A success diary is a powerful tool in your hands for achieving goals and overcoming difficulties. By recording your achievements and events that evoke positive emotions, you can speed up your progress towards your goals. Let's talk about how to properly keep a success diary, look at a few examples, and why everyone should make these entries.
What is a success diary
Many people note that their lives are filled with a variety of daily tasks. However, at the same time, they do not move anywhere, as if they freeze at one point without the slightest personal growth and progress. And all this happens because they are focusing on the wrong things. The human mind tends to concentrate and retain in memory negative events rather than positive ones.
Successful people have developed the habit of keeping a daily success diary - recording their achievements and positive situations. And all because they noticed: this activity consolidates and increases their achievements, helps them remember good events and pleasant moments. In difficult times, a diary of successes and achievements helps strengthen the spirit, analyze an unpleasant situation and find ways to resolve it.
The success diary is an ordinary notebook, notebook or diary (you can keep notes in electronic form). In it you note your successes at work or in school, positive emotions, compliments from friends and positive assessments from colleagues, pleasant meetings - that is, everything that lifts your spirits and brings you closer to achieving your goals.
Important! Learn to enjoy even small victories, and not just celebrate great achievements. Happiness is built from small joys. Small victories are the building blocks of great success.
Make it a rule to make at least 5 entries daily. Write down all the positive things your day has brought you: you read a book, went to the park with your children, did morning exercises (or went for a run), refused a portion of fast food, etc. Record everything you have done to become better, feel healthier and more successful.
On the pages of the diary you can write down motivational phrases, affirmations, quotes from famous people, and your revelations. This will prevent them from leaking out of your consciousness and will keep you on the right wavelength.
Finding inspiring moments to write down in your success journal is not difficult. But many people abandon this activity, believing that it does not make sense or they do not have time for it. “Everything that is ingenious is simple, and everything that is simple is brilliant.” Don't be fooled by the simplicity of the activity, there are many benefits to keeping a success diary.
What should be done
“By getting into the habit of writing down the six most important things you want to do the next day at the end of each day, you have a powerful tool for success at your disposal.”
Tom Hopkins.
Every evening, you sit down and write down all the things you want to do tomorrow. Determine the order in which things need to be done and tie them to time.
This section in my diary migrated from a regular organizer, and the story of how I came to write down upcoming tasks is as follows...
Autumn 1998. We rush to the neighboring city, located 120 km from us. The silver “OPEL” flies, rustling its wheels, and “Cocoa – cocoa – oh – oh – oh – oh...” thunders in the speakers. And everything would be fine if it weren’t for the business meeting I missed yesterday. We simply forgot about it, because there was a lot of work at the start of a new business (regional advertising and information newspaper). And this was the second puncture in the last week. The company's image had deteriorated, and it was necessary to urgently come up with something so that these failures would not be repeated in the future.
In the evening, over a cup of tea, we decided “what can be done to prevent such mistakes.” Tamara, the wife of one of us (business organizers), suggested a simple thing: “You write down what needs to be done.” The idea turned out to be simple, but at the same time very effective, we armed ourselves with organizers and began to keep notes - planning tasks for the month, week and every day.
The results of using such recordings exceeded all expectations - we became more organized, confident, efficient and more competent as businessmen. And if at the beginning we only reacted to constantly emerging problems, then with planning we began to anticipate and control the business. Since then, the “travel notebook” has been with me every day.
I noticed that some of the planned things are done as if on the way, without additional time and effort. What’s also interesting is that along with the bustle and uncertainty, anxiety disappears, and they are replaced by calmness, a sense of control, confidence and enthusiasm.
Somewhat later, I found confirmation of the effectiveness of this technique from many famous teachers. Here's what true masters of their craft, businessmen, scientists, authors and lecturers who have received worldwide recognition and specialize in achieving personal, professional and financial success think about creating a “to-do list”:
Tom Hopkins . In the book “How to Become a Master Salesman,” Tom writes: “Very few people—not more than one person in a hundred—engage in daily planning for tomorrow in order to achieve success. You have the opportunity to enter this percentage of the most intelligent applicants for success if you start using our magical technique today.”
