Hi Fabulous Traveler,

How have your reflective walks and exercises been treating you? Feeling calmer, wiser and more creative yet?

Keep it up!

Today we’re going to be strengthening that reflective muscle even more.

I’m going to start with a little illustrative story.

“Could you please hurry up? I have to plane to catch.” I said to the taxi driver.

“Sure,” replied the driver sarcastically "I'll just fly over this traffic."

On my way to the airport, I strain my neck out the taxi window to gauge how much longer until we're free of the traffic. Before us stretches an endless column of cars.

Now I’m certain that I won’t make it in time. Frantically, I start looking for the airline’s number on my phone. Halfway through my search, I am taunted by a “low battery” notification.

With a familiar sound, my phone turns off, taking with it my dream of tonight’s family feast.

It was not the first time I'd missed a flight because I left too late nor the first time my phone ran out of power in a critical moment.

Every time I made one of these mistakes, I was convinced I'd learned my lesson. However, as if a curse had been placed on me, a few months later I would make the same mistake all over again.

After this particularly frustrating situation, I decided to start tracking these repeated mistakes.

This is how my “Book of Errors” was born. A notebook containing all the mistakes and irrational actions I was prone to commit.

Do you learn from your mistakes?

Are you sure?

Here are some examples of mistakes you may have made before:

• Losing the ability to focus in stressful situations. Letting your emotions take over and freezing up in a situation that requires quick reactions.
• Skipping a meal or missing out on sleep so that you don’t have the energy you need to stay focused and productive all day.
• Always arriving late to your destination based on the assumption that we live in an ideal world where everybody is always on time and there are never any issues with transportation.
• Allowing ourselves a moment of indulgence before starting a difficult task or taking a break only to get distracted by other things.
• Promising ourselves that we will give up sugar or alcohol but giving in when faced with an insistent host and falling back into our habit.

Our short-term memory is limited. What is even more limited is our ability to maintain the visceral impact of one of these mistakes. They tend to fade over time, having less and less consequence on future action. That's why we need to write them.

We all experience failures.

When we are tricked by our own irrational mind (and yes, despite what we want to believe, we all are dominated by irrational conclusions), we learn the lesson for a day or two and pretend that we will not make the same mistake again. But two weeks later this experience has been sent to a dark corner of our memory until the same thing happens all over again.

The problem isn’t always forgetfulness or lack of understanding, it can also be our inner attitude. Maybe you tend to underestimate the time it takes to complete a task or to get to work on time.

Or maybe the opposite is true for you: you overestimate your productivity: your capacity to tackle the long to-do list you write every day.

Before being able to really train yourself to think and behave differently, you really need to make those mistakes concrete and unforgettable in your mind.

A Book of Errors

What if you created your own Book of Errors?

Write down every mistake you make and don’t forget to describe the context of the situation in detail. This should include all your irrational thoughts and ideas that underlie the mistake.

Let’s assume you have a meeting in an hour. Something inside you claims you have plenty of time left for other tasks.

50 minutes later you are rushing to your appointment and coming up with excuses that damage your credibility.

Usually you would fall for this trap. You underestimate the required time, you lose yourself in your work, and then dash off when you suddenly realize that you have only 10 minutes left before your appointment.

Your notebook, however, manages to activate your rational thinking, reminding you of your tendency to always assume that there is enough time left. It could end up rescuing you from the same trap you’ve fallen for a hundred times before.

This is because every time you create an entry into this Book of Errors, you are underlining, highlighting, etching the reality of taking that same old route of thinking. Eventually, it pushes to the forefront of your mind before you can make another faulty decision!

A Manual for your Brain

Let’s look at another example: You have a presentation coming up but leave everything until the last moment. You then become overwhelmed by stress and sleepless nights. This is the third time this has happened in a month.

Take your notebook and write down the rule that from now on, you will prepare every presentation at least two days in advance and rehearse it the night before. Write down WHY you are going to do this. Remind yourself of what happened every time you didn’t do this before, how it felt, and what the after-effects were.

You have just imposed a new life rule on yourself. By physically writing it down, you add a new dimension to it and it becomes more than a fleeting thought – you turn it into a fixed contract with yourself.

You have written down a code of conduct for your future thoughts.

I have been keeping my Book of Errors for a year now, and it has helped me ward off my mind’s tricks and diversions countless times.

Inseparable Companions

My Book of Errors has become my reliable and constant friend. Here are some examples of how I use it :

• To remind me that when I travel to a country where tourists are often taken advantage of,  I should always ask the price of a taxi ride before hopping in.
• To avoid eating a heavy lunch,  because of repeated notes proving that I will spend the afternoon in a state of  drowsiness, unable to get much done.
• To not fall into my pattern of finding ways to waste time In the hours before a challenging event which is optional to attend: Sleeping, surfing the web or even tackling a task I have been putting off for a long time. I lose myself in this until quite late and then convince myself that now, it IS too late to go and that it’s better to keep doing what I’m doing. My Book of Errors reminds me ‘look, if you do that again, it’s going to end up the way it did the last 5 times’.

This Week's Plan

One-time action

Get a nice notebook that you can take with you everywhere to t note your mistakes the very moment you make them.

We will use this notebook for many things throughout the Mental Fitness  journey, so keep it safe!

I use a Leuchtturm 1917 and I would highly recommend their notebooks to anyone looking for good quality.

Once you have your new notebook, spend a few minutes personalizing it with a description of it’s purpose on the first page. The more you interact with this notebook, the more useful it will become.

Your goal

For the next 5 days, record all of your mistakes in your new Mental Fitness notebook.

Write them down while they are still fresh in your memory to become aware of the entire process that led to the error.

As soon as you fall prey to a trap set by your own irrationality or over/under estimations, write it down in your book. Describe the whole context and tell the story in detail.

If you write down detailed stories, you will find yourself re-reading the description of your mistake. If you do not write things down in detail, you will easily forget the mistake and find yourself in the same repetitive situation.

The moment you write down the lesson you've learned in your notebook, you etch it into your memory. When the same situation repeats itself you will recall the knowledge and act accordingly.

Skim through your notebook from time to time, visualizing the scenes in question and imagining alternate realities in which you manage to avoid making these mistakes. This mental repetition will prevent you from repeating the error. You’ll learn to deal with these dangerous situations or to at least steer clear of them.

When you’re ready to never make the same mistake twice again, tap Accept below.

What Are We Doing?

We are helping you take the next steps on your journey towards Mental Fitness and Agility. A big part of this is being able to recognize and learn from your own thoughts. Being aware of your own thoughts allows you to constantly observe them and their effects, allowing you to become a lifelong learner.

I hope you’re as excited to delve into the depths of Mental Fitness as I am. Make sure you’re using your new Mental Fitness notebook as often as possible.

I’ll be checking in on you in a few days to see how you've been doing Fabulous Traveler,