Future Self

I just cannot get enough of Jenn Im - I just watched her most recent Youtube video and she mentioned again her future self journalling so I decided why the heck not. It'll also help me achieve my goal of wanting to learn and grow to become a better person. 

For future self journalling, these are the questions Jenn answers herself

1. My daily affirmation
2. Today I will focus on shifting my pattern of... 
3. I am grateful for...
4. Three traits my future self will have are...
5. The person I'm becoming will experience more...
6. I have the opportunity to be my future self today when I...
7. When I think about the person I'm becoming I feel...

She talked about how this is a form of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy where you reverse bad habits, and although not explicitly stated, through such manifestation you are able to grow out of these bad habits and become a better person. 

To hold myself accountable as well as manifest my future self and maybe inspire you to do some form of future self journalling or just work towards being a better version of you, I have listed the traits that I want to improve on. 

Communication

Communication is key. This is a lesson that has become more prominent in my life over the past few years and I am making it a priority to tackle it more than I have previously. Communication is so important in your relationships as nothing is going to change if you don't voice your concerns and/or what you don't like. However, in saying that, it is equally as important to learn not to just communicate your thoughts and feelings, but to communicate effectively and in a way that allows the relationship to move forward. When I voice my concerns/dislikes I want to do it in a way that doesn't attack the other person and instead, voice them and show my want to be able to resolve the issue to improve the quality of the relationship. 

Patience

I have recently discovered that particularly in high stress situations I am very emotional and reactive and has lead to me doing or saying things that I don't mean/regret. Obviously, that is something that I want to change as I don't want to hurt people intentionally and/or for the sake of it and I want to live a life of no regrets. In order to become a more patient person, I'm not exactly sure what this looks like at the time of writing this but I want to be able to be better at thinking about my words and actions - will they add positivity to the world? will they hurt someone intentionally or not? before I speak and act. Even now, I'm still not the best at being patient in this sense but I am determined at working towards it. 

Compassionate 

I am a very sympathetic person, I've recently grown to be more empathetic and a teeny tiny bit compassionate. It's not official, I'm not a professional but sometimes I make it seem that the whole world revolves around me as described in protagonist syndrome. When something needs to get off of my chest, I'm the type of person to just rant about it whilst my ex-friend is the type that needed to be asked and checked up on which I was pretty bad at and whilst I was improving at that, there was always room for more. I recently became close to someone as we share similar experiences and feelings and when giving her advice, I talk a lot about my situation because it's so similar and want to help her get through this time of her life without making the same mistakes as I did and showing her that things will get better. Whilst she doesn't view it as me directing the conversation to myself I still feel that way and through this friendship I have found myself improving and being more empathetic but I want to take it that extra step to become more compassionate. I want to be able to make sure that at the end of their vent to ask what they need from me, or to ask if there's anything else I can do to help them.

Respectful

In my opinion, in improving my communication skills and my patience, I'll be more respectful towards others however, this is solely focusing on self-respect as this is something I've been lacking a lot recently. I've talked about this in other blog posts so I won't spend a lot of time talking about it. In establishing and enforcing boundaries, in letting go of what doesn't serve me anymore and in not caring about certain opinions about me, this is how I will build self-respect. It's a cycle, in respecting myself, I am better able to respect others' boundaries, decisions of letting me go and being more sensitive about giving my opinion about other people and in turn, people will respect these things about me too (or at least I hope so). 

Written on: 10/11/20