This is followed by the following recommendations: “A professional must keep either a diary or a journal in which he notes the number of calls made to various categories of clients; time; spent on finding new buyers; the daily number of hours spent with those who can buy the product that the professional is selling.” Tom recommends using these records to analyze the current state of affairs and make decisions to improve performance results.
Tom emphasizes the importance of note-taking and once again advises: “Build time in your schedule to write down everything you do and feel, including quick notes on all aspects of your life. Keep your notes, and you will be able to analyze and find out what really helps you in your work, and what is useless for you personally.”
Robert Kiyosaki : “In my experience, the secret to doing more and doing better is to make a “To Do” list every day, keep it in front of your eyes, and use it as a guide as you walk through the day. Since the To Do list is an essential tool for helping you manage your time, let's take a closer look at it. It is extremely simple: its title is “What needs to be done,” then a list of various things that you are going to do.
Handling it is also not difficult: cross out the tasks you have completed, add new tasks if necessary, rewrite it again at the end of the day or earlier if it becomes difficult to read.
Save your lists. To do this, it is better to keep them together and not write on scattered pieces of paper that get lost. It may be better for you to write them down in one notebook, or keep these lists in a special folder.
Another important secret for handling such a list is to analyze the accumulated entries and deletions on a weekly basis.”
Brian Tracy : “Make your to-do list the night before, at the end of the work day. Include in it everything that you did not manage to complete during the current day, as well as the things you plan for tomorrow. By compiling such a list in this way, you can be sure that it will be assimilated by your subconscious throughout the night's sleep. The consequence of this is often that you wake up with big ideas that, as it turns out, can be successfully applied to your work, increasing the speed and quality of the tasks performed.”
According to Tracy, this process of planning leads to the following results: “By planning each day in advance, you will find that it is easier for you to both get started and keep it going. Things are going smoother than before. You feel more confident, and the knowledge of your own competence gives you satisfaction. Over time, you come to the conclusion that nothing can stop you.”
Every respected and authoritative leader I have seen has the habit of keeping a “diary”. Many of the successful businessmen and directors I know systematically “cultivate” and “introduce” the habit of keeping a “diary” to their employees. Basic management issues: planning, organization and control are carried out more effectively in “written form”.
Another interesting point. Even in conversations with retirees and grandparents, I noticed that those who are leaders of the family plan their next day, usually this happens before bed and in their minds.
The "What to do" method works really well. I strongly recommend - make it a part of yourself to plan tomorrow, you will feel the results today.
Conduct an experiment, try everything yourself. Before you go to bed today, make a “To Do” list for tomorrow. In the morning, if necessary, make additional adjustments to your list. Realize your plans and make a new list!
Benefits of Keeping a Success Diary
By filling out a success diary every day, you will quietly develop a lot of useful qualities that distinguish a successful, harmonious and happy person:
- The ability to think positively is a very valuable skill. Positive thoughts will displace negative ones and erase destructive attitudes that could have been embedded in the subconscious in childhood. This will not only lead to the fact that negative moments will disappear from your life, you will begin to feel more confident and filled with happiness.
- Confidence and self-esteem comes with the awareness of your success. Increasing self-esteem is necessary, since most people have incorrect attitudes about themselves and their abilities. Particularly destructive to a person is grief over one’s insignificant (from a subjective point of view) successes compared to others. A success diary will help you get rid of the bad habit of comparing yourself to others and teach you to concentrate on the steps to achieve your goals.
- Internal motivation is the most stable force that can move us towards the realization of desires. Inspiration cannot be constant; sooner or later it evaporates and then the moment of decline occurs. When despondency, apathy sets in and the desire to do anything disappears, your entries in your success diary awaken internal motivation. You will realize how far you have already come, and you will have the strength to move on.
