5 Ways to Journal (And Why You Should)

Journaling is the ultimate personal development tool that most people are terrible at. And it's for a couple of reasons, and myself included. I'm Sean Butner, I'm a certified high performance coach and I often convince myself that I don't have enough time to do my daily journaling or I get out of my routine. And here's the truth, like why is it one of the ultimate personal development tools? It's one of those things that can help you get clear in your thinking, it can help you reflect routinely, and it also can help change thought patterns. And it's one of those things too that's very punk rock in that it's available to everyone. It's filled with self expression. You can do it in your own unique way. And I'll share my habit each day for generally and the reasons behind that. But ultimately the most creative, most prolific, the most intelligent people have reflection habits. Like journaling. Right? Again, it's to have a place where you can express yourself, get your thoughts out of your head, to organize and make sure that you're not contradicting yourself and fighting yourself. I want to get into the best health, but I also want to increase my baking skill. In this video I'll share with you 5 reasons to start or to restart your journaling habit. Because ultimately, if you've ever had a habit or you thought about journaling, maybe you think it's too intimidating because it's such a broad category. Like people will often say you should journal in personal development. You should journal for your personal growth. And like how what does that mean? It could mean a million different things. I'm going to boil it down into five different styles of journaling that can really help you. People just can't get the habit to stick. Sometimes where it's boring or I don't enjoy it or I never think of it, I just never get into the habit of it. And how are you able to really connect with the habit and make it fun for you so that you're able to stick with it and reap the benefits which are clearer had less stress, more self awareness and personal reflection of how to get out in the world. So if that sounds awesome, I want to point out before we get into a couple other things that if you don't figure out how to have a consisting journaling cabinet, you're going to find it harder to change because you're not aware of your thoughts or feelings and how it's showing up in your day to day life. You're going to find that you're at odds again with your dreams and aspirations, right? So you'll have again that self conflicting trying to run a marathon and try to be the best baker ever and making cookies all the time or you will never find your stinking thinking. Those ideas, those thoughts though, those behavior patterns that aren't serving you in your life. And journaling can be a really great way to root that out. Be again a great way to organize your thoughts. It can be a great way to set intentions for positivity during the day. And we'll get into that real quick. So I love journaling. I got, I've been journaling now for consistently for over 15 years now. And it all started at my first job when I would wake up and have this mantra of I hate my job. Like I wake up and be like, hate my job, I hate my job. I hate my job. And I would just run over and over in my head and it wasn't serving me because I had to get up and do the job anyways, right? And so how I felt or thought about it didn't change the fact that I still had to do it. And as a matter of fact, if I I hated this thing and still had to do it, what was that saying about me? And you start getting into these weird kind of cognitive, dissonant things. And so what I ended up doing is I had a journal like this one, but not this one. And what I did is anytime I found myself saying that mantra in my head during the day for probably about two weeks, I would go and just write that down until my hand pressed hurt in the journal. I take a break at work. I hate my job. I hate my job. Okay. When I finally felt I had gotten it onto the page enough where I was getting bored of it, then I thought, what would be a better thought for me to replace this with, right? And so I replaced it with I don't love my job yet. And what that did in my brain is allow for a space for me to look for things that I loved in my job. And it's just if I didn't love the job yet, it's just I hadn't figured out what I loved about it. So it's shifted how I thought about it and over the course of a month shifted me into feeling dread all the time, feeling extra stressed out, into problem solving. And ultimately I switched jobs at that organization and really from there too figured out what I really wanted to do with my life. And so it was life changing, right? Not only from a quality of life standpoint but from just being a nicer human being to my coworkers to having clarity on what I actually wanted in my life. Because part of why I didn't love my job was that I wasn't doing what I wanted, but I didn't know exactly what I wanted. So I was just unhappy knowing that the thing that I would was doing wasn't the thing, if that makes sense but. And all that was done self coaching with a journal. And that's one case scenario where it's extremely powerful and I want that for all ya. So that's why we're doing this video here now. I said most people don't utilize or terrible at their journaling habit. And what I I'm not saying that a