I started journaling a little over 3 years ago and I’m still doing it 5x per week just because I find that it adds so much to my life!

It’s been an incredible way to really ‘check-in’ with myself…it’s sort of like giving a friend a ring and saying, ‘hey, how are you?’…and not ‘how are you’, ‘I’m good how are you,’ ‘I’m good too’ sort of thing…

We’re not talking about social formalities here, we’re talking a genuine check-in, the kind where you ask a friend how they’re doing and they’re like, ‘I’m good’ and you’re like, ‘no but really…how are you!? I want to know!’

It’s also been an awesome way to process and release pent up energy and emotion! You can be completely honest in your journal, you don’t have to worry about being judged, juggling shoulds, shouldn’ts, rights or wrongs, it’s just you and a piece of paper…and I love that!

A lot of my clients have used journaling specifically before bed as a super effective sleep tool as well, especially the ones that find that they’re go go go all day long and then their head hits the pillow and they’re flooded with thoughts…writing is a great way to get those thoughts out of your mind, onto paper and accounted for vs. spinning in your brain all night.

I also use it to take a little bit of time out of my day just to tune-in to some of the things, people, experiences etc. that I’m grateful for and appreciate!

There are a million and one ways to journal, however in this article I’m going to share with you exactly how I do it and feel free to use this template as a way for you to get started too!

I journal Monday through Friday without fail and I’d say on average I do it for 10-20 mins, nothing crazy, I typically fill up a page or so…sometimes less, sometimes more depending on how I feel, what I’m processing and what’s going on at that point in my life.

I start every single one of my journal entries with, ‘morning bud, how are you?’

I then touch on how I slept the night before really quickly, which fortunately is typically quite well, however if I had a drink or two or I ate too much or I ate too late, that may not be the case…and so briefly reflecting on my sleep has been a quick and cool way to pattern recognize what has me sleep well vs. not so much.

Then if I have something that I’m really struggling with, I jump right into it because if I’m having a hard time with a specific thing, it’s always top of mind. It could be something to do with my business, a family matter, a relationship issue, a personal hardship…anything and everything.

I then get in touch with a few things that I’m feeling grateful for on that specific day just because it makes me feel good and I believe that what we appreciate, appreciates us.

This morning I journaled about my coffee…I’m in Guatemala at the moment and Guatemalan coffee is delish! I wrote about all of the people that potentially played a part in getting that cup into my hand…

The farmer who planted and tended to the seed and then the plant itself, whoever processed the beans, drove them to a location to be packaged and distributed, also the grocery store clerk who put it on the shelf as well as the person who actually rang it up and sold it to me!

I’m obviously skipping over 1000 steps, but you get the idea…there are so many folks involved in one of my favourite parts of the day and I find that really humbling and gratifying to think about!

I then acknowledged how grateful I am for my body, the most complicated and intricate organism in the world as far as we know! I just laid in my bed for 7.5 hours sleeping and while I did that, my body essentially power washed and cleaned my brain via shooting cerebral spinal fluid into it!

My organs also just regenerated themselves on their own, I literally had to do nothing. My digestive tract broke down the food that I ate yesterday and shuttled the nutrients off to the areas that needed them the most.

I dreamt, which helped me to process my day from a mental and emotional standpoint…and I won’t bore you with any more of the body specific details that I dug into…the point is, I wrote about being grateful for the miracle that is my body, which I’m essentially renting for hopefully 90 or 100+ years.

I then thought and wrote about some of my family members and just how friggin’ awesome they are…specifically my immediate family so my Mom, Dad and sister!

My Mom is just legitimately the best, I absolutely adore her…she’s one of my favourite people in the world.

My Dad is so cute and awesome and supportive and funny and he’s taught me countless useful lessons and life skills…he’s an amazing man!

My sister is the sweetest, she has an incredible heart, a great sense of humour and I’m just so thankful that she’s my sibling!

I then delved into how grateful I am for my lifestyle itself…the fact that I’m able to travel year round with a laptop doing something that I love career wise and that I believe is making a real difference in the world is still somewhat mind-blowing to me 5.5 years later (I’ve had my business for almost 12 years, but I’ve been fully remote for 5.5).

I’m flying to Austin, Texas in a few days and for travel days specifically, I like to be grateful for a smooth travel experience beforehand and so I write about it as if it’s already happened, for example…

I’m grateful for the smooth bus ride from San Pedro (where I am now) to Antigua and then to Guatemala City. The hotel I crashed in for the night was perfect and I’m so thankful for a smooth flight the following day from Guatemala City to Dallas Fort Worth and then DFW to Austin itself.

