 Today, we're talking with Sherry Samvillion, a certified life coach, speaker, author of a self-development journal called Journal and Discover Your Authentic Self, and I'm super happy to have Sherry here with us. Sherry is a dear friend who's been with me on the self-development journey for many, many years, and I'm so happy to have your book in front of me, and I'm working through it every day, and I'm really glad that we can share your insights into the journaling and self-development journey with our listeners here. Thank you for having me, Micha. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, AJ. Yeah, it's great to have you, and I think so many in our audience are facing this question in their own self-development journey of what next? So, I talk to a lot of clients in our X Factor Accelerator, a lot of our listeners tend to be what I call box checkers. So, they have this list of goals in their life, sometimes by parents, society, or by themselves, get a great job, get the degree, start a family, buy a house, and then after accomplishing these goals, they start to look around and say, is this it? What next? What do I do with my life? And I know part of the journaling process certainly helps in that discovery, but for many in our audience, they feel stuck, and it's hard for them to move forward or figure out what that next goal could be, and sometimes it's not even about creating that next goal. So, what would your advice be for someone in our audience who's in that exact moment in their life right now? That's a wonderful question. So, that's where I started, asking myself exactly that same question, what next? I have done everything that was expected of me. And for me, especially having my Kenyan background, African background, you're supposed to go study and get married and have kids. Those are the accomplishments. Nobody tells you what to do after that. And I'm a goal setter. I'm a person who I need goals. I need something to look forward to, and I didn't. And that's where I started. I said, okay, so I had to relearn myself. I didn't know who I was anymore, because I was a certain point. I had reached where I thought I was supposed to be. And then, you know, you know how they say, you're not the same person you are when you're 20 years old. You're not the same person when you're 30. You're not the same person when you're 40. What are you doing to get to know yourself? What are you doing to understand yourself? And that's where, for me, journaling really helped me understand my journey and my path, and helped me see that I needed to relearn who I was, because I had gone through stuff. We go through things. We go through life. We go through experiences. You've learned. Your beliefs have changed. Your values have. So many things have changed. And because you're out of sync, that is where the problem is. And so you just need to get back into sync with yourself. And when you do that and it clicks, then you can now set your goals based on that click. I completely agree with that journey of you're not who you were in your 20s or your 30s or your 40s and all of that shift happening. And what I was sharing with Michael that I think a lot of our audience members struggle with is, well, who is my authentic self then? Like I have this vision of who I was in my 20s and now my experience is in my 30s, but I'm sitting in my 40s and I don't know after checking these boxes who my authentic self is. So I love, I discovered, and this is where I actually met Michael, understanding my authentic self because we met during the course of the confidence coaching course. And what happened was he was doing the getting out of your comfort zone. Back in the day when I was still running these in my living room here every before I was even a coach. Yeah. Exactly. Yes. That's true. And that was actually our journey where we began. And do you know I found my authentic self out of my comfort zone because that's the only place you're going to find it. Yes. You have to get out. You cannot do the same thing as they say. You cannot do the same thing and expect the same results. You got to get out. And it was me standing in front in Michael's place in front of people giving a speech, you know, talking to standing and having talking to people is one of the worst. Is it the second fear? No, it's number one. It's number one. Yeah. You're actually more scared of giving the talk at a funeral than you are of lying in the coffin. Yes. It's number one. And we went on that day. It was one of your highest attendances. We had a lot of people in your room that day. But what I realized was at that moment, because my coach at that time told me this is what you have to do. If this is what you want to do, you have to do something that you've never done before. So, Cher, we might have to set this up for our listeners a little bit. So really short. The story with this is that in 2015, I started running confidence building workshops because I needed to build my own confidence. This was something that I was struggling with all my life. And I wanted to finally get this done. And I found a platform and nowhere where, you know, this platform was being exercised where people could go to work on their confidence. So I said, well, you know, I'll do it myself in my living room with the help of friends. We'll put this together. And so every Saturday from then on out, I had like 15, 20, 25 people in my living room