The 5 Journaling Techniques That Changed My Life

this is my first ever journal and if you would have came to me 11 years ago and said journaling will be the number one thing that will change your life I would have told you you were crazy but I stand corrected in this video I want to answer one of the most common questions I get in the comments how look there is a million in one different methods you could choose from but I want to select five that I would recommend you start with and we'll go over them in this video I'll also splice in

some uh BTS clips of like inside the journals in case you want real examples so these are my five favorite methods and recommendations of where you can start method number one this is what I would just label as free writing and it's the simplest and easiest to grasp you take out a journal you open a blank page and you just let it r a more structured version of this is called morning Pages this is an exercise I got from Julia Cameron who wrote a beautiful book The Art way it's about getting over your inner critic

your own blocks to create so morning pages is a stream of Consciousness type of writing where you just take what's in here and you put it on here now what's the benefit of that there's a couple the first is understand that like most of your thoughts are not conscious they're subconscious it's like air bubbles in the water that bubble up to the surface that's like a deep insecurity or thought or doubt you have and then boom it bubbles up to your conscious mind and you think about it something triggers it but it's beneath the surface

creating it and so when you're able to put them on here the second benefit I got from doing that you just walk away feeling lighter like have you ever had a conversation with a friend and you talk about what's bothering you and then afterwards even if you don't solve it the venting alone made you feel like you know what maybe I was looking at that wrong you know what maybe I'm being dramatic and you go throughout your day with that feeling it carries over there's one rule with morning Pages you're not allowed to read it

for at least 8 months that's enough time to look back and feel like it's sort of a different person who wrote that or you were in a different stage here's a good time to explain my methodology of journaling we have longer breakdowns if you want a full setup guide on this channel but I can explain it to you here in a couple seconds when I got started journaling I was keeping several and one was on business notes one was on personal like brain dump notes one was on health and wellness trackers and I was looking

at these six journals and I'm like what happens if I just combine them into one so over a decade ago I came up with what I call the 6in one journaling method very simple it's where you take a journal and you divide it into six sections each section is about 20 Pages or so and you title it and then you fill that section with whatever the title is now these sections are customed to you they can be about anything for example though I have ones on my business ideas marketing uh Concepts YouTube videos I have

one on brain dumping where it's the first method I mentioned in this video the only thing with your sections that you should worry about is if you're going to use them so if it's your first time I recommend starting with three what are the three areas you Journal about the most or would like to the other part of this is the front and the back cover which I will talk about next the two most important parts for me in this journal aren't actually what I write in it but it's on the front and the back

cover your front cover is where you write all the big 1% lessons that you learned that year try and make these like quotable and Punchy like onliners zingers for example only that which can truly destroy itself is totally alive Carl Yun inside suffering is the seed of change when the Heart is Open tears flow success is doing half a dozen things really well repeated 5,000 times who looks outside dreams who looks inside awakes make the world a better place by making yourself a better person wo we could just go on and on and on let

me know if you want to see a video on these the top 1% you're putting there now why would you put right in the front cover well again your subconscious is programmed through repetition and strong emotion and so one of the ways it's an easy hack when you open your Journal you're glancing at it and so if you're going to journal daily or weekly every single time you open it you see those that make sense now what about the back cover what do you put here this is where you list all your goals the goals

you are working on for the year again I do swap my journal every single year so it's like starting fresh and I love that because you can look back on goals and see what you checked off and see if you're leveling up like a game but you can divide goals into work rest and play Work goals what are the metrics numbers you're going after making a certain amount of money saving a certain amount of money achievement based rest what are the personal goals uh things that you want to achieve personally this year maybe health goals

family goals giving to people contributing and then Play Goals what do you want to do for fun are there any trips are there any hobbies are there any Adventures work rest play you put that in the back cover and you check it off as you go out throughout the year front and back cover super underutilized in my opinion and uh yeah that's one of my favorite ways I've journaled now as you keep this habit of journaling up you're going to start to amass more and more of them one of the best habits you can do

is not worry about cramming and filling more up but it's reflecting on old ones so what I do about once a quarter so every 3 months or so I'll spend 2 hours one morning and I'll go back through and transfer like big ideas or lessons from my old journals that one little tip I have found been massive for insights or when you're veering off course just a little bit and it's like you can redirect yourself and get back on track you'll notice patterns that you thought you dealt with and they're showing up today currently for

you it's a very humbling and eye openening realization you will not get that in therapy and coaching talking with a friend unless you're extremely self-aware and if you were already aware of it you would probably be actively changing it this is not the expensive incense let me tell you it's like the ones they dump in gasoline at least it burns the next method I would label these as notes you ever notice that when you're reading a book you you like highlight everything or you're really inspired and then if you look at that book a month

later you're like yeah that book was really good I'm not sure why I liked it so much I can maybe tell you one or two things about how did I apply that in my life did I apply that in my life should I reread the whole thing that's where this section comes in anything that you've consumed for educational purposes you put in this section all right so briefly on the booknotes section just to show you not tell you I'll give you an example here we have a book the happiness hypothesis you know it's good when

