10. How to use JOURNALING as a tool!

Hello, my beautiful friend, and welcome to the Mind Body Alignment podcast. This is a place for us to come together and not only understand who we are, but how to become exactly who we want to be while developing the right skills and tools to help us do so. I'm your coach, Tessa Romero, and I can't wait to get started. Oh, my goodness. I am so excited to be telling you all about my favorite tool to use when it comes to shifting my mindset about anything that I'm going through or thinking of, and that is journaling. So I know the common way to think about journaling is, you know, you open up a page in your journal and you just kind of go through whatever happened in that day. So you're going to talk about the tantrums that your kids threw, maybe the argument you got in with your husband, how something's stressing you out financially, or it's unfair how you're being treated in your work environment. A certain relationship might be on the rocks. Like, it tends to just be a lot of negative things taking up the front of our mind and the pages of our journal. And. And that can get really exhausting, right, because not only are you living through that in your life, but now you're reliving it in the pages of your journal. So that is not how, like, the diary type journaling. That is not how I journal, and it's not how I coach my clients to journal. However, I do find it to be extremely helpful to occasionally go to your journal when needed to process through those hard things. I'm not saying you can never write down hard things or negative things, but I always want you to go into it with the intention of flipping it, like, finding out what it is that you need. Now that you have it down on paper in front of you, you can say, okay, this tantrum, for example, triggers me. Why does it trigger me? Unpack it more. What was your childhood like? Like, try to understand yourself better. And that would be an example of times that I would write down something negative or hard that I'm going through just so that I can better understand it and help myself. Now, obviously, in the previous episodes, I've given you guys journaling exercises, like with the shame episode, the self forgiveness episode. So clearly, like, I use journaling in a lot of different ways. But this form of journaling, I call it manifestation journaling, this is what I coach my clients to do in my mind body alignment coaching program, because it is, like I said, incredible for shifting your mindset and really getting your mind working with Your identity. So your identity's permission to be exactly who you want to be without fear of judgment or failure. And. And your mindset is constantly telling you how to do it. An example of mindset would be, let's say you and I say that we're going to work out at 5 in the morning. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm so excited to get this workout done at 5 in the morning, uninterrupted. It's going to be great. Blah, blah, blah. And you might be saying, oh, this is going to be so hard to wake up at five in the morning. It's going to be exhausting. I'm going to be so tired the rest of the day. Both of those are a mindset. You choose your mindset and I choose mine, and that's that example. But journaling. The reason why I love the manifestation journaling so much is because you are intentionally flipping any, like, fear, doubt, or anxious feeling that you have about something. And I'll give you an example of where a lot of this started for me and how it helped me tremendously transitioning from one to two babies. So to start, when I started manifestation journaling, it really came from. I was at a women's retreat in February of 2019, so right before everything got shut down for Covid, and Luke was born in April. And at that women's retreat, that's when I learned this form of writing. And I fell in love with it, that I just started doing it every single day, every single day, for five minutes. I would open up a page of my tiny little journal that I got at the women's retreat. It's called Sweet Retreat. And I would Write for just 5 minutes all these positive things, like wonderful things happening to me and everything that I want, everything that I desire, I wrote it as if it already happened. What do I feel like? What am I experiencing? And that's where the manifestation piece comes in. And what I coach you to do is to take the specific things on your mind that you're struggling with and manifest what you want the outcome to be, what you want to experience in life or attract into your life. So fast forward from that sweet retreat just a couple months, and I started feeling really, really anxious about becoming a mother of two. I felt like when I. When I found out I was pregnant with Luke, I put my head down and said, I'm going to work. Because I was so fearful of not being able to work during my pregnancy. I was fearful that I was going to be put on bed rest. And I won't be able to work out anymore. Or what if I can't get on my coaching calls and everything falls apart? And I've worked so hard to build what I have that the fear of it all falling apart was really heavy on me. And once I learned about the manifestation journey, and I was like, oh, my gosh, I could totally apply this to becoming a mother of two because it was