every single Saturday for one and a half years. And we would do some self development work would give a platform for people who would want to give a short public speech in front of an audience to practice. And then we would go out and do comfort zone challenges, which is something that the participants of our X Factor accelerator program and unstoppable are very familiar with. And you were one of the participants that showed up and said, Hey, I'd like to give a short little speech about a topic I'm familiar with. And back back to you enter, enter stage Sherry, enter stage Sherry, who at that point had no idea what it is she was going to talk about. I decided to talk about my journey. And the first thing that came up was finding my authentic self. And so I did that. What's interesting is this was before I think we went out, right, to do the exercises. Yeah, that was already killing. But what was interesting is AJ, imagine having your first, your first talk, you have prepared, you've written the notes, you got the cards. And I left them in the train on my way to Michael's place. Talk about having a breakdown in Michael's bathroom. And rewriting everything. And talk about having an authentic talk, actually, because it really had to come from our heart. And what it is that, you know, my own experience. So, and what was really cool about it is I got these huge applause afterwards, which was crazy. And somebody then told me something that I will never forget. And I had never been told before. And he said, You know what, Sherry, you have a talent. Can you believe I was 36 or something at that time? Nobody had ever told me that, that I have a talent. And it took me to get out of my comfort zone, to get to that point, to lose my notes, to hear that and to know that I am seen and I have value. And that was just the beginning of, and imagine now, I've been journaling for many years. At that point, it made so much sense what I was doing and why I was doing what I was doing. And the great thing about journaling is I had reference. I could go back to my journey where I was and I could start writing a new story. And this is, you know, the small things that journaling does for you. Was it that moment where you were outside of your comfort zone, giving a improvised prepared talk and then being told that you have a talent, you have a gift where that sync happened, that click happened that you were talking about before that made you say, Okay, now it's time for something new in my life. Yes, it made me realize that not only do I have a talent, but now there's something that I can start looking forward to. That means now I can now consider, Okay, if this is something that I'm good at, what else can I do? What else can I take control of? If I can take control of my fear of standing in front of these people, then I can do what else can I do? And actually that's when I started going into other personal development courses. And, and that's when I discovered I love helping people. Things that are clicking, you know, I love helping people. I love being there. I love connecting with people. So I love speaking in front of people and teaching people and helping people get to their aha moments like I got to my aha moment. And this is when that led me to understanding there's something called life coaching. And you can do this with a structure, with a goal. And, and that's when I got my certificate. And, you know, then the click then came in when with another coach, because you know, as Michael is a coach, you need coaches, you need coaches to help you move forward. They're like, like the secret ingredient that you need to get to make things work for you. And I had a business coach, and she then told me, you know, you're a life coach, that's great. What's your tool? What do you have? And this is when I combined my journey of understanding my authentic self, my life coaching skills, and my love and passion for journaling. And I thought, hmm, I can combine that. I can put that together. I can create a journal where the main purpose of the journal is questions, prompts in the journal, but focus specifically on understanding who you are. And that's where that journey began. Well, I'm so happy you shared the multiple clicks, because I feel so many in our audience are sort of waiting for lightning to strike or this one aha moment. In actuality, listening to your journey, much like my own and Michael's, it's getting outside of your comfort zone, feeling, okay, now I feel like I'm moving in the right path. And then doubling down on that effort to stretch your comfort zone, to put yourself in another self development course, to hire a coach who's going to push you further than your comfort zone. And now things start clicking. It's not waiting for something to happen. It's acting and becoming the person that you've thought about that you've journaled about that you've actually seen in other people that you want so much in yourself. So from this journaling process, because it sounds like journaling was well before even the clicking was happening for you. So many of our clients will say, AJ, I'm staring at a blank page. I don't know what to journal. I don't know what to write. And oftentimes, when we think about it, so much of the writing that we've done in our life has been structured by other people. Okay, you have to turn in this paper. It has to have an outline. It has to have a conclusion. It has