Unlock the secrets to a more reflective and purpose-driven life as I, Natalie Davis, guide you through the enriching world of journaling on Rise and Thrive. This episode is your passport to discovering how simple pen and paper can become powerful tools for emotional release, crystallizing thoughts, and setting the stage for achieving your dreams. I'll walk you through the best practices for weaving journaling into the very fabric of your daily routine, ensuring it becomes a cornerstone of your morning and a lantern illuminating the path to personal growth.
Feel the thrill of anticipation as we explore the landscapes of your deepest aspirations, from the cobblestone streets of your dream cities to the pinnacle moments ticking off your bucket list. I'll be your companion in painting vivid pictures of your future glories and the emotions that come with them, using journaling as a canvas for your authenticity and vulnerability. Join me and the vibrant Reignite Resilience community in documenting the steps to your success with intention, fervor, and a dash of excitement for the journey ahead.
Don't forget to listen and follow on your favorite streaming platform and on Facebook. Subscribe on Your Favorite Platform: https://reigniteresilience.buzzsprout.com Follow Us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reigniteresilience
Disclaimer: The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The co-hosts of this podcast are not medical professionals. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast. Reliance on any information provided by the podcast hosts or guests is solely at your own risk.
Unlock the secrets to a more reflective and purpose-driven life as I, Natalie Davis, guide you through the enriching world of journaling on Rise and Thrive. This episode is your passport to discovering how simple pen and paper can become powerful tools for emotional release, crystallizing thoughts, and setting the stage for achieving your dreams. I'll walk you through the best practices for weaving journaling into the very fabric of your daily routine, ensuring it becomes a cornerstone of your morning and a lantern illuminating the path to personal growth.
Feel the thrill of anticipation as we explore the landscapes of your deepest aspirations, from the cobblestone streets of your dream cities to the pinnacle moments ticking off your bucket list. I'll be your companion in painting vivid pictures of your future glories and the emotions that come with them, using journaling as a canvas for your authenticity and vulnerability. Join me and the vibrant Reignite Resilience community in documenting the steps to your success with intention, fervor, and a dash of excitement for the journey ahead.
Don't forget to listen and follow on your favorite streaming platform and on Facebook. Subscribe on Your Favorite Platform: https://reigniteresilience.buzzsprout.com Follow Us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reigniteresilience
Disclaimer: The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The co-hosts of this podcast are not medical professionals. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast. Reliance on any information provided by the podcast hosts or guests is solely at your own risk.
Speaker 1:
Hello Reignite Resilience community. Natalie Davis here, your co-host of the Reignite Resilience podcast, and I am so excited to bring you this week's edition of Rise and Thrive, your weekly message of inspiration from the Reignite Resilience podcast. And today I want to talk to you about journaling. We talk about journaling, I want to say, in about 75% of the podcasts that we air. It is a vital tool that is so beneficial in so many ways. So I want to just take a few moments in this week's Rise and Thrive to dive deeper into the practice of journaling. So I want to first just talk about some of the advantages of journaling. First and foremost, I think one thing that we know you can utilize journaling as a way or a source of being an emotional outlet, a place for you to just really dump all of the emotions that you're feeling, both positive, negative. It's really a way for you to express what you've just experienced in terms of the emotional aspect of experiences that you're having in life. You can also utilize journaling for self-reflection and awareness. We talk about reflection quite a bit when we discuss various adversities that we face within our lives, and so journaling really creates that space for you to reflect. Do the internal reflection. Have that self-dialogue right. We jokingly say, well, we don't want to have conversations with ourselves. And journaling is a place that you can do, that you can sit down, have a conversation with yourself, write yourself through the different scenarios, what you're truly feeling, being candid and honest with yourself. When you're looking at journaling. It is very important and vital for you to make sure that you are being honest and transparent and 100% vulnerable in your journal entries whenever you set yourself up for journaling and a little bit later I'm going to talk about how you can set yourself up, best practices for journaling, things that you can do to position yourself to have a great journaling experience. The other thing that you can do is problem solving. I mean, how often do we go to bed at the end of the day and we think, gosh, you know what I really wish? I would have said this to that person when we had that challenging conversation, or when I had to have that heart-to-heart conversation, or I missed an opportunity to show gratitude or appreciation to a person, and I want to go back and look at that moment. Utilize journaling as a problem-solving tool. You can literally, in a bullet point fashion, just go through and say if this is the problem. X is the problem. Here is a solution in numbers one, two, three and four.
