The Differently Journal is Here!

Meet The Differently Journal!

Today's episode is a celebration + peek inside this new guided journal.  

I'm also sharing my 5 favorite ways to use writing to navigate life, and more.

Get your copy today!

Get The Differently Journal at carlareeves.com/journal

Group pricing?  Please email to carla@differentlyco.com

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Learn more about Carla:
Website: https://www.differentlyco.com

Get The Differently Journal:
https://differently.myflodesk.com/journal

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Connect on LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reevescarla/
Connect on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@differentlythepodcast

Go to https://differentlyco.com/events to get The Class schedule, sign up, and/or pass it on to a friend.  Come hang out and learn with us for FREE!

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Transcript

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A New Way To Live And Think

SPEAKER_00 0:00

A deep change in the way that we live requires a deep change in the way that we think. I'm Carla Reeves, and this is Differently.

Announcing The Differently Journal

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Happy Thursday. I it's a little extra happy Thursday because even though I'm not recording on Thursday, I'm anticipating you listening on Thursday, and I'm so excited because I have in my hands the Differently Journal. And it's a real physical journal that you can now get a copy of. And I'm so excited to share it with you because it is the first journal that I have printed in over 20 years. And it feels like a very full circle moment that I want to share with you. And this episode is really a sneak peek into the journal. And I want really want to remind you and hopefully inspire you by what this simple, easy, accessible, affordable tool called writing can actually be for your life. I lived my life for many years, feeling at the mercy of what was happening around me and felt trapped in my own thinking and noisy mind. And I knew in my heart there had to be another way, but I had no clue how to get there or what that looked like. And writing helped me find my way out, and it can help you too. This is why I created the Differently Journal, and it's officially available. Um, you can go to Carlareeves.com forward slash journal and check it all out there. But this journal is designed and filled with so much love from my heart to you to guide you in writing your life forward so that you can stop surviving your days and really start creating your life on purpose. So I mentioned this is the first journal I've printed in 20 years.

Why Writing Became A Lifeline

SPEAKER_00 2:06

The first journal I printed was called Little Me. I may have mentioned this before, but it was a baby journal, and I created it for my boys as a way to record and remember all the precious little things that happened so early in their life because I knew over time I would forget so much of it. And I actually wanted to record and remember it for them so that perhaps someday they could go back and remember who they are and who they were created to be. So, as if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know my probably original story of writing, but it happened when I was a young mom. And in a season where I felt like I was just surviving and not even just surviving, I felt like I was slipping into just a place I didn't want to be. I felt like my sanity was slipping. I didn't feel myself. I looked around and so saw so many other moms too that were unhappy or overwhelmed, and that was quietly starting to ripple into the way they parented and showed up in their marriages. And I knew I didn't want that, but I felt myself kind of going down that same path. And I knew I wanted to be a happy mom. I felt like that was one of the greatest gifts I could give my children. And at the same time, I felt God tell me to write. And I listened, I started writing, and here I am today, 20 plus years later, still using writing um daily. Um, you know, daily, I do a daily morning journal. Um, as far as using it as a tool to navigate my life, I use it as needed now, but multiple times a week, um I am writing in some form or fashion. And teaching it and sharing this tool. So shortly after I started writing, I flipped through the pages of my journal and realized all the things that had happened, and also felt, God say, you're here to teach people how to use writing as a tool to navigate their life. And that's what it is, friend. This is not just a recording your life, recording what happens, although that might be important too.

Writing As A Tool For Agency

SPEAKER_00 4:20

It's really about using it as a tool to manage your own mind, sort through your own thoughts, um, hear and listen for truth, and align yourself and move forward so you can do that on purpose, so you feel like you have agency in your life. So today, in celebration of uh the release of the journal, I want to just share really the my favor, my very favorite things that you can do inside of a journal and how you can do that inside of this journal so you can go grab a copy. Okay, so my very favorite things that I use a journal for, and that I actually use with my clients to do too. So if you haven't been listening for a long time, um I also coach with a journal. So anytime I'm working with a client, they have an online journal that we share, and I take them through writing practices, many of which are in this