to be something that will persuade someone else or convince them that you know something very, very rarely in our life are we staring at a blank page with absolute freedom to write whatever we want. And it scares a lot of our X Factor members. So what's been interesting, it's I self published my journal like seven months ago, and now I'm getting feedback. And it's really interesting. I mean, for me, I was passionate. I thought this is great. You know, you have something you have, not only do you not have empty pages, because I knew there was a fear of the empty pages, but you got prompts and you can do it. Not only are people afraid of the of as you're saying the pages, they're afraid of even beginning to journal, even turning that page is a problem. They think it's I need a perfect moment. I need a mood. I need a certain place. I have to be in a certain time in my life. It's as you said, they're waiting for that lightning strike or that bolt to come. And I was thinking, no, I think you're over thinking this. It's it's journaling is just simply sitting down and writing down your thoughts. It should never be organized. It should never have some kind of layout or whatever. It should just be whatever it is you want it to be. The thing I think I realized is journaling is a habit. Like any habit, it takes time for you to get used to this new thing that you want to introduce into your life. We've just said that journaling is something that you need to do often. It's like you have to exercise often if you want some kind of result. You have to drink, I don't know, your shake often for you to find some kind of a result. Same thing as journaling. You have to do it often enough so that you can get used to it. And like any habit, you will start with enthusiasm, you will stop with boredom, and you have to start it all over again so that you can get used to it. And I think this is now like my mission is trying to talk to people about it's not about the writing. It's not about the journaling. It's about what you're doing for yourself and why you're doing it. And your journaling is done not just to write down words. It's done to rediscover who you are. It's done to connect to yourself. What I realized is most of the time we don't know what's happening inside of us. We don't ask ourselves, how am I feeling today? What was going on with me today? You could be excited or you could be whatever that's fine. But in the morning, if you wake up in the morning and you have a cup of coffee or a cup of tea and you're asking yourself, how am I today? You have no idea what will come out of that. And I want people to understand it is such a beautiful and interesting. You are an interesting human being. And you can find out so much about yourself if you give yourself the time to do it. And when I'm not saying you need to give yourself 10, 15 minutes every morning, no, give yourself five minutes. And especially with the process that I developed with my journal is you begin with gratitude. We do the importance of gratitude. Just giving three to five things you're grateful for. We'll talk about that one. Gratitude just on its own. And the impact it has on you and the way you will change, the way you see things. Again, a habit which you need to get used to, to do that. And then setting your intention for the day. That's another thing that I add into the book, which means just understanding what is it that I want to have today? What do I want to feel today? What do I want to experience today? That's just setting that pace. What's the pace for your day today? What do I need today? That's setting your intention. And then just saying, how am I feeling today? What's going on? And thank goodness with the journal that I've created, you don't even need to ask those questions. I've set up the questions for you. So all you have to do is explore yourself through those questions. And then after that, you can add up whatever it is that you want. So my tip is give yourself a chance. Find out why do you want to journal? Is it that you want to discover more about yourself? Is it that you feel lost? Is it that you want to create more goals? What is it? What is it that you want that you would like to get out of journaling? Generally, the other thing or misconception was, I thought, was that journaling was more for females than for the guys. And that was not true. I realized that a lot of guys journal, you know why? Because women talk more. We express ourselves more. We're always bubbling around telling people, everybody, how I feel, whether you want to listen to me or not. But guys, you keep so much to yourself, which is understandable. And then you have no outlet. And as I was reading about this, I found some statistics that from out of the suicides, like general suicides, 40% a mill. And it's because they are not able to share themselves, to express what is going on with them. And one of the things that is highly advised by psychologists, by therapists is writing down your thoughts. Because this is your space. It's your personal intimate space. Nobody is there to judge you. Nobody's there to look over you to see what is happening. It's just you sharing about you. And that release gives you so much relief in what's going on with you, that now you're creating this relationship with yourself, and you're not looking to the outside world for some kind of validation. Now you're just looking within. And what this