Neelix.IO Blog

Life journey journal or personal diary?

services@neelix.io (Neelix IO Pty Ltd) — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 02:09:01 GMT

Introduction

The life journey journal is different to a traditional keeping of personal diary. Rather than the frequent entries of a diary, the life journey journal serves as a companion for easy touch introspection. Keeping a life journal is easier because it does not require micro blogging.

Imagine yourself in the years ahead. Everyone has a moment when we want to reflect on our journey - for instance at the point of graduating from school, at the moment of finding a partner for life, or other major life events. At those moments of major reflection, the life journal serves as an invaluable tool. It is precisely because a life journal is not based on microblogging, but only on occasional meaningful reflection, that it can be an insightful companion for self-reflection.

The life journey journal is an ideal tool for monitoring where you procrastinate and guiding yourself to unlearn those procrastinating habits. Main differences between a life journey journal and a diary lies in their frequency of recording, purpose, scope and the approach used to document our personal experiences:

Scope and Frequency

Diary: Requires daily diary keeping that provides a detailed journaling of events, activities, feelings and personal experiences.
Life Journey Journal: Involves less frequent journaling, such as weekly or monthly, focusing on capturing key moments and insights. It proves valuable for preserving notable moments, achievements and evaluating how we deal with procrastination. Even if you create a journal entry only once a month or so, these potent reflections will accumulate by the time you would want to reflect on a part of your life.

Purpose

Diary: Primarily serves as self-awareness organizer to manage personal development, goals tracker and helps to identify our feelings and emotions. It often includes the routine aspects of daily life.
Life Journey Journal: Serves a more reflective purpose, emphasizes thematic content, such as personal achievements, challenges, other important life events, and the evolution of life journey.

Long-Term Perspective

Diary: Tends to capture the short-term aspects of life, offering a detailed snapshot of daily experiences to motivate and overcome the obstacles.
Life Journey Journal: Takes a longer-term perspective, providing a holistic view of personal growth and depicts your journey through life.

Intentionality

Diary: Often recorded as events unfold, with a focus on capturing the present moment or collaborative work with Friends and Family .
Life Journey Journal: Plays the role of a life companion for introspection. Encourages intentional reflection and contemplation, requiring a deliberate effort to select and record significant moments and insights.

How to Get started

Neelix.IO Diary provides an enjoyable way to build your personal timeline through confidential journaling. Create your circle of trust to share experiences in a private and secure space. In summary, while a diary includes detailed entries about feelings and daily life, a life journey journal is an intentional record that encapsulates broader reflective experiences over time. Each one serves a specific purpose in documenting and the record-keeping of your life events.

Top four myths about mental health

services@neelix.io (Neelix IO Pty Ltd) — Sun, 18 Jul 2021 00:11:22 GMT

Life can be chaotic. It is not always about events disrupting your bubble, or things not working out how you hoped. Challenges tend to pop up together resulting in concerns about the lack of control. True chaos begins when doubt becomes your companion, and when easiest choices are made in the attempt to cover up some void.

Thanks to the contemporary “finger flicking” way of processing information feeds, it has become popular to think that mental health is a widespread challenge. This blog argues that the concern is misappropriated for some of us. Yes, mental issues are very serious, and people who suffer from such require our support and understanding. However, most every day battlers do not suffer from mental issues. Instead, most of us are subject to issues related to mental hygiene. This is a different matter altogether.

Let’s express this idea through the top four myths.

Myth #1 : (Mental) Health is what you are trying to fix

When thinking about mental health, the word “health” can be misleading. Assuming you are not the unfortunate one suffering from some real disorder, being unwell may be an outcome of something else. Hence, it is only fair to contemplate and appreciate what that something else truly is.

Chaos of life is a stream of events that hit us as meteor showers. If you do not have skills to duck and handle those hits, then the outcome is inevitable.

Some people are naturally good at developing skills of controlling their own space , others could use a coach and a mentor. It is a mistake to hope for a short term treatment that can put you back in a safe zone. At the end of the day, it is the individual who has to develop the necessary skills for handling the chaos.

The conclusion here is to stop overthinking the mental health aspect. Wondering about the unfairness of the world and “what am I doing wrong” are detractions. If mental health were to be thought of in such generic terms, then it is really the whole of humanity that is screwed up, at this point of time. Within that context, you are probably doing very well. We should snap out of aliking and belittling mental health to the common cold. Coming back to the analogy of mental health vs mental hygiene, our current society is a bit of a rubbish disposal site from more than just an ecological perspective. Living in such a place under equipped and breathing in the fumes of mediocrity will certainly damage one’s health. Change can only come if we take more than one step back in conversations across a full spectrum of topics.

