Ever had a tough life event that challenged you emotionally?
That’s exactly what happened to me a couple of times over 2 years. And then I got curious to use my experience as a case study. I decided to start tracking my emotions. Recently I got a chance to go through another stressful event (sounds fun, but felt like a mental torture) to enrich my “case study” with a new data.
And credits go to my colleague Ankita Magdani for bringing a twist to my game. I upgraded my tracking tool that I am sharing with you today:
The Tracker: My original tracker was pretty simple—date, time of day, emotions, and intensity. But then Ankita got me curious and I expanded it. Here’s how it looks now:
1. Date and/or Day Day 1, Day 2, and so on. It helps you keep track of the duration of impact.
2. Time of the Day: I feel differently at different times of the day—when I wake up, go to bed, and even during the day. You might uncover some interesting insights.
3. Thoughts, Feelings, Ratings: Write down the thoughts that pop into your head, the emotions they trigger, and rate their intensity on a scale of 0 to 10. It’s tricky and fun to catch the thoughts before your feelings!
4. Actions: What do you do based on how you feel? Note down the actions you take.
5. New Thoughts and new feelings: After taking action, check what new thoughts and feelings pop up.
6. Notes and Reflections: This space is all about being a coach for yourself and set intentions for tomorrow.
What I discovered by visualizing and analyzing the data from my tracker:
2. Overcoming Stress: It used to take me around two weeks to bounce back from stress, based on my mental notes from 2021. But in 2022, I shortened that to 9 days. And in 2023, I only faced low to moderate stress twice over ten days.
3. Positive Shifts: Kindness and gratitude used to kick in on Day 5 in 2022. But in 2023, those awesome feelings showed up as early as Day 2 and remained there.
4. Emotional States: After conquering stress, I used to feel calm in 2022. But thanks to a coaching technique called “The Power of Six” in 2023, I experienced joy, satisfaction, and happiness by Day 10. It’s incredible how self-reflection and coaching can elevate your emotional state.
5. Thinking of the stressor triggered feelings of stress, anger, sadness, self-blame. While insights after coaching and CBT exercises triggered joy, happiness, curiosity, fun.
