The single most important thing you can do to start improving your whole self is to start writing in a daily journal. This is the best way to start. If you’ve ever been busy in your life, you’re not alone. In the morning, if you’re like most people, you hit snooze a few times before getting out of bed and hurrying to get ready for work. There are Post-it notes all over the place, and deadlines are slipping away too quickly for you to keep up with. At home, you have to do the same things you did during the day to stay afloat.
There are dishes and laundry and bills and maybe a side job. “What did I get done today?” It might seem like you didn’t do anything important or nothing at all, even though you worked for 14 hours. And aren’t they both terrible?
Here’s what we want you to do: stop.
Stop right now. Stop and breathe, think, smell the coffee, and plan your day. Take charge of how your short time on Earth turns out. Stop letting your schedule decide who you are and take away your legacy. Overnight, you won’t be able to get out of autopilot mode right away. Don’t expect it to happen. It’s going to take one small daily commitment, one day at a time, to make it happen. You’re going to see small changes that start to change how you feel and act during the day.
Then, you might wonder, “How can journaling change my life?”
It can change your life by putting your attention back on life. Throughout our lives, we only have a limited amount of time to do what we want to do. Most of us don’t even know what we want to do. Instead of asking, “What do I need?” we just do what life asks us to do every single day.
People who use autopilot have low energy, don’t feel like they’re getting what they’ve worked so hard for, are depressed, anxious, weight gain, tired, and more. No, it’s not the same thing.
What Role Does Journaling Play in All of This?
Beginning each day with a morning notebook offers you the chance to re-center yourself and define your objectives and priorities for the day. It enables you to begin your day on purpose by driving the train rather than riding it to your destination. It helps you to reflect on your decisions and the consequences of those decisions, which motivates you to make better decisions on a daily basis.
The habit of writing encourages you to make time for the things that don’t naturally take up your time throughout the day, such as gratitude, health, wellbeing, relationships, and serenity, since it pushes you to create time for them.
In addition, as Buddha says, you become what you believe. When a result, as you think about your eating choices, physical exercise, thankfulness, relationships, and living a calm life, it becomes, in a sense, a self-fulfilling prophesy in your mind. Of course, this does not happen suddenly, but rather via little everyday adjustments that result in a metamorphosis of the body and mind.
What Methods Do You Use to Make Time to Journal?
You make the decision to find the time. If you commit to this habit, any of these methods — or any other method you can think of — will work perfectly well.
- Prepare for the day by setting your alarm fifteen minutes earlier each morning.
- You may choose to sit down at the coffee shop rather than driving through it.
- It should be scheduled on your calendar so that it gets the same level of attention as a dentist visit or a performance evaluation.
- Take advantage of your lunch break to complete it.
- Create a system of rewards: no coffee in the morning or a glass of wine at night until you have finished your journaling.
- Make a list of everything (crossing it off is oh-so-satisfying).
- Glue a sticky note on the steering wheel.
- Keep your diary on your bedside and complete it before you get out of bed in the morning or before you go to sleep at night, whichever comes first.
- If you must use public transit, be sure to do so throughout your daily commute.
You can do everything you set your mind to, but the most essential thing to remember is that you must make the decision to do so. Period. There will be no excuses. The good news is that When you begin your day with purpose, you will discover that you have more time than you have ever had before because you will begin to choose not to waste your time on things that do not important to you.
As a follow-up, here’s some advice on how start Journaling
You now know the benefits of journaling and how to make time for it in your hectic schedule, so now let’s speak about how to really journal.
For some people, a diary can conjure images of a notebook filled with cursive entries listing the happenings of the day. That was my initial impression of a journal when I started keeping one. The point of keeping a journal like that is to make you reflect on your day, which may lead to sentiments of love, appreciation, and even healthy guilt, all of which can lead to better decisions in your life moving forward.
Even while journaling is a practise that combines reflection and purpose, it is quite different from journaling as a kind of self-reflection.
Your Whole Life Challenge journaling may look something like this:
Pause for a minute and think back to the day before. How well did you eat this week? What kind of exercise did you get in today? Was your daily aim met? Please describe your reaction.
Spend a few minutes making a plan for the day. What’s your daily routine like? Considering today’s goal, is there anything in your schedule that conflicts with it? If so, can you remove it? What do you want to accomplish today? What little steps can you take to get there? What do you have to be thankful for?
When writing your daily notebook, keep in mind that aiming for perfection is a sure way to fail.
A gallon of water, no carbohydrates, 60 minutes of hard exercise, and no negative thinking aren’t enough. Even if it happens once or twice, it will have no negative consequences since it is unlikely to occur. How about six bags of chips, twelve hours in bed, and a terrible attitude toward your loved ones?
It’s not a terrible idea to include a treat into your weekly schedule if you’ve learnt that it won’t cause you to gain weight (and journaling may help you discover this). If you’ve found that watching an hour of TV before bed helps you sleep better, make a commitment to yourself to allow yourself that time.
Rather of settling for mediocrity, aspire for excellence.
#Simple #Journal #Framework