How to Journal to Become Unrecognisable in 3 Months

Sometimes it's easy to feel like

journal

ing is really difficult and overwhelming, but really all you need is just 1 minute a day to start transforming your life. Journaling is a very powerful mental and spiritual tool to transform your life by helping you heal. to grow helping you progress helping you achieve the life of your dreams a question I get asked a lot is how to keep a

journal

. I don't even know where to start with journaling or I can't stay consistent with journaling everything you need. Start Changing Your Life are some simple, tried and tested, evidence-based techniques, so in this video we'll answer all of those questions, starting with why you should journal and how journaling can really change your life.

Intriguing click bait type title, this will truly change your life if you put it into practice. Second, we'll go over the key journaling methods, which are super powerful, tried and tested, evidence-based journaling methods that I've also personally used over the years. Third, we're going to go over how to stay consistent and incorporate it into your routine to take action on wanting to journal and make this a reality for you, so without further ado, let's dive into the video if you're new here, my name is Izzy . I am a doctor and a Cambridge graduate, and I have personally been journaling for over 8 years and have read literally dozens of journals.

I've created a journal template with lots of structures and prompts below, completely free for you to use. as a complement to this video, so why should we journal and how will this really change our life? There are three reasons to keep a journal. The first reason is to record your memories as a kind of snapshot to see the progress and see how far. you've come when I look back at some of my old journals and think, oh my God, I can't believe that at the time I was so worried about something that was happening or that I felt it so strongly, but then I looked back.

In fact, that was a huge blessing and that gives you this magical zoom out button to put things in perspective. Secondly, it affects your affect, so whether you have a more positive or negative approach to the world, we basically all struggle with negative emotions at times. like fear, things like anxiety, feeling like you worry about the future, fear of failure, fear of being judged, worrying about not being good enough, all of these things can weigh on us on a daily basis. Holocaust survivor and psychologist Victor Frankle, who wrote maner for meaning once written between stimulus and response there is a space in that space it is our power to choose our response in our response lies our growth and our freedom by putting our thoughts and feelings into paper over and over again Journaling is one of the most powerful ways to more objectively understand where our thoughts and feelings come from and understand the truth of what is really happening in our lives.

There have been studies with students that show that journaling as a practice can reduce negative emotions and even increase your emotions. Ratings are strange in general, it helps you realize that your emotions and feelings are actually not directly caused by the situation in your life. It is also a space where you can cultivate a higher state of mind and a more positive outlook on life. In this way, journaling can literally change. our lived experience of the world because experience is not something objective, experience is the life situation we find ourselves in plus a subjective evaluation on our part of that situation and that creates our experience, it includes things like the facts of the matter, but also all the feelings, emotions, narratives, beliefs and stories that we link to them and that make up our experience and, thirdly, it is something that I call access to the results of beliefs, by completely changing our focus from the diary of life, it can actually also completely change the outcome of our life.

Okay, let me explain, so the outcomes of our lives are broadly determined by our actions, obviously there is luck and other things involved, but what we can control are our actions, our actions usually come from our decisions and our intentions, our decisions and intentions are generally based. about our thoughts and feelings about things, so if we think something or feel something that often leads us to make a different decision, those again usually come from our beliefs and the stories we tell ourselves, the things we believe about ourselves, whether they are limiting. beliefs and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are who our identity is what things mean those same beliefs came from somewhere those stories those things we believe about ourselves didn't just come out of nowhere they came from events that happened in our life and way we choose to interpret it, for example, if you think you're not worthy, you're not good enough, that leads you to think okay, I'm not good enough to apply for this job because they'll reject me anyway because I'm not well, obviously because that's maybe my limiting belief and then that makes me decide not to bother applying for the job because they would think, oh, who the hell does he think he is to apply for this job? because she's obviously not good enough, which is something I've decided for myself, not that I've actually been told that and that leads me to the action of "okay, I'm not going to apply for that job and the result It's just that I did it." I didn't get that job because I didn't even try hard in the first place.

On the other hand, if let's say I have the belief that I am good enough, I can get this job. I am worthy, I am intelligent and I am capable and I can learn quickly, that would lead to thoughts and feelings of yes, I feel qualified to do this and then when the opportunity arises to apply for the job, I decide yes, I am going to apply for this. because I have this belief and this thought process and this feeling that I can do this and I can try even if I get rejected, okay, I'll try again, okay, I fundamentally know my worth and I believe in myself and that would lead me to the action of applying for jobs, putting yourself out there, which would likely lead to the outcome of getting that job, making that change, another example is if you believe I am a healthy person who prioritizes my well-being and fitness.