The solution may be to search for an emotionally mature person who can be your sounding board - someone in your circle, a good counsellor, and do not discount yourself as an inner coach. The only real source of strength is from within. You simply need a pattern for managing emotions, making choices, and possibly an inner “parole officer” for staying on the right path.

Myth #2 : Self-reflection solves problems

Systemic help is the one that people seek when facing spiralling issues. In this context, introspection and self-reflection are fundamental patterns. They are great at enabling one to see the forest for the trees, and making things less chaotic. This sort of inspection does not, however, always lead to a better state of mind. It is quite easy to do self reflection the wrong way .

A skill to reflect on one's own journey, qualities and experiences is important for establishing a system of coordinates. The idea is to remove coloured lenses that affect the perception of reality. This process is about being brutally honest about who you are and where you are.

The challenge is that self-reflection can turn into self lambasting. If you are already under pressure, do not self-reflect by yourself. Find a good person who can help you stay balanced - just do not expect that person to always nod. A single “no” can be worth a thousand of “yes’s”.

Myth #3 : You need to take it seriously

As a segway from myths number one and number two, some people get caught into a trap of contemplating the value of it all. Given the label of “mental health”, the tendency is to approach this seriously. The spiral is perpetuated when you wind yourself up by reading too many social feed posts or by developing maximalist conclusions.

Repeating a theme from above, if you are in a camp who believes the whole world is kind of crazy, then you are relatively healthy. The trick with managing related unwellness is about not treating yourself, or the world for that matter, too seriously.

Serious contemplation is not a taboo, but it has its place with a philosophical lens only. It may be useful to tip toe into such topics as educational safari trips into philosophy of Absurdism . Use humour as an antidote against developing maximalist views. “Most terrible things in the world have been done by men with serious faces” .

Myth #4 : You need a new routine

There is a lot of advice about keeping oneself happier - some of it is good, and some is just a click-bait noise. It is easy to feel that some routine is being pushed into your life. The suggestion is to stay away from routines that can turn into a religion of false hopes. These hopes, in turn, will force you to wear coloured glasses that distort reality.

There are skills and tricks on how to stay most honest. All of those are about substance, and not about some cadence or a very particular way of doing things. Someone who contemplates on things only once a year, can come up with more meaningful changes in their life as compared to another person who is driven to micro-blog. “I is the hardest word to define” - John Green (Turtles All The Way Down). Don’t rush. Taking your own time and avoiding fads will make you happier.

Art by VarLa

I truly understand why you feel that way. Dealing with misunderstandings.

services@neelix.io (Neelix IO Pty Ltd) — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 03:41:07 GMT

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” - George Bernard Shaw.

Our daily lives are filled with many battles, many of which are constant themes that we accept as part of human nature. Misunderstandings are as old as anything else in this regard. Each of us develop our own ways of dealing or surviving with such an unfortunate trait. Does it really have to be as persistent and unsolvable? The answer is not as complex or as philosophical in comparison to how deep this infiltrated our culture.

It is all about the amplitude of emotions and how different people deal with them.

Our balance gets displaced by opposing forces - intensity of our lives on one side, and resignation of various status quo on the other. This curve, if zoomed in, is made up of communication and event points. Verbalised communication is a lottery game that often starts with miscommunication. People deal with this roller coaster in different ways. Some of us become super tough, and even cold. Others feel that the weight of life is even greater than what is perceived as fair.

Resolving miscommunication at a pinpoint of time, in order to achieve an outcome from a specific task, is a specific skill and an expenditure of patience. The real issue with the whole topic is that building up the skill and emotional bank balance requires taking a few steps back.

Communicating with others should be thought of as an exercise of crossing the river. It is not right to expect for the end point of river-crossing to be at precisely the same longitude as the start . Under surface currents and rocks will change your destination. Truly problematic misunderstandings are the ones where two parties converse about relative points without appreciating, or accepting reality factors, if they actually were to undertake the full journey.

How does one develop the skill of passing communication river-crossing? One of the better ways is to practice retrospectives. Self-reflective discussion with partners is an under-appreciated pattern. Retrospective exercise is just as applicable, and powerful, to perform for oneself.

The secret is to avoid turning retrospectives into a complaints galore. Some dive into these reflections in order to complain about the underwater stones and general unhappiness of currents. These are the scenarios where the change will remain as illusion, and misunderstanding will remain as real. Retrospective is actually a practice in appreciating larger perspectives. It is a practice in having a conversation with the aim of finding a balanced projected conclusion. If you focus on conversation, rather than a winning argument process, then it is possible to arrive at saying - “I truly understand why you feel that way”.

