I see journaling as a way to process big changes and challenges in my life
As your life evolves, your journaling practice evolves with you. There is no need to put pressure on your journaling habit: “I haven’t journaled in a month! I’m totally off track!” … There is no ‘off track’. There is only this beautiful tool that is sitting there, ready to support you whenever you need it.
This is my story of how journaling has evolved with me through the years. I hope it inspires you to flow with your journaling habit, too.
1. Journaling Before Bed
When I was 12, I got a journal as a birthday gift. It had a tiny lock and a cover image of my favorite Teen Band. It felt like my secret way to talk about everyone and everything, knowing that nobody would read it.
The only way I thought journaling worked was to sit and write about your day every night before going to bed. At least, that’s what you see in the movies, right? “Dear diary, I have a crush on this boy, but I don’t know if he loves me back. I had pizza for dinner and I had a fight with my brother. Good night.”
When you're a teenager, every day is an adventure. Every conversation with a boy is a movie on repeat. Every setback is a disaster.
Journaling helped me process my feelings, my thoughts, my experiences.
I literally couldn’t sleep well without journaling first. I felt this relief after putting my thoughts and feelings onto paper. I felt like my head was empty, and ready for peaceful sleep.
Today, journaling before bed helps me both in my life and in my business. Whenever I'm stressing over something, or the opposite, I'm having many creative ideas for my business, I unload it all in my journal.
2. Living Mindfully Through Chronic Disease
When I was 15, chronic disease turned my life upside down. I couldn’t go to school, I was walking with a cane, I got used to feeling high amounts of pain every day, and I couldn’t live a normal teenage life from my 15 to 19.
I remember my singing teacher gave me a book I didn’t realize was quite the classic: The Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
It opened these big bright doors to mindfulness and self-help books.
Doctors didn’t know what to do with me. They said: “You just have a small energy bucket and you’ll need to learn how to live with that. There is nothing you can do about chronic disease.”
I’m proving them wrong in every way today, but back then I only had a nagging feeling of “This can’t be it.” I didn’t know where to go for help, so I dove into everything I could find about mindfulness, positive psychology and healthy living.
The only remedies I had at the time were:
- Living in the now
- Being grateful for the little things in life
These two principles literally saved my life. As I was fighting against my body’s limits, I had to learn how to love myself fully and become my own best friend.
I used mindful journaling and body scan meditations (You can download my free body scan meditation right here and test it out) to check in with my body and truly listen to my new limits, instead of pushing through (which used to be my default).
Journaling and meditation pulled me out of a dark place at a young age.
3. Journal Prompts
If you’re not familiar with journal prompts yet, these are questions for self-reflection that you can use to get your journaling juices flowing. I love using prompts, because they might have topics I hadn’t even thought about and they take me to places in my mind that seem new and refreshing.
My way into journal prompts was self-help books or workbooks.
Every time I read a new self-help book, I would journal after every chapter to reflect on what this topic means to me, which place it has currently in my life, and what I can improve for myself.
I still love using journal prompts whenever I need inspiration or clarity about my life and business goals.
One of my favorite topics to journal about is overwhelm. Whenever I feel my life is just getting too busy and I need to regroup. I plan a moment for myself without distractions to zoom out of my busy life and re-organize everything, making sure my daily activities are still aligned to my bigger goals. You can do the same!