Speaker 1:
Journaling is a great space to do that and now that we are just coming out of business planning season and we just wrapped up the first of the year, it's a great time for New Year's resolutions. We see a lot of goal setting. That happens during this place, this time in a lot of our lives. Goal setting and setting achievements or items that you want to achieve throughout the year is a great way to also utilize journaling If you have a journal just setting down and writing out some of the goals that you've set for yourself. I actually had a conversation today with a client and she went back to look at her notes that she entered in on her phone a year ago today and in that note section she sat down and wrote out all of the notes for the goals that she wanted to achieve in 2023. And here she sat a full year later looking at that list and feeling this sense of accomplishment that she was able to check every single box for the things that she wrote down. There's a certain power in writing things down. Now she wrote it on her phone in her notes app.
Speaker 1:
I'm a firm believer in actually writing out and journaling pen to paper because of the neurotransmitter activity that happens within your brain when you are engaging your hand and the actual sensation of writing on the paper. But we'll talk about best practices here in a bit. But if you have goals that you're setting for yourself, so small milestones that you want to reach, journaling is a great way to do that as well, and I think oftentimes it's overlooked. People think about journaling and they think, gosh, I've got to write a story, I've got to reflect on something. Another great benefit of journaling if you suffer from or you feel like the older you get, you're having challenges with your memory and you're having just recollecting the experiences that you've had.
Speaker 1:
Journaling is a great way to just record your daily experiences. I personally love the experience and practice of journaling on a daily basis and I actually keep a lot of my journals from year to year. I now have them boxed in one spot so I can pull it out and see. You know, what was I experiencing? What did I feel? There are so many things that we experience on a daily basis and we let them go. I mean, if you just think back to the last 365 days. I find it very hard to believe that you would be able to recall and recount every emotion and experience that you had all day, every day, for the last 365 days. So why not just take a snapshot and jot that into a journal so that you can have great memories all stored in one spot that you can go back at the end of a year, at the end of the journal itself, when you get to the last page, to just flip through and say, gosh, well, what did I just experience over the last 90 days, last six months, last 12 months, what did that look like? And then going back and being able to again experience those positive emotions that we have and being grateful for the experiences that we're having on this journey. So there are so many fabulous benefits when we are looking at journaling. So what's the best way to do it? I'll just share from my own personal experience.
Speaker 1:
I love journaling and it's part of my morning routine, so that's something that happens in the morning. So for me, I like to find a space and create a space that is conducive for me to journal, and that's what I'd recommend that you do as well. It's pretty consistently the same space depending on the season. It is now winter here in the state of Colorado and in the winter months it gets dark early and also it doesn't get light until later in my home and I kind of go through the same practice every day in setting myself up for a successful journaling and morning routine. It involves coming down, making a warm beverage typically coffee, sometimes a hot cup of tea, but typically coffee and then I sit down in the same spot and I leave my journal and my goal setting planner all in one spot where I write down my journal entries, my gratitudes and affirmations, my goals that I'm reflecting on for the quarter. I keep it in the same spot every day so that I can just rhythmically go through the process of making my way to sit down and have some time with myself each morning. For me it's about 45 minutes to an hour that I allot and I make sure that I allow that time every single morning so that I don't miss out on opportunities to reflect on the prior day or even think through the day ahead when we're looking at like journaling for problem solving If you know you're going to face something, journal about it so that you know some opportunities or options that you have. So really setting yourself up in the space and then finding your journal style.
Speaker 1:
Journaling is not something that came easy to me. I am not a writer. I guess it's not something that I own, it's not part of my character or who I am. So I had to figure out what style of journaling worked for me, and there are a variety of styles. When you're looking at journaling, you can just do like stream of consciousness writing, where I say that's when you get into flow, and usually I do that after I've done some type of meditation and relaxation practice. So I'll get into the state where I can actually just do conscious writing and it's amazing the information, the space of gratitude and growth and appreciation that you enter into when you're doing that consciousness flow writing.
