4 Ways to Make the Most of Your Bujo Mood Tracker

The World Mental Health Day may have come and gone but looking after our mental health is a year-round pursuit. Every day, we must mindfully practice habits that will protect and improve our mental and emotional well-being.

One such habit is keeping a mood tracker on our bullet journals. When done right and consistently, mood tracking has the potential to positively impact our lives!

Do you want to make the most of your bujo mood tracker? Here’s how!

1. Be completely honest and open.

Without honesty, the whole process of maintaining a mood tracker becomes fruitless. We all have a tendency to suppress or ignore our feelings, whether we’re conscious of it or not.

This is especially true for unpleasant emotions like envy, bitterness or resentment. Those emotions usually come with a measure of guilt and it can be difficult to acknowledge them.

If we can be honest about our deepest feelings on our mood trackers, we can start to grow in self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Openness is crucial so let’s keep our bujos judgment-free.

While some people can write pages upon pages about their emotions, some people are not quite adept at identifying their feelings and putting them down on paper. A mood tracker is like a chart so filling it out is much simpler and not as intimidating as a blank page.

2. Happy feelings count too.

Since mood tracking is a practice that is usually recommended for those experiencing mood disorders or struggling with their mental health, it’s easy to understand why some people would immediately associate it with negative emotions.

But the entire spectrum of our emotions — from our highest peaks to our deepest valleys — is valid and worth taking note of. Our moments of joy, triumph and excitement are as much a part of us as our hurts and disappointments.

We will have good days, bad days and somewhere-in-between days. The point of a mood tracker is to acknowledge them and record them as they come. Taking note of the positives will also help us with the practice of gratitude and appreciation.

3. Consistency is key!

Our memories are not the most reliable of narrators. We always end up omitting (or embellishing) details upon recollection and exaggerating (or downplaying) our feelings. This is called recall bias.

To minimize recall bias when it comes to mood tracking, we need to be updating our mood trackers at regular intervals. Skipping days and filling in the gaps when we get the chance will result in an inaccurate assessment.

Pick a schedule and try to stick to it as much as you can. Include it in your normal routine so it becomes second nature to you.

4. Make time for self-reflection.

Setting up a mood tracker can be extremely enjoyable if you're the artsy and creative type. There are so many different layouts for mood charts you can experiment with!

But we would do well to remember that we are not tracking our mood just for the sake of it. There’s a deeper reason for this powerful positive psychology exercise!

After successfully completing one month’s mood tracker, set aside some quiet time for self-reflection and evaluation. This is the time for us to take note of mood fluctuations and identify patterns and triggers that cause them.

This self-check will help us gain clarity and a better understanding of our actions, decisions, priorities, values and motivations.

Anything worth doing is worth doing right. If we’re going to keep a mood tracker, we might as well make sure we’re getting the most of it!

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