The Power of Journaling

One of the Best Tools for Personal Growth

People who know me know how I love my journals. Here is hoping that after you read this you think about the benefits of journaling in your daily or weekly repertoire.

Over the years my journaling has taken different directions. These days, my journals are numerous. My discovery that a separate journal for the different priorities in my life resulted in more focus and quicker results, and led me to add more journals as a new area of challenge shows up in my life.

Here are my current journals plus some of the other uses of my journals:

Journals:

Daily Journal of Today’s Activities – This is my go to journal.

• Celebrations or what I see as victories also known as “My Gold Stars”
• Gratitude
• What I Want to Say to my Higher Self (I call her Angel)
• Visualization for the day
• Sorting out a challenge

Research Journal – When starting my journey with reversing diabetes and high blood pressure, my wellness doctor suggested researching cortisol—the stress hormone. Plus, a friend of mine is a great researcher. I caught the bug after that because what I learned was so valuable, especially  in dealing with mid-morning spikes in my blood glucose. Whenever I feel inadequate in managing some area of my life, off I go into my research mode and journal.

Projects to Do – This journal based on the book 12-Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington – It was a life-changing outlook that ups your chances of reaching your goals. Love it.

Our Mastermind Weekly Goals – A simple list of five goal areas: Finances, business, health, personal, and humor.

Records:

Records and Possible Ideas for speeches, networking commercials, upcoming podcasts,  Facebook posts, and video ideas,

Habit Contract Story – Ideas for a possible fourth book about my journey to reverse diabetes and high blood pressure.

Lance’s Greatness – A record of the things my husband does that are soooo appreciated.

Courses/Structured Work:

Self-Compassion Break — based on the Audible course The Power of Self-Compassion by Laurie Cameron. This was part of my research about self-care and in my researching journal are her exercises for easy reference. My growth and working her process is recorded in my daily journal.

Previous Journals:

Personal Food Plan – In my journey to reverse diabetes and high blood pressure , my food plan has evolved to a combination of intermittent fasting and the blood type diet. It took research, patience, and experimenting. This has proven to be successful. I have gone from taking 5 medications to only1 and I am aiming to eliminate that one too!

Story Worthy – A journal to get me thinking about the stories in my life that might be useful when speaking. Based on the book Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling by Matthew Dicks.

Writing My New Story – A journal direction was recommended by Janet Attwood, co-author of The Passion Test: The Effortless Path to Discovering Your Life Purpose. For 30 days you notice what negative thoughts are coming up for you. Then you write a new story about those thoughts. This was enormously powerful.

Atta Girl – This journal was to acknowledge my talents, wisdom, and skills. There was a time when there was little confidence in who I was and what I did. The daily short atta girl’s changed that.

Prayer Journal – There was a period in my life when I struggled with many of my relationships. During that time I had good experience with what I called my “prayer experiment”. I felt so helpless and by praying for those relationships, I felt at least I was doing something and not stuck. Things actually ended up changing.  More recently, I wanted to find a way to think differently about some of the people in my life. I decided to start a prayer journal.  The change happened. It was an empowering experience.

Do You Struggle with Journaling?

Friends and clients sometimes tell me they have trouble journaling. Here are some of the possibilities that could cause you to hesitate:

• You might be concerned that some old painful baggage might show up because you are accessing feelings. Remember, you are an adult now and have more strength and experience than you did as a child.
• You do not like to write things by hand. Don’t—use the computer or an app. Several of mine are in a convenient app called Tasks.
• You have too much to do and never have a minute to yourself. If you knew for sure journaling could change the trajectory of your life, would you take a minute?
• You think journaling will not help. If you think that, it surely won’t.
• You do not have a clear idea where the thoughts you get in journaling come from. Might I suggest you do some research on intuition and ways to get inspiration. For me, I trust my intuition.

Go for It

 My suggestion if you hesitate about journaling is to give journaling a try for a few weeks and see if you find yourself clearer and calmer. If so, you have just found the rewards of journaling.