That will lead me to think about how I can improve my physical condition; feelings of motivation around exercise and self-care, which will lead me to decisions like: I'm going to go to the gym three times a week, I'm going to eat well. I'm going to sleep well and those actions lead to the results that you are more fit and the surprising thing is that this is actually a closed loop where the results you have

become

life events that then further condition your beliefs and They give fuel. to find evidence to support your beliefs and in fact these results

become

life events and that's why this loop is so powerful because you can look at this and think, oh this is so depressing because that means that the events of life are already happening.

I decided what my destiny will be. You could see it that way if you wanted, but you could also choose to see it another way, where beliefs, stories, thoughts, feelings, decisions, and intentions are not all determined by external things. The big influence on that is ourselves, we can make decisions to change them and that's where the journal comes in and that's why it's so special. I'm going to list them just for simplicity in this process, there is actually a lot of influence that we have to change. the way this Loop goes and changing this Loop even just a little bit and changing, for example, just our beliefs and stories and our thoughts and feelings just by a few percentage points that would change our decisions, change our actions, change the results that we Then change changes the events in our life, which then feeds back into the circle and continues to turn, so instead of letting this be a vicious cycle of negative beliefs, negative thoughts and feelings, negative decisions that limit us, we want to turn this in a virtuous circle that really lifts us up.

For us, there are ultimately four segments of this that we influence with journaling and those are how we perceive the events of our life, our beliefs and stories, our thoughts and feelings, our decisions and intentions and throughout the rest of this video on each of the journaling techniques. that I mentioned, I'm going to talk about which of these we can access. For me, making sure there is some of each of these four segments in my journaling practice has been the most powerful holistic combination for me. I highly recommend you try it. dabble in at least some of each of these four the first technique of journaling is also the simplest and this is the brain dump this is where you document your day let your thoughts and feelings emerge as they are and simply write them down this it's quite similar to a Julia Cameron technique in the artist's way where she talks about a technique called morning pages and this is where you sit down first thing in the morning or sometime in the morning and you just write for 10 to 20 minutes .

Full pages of Stream of Consciousness essentially for me. I do this kind of brain dump every day after my morning meditation because I often get some thoughts during that and I notice some things, so I literally just set a timer on my phone. for 5 minutes and then just start writing. This is especially helpful if you're feeling overwhelmed with thoughts or just want to clear your mind because I find that as soon as I do this I feel a lot calmer and any of these thoughts that I've had ideas about or that have filtered in, they just appear on the page. and as soon as they're on that paper, it's much easier to draw patterns from them and understand the bigger picture.

It's also great for documenting your life and sometimes I'll look back at previous brain dumps that I did where I wrote about, oh, what I was doing that day and I had a snapshot of what I was thinking, what I was doing at that moment and The next thing is to write a gratitude journal about my kindness. There is so much data and evidence to support gratitude journaling as one of the most powerful ways to change the way we think, improve our mental health, mental well-being, connect more with others, and even improve our physical health. There have even been studies that have shown that it can improve your quality of sleep lower your blood pressure crazy stuff again this is super easy you can do this in just a couple of minutes a day all you need to do is write down a few things why I'm grateful today, so maybe even just one, two, or three things, one thing I would do in my Bullet Journal is basically write a page where I would have a line for each day of gratitude and I would just write in sequence a couple of things that I was Grateful for that day, this also means I can see a whole month of gratitude on one page and that was great.

Having a daily gratitude practice for just 5 minutes a day can improve your happiness as much as doubling your salary, which is mind-blowing. So instead of trying to rush to get a raise or more money, you can simply keep a gratitude journal and have the same impact on your happiness. If you feel stuck in this. I often start by looking around me and appreciating things in the present moment. in the present, then thinking about my relationships with my family or my friends and the things I'm grateful for about them or thinking about the events of the day and what I'm working on in areas of my Health type is just the fact that I'm alive just the fact that this world exists is something to be grateful for so it literally could be anything or it could literally be I'm grateful for this ruler because it helped me write straight lines I'm grateful for this pen and having nice stuff office so I can journal and enjoy the experience of journaling while being grateful for this cup of tea, even though it's cold, it's refreshing and I'm so grateful to be able to enjoy this today in an interesting way for the future. year my number one value, Val, is gratitude.