- High self-esteem, self-respect, the presence of internal motivation - all these new qualities change you as a person and correct your worldview. You have a different attitude towards life, your surroundings, the events that happen to you. Look at all situations through the prism of positive emotions and expectations. Even in failures you see opportunities for growth. This helps us move forward where we previously gave up or gave up. As a result, you become a winner. Now you control the circumstances, and not they control you.
- Keeping a journal of successes and achievements, in which you focus exclusively on your strengths, achievements, skills and abilities, helps to attract even more successes and successful accomplishments to you. After all, we attract what we focus on.
Another advantage of keeping a success diary is organization: at first you force yourself to write notes every day, and then it becomes a habit. A skill such as organization is useful in any field. It makes getting rid of laziness much easier.
If you are depressed, lack self-confidence and have a tendency to self-blame, be sure to start keeping a success journal. No matter where you are in your life, you can qualitatively change your life for the better. The main thing is to tune your brain to the right wavelength.
Personal diary of self-discovery and success
We are unlikely to discover America if we say that successful people always do everything consciously and try to adhere to some kind of logic and pattern in any activity, even in self-knowledge. Keeping a diary in their case is no exception. Here, most successful people also adhere to certain principles - they write down:
- Any fresh, unusual, creative ideas – your own and others’. If you have a lot of ideas, you can make a draft diary following the example of Virgin Group founder Richard Branson. Only those ideas that can develop into a new project, change the business, or at least become the basis for writing an article are included in the final version.
- Any victories and successes, even small ones. It’s nice to return to such recordings in the future; they inspire you to move forward when it begins to seem like you’re doing little or standing still. By the way, such records will help you update your resume and answer an unexpected question from an HR manager about your achievements that you are proud of.
- Any signs from the outside - discovered relationships and patterns of events, changes in the behavior of others or your internal state, emotional and physical, your desire or unwillingness to do something, obstacles in the implementation of your ideas and new opportunities for development, growth, and earnings. When you accumulate a lot of such records, you will be able to predict the success or failure of your next idea no worse than a professional fortune teller.
- Any facts and events that made an impression - meetings, conversations, reports at conferences, webinars, trips, etc. For business people, recording events often goes in conjunction with the main points of the event, conclusions from what happened and heard, and outlines for the future.
- Any questions that come to mind and the answers to them. If there are no answers, you can write down the reasoning or process of finding the answer. This works especially well with issues that you really care about, whether it concerns business, work, relationships, or self-discovery.
By the way, diaries of successful people are in demand from publishers no less than writers’ diaries. Of course, they usually require additional literary processing and editing, however, being living witnesses to a success story, they are always valuable for future generations who want to achieve something in their lives.
Examples include the autobiographical books “I am a couturier” by Christian Dior, “A Star in Shock” by Sergei Zverev, “Creating a Dream” by Matsushita Konosuke, “My Shocking Life” by Elsa Schiaparelli, “Yves Saint Laurent through the Eyes of Yves Saint Laurent.” By the way, the latest edition contains not only text, but also drawings and sketches of the master, photographs of his collections.
This approach significantly expands the possibilities of keeping a diary for people who find it difficult to express themselves and their emotions in words or whose activities require an element of visibility. It will be difficult for an artist or designer to convey his thoughts without pictures. And a schoolgirl will be bored with keeping a diary without cute hearts, emoticons, and cats.
By the way, the generation whose childhood occurred in an era without the Internet remembers very well the school girls’ “candid books” with eternal questions about love and friendship, which they filled out themselves and gave to classmates to fill out in turn. This is also a kind of diary, where emotions and thoughts on a variety of topics were recorded and, to one degree or another, reflected the relationships of the owner of the “frank” with classmates.
Using these records, it was quite possible to track the process of growing up - your own and that of your classmates, as well as learn more about yourself as an individual. It is interesting that many then do not believe that it was they who answered this or that question just last year in the way that was written down in their own hand in the “revelator.” But even in the digital age, this format has not lost its relevance, and today those who wish can buy a “candid book” with ready-made questions on the Internet.
