When you are not on a meaningful path to mastery, wasting time doesn’t matter. You can spend all day playing video games, like eight hours a day, because without a path you do not feel the sensation of longing to get back to the path where meaning is found. By having a path you have declared that something matters. People who have no attachments have no meaning. We attach ourselves to paths to pursue mastery, the meaning of life. Mastery is the meaning of life because we assigned it to be.
This is not to say video games are bad. Video games are an excellent storytelling medium and respite from the path when you have walked long and hard on your Body, Mind, and Spirit paths, completely exhausting them where they do not perform at their best; this is when you go off-path for activities like video games. Earn your time off the path through your dedication to the path. Understand that you must get to the path once you are refreshed because that is who we are.
Saturday is a good day to rest from the path.
There is a way to travel through your life, exploring your memories and your past. Time machines exist right now. A journal is a piece of technology that can be used to travel through time. People forget that language, paper, and ink are all technological advances.
Every night, write the events of the day in your journal.
You can use a journal with a device, privately, using this method. Ideally you use paper and pen so you are greater connected to the process. You should write the events of the day, your thoughts, lessons, wins, losses, pitfalls to avoid, interesting things, daydreams, ideas, anything you want; including what you ate for breakfast.
People often think with journaling they need to write long, wordy reflections that takes a significant amount of time to compose. You can write bullet-points if you want. Or draw pictures, it doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you write the date and provide a few things that happened that day.
Your journal can be a therapist and a historian. Writing your pain is communicating it in written form; therapy occurs in the verbal form but both are forms of communication and writing it out is shown to help.
Understand your past has lessons that expire if not recorded.
Major lessons are recorded in your memory, but minor lessons can go forgotten which creates repeated mistakes. Getting stuck making the same mistakes can make you walk in circles on the path instead of walking forward.
The brain has limited storage. Paper, or a digital journal is unlimited. Journaling every day is putting together the parts of a time machine.
Reliving every day on your death bed
Imagine being 98 years old; well accomplished and surrounded by loved ones from newer generations you helped along their paths. Your journal entries throughout your life preserve the memories of your entire life. You can relive every day on your deathbed if you worked to build your timeline(machine) for a few moments each night.
If you’re ever feeling defeated or in a flatline, you can review your past and see examples of how you have overcame previous obstacles. The way is the same in all things and if you have ever overcame an obstacle, you know how to overcome another. You can review your small and large life achievements so you reinforce that you are someone who achieves.
Understanding your past and reflecting on it helps nurture your progress down the path.