I'm going to focus on this every day trying to bring it to life in every moment and trying to bring that coherence into my gratitude practice and coherence and wrestling with inconsistency is something I'm doing. I'm going to talk towards the end of this video, so stay tuned, if you're enjoying this video so far, you might want to follow me on Instagram @izy. I share my stories with daily updates, including some journaling prompts and things I keep in a journal. What I'm going to do next is one of my all-time favorites,which is asking your higher self for advice.

We all have this version of ourselves that we aspire to be the kindest, most loving, most compassionate, level-headed, wisest, most confident, calmest and most forgiving version of ourselves. I aspire to be when faced with the situation I often wonder what my higher self would do in this situation, how I would respond, what advice they would give me, for example if I noticed in my brain dump diary what I was feeling. If I had some level of fear and doubt about posting a YouTube video, then I could ask my higher self what she would say, how she would respond to that feeling or respond to this situation, and maybe she would actually say instead of thinking, what happens if I am? is not good enough to make this video or what if the video is not useful enough or what if you are making a fool of yourself online maybe she would say really well if your video can help at least one person isn't it ok the sorrow? and she could also say that you are actually the only person who can create your video and you are the only person who can believe in yourself or let's say if there is a conflict with a friend or family member instead of getting very attached to the ego and saying: Oh , am I right or are they wrong, it was their fault, maybe your higher self would remind you that it's really about the relationship and how you can do it. express love to this person even in the face of conflict, how would your higher self choose her response again touching all that space between stimulus and response, how would she choose in that situation?

Next up is the bullet journal, which is essentially an amazing system developed by Ryder. Carol, she has a whole book called the Bullet Journal method. I'll leave a link below. The Bullet Journal is the building block of my journal and is the structure that holds the rest of my journal. Basically, it allows you to break it down. your entire life and keep it all in one handy notebook. It is a complete system to migrate information and develop the sense of intentionality while having a year at a glance, a month at a glance and also a quick log in which you write down different tasks. that it has, it's almost like a mix of a to-do list and a don't take system and also an event reminder system and a calendar all in one and this is more of a kind of diary based on organizational life events. advance planning, but can also include There are other types of journals in there, so this is what I do almost every day while I write in my Bullet Journal.

Breaking down exactly how the whole system works will make this video too long so if you're interested in seeing my full setup then let me know in the comments if you want me to make a video on that because I can make a video if I do, I'll link it somewhere here too. Bel journaling for me has helped me keep my life together, enough. keep it from falling apart and basically keep it all in one place and in one handy book along with integrated migration and review practices that incorporate intentionality and mindfulness along with all the productivity.

Next is expressive writing. This is essentially a practice of writing. all your feelings and also the facts about difficult and painful emotional experiences James Pen Baker and his colleagues did a series of incredible studies where they showed that if you gave people the task of writing about the most traumatic experience of their life, they would simply write directly for 20 minutes, don't censor themselves, never stop writing, just write continuously, talk about the feelings but also the events that surrounded them and you had them do this four times in the span of a month and this had profound benefits for them. physical and mental health, so the way you can do this in practice is if you take out your journal and then write for 20 minutes straight without stopping the pen unless you need to, I know, wipe away a tear or take out a tissue or something like that. , without stopping the pen and simply writing continuously. about the most painful or very painful experience you've ever had, don't worry about punctuation, spelling or grammar, and if you run out of things to say, keep moving the pen, so draw like a wavy line or something until that you feel like you can start writing again write just for yourself don't make sure other people don't see this you need to feel like it's a safe space where you can fully express what you want really let go when you're writing and explore your deepest feelings and thoughts of the experience What they really discovered when people progressed through the four sessions of writing about the most painful experience they had ever had to writing about the same experience was that over time they wrote more objectively about it and also linked some more causality and began to put it in context, to understand it more and to process it more and there was a shift to slightly more positive and less negative language over time, this could be especially effective if you have some experience. the ones that you avoid thinking about or find it extremely painful to think about because they have this baggage hanging over us and weighing on our hearts and our minds and starting to work on that is really part of the process of feeling more whole and healed and settled.

