The Power of Dreams and of the Mind

 A lovely inspirational quote this week, by Wilma Rudolph: "Never underestimate the power of dreams and the power of the mind. The potential for greatness lives in all of us."

I have blogged a couple of times on here about the power of dreams, here and here. So today I'd like to think about the power of the mind... 

Last weekend, my grown-up daughter contacted me to tell me about a new diary / journal she had bought herself, The 6-Minute Diary. And it sounded so good that I looked it up and treated myself to one.

The idea is that you spend three minutes each morning, filling in the first half of the page, and another three minutes in the evening, reflecting on the day just over. The idea behind it is to encourage positive thinking and hence enhance happiness.

It's a fascinating book. The first sixty plus pages explain how it all works, and then there is a page for each day, plus an introductory page for each week, where there are five different questions to answer and a habit tracker. And it's beautifully designed, complete with two bookmarks - one to keep in the beginning-of-the-week page, the other for the current day.

There are six daily prompts:

For the morning, 1 I'm grateful for... (and 1,2,3)

                            2 This is how I'll make today great (five lines of free writing)

                            3 Positive affirmation (you can either change these each day or focus on one particular

                               goal.

For the evening, 1 My good deed today

                           2 How I'll improve

                           3 Great things I experienced today (and 1,2,3)

I started doing it on Tuesday and I'm loving it. Interestingly, the one that has me chewing on the end of my biro for inspiration is 'My good deed today' - they say it can be something small and insignificant, but it's been hard to rack my brains and remember a specific small act of kindness. 

It's going to be fun reading back over all the entries when it's full (they give you six months' worth of pages in each diary). And I hope it will make me remember all the little things I am grateful for, and help me to establish some good habits.