100 day review
If the wisdom problem is, "why don't I do what I want to do?" then the last 100 days have not been wise.
And that is because I did not set myself up to program myself. I did not carve grooves of thought into my mind.
I'm glad I've got this 100-day review program because it means I stop, review my life, and change direction. It's a mechanism for self-correction.
During the last 100 days, I did not set myself up to program my brain. I did not have the ruminations and trains of thoughts that result in the actions I wanted.
I want to exert my free will. My free will is an expression of the thoughts that are presented from my subconscious. The mechanism of exertion is to use a reflexive loop in which I can influence the conscious thoughts by creating ruminations, by carving grooves of thought into my mind, which then rise back to the surface of my consciousness.
Ruminations are the programs that run autonomously and are presented to my awareness from my deeper self. Putting thoughts into ruminations that I want means that thoughts are presented to my consciousness that are ones I want, and it biases me toward actions I want. It is carving grooves of thought into my mind.
What didn't I do these 100 days that meant my ruminations were uncontrolled?
Weekly Reflection
Meditation
Habit tracking
Weekly Reflection
My structure for a weekly reflection is:
Write what is top of mind
Reread the Key Lessons
Review each of The Problems
An hour a week on Sundays keeps my ruminations focused on what I want, how I want to be.
Writing a list of Key Lessons and rereading it each week changed my journaling from thoughts on paper to effective learning. Writing down an insight, then forgetting it and not having a process for finding that insight meant that insights were fleeting. Instead, capturing that insight on a list, then rereading that list each week means I am reminded of insights. I've had that list for years now, so I know there are lessons I've learned from years ago that I still reread. There are also insights that are no longer relevant because they helped me for a time, and I outgrew that lesson. Reading the Key Lessons each week and reviewing The Problems and their progress and tweaks focuses my ruminations, carves Key Lessons into the grooves of my mind.
Meditation
I stopped meditating because I was finding myself too meta-aware. Being constantly aware of your awareness. But I missed out on the regular practice of changing my state and reciting a mantra that became a rumination.
"I am good. Life is good. The future is good."
This rumination is calming and removes a lot of anxiety.
My reactivity also went up. Without a space between stimulus and reaction, I became more reactive. And that caused problems with relationships.
So, now I think it's a fair trade-off: more meta-awareness for carving a mantra into a groove of thought and for less reactivity.
Habit Tracking
I had a full page of habits I was tracking. Some were daily, some weekly, some monthly. So, there were a lot of habits that I didn't check off because they were infrequent, and even then, didn't get done. So I simplified them to the minimum five daily habits I wanted. While easier to do, it actually got done less because logging them was so quick that it didn't cause me to stop and think about those actions I was or wasn't doing. Logging lots of habits was another method of putting thoughts into ruminations that resulted in better actions. It's a daily review of a list of actions I want to take. Habit tracking is yet another method of carving grooves of thought about actions I want done into my mind.
100-day review
This 100-day review, I didn't go away because my sons arrived back from the US. But the moment in time that it signifies causes me to stop, review my life, ask why I haven't been doing what I want to do, and course correct. It's another method of putting thoughts into rumination, another method of carving grooves of thought into my mind. And I'm so glad I give this to myself. I am the only one looking after myself. Thank you to my past self for setting this up so I stop actions that harm myself and do more actions that help me.
Visualizing the next review
The next 100 days end on January 3rd. We will be away at the beach. On that day, I want to be able to be proud of myself and how I have exerted my free will over my life, completing the 100-day tasks of each of The Problems.
