cards and put “your energy” into them and, for the inner child in me, I like to say “Today’s energy is brought to me by…” then pick a card. The card value goes towards the top of my evening review. I read the interpretations in the booklet ponder how it applies to my life and it helps me be prepared for what they day may bring. In the evening I look for signs throughout the day that the card may have indicated. This is not just hocus pocus stuff, but an established system for hundreds of years.

Character building is an important aspect of evening reviews and spiritual growth. According to the wisdom traditions there are two character-building elements that can nicely snap into an evening review; vices and virtues.

Vices: we all have qualities about ourselves that we would like to improve, or frankly, wish were not present. Acknowledgement of our own vices is a first step in overcoming them. Sometimes, we eat too much, sometimes we don’t treat others very nicely, sometimes we don’t share. We could create an entire module around vices, but for now perhaps pick 1 – 3 aspects of yourself that you would like to improve and include them in your evening review.

I should note, the vices I had in my evening review 200 days ago are not the exact same vices I have on my evening review today. By continuously working on them I have been able to remove a few from my review process. And I am fortunate enough to have them replaced with new vices to overcome ;-) Vice, vice baby too cold.

Virtues: Let’s warm things up a bit. We all have within us virtuous assets or capabilities. And we all, likely would like to develop more virtuous skills or find ourselves in situations where we can lean into our virtues more often. Documenting our virtues is a good reminder about the value and contributions you bring to the world. Focusing on a new virtue that you would like to develop is a good reminder for the choices we can make throughout the day(s) to get there.

Proposed Questions for an Evening Review

The following are a handful of questions that I have found to be useful in my evening review practice. You are welcome to accept them, remove them, or create questions that are most helpful for you and where you are at in your life.

What did I do that went well today?

·       This one is easy, share what you enjoyed

·       Perhaps you had a goal for the day, helping a family member or friend, nailing that one task at work, not reaching for that extra cookie

·       Maybe you did, like nothing, and just took a well-deserved break

·       Write it down and you can be appreciative for the goodness

What did not go so well?

·       There are plenty of things that cannot go so good on a daily basis

·       This can be an opportunity to vent

·       Perhaps venting here can help you to manage the intensity of your venting to others

·       Accept that you will not always live up to your own expectations – it’s okay, we can do better tomorrow

How could I do better tomorrow, or in this situation in the future?

·       Oh, if I come across the same situation tomorrow, maybe I would take a deep breath and approach it a different way

·       Maybe rehearse the words you would say differently

·       Maybe apologize

·       Maybe you did just fine, and write how you can take it to the next level tomorrow

How did you relate today?

·       You could comment on each of the primary relationships you had today with your fellow humans

·       What about your relationship with yourself

·       Were you in harmony relating to your environment

·       Life is a continuous cycle of energetic relationships, you have the freedom to cover whatever you like here

Are there any relationships you would like to improve? With whom / what and how might you do so?

·       Sometimes, that one person, that one thing keeps coming up

·       Are you in a healthy relationship in the first place

·       What common ground can find and can you build on it

·       Can you offer more grace

·       Can you make different choices

As you work through these questions, over days, months, potentially years, you will find that the things you start with gradually evolve over time as you continue to work with your evening review. This is a sign of growth, development and character building. Be patient with it, and with yourself. Patience is a virtue, and it can be so challenging to accept the speed of life, or lifetimes.

The most simple tool you can use for an evening review is a traditional hand-written journal. There is a certain aesthetic to a classic journal, the pen flows quite naturally and they feel very private. And yet we live in a digital age and the life hack I might consider is to use the Notes function on your mobile device. With your mobile device you can quickly dictate your evening review, it provides a nice date structure and you can reference previous reviews via search function. So, what you might want to do is outline an evening review structure and pin it to the top of your notes, then copy and paste the outline each day to fill in and reflect.

Suggested Evening Review Outline

·       Goals for the year, for the day

·       Tarot / Oracle card for the day

·       Vices to overcome

·       Virtuous skills to develop

·       What did I do that went well today?

·       What did not go so well?

·       How could I do better tomorrow, or in this situation in the future?

·       How did you relate today?

·       Are there any relationships you would like to improve? With whom / what and how might you do so?

·       Contemplation on the day

·       Light meditation

By all means you can customize this outline as you see fit, we all must be responsible for our own path on Earth, and if there are specific elements missing, or ones that do not resonate, then that’s part of the fun of crafting your own evening review tools.

For those of you who like a challenge, see if you can manage your evening review for the next 49 days straight. If you don’t like challenges, then just give it a go today and see what you think.

But please be kind to yourself, if you don’t journal every evening, it’s not the end of the world. I must admit, sometimes my days are filled with so much life, the journal just feels like one more thing to do, and yet I revisit the practice, for I have seen how it helps to make me a better person and to help me to direct my life.

May you all live - your – best - life.