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Cheerful Retrospection

I like this twist on a key element of the bullet journal. For years, I’ve written down one thing that happened to me that day. Or one thing that happened in general. But Austin Kleon puts a twist on it, pulling an idea from Nicholson Baker.

He calls it cheerful retrospection: Asking yourself “What is the best thing that happened to you yesterday?” Our brain is super good at focusing on the negative. We don’t forget bad things easily. But asking yourself to choose something positive, no matter how small, means that you’re training your brain to notice good things, too.

Maybe those moments didn’t impact your life as much — or maybe they did — but the point is to not allow them to float into the ether. Trust that you’ll record the upsetting things, too, and force yourself to come up with one good thing.

What was the best thing that happened to you yesterday?

2 comments

1 Phoenix { 06.28.22 at 10:52 am }

Last night I wrote in my journal all of the things I got done yesterday. It wasn’t anything exciting (laundry, grocery shopping, schoolwork, phone calls, etc.), but I felt really proud of myself. There have been years of my life where I was so depressed that doing even one of those tasks was insurmountable. So the best thing that happened to me yesterday, despite all that’s bad, was I was functioning, maintaining, and managing life. No small feat!!

2 loribeth { 07.03.22 at 5:26 pm }

I like that idea! We didn’t really do a lot yesterday, so I had to think a minute… probably the best thing was that I was on a group Zoom call that had the potential for a lot of tension but actually wound up being pretty good. It’s always nice when things turn out better than expected! 🙂

The best thing today is mild temperatures but NO HUMIDITY, and having the balcony door open all day! 🙂

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