we got the double cover right Jonathan height great author so this is one I've been through three or four times starting in 2014 and so what I'll do is I'll go through and I'll read and highlight anything that sticks out in the major points and things that would make for good YouTube content as well which is an important note like I read cuz part of it's my job so you don't have to do this this intensely okay now if it's a bad book I'll stop reading it but if it's a book that I'm super interested

in and getting a lot from that's when I go crazy and if it's a book I'm like wow this is amazing I'll do this I have a section in my journal called student and this is where I put any notes from courses books Etc so I will just go chapter by chapter chapter 1 notes chapter 2 chapter 3 here's an example of cognitive distortions that I got from chapter 3 where he's talking about the nine ones that use in CBT incredibly useful to reference I've used that a lot personally and professionally and I know I

have videos reading hundreds of books again that's like my job just pretty cool I get paid to read don't get caught in the Trap of reading more for the sake of more ego reading it's not a flex how many books you have on your shelf you get more benefit reading one book 10 times then 10 okay books one time so what are those 10 books for you do this exercise in your Journal it's helped immensely I hope that helps kind of clarify how a reading section breakdown would look for you next method of journaling these

are prompts so sometimes staring at a blank page is very intimidating having journaling prompts that elicit deeper thinking from you I'll throw out a bunch here take whatever you want leave what you don't what's working love that question what's going well for you not only does this Prime you to look for what is working so you can get more of it but Gra ude also is one of the most lifegiving fulfilling emotions like when you're truly grateful for people or things or yourself you get so much positivity from that the second what's not working equally

as important be honest what's not where you want it to be what are the three things you could stop doing what are the three things that are holding you back the most who in your life is holding you back your ideal day 5 years from now Flash Forward it's 5 years in the future what is your perfect Saturday look like who are you spending it with what do you fill your time with what hobbies are you doing who do you have around you if I have a specific problem I ask what would this look like

if it were easy I got that from Tim Ferris like I don't know over 10 years ago and constantly realize I'm making things way harder than they need to be what distractions get in the way of me being most productive what do I know today that I didn't last year if someone described me what would they say how would they describe me what can wait till next week what can't wait till next week and if you just type in Google best journaling prompts for self-growth you will find probably a dozen more I'll link up down

below 11 questions to change your life this is old I hope the link still works uh but this is something I put together with 11 of my favorite journaling questions that I use so if you want that it's 100% free just put in your email and it'll get sent to you I'll link that in the description below again fingers crossed hope it still works it looks too QVC the order in the next 5 minutes here's a good time to talk about a frequently Asked question Clark how do I build the habit of journaling how much

should I Journal how do I stay consistent with journaling and while it's great to want to be consistent with things I find that that question is why people quit see the more you approach journaling or any tool for that matter as something you have to do or you have to be consistent with I noticed the more resistance it creates now the whole reason you're doing this is not because you have to but it's for you and so I always say you Journal out of inspiration not out of obligation and that is the one reason I

have been able to keep up a decade plus habit despite trying lots of other habits and you know they'd fizzle out this habit has stuck around because I never had any rules around it I never had quotas I never like had to do it on a Monday at 7:00 okay after have the journal I just find that builds up such a Goodwill Association when you look at it I don't know I feel like a lot of self-improvement habits can get tiring and don't make journaling another thing you have to do you get to do it

it's your choice voice and you'll also think what else in my life can I approach with this mindset and that's how you build a badass life that you love filled with things that you like doing and don't have resistance towards and with that here's the next method this is what I would call Self coaching look therapy is amazing but it's very hard to find a good therapist and if you switch you kind of have to like re-explain all your problems to them and the context is a lot and you kind of like have to get

to know them a bit really not on similar to dating where you have to like kind of tell your life story and then a month or two in you're like yeah this isn't really a good use of time again there's amazing therapists out there there's amazing coaches out there but what I have found a lot of benefit from is self- coaching coaching yourself and that really is the entire goal of journaling in my opinion is to be your own coach because you know all the context that you could ever know about your current situation and

you know all the things you're struggling with all the fears all the doubts now I'm not saying this is a placement to therapy and coaching because I think a lot of times too having a third party to walk you through your thought process and be like ah maybe you're seeing it wrong let's turn and look this way at the problem that's invaluable but I've also found as someone who's been in therapy and coaching that 80% of the benefit I've gotten from it has been just hearing myself talk having a space where you're uninterrupted where it's

all about you and there's no like agenda where you have to like ask them about themselves or anything with like friendships or family not that that's bad CU you care but it's uninterrupted time for you to hear yourself talk through your problems so this strategy for journaling is just opening up a blank page and write as if you're in a therapy or coaching session I've heard some people's variations of this where you can act as if there's someone a you of like 5 20 years down the road who's having like a Q&A with you it's

a good frame but I think a much simpler question is what advice would I give someone else in this same situation so write about your problems what's working what's not working looking at that what advice would you give someone else like if this was someone else it's easy to give advice right dude you just got to do this this and this and you're on your way but when it's us we take it really personally or you know Ah that's not what I meant or yeah but so remove all that what advice subjectively would you give

someone else in the situation so those are variations of that but that is self coaching in a nutshell thanks so much for watching see you in the next one stop settling start living see you