journaling habit's going to be a cure off for everything that ails you in life. Quite the opposite, right. If you do it too much it could be a distraction or it you run the risk too of oh, I wrote it in my journal and nothing changed. And now I'm upset that Sean told me to journal and that it didn't work. And that's not going to be super helpful. But it's not a solution. But it's a diagnosis tool that can help guide you through your life. So keep that in mind that sometimes it takes time for to see results with journaling. Sometimes it's not going to be an immediate connection to what's going on because the brain will change slowly over time. That's just something to keep aware of as we go forward. And also I'm sharing my habit with these five different areas that I like to journal in. Please pick, choose and play with them as you will. This isn't the habit, it's just a habit. And I think part of the fun of journaling is making it your own. But these five areas will highlight different intentions or different goals for journaling that can really help improve your life. And so that's the goal here today. With that said, the first thing to think of when you start a journaling habit is clarity. And I do this every morning. So I have two index cards like this, right? One for the morning, one for the evening that has the same amount of or not the same amount, the same questions or the same prompts so that I don't have to write those out over again because I hate repeating that and I prefer to write things out physically versus on a computer. I just find getting out of the screen is helpful for me and it's really nice to be in a coffee shop or out on My patio in the sun. Writing it just feels great. So I'll offer that up to you and there you could go way nerdy into that, but we won't in this particular moment. Clarity. What is important today? I like to do this right when I wake up after I've done my morning yoga and stretching and my morning routine. The end cap of it before I start the day is this morning journal. And it's starts with code. So what is important today? What is important personally? What is important professionally? What's important for my health, what's important for my relationships? I like to start today, the day, thinking about, okay, what do I need to be thinking about? Essentially, right? And so I asked what is important today? What's the number one thing that I need to accomplish to move my life forward or my life's work forward? And then what are the big projects or big things that I have on my horizon that I need to keep track of and what that looks like? So what's important today is just a free form. What's on my mind, what am I focused on? And I try to hit one in those categories of health, relationships, career and wellness. Okay, what is the number one thing that needs to get accomplished? This is going to help me when I start my workday, and that's going to be the first task. I'm going to have a dedicated hour where I shut off all types of communication and just do the thing and then what are the big things I want to have happen in life? So these are three biggish projects that have five big moves on them. And this is some of those will be done today, Some of those might be months or years working on, but it's always helpful for me to see where I'm going, because you can identify then, oh, this task doesn't align to anything. Either my priority for the day is goofed up or my priorities have changed. And that's a whole set of thinking through that you gotta do. So that's what I love to do every morning for clarity. The second type of journaling that I find really helpful is setting intentions right. How do I want to feel today? How do I want to handle unexpected or expected setbacks? How do I want to show up in my life? And this is usually future focus for the day or who I want to be as a person in life. And the reason why this is such an important style of journaling is that so many people neglect that set of intention of how they want to feel. It's usually focused on what big moves we Want to make what we want to do. But setting how I want to feel and how I want it, the character of who I am, how I want to assign authentically show up in the world often is missed. And what does that. What happens when you don't set those intentions? That's when the slight at the coffee shop set you off and you yelled the barista because they poured too little or too much milk in your latte. That's insane. Or that person that is going to question you pretty hardly on your work project is going to set you off and end up yelling at them instead of handling it like a professional and being able to address those point by points in a way where you can maybe win them over to support the project versus being confrontational. So it could be a whole bunch of different things. It could be knowing that maybe today it's a busy day and you're not going to get your run at lunch done. So if that happens, your backup plan is to run at the end of the day so that when it happens, you're not thinking like, oh, I'm not running today. It's no okay. I just had to move it according to the plan. So that's the power setting and intentions. It's also I want to highlight too. You want to be focusing on setting positive intentions. So it's how am I going to solve problems? How am I going to be excited today? How am I going to feel optimistic? How am I going to show appreciation? All