Mike MichalowiczBusiness Author & Keynote Speaker Empowering Entrepreneurs

The REAL Power of Journaling

17 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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In this brief conversation, Mike Michalowicz explains his daily journaling habit, correcting his earlier belief that a journal should only record positive events. He shares a friend’s advice that journaling is fundamentally about expelling thoughts, regardless of content. During periods of depression and a significant financial challenge a year earlier, he used his journal to vent anger, disappointment, and frustration, noting that writing these feelings released the emotional "steam" and led to a transformative experience. The co‑speaker affirms the power of putting thoughts on paper, acknowledging the difficulty of starting when down but emphasizing the profound change that follows.

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.