Misunderstandings do not need to be growing into stalagmites. Humans are a lazy bunch, as we have been letting those emotional drips grow into socio-economic insurmountable formations. At the same time, we are good at doing a regular tooth cleaning (so that we can have more cake and look beautiful?). Let’s use meaningful conversation and perception focused retrospectives in order to improve the cleanliness and beauty of our minds.

Purpose of self-reflection. How personal diaries work.

services@neelix.io (Neelix IO Pty Ltd) — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 03:39:32 GMT

Why to engage in self-reflection practices by meditation and journaling? This blog is written for those who ask about the meaning of diaries and self-reflection. Diaries can be immensely helpful. However, diaries are useful only if two conditions are fulfilled. Firstly, you need to be doing it for reasons of self-reflection (self-reflection is outlined later in this post). The other intention is to explore causality. Life does not change if you just do something mechanically.

Before discussing self-reflection and what you write into a diary, let us paint an abstract picture about why some of us need a diary more than others.

We are all different. Some have a strong core and an enlightenment of sorts. Such folks ride the waves of life and are instinctively aware of the bigger picture. The other type of people are more of a body surfer type. There is a sense that some progression to the next level is yet to happen. If you are feeling tired from life, and even feel like a ball in a Pinball machine, then you are a body surfer. Waves of challenges probably knocked you around a bit. Unfortunately, it is not possible just to give a floating device to someone. Also, it is not possible to transfer that sense of the bigger picture. Be realistic about the limitations of fads, isms or promises of success sold for money. For some, a compassionate counsellor can certainly be very helpful. However, you will need to do some real work.

When it comes to diaries, write anything into it, provided it is brutally honest - daily experiences, notes about personal or professional relationships, food satisfaction, leisure, addictions, feelings about life, find some examples. Posts can be very short or blog like. It is also useful to complement reflective writing with a picture, humour or a meme - this helps to relay emotional charge. As a combination, these diary posts form a stream of experiences. There is no obligation to make daily or intra-day records. Do it as frequently as it is comfortable for the way your life is organised. Do not get addicted to diary posting either...

Individually, these observations have relatively low value. In order to enable the bigger picture, you need to track impact and link experience categories to your post.

Here is an example of one short diary entry.

Post : “Played tennis with a random stranger today. Wow, it is not as scary to step outside boundaries. There are really nice and interesting people out there to meet.”
Linked experience categories : Sport, Social Life, Health (in Neelix you create experience categories for your own context)
Impact weight : -5 (it is a soft measure used to relatively compare experience to each other; you choose the scale you like)

These diary posts build into a stream of experiences. Here are few more examples:

The point of all this is self-reflection.

Self-reflection is a process that enables you to decipher truth behind experience connections and truth about the state of yourself. It is common for people to perceive themselves in a better or worse way than what they truly are. Being wrong is part of being human. However, it is not an excuse to be wearing coloured glasses for the rest of your life.

“No legacy is so rich as honesty.” - William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well

Important part about being brutally honest in private and journaling logs, is not to treat them as avenues solely for complaints, sad stories or self-punishment. “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” - Oscar Wilde. Facing one's own demons requires a sufficiently light, innocent and even vulnerable heart. Do use The Skill of Humor as the helper (Andrew Tarvin). Self-reflection enables you to see the bigger picture.

Ability to contemplate and meditate fulfils the second object of keeping a diary - e.g. the intent to explore connections. Self-reflection expedites the acknowledgement of the Achilles heel in your character, and articulates boundaries that may be limiting you.

Please be mindful that the discovery is not going to be immediate. It is not dissimilar to staring at an abstract picture and suddenly being able to see the shape intended by the artist. Whether you think of this picture as a fluke of the universe or an intention of the maker, you still need to make a choice what to do next.

Our mind instinctively tells us to be searching for “yes” answers to many questions. Confirmation bias is all around us. This is like light pollution in big cities that stops us from seeing stars and dreaming of something bigger.

Armed with self-reflection, you should be searching for the “no” answer. One “no” is worth a thousand of “yeses”. It is unrealistic to change everything in our life. However, changing just one thing can dramatically turn many things around.

Once you are able to embark on the journey of change, start setting and tracking goals. Make sure you don't become a failed resolutions statistic - read more in this blog. As it is with diary entries, do not shy away from tracking anything meaningful and do pay attention to how one habit may be interacting with some other - for instance coffee consumption vs going to bed early vs achieving some other goals.

Neelix.IO social mission is to enable meaningful self-reflection of personal lives, as well as within family, groups of friends, teams or communities. Try it out today .

