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Happy Friday Reader!

I hope you're feeling better than I was last week. I felt under the weather, but I also had time to think deeply about the current year, especially after finishing the transformational four-week Future-Ready Woman Masterclass as a facilitator.

This realization sparked an intriguing idea: How to develop a new holistic self-reflection system for 2024 with the help of AI to gain more clarity and focus on my health.

So, today, I'm excited to take you along on my learning journey of creating this new system.

Are you ready to dive in with me?

Time to Tune In ❤️

Self-reflection has always been on my wish list, though I often felt too busy or distracted to engage meaningfully. From zero reflection to accumulating beautiful mindfulness and reflection books, meditation, and setting up business OKRs – I've tried it all, but nothing seemed to stick.

Then, lying in bed last week, it hit me: I wasn't considering the full scope of my life, particularly as a woman. Lately, my pre-menopause symptoms have been a rollercoaster of mood swings, energy dips, insomnia, and pesky food cravings - all negatively affecting my daily productivity at work.

Over the past six months, I've diligently started to "hack" my metabolism with a Lumen device and my sleep, diet, and tennis workouts across various apps. But the real challenge is bringing all this data into a system that integrates with my women's cycle, which can help me uncover hidden patterns to improve my daily life.

Ready to Gear Up 🧰

My 'aha' moment came from reading a newsletter by Julia Saxena. She utilizes a seamless journaling system in Notion, designed for clarity and focus. This system functions like a brain dump, logging her daily activities, including job tasks, workouts, and breaks.

Here is the template Julia created in Notion, which I've adopted.

I began using her template to document my daily activities, focusing on elements crucial to me, e.g., diet, sleep, moods, and more, with timestamps while removing the habit tracker fields to keep it simple and motivating.

As someone who is data-driven, the new AI feature in Notion has been a time saver, helping me to summarize my daily entries succinctly. At the end of each week, I dedicate a 30-minute session for journaling with ChatGPT as my private well-being and business coach. I use my daily reviews for my conversation with ChatGPT and ask them to compile a simplified summary of my week, which I can then discuss and share with my doctors.

After years of struggling to build a journaling habit, the Notion AI & ChatGPT combination has transformed into a really enjoyable and exciting activity. It's fast, dynamic, and adds much aggregated personal value.

Put your Power Play on 🕹️

This system has helped me uncover valuable insights in just a week. For instance, I've discovered that 16:9 intermittent fasting is not really working for me and is effective only on certain days of my cycle. Additionally, I've noticed that on days when my estrogen levels are low, often coupled with insufficient sleep, I experience an energy dip, which consequently affects my productivity the next day. Recognizing this, I now opt for 'light' work on such days, which requires less mental exertion.

Having a new personal AI coach to advise me on what to focus on next based on my hormonal cycle, energy level, and feelings is pretty cool.

What do you think?

Ready to Accelerate 🚀

Now, I'm thinking of creating a customized GPT to make analyzing my data over time even easier, identifying patterns, and suggesting tweaks to my routine based on hormonal changes. If it works, I can share it with more struggling women like me.

This whole endeavor is fresh and experimental, but I'm thrilled about its potential. Why share this so early? I'm eager to connect with other women interested in this AI-assisted holistic approach. Hopefully, my openness about this topic inspires you to reflect on how you can combine your professional with your personal health goals.

I wish I had begun understanding my body's signals much earlier, but there is still enough time :-) Self-reflection is a vital starting point. Let's see if AI can help me unravel the patterns of this new phase of my life, in tandem with my doctors, to make 2024 a year where I genuinely embrace and own my body again.

Do you have a holistic self-reflection routine that sticks? I would love to learn from you. I'm considering setting up a new "Play session" in German & English in our Future-Ready Community, where we all share our methods and systems to learn from each other.

Let me know if this sounds interesting, and I'll set it up.

❤️ from Venice Beach

Simone