so common for me to hear, you know, the transition from one to two is so hard, and it's going to be exhausting and it's going to be awful. And I feel like moms just were sharing these horror stories with me about their awful experiences, and I didn't want that. I really didn't want to settle for, well, everyone else has a really hard time with it, so I guess I will too. I didn't want to live in that place. So I would turn to my journal and I would write down things like, I am thriving as a mother of two, and both of my boys feel, feel my genuine love every single day in a natural way. And I have all the time love and attention to divide to them equally. And we enjoy doing things together. And the whole transition has been so great. And I would journal about my marriage after I had Liam. Marcus and I totally struggled like any marriage does when you introduce a baby. And I had to learn how to distribute my attention instead of all onto Liam. I had to figure out how to still be the wife that I want to be and the mother that I want to be and the woman that I want to be. And that balance came from, obviously, identity. But journaling in my journal, knowing that Luke was coming soon and I didn't want to go through that same struggle. I was journaling about how I am a phenomenal communicator and Marcus and I enjoy being playful and spending time together. And I would just go on and on and on about the experience that I was having as a mother of two boys and a wife. Before I really even got to that point in my life, I wasn't happening. I was still probably a month away before it was happening. But I was putting it in my journal as if I was already going through it. And my reason for that was I wanted to create my own outcome. I wanted to create my own mindset about being a mother of two in this transition that was going to come and how I was going to prioritize myself postpartum. And so my kind of rules for this manifestation, journaling is always number one talk in present tense. This is not something that you're going to do. I am going to thrive in postpartum. No, I am thriving in postpartum. You don't want to look at it as well when this comes, I will do this. Nope, it's all present tense. As you go through things, what are you doing? So, number one, keep it present tense. Number two, keep it positive. Always, always, always in this specific manifestation Journal, I highly recommend that you have a separate journal for all so that the only things that go in this journal are positive. Let them be full of light and encouragement and dreams and goals and inspiration and whatever you want. Let it be that. Don't let it be. This is so hard and it's unfair, but I'll get through it. Like, no, no, it's not hard. It's not unfair. Like, you are thriving at xyz. You are vibrant and radiant in every single day of your life. And you feel a natural source of energy pulling, pulsing through you and radiating off of you so other people can feel it too. Those are things that I put in my journal. Do I always feel that way? Not necessarily, but that's the way I want to feel. So I'm constantly putting my mindset in a position to say, this is the truth and really think about when you want to write something down. When I want to go to write something down, what do I have to do first? I have to think it. I have to think about it before I write it. So if you ever, like, have a long term limiting belief of what you can and can't do, whatever, think about that thought that's just been ingrained in you. Maybe you can't write like you can't start your own business. I could never start my own business. Well, you thinking that is the mindset that's keeping you from starting your own business. It's your own limiting belief. So if you went to the manifestation journal and said, I am thriving in my XYZ business and I attract new customers easily and effortlessly and I have so much fun doing xyz and. And this has become like the biggest blessing for my family. And now we're able to travel the world and have an abundance of income and time and love and creating wonderful relationships. Like, talk about all the amazing things that are coming from what you're doing. And when you can prove to your brain, hey, look, this is an option and you're forcing your brain to think these things because you have to think it to write it. You start to think differently about what you can do. You start to think differently about the opportunities you can create for yourself. So this does apply to motherhood. Extremely. I use a lot of my manifestation journaling for the coaching that I do my marriage and motherhood. So number one, keep it present tense. Number two, keep it positive. And number three, flip it, flip it, flip it, flip it. This is part of keeping it positive. But it's really great to keep on your mind. Like if your mind is racing with. I'm such a terrible mother because I yelled at Liam today when he flooded the backyard, like true life. This freaking morning flooded our backyard. And I truly did snap at Liam and I started crying because everything in that moment felt so overwhelming. I need my brain to turn on and be my own best friend. I need it to show up for me in that moment. And it did. But why did it do that? Because I constant. I journaled this morning at 5:30 in the morning. I'm constantly