It’s been a long while since I last posted here. Life caught up with me and blogging has slid to the bottom of my priority list. Today, after a restful summer and a nice long break, I’m ready to start again. And I would like to do it by presenting how the so-called bullet journal monthly ritual is helping me be who I actually want to be.
As you might know, I have been using a bullet journal for a few years now, cherry picking from the original method to take what I believed to be most useful and practical for me. This did not include the “ritual” parts, i.e., the reflection moments that are built into the system to help you understand how your life is going, and straighten the course if necessary. I used to think that this would be obsolete for me, as I already journal quite extensively and therefore am already recording my thoughts and feelings. What else could there be to it? But of course I was wrong.
So one day, during a lazy summer day scrolling session, I came across this video which goes into details on how to carry out a monthly ritual, that is to say a reflection moment at the end of one month and beginning of the next. According to the founder, Ryder Carroll, this moment (which can take anywhere between 10 minutes and an hour) is designed to help the bullet-journaler learn from the experience recorded on their journal, and set intentions for the upcoming month. I had already seen the video in the past but had probably paid little attention to it, discarding it as that part of the bullet journal that I was not interested in.
However, this time the video struck a chord, and I found myself watching it avidly and taking notes. So when the end of the month came next time, I sat myself down, reviewed the notes I took from the video, and decided to follow the steps of the monthly ritual. And, as you might guess, I was amazed by the results.
Not only did the reflection moment encourage me to read through my entries for the past month in my bullet journal and understand how my month had gone, where my head and heart had been during the month, and what I had accomplished; it also allowed me to understand how much I had actually got done, even in the slower summer months, and it got me thinking about what it is that I like and don’t like about my life right now, and what I can do to improve on that.
This in turn helped me set an intention for the next month, and to review my list of to-dos and appointments in the light of this new intention. It’s not so much a question of goal setting, productivity, or (the word I hate the most!) “mindfulness”. It’s a question of being happy, of doing what makes you feel good with yourself and with others. It’s about understanding what you’re doing right and what you can change to make your life better for yourself and the people around you.
I know all this might sound like a platitude, it did to me too. Until I tried it. There is something really powerful in re-reading your own journal entries and spotting patterns, looking from afar and understanding that what was causing you anxiety, stress, restlessness or sadness are specific actions or patterns in your life — thing that you do not see while you are caught up in them, but that easily emerge when you have recorded them somewhere.
For instance, I am sure I would have quit my old job much earlier had I paid attention to my journal entries and read them back regularly to spot patterns while I was working there. I cannot believe the number of times I wrote that I was feeling stressed, anxious, and often edgy, and still did not think about the root cause of all that! How could I not notice that? Simple, I was writing down the feelings and occurrences, but I was not purposefully re-reading them and setting aside the time to regularly reflect on them. And so I continued for too long, until something did it for me and I quit. But how much stress and grumpiness could I have avoided by performing a simple monthly ritual?
So now the weekly and monthly ritual have become and integral part of my bullet journal practice. And whether you bullet journal or not (if you don’t, I strongly recommend you give it a try… you only need a notebook and a pen to start), I encourage you to try building a form of regular self-reflection practice into your routine. It might look too new-agey or time-wasting for you now, but I believe your future self will thank you for it.