A peek inside my journal

If there’s one thing that has made me more focused, more successful and more joyful in my day-to-day life, it’s my morning journal habit. 

Every morning, before anyone in my house is awake, I meditate for five minutes, make an espresso and sit down to an empty page of a journal. No better way to start the day. 

It has become such a crucial part of my routine that even when we go on vacation, I wake up before my husband, find a place outside and do my journaling. 

So what do I write about? 

I’ve tried a lot of different approaches – sometimes just flowing with a stream-of-consciousness, sometimes re-writing the stories in my head of past events, sometimes asking myself challenging questions I’m dealing with and answering them in third person. I’ve used prompts, or spiritual texts, or motivational videos – you name it. But over time, I’ve settled on a pretty formulaic system that has skyrocketed my productivity, peace and happiness. Pieces of this have been picked up from advice books or podcasts, other parts I’ve just made up, and it continues to evolve.

Step 1: The mantra 

The first thing I write on each page is a mantra I stole from “The Big Leap” by Gay Hendricks. It goes like this: I expand in abundance, success, and love every day, as I inspire those around me to do the same.  

I write it at the top of the page before anything else. As I’m writing I really think about those words and what they mean. Then I smile and think about all the ways it’s already true. It sounds cheesy, but it makes a huge, immediate impact on my open-mindedness and flow. 

Step 2: Future trip

The next thing I do is arbitrarily pick some time frame in the future. Sometimes it’s five years, or 10, or sometimes it’s 30 days or 60 days. I randomly pick a date, write it down, and then describe in great detail how my perfect life would look at that time point.

I write about how it feels to wake up in the morning, what I do with my time, how I feel, who I’m spending time with. I make note of my kids’ ages at that time period and what they’ll be doing. I write down what my husband might be doing, or the anniversary we’ll be celebrating. I get into great detail and allow myself to really feel how it feels to live that ideal life. 

Then I start walking backwards. If I picked 10 years, I might riff on what five years out looks like, then three, then one. If I picked 30 days, I’ll break it down into the next four weeks. I just jot down a couple bullet points – the incremental steps that I’ll need to be taking toward that future day. 

So many of the thoughts we have each day are just re-plays of the same old stories; such a broken record. What I’m doing here is trying to create new neural pathways and lay down new grooves. Since I do this every day, I don’t spend more than a few minutes on it, but it’s a great way to “practice” feeling the way I want to feel. And then…. 

Step 3: Today is going to be a great day

When I’m satisfied with my future trip, I start a new section and write in big letters:

 Today is going to be a great day.

Then I pull out my phone, open my calendar, and make a list of every single thing I need to do on that day and why it’s going to be great. 

If I’m about to workout, I make a note about how great it’ll feel, or that the music will be awesome, or that it’ll be good to sweat. 

If it’s my day to take the kids to daycare, I’ll write about how much I love their funny little stories in the car and how grateful I am to have the support system of a little school we love trust (and that has extended hours!) 

I try not to have any meetings scheduled for the first hour of my day, which I relish. So I take a moment to write down whatever I’m going to focus on in that first hour. Maybe planning a future presentation or team meeting. Maybe prepping for a meeting later on in the day. Maybe reading. 

Then I make a list of all the meetings I have that day and think about what I want to get out of them. Sometimes it’s just building morale and checking in on my people. Other times there’s a clear outcome I want to make sure we have. I think about how grateful I am to have a job I love and people to lead who I care about. 

I list what I’ll eat for lunch and preemptively choose something that will keep me energized an healthy. I build in time for at least a 20-30 minute walk, usually after lunch. I keep going like this for every activity till dinnertime, which I also map out. 

Sometimes I look ahead to the next day to make sure there’s nothing tomorrow that needs to be planned/ prepped for today. 

Then I close my journal and get to it. 

Checking my work

Every so often I’ll flip back a couple pages and see what I wrote in the weeks or months prior. Amazingly, but not that surprisingly, I start to notice that the “dream days” I described previously are starting to look more and more like my actual life. The choices I make are being guided subconsciously by this imagined future. 

You hear a lot these days about “manifesting,” which sounds like something you do with crystals on a full moon. But is it really so far-fetched? 

After all, our days become our weeks, become our years, become our lives. Shouldn’t what that looks like be up to us?