On yourself, the next way to journal is to write about a story-worthy moment. One of the things that set us apart as humans from other hominids and great apes was our ability to really share stories and use them to bring people together and also to find that. motivation within us to continue making meaning of our lives and to be able to communicate and share this with others in a book worthy of a story written by Matthew Dicks. Talk about a life assignment where you essentially write just one or two sentences about a story-worthy moment each day something that involves some element of transformation or some moment of realization or just something interesting that happened that day.

This is a really nice way to document a little bit of your life and highlight something interesting that happened when you look. behind you you can see all these moments worthy of a story. I have a part of my monthly post where I talk about all the story-worthy moments and I essentially put them on a page here and each day has a line to write a very short snippet of a story-worthy moment, the next method is to set goals and keeping a manifestation journal, so this is where we think about where we want our lives to be in 5 years, where we want to be and then work backwards in 3 years, where I want to be and then in a year, where I want to create that vision for ourselves, visualize it and then come up with goals that we can pursue to achieve that and then also manifestations, things that we can affirm to ourselves, incantations that we can tell ourselves to get into the state of mind that we need. to be the person who can achieve those goals and make that dream come true.

I have a whole video on how to set goals, so feel free to watch it. I'll link to it somewhere here and again we'll go over the totally free template below with all the journaling prompts that I would recommend to work with as a complement to this video. There is a lot of evidence to show that when we write down our goals. we are much more likely to achieve them, so writing down our goals, writing down why we want them and how we are going to get there and then manifesting them, embodying them and bringing them into our lives as something we affirm to ourselves and reminding ourselves every day will put us in this path towards achieving the life of our dreams and this is working on the fourth part, mainly our decisions and intentions.

For me, one of the big goals I have for myself is to rest better. It is the foundation of everything else in our lives having good quality rest makes us more productive more emotionally stable having a more positive outlook on life and generally being able to live life to the fullest and live our best life and one of The key components to getting good quality sleep is having a perfect blackout. Something has evened out my sleep and helped me get much better quality sleep: Manta sleep masks, who are very kindly sponsoring this video. I literally travel with this everywhere at home or on the road.

It is not an option. -Negotiable for me to have this mask with me now because it helps a lot with sleep quality. My personal favorite mask they make is the Manta Pro Sleeping Mask. These really provide true 100% blackout. The glasses are completely customizable, you can literally put them on. Place them in any position you want, ensuring you can get that perfect custom fit. They have this C-shaped cup where there's a gap in the middle so it doesn't press on your eyes, it doesn't press on your eyelashes. comfortable to wear and the C shaped cup means the edge is thinner which means if you sleep on your side like I sometimes do then you can lie on your side and it's still very comfortable.

I really like the material it is made with. It's so breathable and comfortable, if you're interested in improving your sleep by getting a true blackout that's comfortable and portable that you can literally take anywhere, then definitely check out men's sleepwear. I'll leave a link below and make sure. to use the code Izzy to get an additional 10% off your order, the next method is The Wheel of Life The Wheel of Life Map different parts of your life so that friendships, family, career, finances, Health, everything this type of thing and invites you to rate how you are doing in each of those areas out of 10 and then draw a kind of circle.

I love this method because you can measure your progress over time and how things are going over time, you can literally make a graph, so I actually made an Excel sheet where I would track all of my metrics from the Wheel of life and every time you do this, whether it's every week, every month, every quarter or even just once a year, you can see the areas where you are lacking or not scoring. highly like the others because the goal is to create a holistic wheel and that's why it's on this type of wheel because you're trying to build the wheel without any big dents so identify this area, say for example if friendship got a score lower than everything else, maybe it was just a four out of 10, which could be a reminder, think hard, how can I really align my goals or set some new goals for myself to help me push this area of ​​my life forward?

And also what are some? areas where I'm doing pretty well and in fact, I can almost pat myself on the back and say that you know what you're really destroying with your relationship with your family or that you really like taking care of your health. reprioritizing your well-being, taking care of your worldly vehicle, next up is a holistic check in, so this is Mind, Body, Spirit, so this is where I write about how I'm doing mentally and I use a lot of how I feel statements for this, so I feel excited about this, I feel sad about this, I feel all these kinds of statements and then I physically check how my body is, how my skin is, if I have any kind of breakouts or how my body feels during my workouts. my exercise if I have any muscle soreness and then how I feel spiritually, which sounds a little um, maybe a little woo woo, but I find this really helpful to check in if I feel aligned with my purpose, my mission, if I feel connected with friends and family if I feel connected to spirituality and my meditation and yoga practice.

