Keeping a Daily Journal in Times of Stress

I need to say something that I know I need to hear. And I think a lot of you will probably need to hear as well. It's a wild time and it's okay to feel and be a little overwhelmed. When I released my last video kind of talking about what happened in the past week with coronavirus and thinking that I was going to be maybe a little bit more productive or that I was going to be able to do my work, take care of my family, and still try and exercise a little bit, all the other things that I do for YouTube channel on side hustle and do— go back to daily vlogging. I just wasn't prepared for how this entire week was going to feel and how it was going to end up being one of the weirdest, wildest weeks of my entire life. I mean, for probably a lot of our lives, the world has changed, and the current state of things can lead to a lot of uncertainty and a lot of overwhelm and a lot of changes for everyone. Even though my life working remotely for several years now, working from home has not been a big change for me, but having everyone here while I work at home is a big change for me. I've had a lot of conversation with friends, with family this week about life, about how like we interact with each other, about the uncertainty in the world. What I realized is I wasn't giving myself enough grace and compassion and empathy just for myself, even though I was certainly willing to give that to everyone else. Often it's difficult to give that same kind of compassion and empathy to ourselves. I don't know if you needed to hear that today. I know I've been reminding myself of that every single day of this week and will have to continue to remind myself of it personally for many days to come. Now what won't come as a surprise to many of you is that one of the best ways that I have found in dealing with uncertainty and rapid change and occasional, if not consistent, overwhelm is to continue journaling and even ramp it up a little bit. There are multiple reasons to start journaling or to get back into journaling during this time. Not only does it help you kind of like Dumbledore in, Dumbledore in Harry Potter, like pull the thoughts out of his head and put them into the Pensieve, or the Pensieve. But pulling those thoughts out of your head, that helps me reduce anxiety and stress, because when I'm putting it into the journal, it is a way for me to get those thoughts literally out of my head, or at least have a way to process them through writing. So here's my journal starting the week that everything kind of took off. March 4th through 8th, actually went down to Florida because I was speaking at a conference and then trying to figure out if we were going to fly back on Monday. Everything that's been happening on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday of last week over the weekend, lots of things that changed and just continuing to put more and more thoughts on paper and in the margins. There are a handful of questions that I've been using as prompts in this crazy time because really all I'm looking to do each day is keep a log of what actually happened and some of my reactions to it, some of the things that I'm learning. Because even just the, the aspect of being able to take thoughts out of your head in a sense and be able to reduce your anxiety and stress by processing through writing and journaling is that it also gives you a record, a record of what you were going through at that time. And I mentioned this in my last video, but I want to have that not just for myself, but also like I want to be able to tell my sons— I don't know if you could hear one of them outside on the porch— I want to be able to tell them this is what was happening, this is how I was processing it, this is how your mom and I were kind of going through it. But I'm asking myself these primary questions every single day. I don't answer all of these every day. But I'm asking myself, "What happened? How am I reacting to it or impacted by it? Who did I love today? What did I do? And what can and can't I control?" If you ask yourself these questions and answer them honestly, you will, I guarantee, go to sleep a little bit calmer than you would if you just kept all of these thoughts and emotions, reactions unprocessed in your head. All the better if you can talk to someone that you love about it, whether that is a spouse, partner, a best friend, a parent, a brother or sister, you know, any, anyone that will give you honest, you know, loving, you know, like attention and feedback. Those people are going to become more and more valuable in your life. You can see that I wrote here, it's first A full week of a different world. Hard to believe we were in Florida a week ago. I couldn't believe it. And sometimes I think in the future when we look back and like, what was happening during coronavirus? What was happening during that time? Being able to journal and document yourself, your life through chaos is going to be incredibly valuable just for you, just for your family, because we will forget aspects of this or we will romanticize or like attach fear to the highs and the lows, like, "This was awful, this was terrible," and there are plenty of awful, terrible things happening. And we might romanticize some of the things, like, "Oh, you know, I just got to, you know, share a bunch of memes with my friends and watch a lot of Netflix." It's important, it's valuable, it's timeless to record the interactions, the experience that you were having during something that is, you know, is probably going to be an inflection point in not just US history, but in the worldwide experience and community. Another one here is having a conversation with my friend Jeff and thinking about how I can use this time to be more honest with myself, the fears that I'm having, self-doubt, whatever it is that I am, instead of judging myself over those, feelings, experiences, and thoughts, taking time to examine them and think about, is that true? This thought that I'm having, this experience, this way that I'm reacting to it, is it true for me that I am this way or that I think about things this way? And a lot of times it's not true, it's just something that I've conjured up in my head. And being able to strip away a lot of the anxieties and stress or at least examine them and be like, ah yeah, that's a thing, This is, this is a part of journaling through a chaotic experience that you can examine the thoughts, reactions, emotions that you're having around something that throws us all into a great deal of uncertainty and trying to understand what you can control and what you can't control. So asking yourself these questions, questions like what happened each day, how can I log the experiences, How did I react to it? How does it impact the work or the way that I communicate with my family? Who did I love today? And I think I just want to say that one is incredibly important because like I FaceTimed with my entire family yesterday. I've tried to like call my grandparents and other people that just matter to me that maybe I haven't stayed as connected with. Like I texted my cousin today. I haven't, you know, texted her in quite a while. Just checking in on people. Because one of the gifts that this can give us— and then of course, you know, I just kind of document that process in here— but one of the gifts that I believe, one of the silver linings of this entire experience, is that we are starting to see again and understand more fully how connected we all are and how much our choices impact those around us and how much we can like help each other get through a situation that is very stressful, even if we are, you know, miles, even countries away from each other. The last two questions, the last two prompts that you can use are just asking yourself, what did I do today? Did I read? Did I move around? Did I bake or cook? Did I play with my kids? Did I build something? Write, etc. And even if there's not anything that you like did, again, just kind of observing that and wondering like, okay, could I do something tomorrow that's going to give me a sense of purpose? It's going to let me take an action when I feel relatively powerless in the world and like the big, you know, the big picture, you know, world health and geopolitics that are playing out on a grand stage, giving yourself a little action, a little step to take every single day is something that will, again, along with this journaling, give you a way to take control of the things that you do control and have an impact on and lower your anxiety and stress because you're able to place your focus on attention on something that is right in front of you rather than like thinking wild thoughts about something that you don't necessarily have a tangible connection to. All right everyone, thank you so much for watching this video. If you have enjoyed it, please give it a thumbs up and share it with someone. If these are words that other people need to hear, please share this video with them. Leave a message in the comments below if this resonated with you. If there's, you know, any kind of encouraging word or anything that I can Anything that I can help with, please reach out. I would just love to help in any way that I can. Going to be more videos like this coming. This is a wild time and I just enjoy sharing different things that you can do to stay connected. Hey, it's family. Kanan, come say hi. There's also going to be, you know, kids are at home now, so there's going to be more things like this happening in the video. So thank you so much for watching, everybody. Kanan, can you wave? Wave to the YouTube fam, and we, uh, yeah, we'll see you in the next video. Thanks, bye!