Mentoring Session: Self-Mirror-Journal – Practise Self Mastery
Learn to become a reflected person worth following
“Ask yourself the question: Can you be honest with yourself?
If not, consider the consequences for you.”
The Stoic Leader
I have been a CTO & entrepreneur for 18 years now, and I have never been unpaid for a single month. I never needed to apply for a job in the tech space, and I always went into leadership roles in a “natural” way. Well, not naturally, of course, my specific circumstances of my upbringing and attitude played a significant role.
One aspect of it remained. I wanted to understand things in and around me on a profound level. Even though others often smile and ask why I am so interested in the boring things. Well, because they weren’t boring for me. My personal connection to the Muse, the opposing force of Resistance, keeps me curious, and I have never felt prone to Resistance in a way that I couldn’t understand it actually exists.
Thy key was and is Self-Reflection; a practice every real Leader must practise.
Today, I show you how to self-reflect with a Mirror Book.
When you're ready to start with a Self-Mirror Book, I recommend purchasing a small DIN A6 notebook, ideally with a cover, that you can always carry with you. You need to have that book with you at all times, and it should be a physical book, accompanied by a very low-tech device called a pen. You want to be able to write in it anywhere; if you are outdoors in the morning, sitting with a coffee in the forest, you can write in it; you can write during office hours in a short break, or sitting in a parked car before a meeting. You can always capture what is on your mind, and you can always take a quick look at what you wrote before.
I always carry mine, and by now it is a series of books, which is precisely what you want, a visible trail of who you have been becoming over time.
It is essential to understand this: you need to write in it daily. It is okay to miss a day, and it is OK to be very quick on days where you genuinely have no time, but the point is discipline. I use the word in its older sense, referring to discipulus or disciplina in the Stoic spirit; the idea that we practice our craft every day.
Your craft, as a leader, is yourself. To turn potential into reality, you must understand yourself better and be brutally honest with yourself. That is the core essence of this book. It reflects what you have done, what you committed to, and what you actually achieved. It quietly answers a tricky question:
👉 Are you lying to yourself or not?
In that sense, this is a Self-Mirror Book. It is your journaling mirror, held up to your behavior every single day.
The Self-Mirror in Practice
(Your Daily Leadership Mirror)
“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
I used to call this idea the Breakbook because it is about breaking old patterns; Self-Mirror is a better name because it captures what really matters: you deliberately look at yourself as you are, not as you wish you were, and you record the moments where you showed up as the leader you want to be so your brain starts to see and trust that new identity.
Think of the Self-Mirror Book as a daily training log, not a diary; one notebook used for one purpose only, to capture how you actually lived your leadership on purpose that day.
What you get in this session:
5-step guide for your daily routine
Audio Note for each step (Leader Transformation Tier Only)
Practical understanding of reflective journaling
Learn how to improve leadership traits.
1. Start with the basics:
Date and “Signals”
Each entry begins with the date and a straightforward section:
Signals (1–3 only)
These are the 1–3 core signals of the day; the things that should happen if today is going to matter.
I call them signals instead of to-dos for a reason; if you call them to-dos, the page invites you to dump everything you could do, while signals force you to name only what truly matters today.