I personally do this once a month and it's actually quite useful because then I can look back at the previous month, for example, I recently updated my skincare routine, so it's interesting to see month by month how I feel about it. to my skin because I will always write about my skin in the physical section because it varies a lot depending on the seasons. Next is the weekly review. It's one of my favorites because it's a key habit where each week you sit down with your journal, review how last week went, win the challenges, and then plan for next week and figure out how I'm going to overcome them. obstacles and what I'm going to focus on over the next week and one thing I've done in the past is almost set a theme for next week where, well, I'm going to focus particularly on this over the next week.

For example, next week I realized that I stopped sleeping and didn't get enough rest, so for next week my theme is rest and I'm making sure to prioritize rest and recovery. It's good to set a couple of weekly goals for yourself, something small and manageable, and then select a couple of things that are aligned with your goals and that you can realistically achieve in the next week. You can also do this as a monthly review if weekly is too much. frequent for you, I personally really like the week because otherwise it's pretty easy to let things slide in a month and have a reminder or alarm on the weekly calendar thatIt's a good time to do your weekly review.

It's a good responsibility for yourself, a general thing above all. These journaling techniques are a tool to support you. They are here to serve you to generate awareness, mindfulness, intentionality, understanding and compassion. This brings us to the third section of this video, which is how to stay consistent with journaling because the biggest thing people have the hardest time is not keeping up. The number one mistake people make that prevents them from being consistent with the journal is that they set the bar too high. There are too many things to do and it becomes overwhelming. and then they give up completely, so keep it minimal at first.

Something you can complete in less than 5 minutes. Perfect is the enemy of good, so don't try to force yourself to complete all the things in your journal every day because that is actually an unrealistic goal. Secondly, be kind to yourself and approach him with a spirit of play, lightness and ease. This is meant to be fun, it's fun and it can help you achieve your goals in a way that feels good and authentic, so don't beat yourself up if you break your streak, it's no big deal, you can always pick it up another time, you'll always love it.

It's waiting there to serve you and your journal so it's a safe space for you, another thing that helps is setting a timer, so for example for me, right after my morning meditation, I'll set a timer for 5 minutes. and I will only journal for 5 minutes, this means the time is limited and therefore it doesn't drag on and I don't do it either. I give up after just a minute. I sit there for 5 minutes. I give myself the gift of that space to journal. The next tip would be to accumulate habits, for example, accumulate them with meditation, so for me in my morning routine I do my meditation. and then right after that I have my journaling space and that means that as I started my morning routine, I have chained all of these habits together and then the journaling takes place by default.

The next tip is to choose a journal that you really like and you really like to use something that sparks joy, something that feels good to use, so I really like the L 1917 term journals that I normally use. use a Matrix one for the Bullet Journal, something you like to use on paper and also get a pen that you really like, so I like these Muji pens. I usually use a 0.38 uh in black and also in green, but just pick up some stationery that I really like Sparks Joy so you can use it and feel like you can sit back and really enjoy the journaling session.

The final tip is to adapt it to your needs. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to journaling. Look at all the different ways to journal. You can choose what type of journal you want, how you want to do it, when you want to do it, where you want to do it, it's all customizable, so experiment with what feels good to you now for the final section of the video, which is where we're going to take action on what that we talked about today, everything is fine, watch a lot of videos on journaling, a lot of videos on productivity, self-improvement and personal development, but if you don't take action, nothing will happen. nothing is going to change so to really change your life with journaling like I changed my life like I changed so many people's lives you need to take action today not tomorrow tomorrow literally never comes so let's start today decide two action points you can take. right now to start your journal and start changing your life starting today, whether that's getting the bundle of free journaling templates and prompts I've created for you below or purchasing a journal you love using or starting one of these diaries. techniques just today just for 5 minutes just set your intention to do this for 5 minutes in the morning every day write down three things you are grateful for make that commitment to yourself today if you enjoyed this video I think you might like this one here where I talk about goal setting and how to set your goals so you actually achieve them.

I'm really, really excited for you to start journaling. It has changed my life and I know it will change yours, as always, take care of yourself and me. see you in the next video bye