Speaker 1:
You can also do gratitude journal. I mentioned that I do gratitudes and affirmation. My journal includes gratitudes that I have on a daily basis. I write anywhere from three to 10 things that I'm grateful for. Right now I'm actually in two different journals. So one journal it's a prompt for three things that I'm grateful for. Another journal it's a prompt for 10 things that I'm grateful for. I'm doing both. So I come up every day with 13 things that I'm grateful for, and it's great. Sometimes they match and overlap, other times they don't, but really, when I can start my day by jotting down 13 things that I'm grateful for, you better believe that you start out on just a lighter, happier note, just as you make your way throughout the day.
Speaker 1:
Bullet journaling is another option for you, or just simply writing If you get into a spot where you're not sure where to go, look for writing prompts that can give you kind of a start to what you'd like to write about or share in your journal. For that time Again, I've shared it's important to make sure that not only your space is consistent and conducive for you to show up as your full, authentic self, but also allow you to feel safe so that you can be vulnerable to share within your journal, but also doing it at a set time. I mentioned that I schedule this in in my morning routine. If you are planning on incorporating journaling into your daily routine, whether you do it in the day, first thing in the morning, or you do it in the evening, right before you retire for bed mid-afternoon, if you do it during your lunch hour, whatever it is, do it consistently during that time, all the the time, or as much as possible. I will tell you, I'm a morning journaler and I often do my morning routine.
Speaker 1:
And if I happen to have a morning that I'm traveling or my schedule just doesn't allow me to do my morning routine, and I tell myself, oh, I'll just come back and I'll do that during lunch I usually don't or I'll come back and I'll do it at the end of the day. I usually don't. And here's why it's not my normal routine or habit that I have in place. As soon as I extract it and try to place it somewhere else in my calendar, I have to intentionally reprogram my brain to do that thing during that time. And that's not just with journaling, that's with everything that we do out of order when we have those prompts. Go back and listen to our episode about habits. We talk about it there.
Speaker 1:
Be honest with yourself when you're journaling, and this is a hard one when we talk about being authentic and being honest. When I started journaling, I think I'm about eight, nine years, maybe 10 years now into my journaling practice nine years, maybe 10 years now into my journaling practice, and initially it was hard right. Do I want to write down all of my thoughts, my emotions, my feelings in a book that someone might see. So look at this and know that this is an opportunity in creating that safe space, even if it's a safe space for yourself. Know that you're going to create the safe space and you're going to be authentic and honest in who you are and what you're writing. Hold back from judging yourself, hold back from judgmental thoughts that may start to creep in or anything that even is going to hold you back from being truly 100% vulnerable as you enter into your journal practice.
Speaker 1:
I mentioned that you can use some prompts, so I'm going to give you a couple of prompts that you can start to use, and one is just like reflection on your day. What were some of the highlights? What are the top three things that you experienced that day that you're grateful for upcoming day, and journal about those things. And let me tell you, when you journal about those things in the positive, in the future, they truly do. It does impact the experience that you're going to have throughout the day.
Speaker 1:
Another prompt that you can look at is reflecting on a recent personal success or a professional accomplishment that you had in life. What's something that you've recently accomplished or done and that you've celebrated and journal about that. Journal about the celebrations that you've had. And again, it comes from a place of gratitude and appreciation for the journey and the path that you're on. In this journey that we call life, you can journal and reflect on other people, identifying a person or a professional challenge that you're facing, and you can actually brainstorm on some of the solutions for the challenge that you're facing, or describing a mentor or a role model that you have. What are the attributes that you admire about that individual? What are things that you may not have told them, or maybe you have told them and you shared it with these mentors or key figures within your life, so to let them know how you feel and if you haven't actually shared it with that other person, a journal is a great, great space to put that in Dream in your journal.
Speaker 1:
What is a place that you want to go and visit here soon when you talk about things that are on your life list? What are some things that you want to do on your life list? What's it going to feel like when you accomplish that? And when I say feel like, what's it? Where are you? What does it smell like Taste, like, Feel like. What do you see, what do you hear? Who are you, what do you look like, how are you showing up Journal about those things? And, again, being honest, vulnerable and authentic with who you are in that journal space. So I hope that this little tidbit has been helpful for you as we continue to rise and thrive in the Reignite Resilient community. We'll see you soon.