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.
Write down up to three signals, not more. The limit is the point. Everything else that happens is noise. The signals are how you tell your future self: if I show up here, today was well spent.
Examples:
Have the complicated 1:1 conversation instead of postponing it again.
Delegate XYZ today; don’t do it yourself. But it must be done.
Block 60 minutes for focused work on XYZ.
Release XYZ today, no matter what.
2. Fitness – Mental and Physical
Audio: If you’re in the Leadership Transformation Tier, you’ll find the deeper audio guidance for this step in the Dojo Chat.
The second section is your Fitness commitment, mental and physical.
Here, write about what you will do to stay fit in mind and body today. This is not a vague aspiration; it is a small, concrete morning commitment. I put a little circle checkbox next to it and check it when done.
Examples:
Listen to a specific podcast episode on conflict or leadership
Write one page about yesterday’s meeting and what you learned
Go for a 30-minute walk after lunch
Lift weights
Run 5km
The purpose is simple: you prime your mind against resistance. When resistance shows up later, saying “I am too tired” or “I do not have time,” you are not deciding from scratch; you are either keeping a commitment or breaking it. That clarity alone changes behavior.
If you repeatedly break commitments to yourself, the Self-Mirror will expose the pattern very quickly. That honesty is uncomfortable, but necessary. The point is not self-punishment; the point is to become someone whose commitments can be trusted.
👉 The only responsible person is you here. No one else is to blame if you fail. And you can brag to yourself if you succeed for days in a row.
2.5 Voluntary Discomfort – Training the Nervous System
Leadership under pressure is not built during the crisis itself.
It is built before the crisis arrives.
This is why the Self-Mirror includes a small practice of voluntary discomfort.
The purpose is not punishment.
The purpose is training.
Modern life slowly trains people toward comfort addiction:
constant stimulation,
constant convenience,
constant avoidance of friction.
But leaders cannot avoid friction.
A leader must remain functional when things become uncomfortable.
That is why you deliberately introduce small, controlled discomforts into your day.
Examples:
cold shower finish
difficult conversation you have postponed
deep work without notifications
walking without headphones
saying “no” clearly
physical exercise despite resistance
leaving the phone away during focused work
waking up without snoozing
taking ownership instead of avoiding responsibility
The important part:
the discomfort must be small enough to repeat consistently.
This is not heroism.
This is baseline training.
You are teaching your nervous system:
“I can experience discomfort without collapsing into avoidance.”
That changes leadership behavior over time.
3. Brag – Your Evening Self-Mirror
Audio: Extended audio for this step is available in the Transformation Dojo Chat.
Now comes the Brag section, which is the heart of the Self-Mirror.
In the morning, you only prepare it:
Write the heading Brag and place three bullet points underneath it. Leave them empty, but create them.
👉 You are supposed to have done something you can brag about. That is what progress means.
These three bullets are reserved for the evening; they are your personal mirror of the day.
At night, you come back and fill them:
Where did you follow your signals
Where did you show up as the leader you said you wanted to be
What, honestly, can you brag about today
What did you learned from a failure and definitely understand now?
This section is only for you; do not write it to impress anyone, do not tailor it for mentors, social media, or future readers.
Treat it like Marcus Aurelius treated his notes in Meditations: as something never meant to be published.
Here, bragging is not arrogance; it is radical honesty in the mirror. Some days you will write real wins. Some days you will realise, “I have nothing to brag about today.”
That is already feedback. Both are useful.
The Self-Mirror does not flatter you; it reflects you.
Accept it; learn from it, and adapt. Become a better version tomorrow.
4. Left Page: “Who I Want to Be Today” and Free Thoughts
Audio: Extended audio for this step is available in the Transformation Dojo Chat.
So far, everything sits on the right-hand page. The left-hand page is your reflection space.
In the morning, write a short heading:
Who I want to be today
Underneath, in a few sentences, describe the person you intend to be:
How do you want to face resistance today
How do you want to respond when things go off-plan
What kind of leader are you committed to being in meetings, in Slack, in conflict
Today, I communicated clearly with my business partner; I failed to do so yesterday.
You are not writing poetry; you are setting a tone and a pace for the day. You are preparing yourself for the inevitable “stormy noise” of unexpected requests, escalations, and emotional friction.
Below that, the rest of the left page is free space. This is where you write what is in your head: thoughts, worries, anger, hopes, reflections about yesterday’s entry, and small insights. You dump them onto paper so you do not have to keep processing them all day; your Self-Mirror holds them for you.
The next morning, you quickly re-read yesterday’s notes.
Are you happy with what you see
Did you live up to your commitments, or did you drift
That 30-second re-reading is a quiet but powerful feedback loop with yourself.
5. End-of-Day Rating
Audio: Extended audio for this step is available in the Transformation Dojo Chat.
At the bottom right corner of the page, leave a small square blank.
The next day, give your previous day a simple rating from 0 to 5:
5 = You lived very close to who you want to be
3–4 = A good day, with edges to improve
1–2 = You clearly did not show up as you intended
0 = You abandoned yourself
This is not a framework for others; it is your personal shorthand. Over time, you will see patterns: your average, your dips, the days where you truly moved differently. Your Self-Mirror starts to show not just single snapshots, but a whole film of who you are becoming.
Why the Self-Mirror Works
This journaling practice is not aesthetic.
It is tactical.
Signals force you to choose what truly matters instead of hiding in busyness.
Fitness reinforces that leadership requires a fit mind and body, not only a full calendar.
Voluntary discomfort trains your ability to stay functional under resistance instead of unconsciously escaping discomfort.
Brag turns your day into evidence; you are either building credibility with yourself or weakening it.
“Who I want to be today” anchors identity before chaos and emotional noise arrive.
The rating closes the loop and reveals patterns over weeks and months instead of isolated emotional impressions.
Over time, the Self-Mirror becomes more than a notebook.
It becomes:
a baseline tracker
a behavioral mirror
a resistance detector
a pattern recognition tool
a quiet accountability system
The point is not perfection.
The point is becoming someone you can trust under pressure.
—Adrian
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