practicing this manifestation of not just getting sucked into. I am a crappy mother shaming myself because I yelled at Liam. No. I remind myself who I am through my identity. I am a kind, patient, present, creative mother. How can I be that mother right now? And my mindset just goes off with all these ways that I can be that mother right now. Teaching Liam why we need to keep the spigot off in the backyard and what it's like to have all this mud around now and the consequences of the dogs getting muddy. Like, I can teach him these things because that's the mother that I am. So even if I ever slip out of alignment, I can now trust my mindset to get me right back to where I need to be. And I can use journaling as an extra tool to reaffirm to me that I am exactly who I want to be. So that's an example of how I would want to go to my journal and be not thinking shaming myself. I am a terrible mother because xyz if I shame myself, what am I going to want to do? We talked about this in episode four, shame and takes you to your triggers or your triggers take you to shame. And then you want to numb. You don't want to feel the things, but if you refuse to feel the things, you can't deal with them and heal from them and process them to the point that you don't have to continue feeling them. You can decide to numb something and say, well, it's nice to just not feel it, but it doesn't take care of it. It doesn't help you heal from it so that you know how to Continue processing the emotions that will continue coming in your life. They're not going to go anywhere just because you numb things. Let's work through a quick example together so that you have a little bit more of an idea how to use this in your own manifestation journal. And that safe space for you to unpack and become exactly who you want to be while creating the mindset that really does help you do so. So let's think about motherhood, and let's say that you have. You're going through that toddler stage of tantrums. It can get really difficult to maintain being that present, patient, kind mother when your toddler is literally losing his or her mind right in front of your face. So when this is happening, and maybe it happened all day and you slipped out of alignment several times, yelled at your kids, spanked, did whatever that you don't want to do, and you feel really low about yourself as a mother, at the end of the night, do you turn to your journal and talk about how low you are as a mother and how you're never going to be the mother that you want to be? No. You turn to your manifestation journal and you literally write out word for word what you need to hear in that journal. I am an exceptional mother, full of patience and kindness towards my kids. I love seeing them learn new things in this life, and I am the understanding source for them to turn to when they get overstimulated. And I love that they trust me to do that. Right. Unpack the entire freaking mindset that needs to happen when your kids are losing their minds because they can also feel your energy. So when you can keep your energy in a place of calm and love and gratitude and joy, they feel that and calm down so much faster. And you're way more creative at coming up with solutions for them, distracting them with something else. So when you think about motherhood and what's challenging you, turn to your journal and write down the opposite. If you struggle with time management. Let's talk about in the journal how you are so wonderful at prioritizing what needs to be done before doing what you want to do. Right? Do the thing that you need to do before the thing you want to do so that you can actually enjoy the thing you want to do without thinking about the things that you need to do. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? But whatever you feel like you're struggling with, take it to manifestation journaling and flip it. Prove to your brain that you are capable of doing X, Y, Z. You are intentional you are productive. You are mindful and conscious and loving and grateful and all the things that you want to be. So another example is when you experience anxiety, which I feel like is so common in motherhood. Yes, but amongst women in general. So an example of this could be I'm focusing my attention to what I think, say and do. I feel in control, stable and calm in my daily life. I'm an incredible. I have an incredible ability to communicate my needs and ground myself throughout the day. I am whole, present and intentional. I give myself permission to fulfill my needs each day and release what what was never meant to be in my control. I am free. I inhale all that I need and exhale what no longer serves me. I am grateful for my positive mindset and wonderful skill of coming up with solutions no matter the circumstances. So that's an example of something that I wrote out for a friend that was struggling with anxious feelings and someone else said that they feel like they are just in survival mode and just working on that daily grind. So in my journal example I put I am present and self reflecting. I love acknowledging where I can personally grow and creating a plan that works best for me. It is so much fun to release what no longer serves me and be who I want to be. I am thriving. I am excited. I allow energy to pulse through me and radiate to