Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is to figure out what happened in your life
Speaker 1: on this day in the past. Revisiting this specific past
Speaker 1: is a great opportunity to recall memories and reflect on
Speaker 1: your life. Longtime listeners know that I have been tracking
Speaker 1: my time for a great many years. Now. I will
Speaker 1: be celebrating nine years of continuous time tracking this April. Yes,
Speaker 1: that means that if you want to know what I
Speaker 1: was doing at ten thirty am on February sixteenth, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: I could in fact tell you now. I don't normally
Speaker 1: go hunting back for random memories from random times, but
Speaker 1: for the past two years I have been doing something
Speaker 1: else to reflect on specific days. I finish my weekly
Speaker 1: time log on Monday mornings, and since I name my
Speaker 1: logs after the Monday, like February five, February twelve, February nineteen,
Speaker 1: this means that the time log from six years ago
Speaker 1: has the same name. February fifth was a Monday in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four and twenty eighteen, though the leap year
Speaker 1: will change that match anyway, On Mondays, I have been
Speaker 1: opening the log with the same name from several years prior.
Speaker 1: I look at exactly what I was doing on those
Speaker 1: dates six years before. Usually, given all the detail I
Speaker 1: see from tracking my time in half hour blocks, I
Speaker 1: can remember that week. I reflect on what life was
Speaker 1: like then, and these memories from daily existence. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: that was the week when the Eagles won the Super
Speaker 1: Bowl and several of my kids got the stomach flu.
Speaker 1: Life has both good and bad, often wrapped up in
Speaker 1: the exact same block of time. Now. I know that
Speaker 1: my time tracking obsession is perhaps rare, but lots of
Speaker 1: us have some way of checking life in the past.
Speaker 1: Think about what you could do regularly to remember what
Speaker 1: life was like on this day in prior years. One
Speaker 1: obvious way is to look at old photos. If most
Speaker 1: of your photos are on your phone, and I am
Speaker 1: guessing that is the case for many of us these days,
Speaker 1: then they are probably tagged with the date. Likely your
Speaker 1: phone offers you up and on this date option, sometimes
Speaker 1: open it see what you were doing. If something was
Speaker 1: worth taking a picture of in the past, it might
Speaker 1: be interesting to see. And even if your phone isn't
Speaker 1: creating such a slide show for you. You can do
Speaker 1: this on your own. Just go back to months or
Speaker 1: years and scroll back and choose this month from a
Speaker 1: prior year in to see this time. What were you
Speaker 1: doing two years ago this week? If nothing else, it
Speaker 1: is fun to see pictures of kids when they were littler,
Speaker 1: or you and your spouse when you were younger. You
Speaker 1: might have other options. If you have kept any sort
Speaker 1: of journal, you can go back and look around at
Speaker 1: today's date. You might build this into some sort of
Speaker 1: weekly ritual. What were you writing about three years ago
Speaker 1: or five years ago? Maybe something that was a big
Speaker 1: problem then isn't now. That's good to know and celebrate.
Speaker 1: You can even look at old calendars. Go back through
Speaker 1: your electronic calendar if you can, and see who you
Speaker 1: were meeting with on various dates, or go through your
Speaker 1: paper calendars and see what was scheduled. I have wound
Speaker 1: up remembering events and conversations that I might have forgotten.
Speaker 1: And if none of this is readily available, well commit
Speaker 1: to leaving some breadcrumbs for future you to. Lots of
Speaker 1: places sell five year journals that allow you to just
Speaker 1: write a sentence or two about a date when that
Speaker 1: date comes around again next year. If you are still
Speaker 1: using the journal, you will see what you wrote about
Speaker 1: the previous year, and when the date comes around again,
Speaker 1: you will see what you are doing the previous two years.
Speaker 1: Keeping this really doesn't need to take much time. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's less than sending that marginal extra email, but
Speaker 1: it can be a big boost for your happiness. I
Speaker 1: find that acknowledging the past and taking more active control
Speaker 1: of our memories can be helpful in life. What I
Speaker 1: like about my time log is that it shows everything
Speaker 1: I might have remembered a week in February where multiple
Speaker 1: kids had the stomach flu as being well. Not much fun,
Speaker 1: and parts certainly weren't. But I also did cool stuff
Speaker 1: like spend a few hours in the library working on
Speaker 1: a book, and of course watching the Eagles win the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl. I know my stories cannot be all good
Speaker 1: or all bad, and that richness makes memory a lot
Speaker 1: more rewarding. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
Speaker 1: or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
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