Erika Jones, CFO, CCTAProfit First Professionals · Certified Fractional CFO and Profit First Professional

The REAL Power of Journaling

17 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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0:47

In this brief conversational segment, Speaker A shares his personal journaling routine, describing how he initially thought a journal was for positive self‑talk but learned from a friend that its purpose is to expel any thoughts, regardless of tone. He recounts using a paper journal daily, especially during periods of depression and financial stress, to write out angry and disappointing feelings, which he says helped release emotional steam. Speaker B affirms the transformative effect of putting thoughts on paper, acknowledges the common resistance to journaling when feeling down, and encourages actually doing it as a catalyst for change.

Chapters

Another thing is journal. Journal, journal, journal. I do it every day, pretty much most days. I did a paper journal. What I thought a journal was, wrongly, was write down like, what's the good things of today? Self-positive talk. And a friend of mine, Joe Spano, said, "Mike, a journal is about expelling any thoughts." So he goes, "It doesn't matter what you write, it matters that you let it out." During periods of depression, I sometimes put angry thoughts. When we're going through this challenge, this financial challenge a year ago, I would just lay out my thoughts about this and it'd be, anger and disappointment and all those things. But what was fantastic was once I wrote them down, the steam was out.
Yeah. It's like they get captured there in the words on the page. It's a big transformative moment. And I know it's so easy to say, do it. And when you're feeling down, we sometimes resist these kinds of things. We do. But once you do do it, it is transformative. Transformative.