In my past post, I walked about what feel is, and that to develop it, it helps to be more aware. If you missed that post, you can go back and read it here.
At the end of 2015 I decided I needed to be more aware of my depressive episodes. I knew they followed my period in some fashion but for the most part I would be miserable for several days until I realized my period was coming, and then I would be able to actively manage my depression. That was no longer working for me, so I made the choice to do something about it by developing awareness.
You may remember from my last post, the way my riding coach asked me “Did you feel that?” over and over until awareness had become a habit. So what I wanted to do was create an exercise where I could remind myself to be aware. I call my exercise: “Laura’s Morning Routine”. You don’t have to call it that, but you can if you like.
What I Did
Every morning for a year, I sat down and did two things:
1) I closed my eyes and I took stock of how I was feeling in that moment.
The whole exercise takes no more than five minutes. It was simply a set time for me to stop what I was doing and focus on myself for a few minutes. Since this was not something I had done before, I had no experience with what I felt like, and thus had no idea what I was supposed to be feeling.
As time went on, I began to notice when things were off my baseline. By taking stock at the same time in the same place each morning, I cut down on other variables. I got used to how I normally felt, and began to notice when things were different.
2) I rated the previous day on a scale of 1 to 5 in the categories: mind, body, and spirit.
I am a computer science major. I like beautiful, organized databases and so rating myself on a number scale worked for me. I chose body, mind, and spirit because I thought it would be interesting, then I defined each one thusly:
Body: Rated based on how much pain I was in that day. ONE was pain that got in the way of my day, THREE was how I feel normally (no pain), and FIVE was amazing. Over the course of the year I only had a few ONEs and no FIVEs. This measurement ended up being the least useful to me, but I didn’t know that when I started.
Mind: Rated based on how much chatter or negative self talk my mind was generating that day. ONE was a near constant racket, THREE was normal (not none, but manageable), FIVE were days when I was very positive, either extremely grateful and/or having lots of great story ideas.
Spirit: Rated on how much social anxiety I was dealing with. ONE were days I was withdrawn and did everything to avoid attention. THREE was normal (chatting with people when they were around). FOUR were days when I sought out interaction with people, FIVE were days when I would sing out loud with my music.
I would also make note of important events going on that I thought might influence my emotional state. This included my period.
Making your Own Exercise
I showed you what my own exercise looked like as an example and a guideline, but don’t feel the need to stick with doing everything exactly like I did it. The important points are to:
1) Set aside a time to do the exercise and try and make it happen in the same place and at the same time as often as possible. The whole idea is to get used to being more aware, so if you do it once a week it may be harder to build a habit of being aware, and if you change the time and location constantly it will be harder to build a baseline for how you feel.
2) Define your rating system so you know what it means. You can rate yourself however you want. You can have a scale from 1 to 100. You can rate yourself in .5 increments. You can rate yourself using fruits. The important thing is that you know what it means.
Please Note
Developing feel is not something you will see an immediate result from. (I did this exercise regularly for then entirety of 2016. Not saying I never missed a day, but I didn’t let myself miss many.) It is a lifelong pursuit, but then so is growing as a writer, so these things go hand in hand. I’m not telling you this to discourage you, but to encourage you. I don’t want you to try these techniques for a week or two and then think something is wrong when you’re not magically aware. It takes a bit of dedication, but the results will be worth it.
Now you may be thinking: “Okay, you’re having me gather all this data. What am I supposed to do with it. I should analyze it somehow. What if I get a ton of banana days and almost no limes. What does that mean!?” For right now I encourage you to give this a try for two weeks. Write down your data and don’t analyze it. Or at least do your best not to. Humans like to look for patterns in things and they like to know why. In my next post I’m going to talk about what you can do with the data you collect and how you can shift this exercise to help you become more aware in any facet of your life, and yes, that includes your writing.
This post is #2 of a series of three:
Post #1: The Skill of Feel
Post #3: Analyzing My Awareness