others. I am vibrant and self fulfilled. I am creating the life of my dreams each day and wonderful things happen to me so easily. Only amazing things happen to and for me. And I'm ready to accept what is meant to be mine and release what is not mine. I am light. I breathe deeply and come up with creative ideas for my life. I am so excited to continue pursuing my dreams. Another example would be following through with what I say I will do. Is that something that you feel like you've struggled with before? Like maybe you tell yourself I have no follow through. I never say what I'm gonna. I never do what I say I'm going to do. An example of what you could take in your manifestation journal is I am reliable and always do what I say I'm going to do. I have so much fun fulfilling my commitments and making the time to prioritize myself. Okay, so these are just simple examples of how you can implement this manifestation journaling into what you're struggling with. And one last example is dealing with relationship issues. Again, these were just like question boxes that were sent to me and now I'm giving you guys examples in this podcast. This is what I put for dealing with relationship issues. I love how I show up as a wife. I create so much fun, energy and laughter in my marriage because I am light hearted, playful and loving. I know my spouse is on my side and it feels so wonderful to communicate our needs and have important conversations. I feel safe, supported and excited in my relationship. My marriage is thriving. I am intentionally prioritizing time spent together and staying vulnerable. I I love to embrace physical touch every day and go out of my way to make my spouse feel loved, cared for and special. I am so grateful to have the marriage I have always dreamed of. I am mindful of opportunities of growth and take full advantage of bringing more vibrant love and energy into my marriage. So it really doesn't matter if you're focusing on your career, motherhood, your relationships. Like I mentioned, it could be any realm of things that are creating hardship and challenges for you. Just know that this form of journaling is so helpful for you to unpack it, be exactly who you want to be, have a mindset that supports that, and dream up all of the possibilities in life. In my personal journal every single day, I write down I am a highly sought after, internationally recognized and industry leading coach, author, speaker, mentor and podcaster. I write that every single day and I truly believe that about myself. Now. Have companies called me from all over the world and asked to generously compensate me to fly out to their events and coach at their retreats and such? No. But is it in my journal? Yes. Yes it is. Because I believe that's going to happen. I believe that I am creating the life of my dreams and when my mind is set on what I'm creating for myself, I will continue working towards that and I will show up and I will come up with solutions. Same thing as a mother. I am creative, athletic, healthy, energetic, vibrant, playful and that's my identity and my mindset supports it. My actions follow through and my manifestation journal just helps me say yes, yes, yes, this is who I am and this is how I'm going to do these things. Same thing with my marriage guys. I always want to be a light hearted, fun, playful wife that enjoys showing my husband love and affection in all of the ways, not just the ways that are most comfortable for me. Like words of affirmation because that's my love language. So I hope that this episode was extremely helpful for you. You can find more examples of this manifestation journaling on my Instagram account Essaromero Underscore and it's in the highlight tab Journaling. So just look through there. I went through a whole bunch of options and I could totally do another Instagram box there. Or you can message me directly if there is anything that you need help with when it comes to applying this manifestation journaling in your own life. Because you know that I'm in your corner cheering for you and and I completely believe that this is something you can implement and help you feel your very best and get your mind working with you. It's just another tool for you to implement. Now as always, if you love the podcast, please leave a rating and a review because it helps me tremendously. And if you're considering my one on one coaching program, always just reach out, get your questions answered. And you can always schedule a free discovery call with me by clicking the link in the Show Notes below through Typeform. You'll just submit a little application. We can do a 30 minute call together and and see if my coaching program is a great fit for you. I work one on one with you for 12 weeks and we focus on your mental, physical, emotional and spiritual well being so that you can have that mind body alignment. And that's why my program is called Mind Body Alignment. Because I believe it's not just the mental side, it's not just the physical side, it's not just about nutrition. We need nutrition, exercise and mental well being and I'm here to help you do that. So I love you sis and I can't wait to talk to you next week. It is such a wonderful privilege of mine to be here with you in this space and I hope that you find all the value out of our time together.