From “Listen To Your Day: The Life-Changing Practice of Paying Attention” by Paul Angone
You see, no self-help book can give you the exact formula for leading a successful, fruitful, meaningful life. A book can, and should, help you lay the groundwork. But how you build the walls and construct the house needs to be based on the framework you have been building your life upon.
If we pay attention to what we deem our greatest successes and also the most difficult things we’ve gone through, we can better understand all kinds of crucial components of ourselves. Our strengths, the skills we enjoy operating in, our values, and often-times what we would call our passion and our purpose. All of these are deeply embedded in our greatest triumphs and tragedies, and they are informing our current day and who we are being in the present.
What are your Top 3 to 5 Greatest Triumphs? (Successes that were extremely meaningful and impactful to you.)
What are your Top 3 to 5 Greatest Tragedies? (Don’t have to be of Shakespearean nature, but just hard things you’ve gone through and still think about in your memories throughout your day and had to work on overcoming.)
Now let’s pay attention to the patterns here. Do you see any connection points in your triumphs and tragedies? Do you see the same skills and strengths popping up in your greatest successes? Do you see certain what you consider to be core principles at play?