these different types of things. What am I grateful for? And how can I show that in my day today? I find that very powerful and just feeling good about going into your work. So setting intentions is number two. Number three, just organizing the day, right? So outside of those big projects, what else is popping around in your mind that you can write down on paper? Because the quickest action you could take from a thought is to write it down number one. But two, it takes up bandwidth, it takes up space. If you're like, I have these 50 things I have to do for the kids that they didn't plan on on my projects or the thing my task list today. So getting it down in a to do list so you don't lose track of it. One, two, if you get comfortable enough in your journaling system to know that, you can go back and say, you know what, I need to do this. I forgot to do this today, but I have it captured. I'm not gonna lose track of. It can be very empowering. So what do you need to stop tracking in your head so that you can focus better today. That's the question. And that is just bullet point or however you'd like to journal it. And that's how I like to do my morning journaling. And I can usually accomplish this in, I don't know, about 20 minutes tops, 10 minutes if it's a light day or I don't have a lot going on in my head. But it's a very simple, powerful habit that can make the difference. On days that I don't journal, I tend to be grumpier, I tend to be a little bit more disorganized, I tend to be more easily distracted. So that's important. And if you're like, hey, how can I get these questions? I do have a one week journaling habit challenge that comes with a free download of these five areas with some questions to help you with your your journaling. So if you want to borrow some of this for your day and or you want to follow my suggested habit, this is a great way to get a physical thing that you can print out and put in your journal. Basically just print out the two cards, you stick them in your journal as you go through bada bing, bada boom. If you're interested in that, there's a link below this video to join the free one week challenge and you immediately get the download when you add your email. So check that out if. Anyways, getting back into the last two habits or the the evening habit, which I generally do two things at the end of the day. I like to track goals or habits or the meaningful things that I'm trying to accomplish or move forward each day. So it could be, did I do all my health habits? It could be, how am I doing as a high performance coach? We have high performance metrics. How clear was I today? What was my energy level? What was, how courageous was I? What's my level of productivity and how influential did I feel? The five metrics we talk about in high performance that help improve your life. So I'm tracking those every day at the end of the day and journaling a little bit in a very quick, succinct way of why I felt like I gave myself a score with 1 being low, 10 being high. Right. Why did I score myself a 7 on energy? I didn't really feel fully energized when I was doing my workout and I dragged because I had a bad night's sleep. That type of diagnosis and what I find with the tracking of habits, it's just to keep you aware the longer you can Keep tracking your habits like this, the more likely during the day you're like, oh, I have to have my green shake. Oh, I have to make sure I meditate today. Or I have to make sure I do yoga because I didn't do it this morning. And that's the power of that tracking part of the journal. And then finally, since I'm a little bit of an insomniac, I find that doing some free form of just what are my thoughts, feelings, ideas, any creative ideas that I have or anything else I just need to get out of my head and onto the page so I could sleep well. And I find doing this before bed this evening habit, both of these right before bed is helpful with just helping me settle in, helping me connect with the day and it's been powerfully impactful and helping me sleep primarily. But also when you get everything outta your head, it's just a really weird load that's lifted off your shoulders that I hope you experience for yourself now. So those are the five habits I do. So in the morning, again, you journal for clarity, for setting intentions and for organizing the day. At night, I or I write journal on tracking goals and habits that are meaningful things that I want to accomplish and just a free form brain dump. I also in the morning will look at the previous day's journal to draw to one, capture things that I needed to get out of my head and the organizing or the free form. So I find that to be really helpful. Just a pro tip there, but ultimately a journey journaling habit is something that's personal. It's something that is a great habit to supplement your personal development or drive it. So these are my five habits. Use them in your practice and what works for you, however it works for you. Comment below if you have a particular journaling habit you love that I didn't cover because there's just so many. So it's always, I'm always looking for ways to level that up or share with you guys. So I'd love to hear what you thought or what you think down in the habits and yeah, we'll see you guys next time. So live with more joy, more personal growth and more impact in your communities. This is Sean, but here signing off, Sam.