Don't be a failed resolutions statistic. Be selective with goals and self-reflection partners.

services@neelix.io (Neelix IO Pty Ltd) — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 03:29:52 GMT

Keep moving forward

Resolutions fail because we make and manage them with an implied time box. This means there is a subconscious “give up” clause. The proposition is that resolutions are worth making only if you are making them for life. All other intentions should remain as such for some time - if some work out, then you could promote them to a status of a resolution.

Success is about continuing with a challenge despite any gaps or even interim setbacks. Weakness only exists when you are conversing with your own self-pity, self-flagellation, self-regret. If this is you and those abstract participants, then change the company. It is easier said than done when there is someone or something in real life that is draining your energy away. Just remember - you are not alone! The light will shine through.

The most assured thing in life is change. Resolutions succeed when you embrace the change to its deepest possible implications and approach this with a completely open mind. In order to stay in control of such a process, you need

Ability to plot the path and treat data points with extreme hygiene in a private, self-reflecting environment

Be prepared to stop-start

Ability to visualise the causality

The choice of the right conversation opponent is yours - hopefully it is the projected stronger and happier self. Resolutions and goals tracking in Neelix is anchored on the concept of experience relationships and causality. You can map a non-linear path towards reaching a goal.

“If you can’t fly then run,

if you can’t run then walk,

if you can’t walk then crawl,

but whatever you do

you have to keep moving forward.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

Why should I care?

services@neelix.io (Neelix IO Pty Ltd) — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 03:19:44 GMT

Why should I care, if my life is already organised and everything is moving on the rails? This is a fair response when talking about self-reflection.

The answer may fluctuate through time for the same person. In short, your personal experience may matter to at least one other person. It is simply a matter of time and context. Even if there is nothing to evolve for your personal ways, it is not a bad idea to keep an open mind about how you can directly or indirectly help others.

Do not constrain the possibilities of extending your reach based on criteria being an introvert or extrovert, mature or younger. It may be instinctive to think about the effect on others through a lens of mentorship. Some of us may bulk at the idea for a multitude of reasons. The idea is to remain unassuming as to how, when and why the comfort zone might get stretched, even if it is by exception. Therefore, it is not about thinking of oneself as a mentor “on a mission”. Also, it is not necessarily about skills, or the self-confidence about “who am I to mentor?”. People need a non-imposing sounding board communicating back through humility.

Being available for someone, or taking up a more formal mentorship, is not a privilege or power. It is a service. In fact, learning more about yourself is part of the journey. Never say never to a possibility of learning.

The unassuming approach to help someone calls for unassuming helpers. Neelix philosophy is based on the premise that keeping a private diary or inspecting themes should not be an overhead or a must. Ahoc self-reflection is perfectly fine. At the end of the day it is more about intent than ritual. For instance, one of the people you care about might be helped by building up internal strength with a help of a private diary and some guidance at a particular juncture of their life.

Over a longer time span, adhoc capture of experiences also carries a fun factor. Getting together for some event can feature a momentary glance at info-graphics in order to visualise a collective or individualised journey to date. This check point can add an extra dimension to family or friends gathering, school reunion, team celebrations, etc.

Understanding what makes our family tick - achieving better appreciation and sync-up

services@neelix.io (Neelix IO Pty Ltd) — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 03:16:07 GMT

A picture is worth a thousand words

Real life requires self-reflection within a private context. Syncing up with people close to you is all about relationships and conversations. Neelix is a digital companion designed to enhance your conversations and joint discovery of subtle trends. It is common enough for people to hope you are attentive to feelings and states that may be hard for them to express in words.

Setup a private consortium for your circle and use it as the helper in understanding perspectives, or simply as a fun infographics point during get together events.

It is completely up to you how often to capture experiences. It can be a digital diary or it can be a much more adhoc private space. In either use case, doing a joint recap of the journey, well as searching for connections and meaning through visualisation, can uncover an extra inward dimensions. Inner strength is founded on strong self-reflections.

Private experiences journal

services@neelix.io (Neelix IO Pty Ltd) — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 03:13:52 GMT

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." - Ferris Bueller.

Personal, socioeconomic and other forces are impacting how we live. However, all these should not preclude one from finding ways to be stronger. This journey is dependent on the skill for Self-Reflective Awareness. A very honest inspection of themes happening within your life can reveal a very important inner mentor. Outside help cannot bring sufficient impact on your life without that inner voice . Best practice is to engage in self-reflections by keeping a journal, one may gain focus and clarity.

Listening to oneself requires sufficient privacy. Neelix makes this easy with the concept of a private consortium. Have fun and enjoy the coolest way of keeping a private digital diary for yourself, family, friends or team. You control themes to track. Neelix makes it easy to visualise what is happening and how one aspect of your life may be impacting others. Experience trends, retrospectives, resolutions and goals tracking will make your Digital Diary the most impactful it can be.