Evaluate Your Life Day!! Oct. 19, 2022

Not just every dog, but now everything has a day! It is up to you to find your matter of passion, make people think of it, and transform it into a holiday.  That is what the proponents of hello day - the McCormack brothers - did.  

In my search for the significance of the day, I was pleasantly surprised to see today as the international 'Evaluate Your Life Day'.  This day was born out of the ingenuity of two people - Thomas and Ruth Roy, founders of Wellcat Holidays, to whose credit are about 80 other such holidays to celebrate life, including 'A Room of One's Own Day'.  

It is attributed to Socrates, and sometimes to Aristotle, the famous saying, 'the unexamined life is not worth living'.  It is said that power of reflection on things around in relation to oneself is uniquely human.  This self-evaluation is a practical way of becoming more human - or in the beast - geist continuum, getting transfigured and refined towards more of spirit and less of material! 

Today we were discussing among the academic leaders, their role as leaders.  The prominet tool suggested by the resource person was that we become increasingly reflective people, who examine themselves against the standards being set, while going about ensuring compliance by their respective teams. 

To my mind, this calls for understanding and agreement between all concerned - leader and the team alike, to create regular avenues for giving and receiving responses unique to our given roles and tasks, that there is continuous fine tuning.  I would suggest rather a social contract of sorts within such groups that goes beyond 'you scratch my back, and I yours', and be ready to grow to the wisdom that 'it's only a fool who would think oneself to be wise, whereas the wise(wo)man would know onself to be a fool' (Shakespeare).  It requires the practice of inviting feedback for improvement. It will lead to a healthy culture that would shake us out of our comfort zone, and take us beyond.

Taking a daily dose of self-reflection would imply posing questions to oneself - preferably at the end of the day: 

• Who were the people or events that involved me? 
• How did they affect me? 
• How did I respond to them? 
• What prompted me to respond thus? 
• How better could I have responded to them? 
• Could I make 'my world*' a better place today? 

A theory called 'Self-Evaluation Maintenance' (SEM) model has been proposed by Abraham Tesser of scholarly fame from the Univeristy of Georgia. Other areas of self-evaluation could be that of time resource management (TRM) and that of energy level management (ELM). 

The religious-priestly formation in the Christian tradition lays great emphasis on this aspect, and insists that 2 doses (noon and night - before & after meals respectively) of self reflection (termed examen) keeps negativity away, But it involves the steps of review, repent and resolve.  SEM model would add 'celebrate' to that - our successes are relished and thus reinforced. 

*my tiny world of action and also this bigger world which is our common home. 

https://nationaltoday.com/evaluate-your-life-day/