5 Questions to Ask Yourself Every Evening



Our minds are some of the busiest places in the known universe. It is estimated that, under a deceptively calm exterior, some 70,000 separate thoughts hurry through consciousness from the moment we wake up to the time we slip into sleep. What these many thoughts have in common is that we seldom do them any kind of justice. The result of this kind of sensory overload is an immense difficulty processing what we've actually been through.



But these thoughts and feelings do need to be understood – and will protest more or less actively when they are not. Anger that hasn't been given its due will emerge as irritability, grief that hasn't been honoured will metastasize into aimlessness and despair. What we call mental illnesses are usually the outcome of periods of our lives that we haven't had the strength or opportunity to understand or mourn.



And that's why we have produced five questions that we suggest can be rehearsed every evening on a regular basis. And we'll help to appease the sources of our troubles.



First question:  what am I really worried about?



This question recognises something rather unusual about how we operate: we frequently don't stop to ask ourselves what we are truly worried about. This sounds odd. Surely if we are worried, we would be expected to pause rather quickly – and explore why.



But our minds seem not to work in this supremely logical-sounding way: they feel anxious long before they are ever motivated to ask themselves why they might be so. They can carry on for months, even years, under the fog of diffuse concern before setting themselves the challenge of zeroing in on what is really at stake.



Second question: what am I presently sad about?



We can make a generalisation: we go around being far braver than is good for us. Because we need to get on with the practicalities of the day, we frequently push to the side all the slights, hurts, disappointments and griefs that flow through our river of consciousness. We chose not to notice how vulnerable we are for fear that we cannot afford our own sensitivity.



But stoicism and strength carry their own dangers. With the help of this question, we should give time to noticing that – despite our competent and strong exteriors – lots of smaller and larger things have managed to hurt us today, like every day: perhaps someone didn't laugh when we told a joke, our partner has been a little distant of late, a friend didn't call, a senior figure at work was less than completely impressed…



Third question: who has annoyed me and how?



We want to be polite of course. We're attached to the norms of civilisation. It upsets us to think we might be upset. Nevertheless, here too we need to have the courage of our actual sensitivity. No day goes by without someone annoying us in some rather fundamental way – usually without them in any way meaning to.



Our spirits will be lighter if we can bring ourselves to spell out the injury. What happened? How did it make us feel? What might we tell ourselves to refind equilibrium? Now, as careful guardians to ourselves, we can internalise the process and use our inner adult to soothe the always easily flustered but also easily calmed inner child.



Fourth question: what does my body want?



Much of what we feel but don't process has a habit of ending up in our bodies. That's why we develop backache, tense shoulders, knotted stomachs and fluttery hearts. In order to live more easily around our bodies, we should regularly drain them of the emotions that they have unfairly been burdened with.



We should mentally scan our bodies from top to toe and ask ourselves what each organ might require: what do my shoulders want to tell me? What would my stomach want to say? What does my back need? What do my legs crave?



Fifth question: what is still lovely?



Despite so much that is difficult, every day brings us up against a range of things that still delight and enchant us. Often, these elements are small: the light on the kitchen wall in the morning; a child holding its parent's hand at the bus stop; a fig we had at lunch time. These might not sound like things we should bother to register – but summoned up in their full richness and held in our attention for a few moments, they can help to fortify us against the voices of despair.



When Socrates, apparently the wisest man of antiquity, was asked to define our highest purpose as human beings, he offered a still-legendary answer: 'To know ourselves.'



We should aspire to be people who never cease to try to make sense of themselves at the close of every day. We should devote ourselves constantly to trying to shrink the scale of the darkness within us; bringing what was once in shadow closer to the light of interpretation, so that we stand a chance of becoming slightly less frantic and rather more joyful, creative and calm creatures.



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