Five Powerful Journal Practices

SPEAKER_00 5:20

journal. But one of the very first thing is to calm my own mind. So maybe you can relate that your mind gets really noisy, it gets really spinny, it can just go down a rabbit hole without you even realizing it and derail your whole day. So calming my mind is one of the my favorite things to do. And that is simply just to empty your mind. Take out the mental trash daily, just like you do in your house. So it can be just emptying out all of those thoughts because I promise you that when you can start to get some distance from your thoughts and realize they are not you, and that you don't have to believe everything that you think, just doing that does wonders. Number two, keeping me awake in my life. Do you know how easy it is to fall asleep to this life and just go through the motions or numb out or drift off? Writing helps me stay awake in my life. And it is a practice of just paying attention, paying attention to what's happening in my mind, paying attention to what's happening in my life, paying attention to the actions that I'm taking and the outcomes of those actions, like what's working, what's not working, what needs my attention in my life. If I look around the relationships in my life, so it keeps me aware. It's like a dashboard in a car. It's like uh keeps me aware of all the different parts of my life and what needs attention, or what is uh drifting off or going astray, or what is working so that I can do more of that. Number three, it's an incredible tool to process your thoughts. So when you're spinning about something or you're grappling with something, or you're trying to make a decision and you're just on the fence and can't seem to do it, writing is an incredible way to get out all the things that you're thinking and then stand back and ask different questions, approach it from different angles. Imagine if you were giving somebody else advice, what you would say, and even kind of interrupting those negative patterns that you typically um spin around in. Like I was just recently working with a client, and her default thought pattern is to imagine the worst and find, find all the ways that something's not going to work out or it's not going to be good for her. And so I'm in the process of how teaching her how to approach that differently, to interrupt that pattern early on. So, for example, if you're trying to figure out, like, oh, do I go on this trip? Do I not go on this trip? Is it going to be safe? Am I going to be okay? Is it a good idea? And all the fear comes in, right? When we think of something big and exciting we want to do. Well, in a matter of seconds, she had talked herself out of doing it for all the reasons that something could go wrong. And so I asked, I'm asking her to step back and start interrupting that thought pattern earlier on. Like, what is this trip? How does it align with your bigger goals and dreams for your life? What is the timing in your life? Does the timing make sense? Does it, is it, does it fall in in line with your other priorities? What is your intuition feeling about it? So that you're not just looking at all the things that could go wrong, but you're standing back and going, how does this line up with who I am and what I'm up to in my life? So incredible and so helpful. Um this other way that processing things, I believe it's like a leader superpower, but just taking five minutes before a meeting or an important conversation to get out your thoughts, to really stand back, think about what your ultimate outcome is here so that you can align to increase the likelihood of the best possible outcome. Um, so powerful. Number four, create new approaches to old problems. So similar to what I was telling you in walking a client through. But if you see like a repetitive pattern that is not producing the fruit that you want to see in your life, this is a good indicator that it might be a great time to write and actually just kind of get out what you're thinking, get out your default approach and think about how has that impacted you in the past and what could you do slightly different? Just change your dance ever so slightly to

Calm The Noisy Mind

SPEAKER_00 10:02

tweak the outcome. And then over time, you can practice and experiment with that and refine it and amplify it. That that alone can produce um just new results almost immediately in your life. You can start to shift the patterns. And lastly, number five is to really create. But what if it does happen? What if it happens because you start to write it down, you start to remember it, and without you even realizing it, because you're doing that, you start to aim and align your actions to that. This is so powerful, and it's something I have used in every area of my life to create change, to um to grow, and to realize outcomes. So what you can do in the differently journal that relates to all of these things is really all of it. So I'm looking at it right now, and it's got some instructions for how to start. It's got five ways to write your life forward. And then I take each each way, and there's a page for each way to kind of walk you through that and walk you through what does that mean and what does that look like and give you some prompts to actually do it. So the beginning of this journal is a guide for you, and then it's filled with lots of blank pages, uh, lined pages, I should say. It's filled with lots of reminders and inspiration that you're gonna love. You could turn to a page and a picture and let that inspire

Stay Awake To Your Life

SPEAKER_00 12:19

your writing. I all the photographs in this journal came from our three-week trip to Costa Rica. So it's all of my own photography. And so I'm giving you a little slice of Costa Rica, which um is pretty magical. And then there's also pages and inspiration where you can link to a QR code that takes you to a podcast episode where I talked about that specific thing. So it's filled with ways to inspire your writing as well. So I can't wait for you to check this out. You can get your copy again at carlareeves.com forward slash journal. If you are interested in giving this to your team, which a client of mine did, she just gifted a copy to each of her team members. If you're interested in more than one copy, you're gonna need to email me directly at Carla at differentlyco.com or Carla at Carlareeves.com, and I we can arrange for that. The shopping cart on this site, you can just order one at a time. But it makes a great gift, definitely something for you, but also makes a great gift. Um, could be a great item if you're hosting an event for a swag bag or a giveaway, so lots of ideas there. It is a practical tool to help you clear your mind, see differently, think differently, and move your life forward on purpose. I am so excited for you to get your hands on this and just know from my heart to yours it's a tool to help you stop

Process Decisions And Patterns

SPEAKER_00 14:01

surviving your life and really start creating it on purpose. Thank you for celebrating with me. I hope you have a beautiful day and I'll see you next week.