The one daily habit you should keep to enjoy your life more, gain self-awareness, and learn from yourself
It’s surprising how much we miss from our own lives.
We experience an infinite amount of situations and feelings every day. Some moments seem very uninteresting, while others feel memorable. Most of them are forgotten forever. I find myself repeatedly going through my collection of photos and albums on my cellphone, trying to connect with moments that felt special enough to be captured. When looking at them, though, I struggle to fully connect with the feelings and thoughts I experienced in those moments.
What if we could revisit every memorable moment we live, and learn from it, or just enjoy it again? If you feel, like I do, that life is happening too fast and we’re missing big opportunities to learn from ourselves, here's the one habit that has already changed the way I learn from my life.
January 9th, 2023
I’m on my way to my weekly padel game, driving while listening to the audiobook Storyworthy. Matthew Dicks, the author, introduces the concept of homework for life, a process by which a person can begin to find and document the stories that already exist in their lives. This process, he says, has helped many people begin to see their lives in new, more powerful ways. Practitioners report that time has slowed down for them, their lives feel more meaningful, and they feel more connected to others.
The process feels simple enough to be held daily and, at the same time, potentially transformative. The idea is that, by the end of each day, you spend around 5 minutes capturing the answer to this question:
What’s your today’s memorable moment?
The goal is to reflect and understand what made this day different from any other day. There’s always something memorable, and by only investing some minutes you can even discover things you had missed from your day. To capture the moment, you just need to write down the words that will allow you to remember it, not even full sentences. You’re not trying to write stories with this process, you’re collecting your memorable life.
January 9th, 2023, was the day I decided to start my homework for life. I opened my laptop and created a new document in my digital notebook. I called it “Jaume’s memorable life”.
Learning from your memorable life
It’s been more than a month now since I started this journey, and I’m already amazed about the impact it’s had on me.
I’ve never felt so aware of my life. By investing just some minutes every day, I’m living an unimaginable amount of eye-opening moments.
On February 2nd, for instance, I wrote:
I’m bringing to Oriol a blog post rewriting. I know there’s something still missing. The discussion in the bar brings us to a whole new way to visualize the concept of “team success”. I couldn’t feel more grateful for enjoying this thinking partnership with him.
When I wrote this, I was thinking about what made that day different from any other day. That morning conversation with Oriol, my friend and professional partner in crime at Sense On The Beach, was a very good one. It helped us improve the content of our latest post on team success.
However, If it wasn’t for this habit of capturing my memorable moments in life, I would have completely missed the one happening on February 2nd:
the moment I realized that what really matters for me isn’t what we end up doing at work, but the fact that I’m creating it with Oriol, sharing what I do with a true companion and a very enjoyable thinking partner.
I’ve had a feeling of deep gratitude for starting this journey of capturing my memorable moments several times already. I’ve learned new things about my life I’d have missed before. And it has already helped me connect more with the people around me, and surface a big amount of experiences I’m feeling grateful for.
After more than a month of practicing this habit, I’m not necessarily waiting for the end of the day anymore to capture my memorable moment. I’m starting to notice them when I’m in them, the whole process it’s making me much more aware of the experiences I live. I know, right now, sharing this with you is going to be part of my today’s memorable moment.
What’s your today’s memorable moment?