Call it woo woo or whatever, but I find this exercise super cool and calming, especially if there are a bunch of things that are out of my control like cars, buses and planes just because a ton of things need to fall into place in order for me to get smoothly from here to Texas and…

You can use this tactic for anything…if there is a work presentation that you’re a little nervous about or perhaps a family member has a surgical procedure coming up, it can really be anything.

The next step is actually something that I implemented more recently and it is as if my older self is talking to my younger self. I’m 37 and I think about it like my 47 or 57 year old self is giving me a little bit of guidance and it’s really interesting because…

I feel as though there isn’t any new or revolutionary information that my older self is telling my younger self, I essentially already have these answers internally, however framing it as if it’s a more experienced version of me guiding a less experienced version of me just feels like it’s easier to access the truth…don’t ask me why, just give it a go for yourself if you’re interested!

So today my more experienced self mentioned some things that I’m doing well, some areas that I may potentially want to look at for possible improvements via work and personal issues and then just offered up some support and encouragement...I fully understand that this might sound strange, but it’s almost like having the best therapist in the world because they don’t just know you really well, they essentially are you.

In my opinion this is not a replacement for a therapist.

I’ve been working with a therapist twice per month for 15+ years, I just had a session 2 days ago and I have another one in 12 days. Fortunately, my therapist has been my mentor since I was about 16 years old and one thing that he told me was that we don’t have eyes on the back of our heads for a reason, meaning we need help and support if we want to access the best version of ourselves…I’m BIG fan of therapy!

Once I feel complete with all of that, I wish myself an awesome day and I actually rip the piece of paper out of my journal, crumple it up and toss it in the garbage. Some folks like to keep their journal entries, I’m not one of those people…I like to ‘wipe the slate clean’ as they say each and every day that I write.

Also just practically speaking, I don’t have the physical space to keep stuff like this due to my lifestyle, nor do I want to to be honest…I love the feeling of minimizing and just having less stuff…it provides me with a profound feeling of freedom and lightness.

Now, this is just my process and how I go about journaling, you may want to implement something similar or something completely different, there is no right or wrong way to journal…it’s just a matter of whatever works for you and…

Your process can be totally malleable! You might want to have a different theme every day where maybe one day you journal about personal stuff, another day you write about family and then another is all about work…or perhaps you have a super set framework that you use…there are no rules!

If you are interested in implementing some journaling, I would recommend a few things…

One, use a pen or pencil that you LOVE writing with…this is so important because you want to enjoy the physical writing process and if you have a writing instrument that you don’t like the feel of, it won’t be nearly as enjoyable or effective. Personally, I use these uni-ball fine line waterproof/fade-proof pens, you can get them anywhere and I just love the way that the ink flows out and how smooth the pen feels on paper.

Some folks like beautiful looking journals, I really don’t care at all what type of journal that I have or what type of paper that I write on as long as it’s just simple lined paper, that works for me…the pen though, I care about that a lot!

I also like to journal with my coffee and if you’re looking to implement any habit like journaling, a way to reinforce it is to pair it with something that you already really enjoy, for example…

If you want to start walking every morning and you love coffee as much as I do, you might want to get in the habit of taking your coffee with you on your morning walk.

Or, you could even make it a habit to walk to your favourite local coffee shop. Task pairing like this is a great way to reinforce healthy habits…in fact, you could even walk to your local coffee shop with your journal and write in it there…that’s a pretty awesome little morning routine right there!

If you don’t want to use the little template that I just laid out for ya and you’re still unsure as far as how to start writing, here are a few prompts that you can use depending on whether you prefer to journal earlier in the day or later in the day…

-How would I like today to go / How did today go?

-How could I make today more fun / what was the funest part of today?

-What is one action that I’m willing to take that would make me feel proud going to sleep tonight / what was one action that I took that made me feel proud of myself today?

-What is the biggest problem or challenge that I’m facing at the moment and what is one thing that I’m willing to do right now in order to get closer to solving it?

-If my body could talk, what would it ask me for…what does it need right now?

-Is there tension in my body at the moment and if so, where is it?

If none of those hit home, feel free to google ‘journal prompts’ and TONS of ideas will come up!

So to sum things up…

If this is something that you’d like to implement, grab a blank notebook of some sort as well as a pen/pencil that you love and give it a go! I’d recommend committing for at least 2 – 4 weeks just so that you can get in the groove and give yourself enough time to see or not see potential benefits that you’re looking to get out of this practice.

Personally, I love it!