Lifebook 2020 – Week 2: Emotional Life & Character

I am just about to start week 5 of the Lifebook course at the moment, and I’m starting to see some interesting changes.

Week 2 of this course was about Emotional Life and Character. A chapter, I at first thought I breezed through pretty easily.

Weeks 3 and 4, however, being intricately connected to these two areas of life, had other plans though. You’ll see what I mean in just a moment!

 

Course Structure

For those who haven’t been following along in this series beforehand, the Lifebook structure is very simple.

You have two videos to watch, a PVPS (Premise, Vision, Purpose and Strategy) to complete, and some optional bonus Q&A sessions recorded by Jon and Missy Butcher to help you along the way. This is a structure that appears to repeat throughout the 6 week course.

In week 2, the “Emotional Life” category video was 95 minutes, and the “Character” category video 62 minutes long. The Q&A materials were 2 hours and 15 minutes in total.

One thing I noticed this week, that hadn’t registered before, is that the Q&A transcripts actually include a list of resources mentioned in the videos.

Since I haven’t sat down and watched all the Q&As, this was a super interesting feature. I love reading and learning, so it’s a great tool for enhancing my library.

I also found this useful, as I prefer to browse the Q&A transcripts for specific questions I find relevant each week. That means I don’t miss out on further reading recommendations, even if I’m not watching everything – awesome!

Despite the fact that I don’t watch the Q&As end-to-end, I must say I do find them a very enriching part of the course. I love hearing about how Jon and Missy have put Lifebook categories into action throughout their journey.

Personally, I’ve also found it easier to clarify my own views on each category after watching snippets. There’s just something about learning from the masters that’s inspiring, wouldn’t you agree?

 

My experience with: Emotional Life

My emotional life is an area in life I am extremely comfortable and familiar with. I think that’s why I felt that this chapter was pretty easy to run through.

A number of members in the Facebook group, however, expressed difficulties in this section. That’s why I am not too sure if my experience in this area was standard.

I realise that there are many people who equate “emotion” with “weakness”. From my experience however, I have learned that my emotions are one of my biggest strengths. In fact, it’s when I am experiencing a lack of emotions/numbness that I know there’s something wrong for sure!

I use my emotions to gauge where I am in life. I observe them daily, checking in on myself to ensure I am doing what feels aligned to my core. I’m not sure when I started this habit, but I know it’s been with me for many years.

Having said that, the one part I felt slightly conflicted about in this chapter, was the piece around doing more of what makes you feel good emotions, and less of what makes you feel negative emotions.

I think most of the time I do this naturally. However, occasionally, I do un/intentionally let myself in for experiences I know are emotionally distressing too. Usually, this is in order to achieve a goals of some sort or develop/overcome a certain aspect of my character.

This chapter did make me wonder whether or not I should continue doing this though. It seemed almost self-destructive framed in Jon’s light. I’ll be honest and say that several weeks later – I still don’t have the answer. So that was pretty interesting!

 

My experience with: Character

The Character chapter was an interesting one for me, I must say. Specifically, because it brought to mind how much of our character is actually changeable.

We can naturally just let ourselves be, or we can actively work on parts of our character we don’t like. It turns out, it’s actually very much up to us!

An interesting fact this chapter raised, is that the character we just “are”, is very much linked to how we were raised. However, it notes, we didn’t actually choose who we were raised by, or the situations and events we encountered as a child. As such, back then, we had very little influence on who we became as adults.

As adults though, we do have a choice. We have more knowledge, and we have more power, to influence the people, situations and events that we encounter. We also, have a choice in how we act in and react to situations, which can reinforce certain character traits the more we practice them.

For my vision statement, I put:

• I am consistently reliable, courageous, loving, kind, compassionate, determined and persistent.

As I re-read that now, I’m thinking generous is missing off the list. Yet, either way, I think there’s some work to do. Specifically, because the key word for me in that vision statement is: CONSISTENTLY.

 

Adding new goals to my Lifebook tracker

As I’ve been working through the chapters, I have been looking to add some goals to my Lifebook habit tracker, as and when I see fit.

I didn’t add any new habits to my tracker for these two categories yet. Mainly because I feel like I have some pretty good habits instilled in this area already.

For example, in terms of my emotional life, I already check in with myself frequently to see how I feel. I try to make sure my thoughts, words and actions are aligned. I would say, the only thing I need to work on is possibly removing the need for “challenging” myself emotionally.

However, I’m still undecided as to how to do that and whether to do that at all. After all, closely related to growth is discomfort… and I feel I get some pretty valuable life experiences from the emotional challenges I choose!

In terms of my Character, I am also pretty adept at figuring out what I like and don’t like about myself. When I see something I don’t like, I already have a mechanism in place to evaluate whether I want to put the effort in place to change it or not. Because, believe me, it does take a lot of effort to change your character – so you better know you’re getting something out of it in the end!

That said, I really did enjoy the exploration into these two topics. I would say, a couple of weeks down the line they are weighing on me slightly heavier than they were when I first started. Mainly, as the categories interlink with each other.

That means, you start to see how certain actions in one area can affect your success in other areas. Which in turn can make you question what you first thought weeks ago. Nevertheless, I must say I am really enjoying the process of expansion so far.

It’s definitely made me think long and hard about the kind of person I want to be, and whether I’m doing the right things to get there!

 

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Explore the rest of the Lifebook journey!

• How I found Lifebook
• Lifebook Warm Up
• Lifebook 2020 – Week 1: Health and Fitness & Intellectual Life
• Lifebook 2020 – Week 2: Emotional Life & Character
• Lifebook 2020 – Week 3: Spiritual Life & Love Relationship
• Lifebook 2020 – Week 4: Parenting & Social Life
• Lifebook 2020 – Week 5: Financial Life & Career
• Lifebook 2020 – Week 6: Quality of Life & Life Vision