Recording Success: A Practical Exercise
How to start keeping a success diary? Write down your first 10 merits (skills, skills, talents) that you think will help you achieve your goals. Here are some examples of positive statements depending on your goals:
- If you want to get a highly paid job, list your qualities and skills in your diary: “I communicate well with people,” “I am an attentive listener,” “I am committed, executive and organized,” “I always do more than is expected of me,” “I have excellent persuasion skills,” “I dress stylishly and look attractive,” etc.
- If you're looking to get into a relationship or start a family, write down all your talents: “I'm confident and always make a positive impression,” “I'm caring and considerate,” “I have a great sense of humor,” “People enjoy hanging out with me.” , “I am an excellent housewife”, “People around me are crazy about my charisma”, “My last boyfriend always said that I have very beautiful and expressive eyes”, “Girls always say that I have an athletic figure and an attractive nature”, etc. .d.
You will always find something to praise yourself for. Look at yourself in the mirror without focusing on what you don't like about your appearance. Find what you like. Remember the compliments of friends and colleagues. Praise from partners and bosses. Without hesitation, acknowledge your merits and write them down on paper.
Secrets of psychology - how to increase efficiency and do without a success diary
Many people feel the need to see progress and for this they need a success diary. But journal addiction can be changed. In fact, it is not a person who is designed in such a way that he needs to see the stages of his progress - it is his system of motivation that is like that. This system is not ours by default - it is instilled in us by upbringing. You can reach a level of awareness where the results are not so important to you, and the process itself will have value and bring pleasure.
But don’t think that you will stop achieving your goals. On the contrary, your efficiency will increase. It’s a paradox, but it’s true - when the result is not very important to you, then you easily achieve it and still enjoy the process, on the way to it. Such a value system allows you to feel reality more deeply, experience true love (which, in principle, excludes any self-interest) and ultimately live a more fulfilling life. But for this it is necessary to cleanse the mind - deprogram it, free it from imposed ones: limiting ideas and beliefs, negative attitudes, complexes, negative emotions and other mental garbage that prevents you from living a happy life.
This task is handled by the specially developed Turbo-Suslik system (official website). The good thing about the system is that it shifts the bulk of the work to the subconscious, leaving the user to read ready-made instructions to the subconscious. The work looks something like this: you read the instructions to the subconscious and that’s it, then you go about your business, and the subconscious, in the background, works through the problems. Interested - .
Why is it effective?
Even the smallest achievements in your opinion activate the part of the brain that is responsible for reward. At this moment, the body begins to release chemical compounds - hormones, which give us feelings of happiness and pride in ourselves.
What happens if you record your achievements every day?
By writing down your progress every day, you'll begin to notice all the positive things that don't usually stick in your mind. One of the qualities of human thinking is focusing on the negative. We tend to mentally replay unpleasant memories in our heads over and over again. But reconfiguring your thinking and constantly searching for the positive will reveal to you that life, it turns out, has more positive moments.
By writing down everything, even the most insignificant achievements, you will raise your self-esteem and learn to find positive things even in mistakes and troubles. After all, thanks to failures we gain invaluable experience.
How to consolidate a positive desire when a goal is set in a success diary
A success diary is not only empty and terribly boring writing, far from it. Here we approach the solution of the problem creatively, for every task completed with the help of personal effort and will, there must be a worthy reward. So we take it and fix it in our own subconscious - that will is good. We actually have a lot of mental energy, and it takes especially a lot of it to work through some complex personal issues. And the resources of the unconscious must be restored.
Let's say there is a person who considers himself very shy, this worries him. There is a problem of establishing connections with the opposite sex. So, take a success diary. An optimal plan of action is selected for the resources of this individual, and based on the results of implementation there should be a reward. And this point is mandatory.
Let’s say you fulfill some childhood dream that you couldn’t fulfill before. At the same time, please the inner child in yourself. It's very effective. A sense of self-worth is strengthened, we ourselves begin to treat our body’s own resources with respect - as well as ourselves. And yes, it's a lot of fun! This is why I love diaries, and I have many different ones.