also does is it builds your emotional intelligence. It builds your emotional literacy. Because if you, and I don't have any studies to quote here, but I think I heard or read something around the idea that if you ask a guy to list some emotions, they'll come up with happy, sad, angry. That's it. It's a little bit like my spice rack, pepper and salt. And is there more? And what you do by identifying emotions is you automatically disarm them just a little bit by being able to say, right now I feel X, let that be frustrated, furious, sad, devastated, just by being able to pinpoint that you take some of the punch out of it. And so your ability to sit down with a piece of paper and start exploring these emotions, learn to name them. You don't have to share them. Just like you said, it's just a piece of paper. It goes into your bookshelf. No one's ever gonna see it unless you have friends that go like, oh, that's a cool book. It's like, no, no, no, don't touch that. But other than that, no one ever gets to see that. And especially in the way that to tie this back to what H.A. was saying earlier about the idea of the white page, that was something that always made me struggle. I knew the power of journaling. I knew how good it felt and how organized I felt after writing while I drank my first cup of coffee. But it was that white page, like where do I start? So, you know, I would get up at four in the morning, read five newspapers, work out for three hours, drink a protein shake, learn some Mandarin, then sit down with my journal and ask myself, where do I start? Now, nothing in that story is true apart from the very last point that I just made. But that was it. Like, where do I start? Once it was flowing, I was writing. I was writing until my hand got numb, but like starting. And what your journal does, just like you said, is like, today I appreciate. List five things my intention is. And the reflection of the day that I'm churning on today is write down something you tell yourself over and over again that produces negative and unwanted consequences. And that was like, whoa, you know, this might necessitate more than just a cup of coffee. Like I think I got a lot of stuff to write down there. And I like what you said that because so one thing we have as coaches, that's our super weapon, is questions. Questions are powerful things. Questions unlock so much. Most of my clients, I ask them something and they're like, oh my gosh, I've never, I did not think about it that way. And it's like a, it's like a key that opens up something in you that you didn't discover or didn't realize about yourself. And then, then you find your own solution. So this is why prompts and questions in the book that I create is so important. I'm doing my own journal. Actually, I'm writing on my own journal. I'm surprised sometimes what comes out. And sometimes you're happy when you hear, when you read a question, you're like, I really want to answer this. But as I said, the questions that I created have a structure and have steps. Like for you, what you just mentioned was about limiting beliefs. You know, a belief is something you think about and tell yourself over and over again until you believe it. And, but we don't take the time to think about, okay, but what is it that I actually do believe about myself and reflecting on that. And I feel like, like when we were doing the confidence coaching sessions, and we would have people, you would give us these exercises to do. And we had to go and find something to somebody to talk about or somebody to do. And what I realized is after going through those exercises, I needed a space to reflect about what they did for me, you know, and reflecting is such a beautiful way of creating awareness about yourself and understanding yourself. And what I realized also is when a guy is able to do that, there's nothing more sexy than a guy who's self aware. I'm very self aware. I'll put that out there. It's a tagline in my tagline in my Tinder profile. But because you're able to express yourself more, you're able to reflect with me and bounce off with me more, because you know more about yourself, you know. So this thing of personal development is just for, I don't know what, it's just, you know, this myth that it helps you feel better or whatever. No, it really, it doesn't just change you, it changes your relationships. Yeah, I was just going to share, I think a big part of this for men is answering those questions has social consequences. So men often feel judged for their answers. And to Michael's point, well, they only label a few emotions because men, societally speaking, aren't supposed to be feeling all those emotions and expressing all of those emotions. So we hide behind this mask of I'm good. I'm okay. I'm great. Today wasn't a great day, but we don't really express anymore. And oftentimes we feel if we do express more, there's judgment, there's criticism, there's loss of status for men. So these questions get buried. They don't get answered publicly or shared with our friends and family. And then we sit at a blank page in our journal and we get very anxious because we don't know how to even start these questions. And to your point, I feel like these questions are like shining a flashlight. You know, our job as coaches is to point the flashlight in the right direction. So, you know, if the doorbell was to ring right now and someone's to come in here and ransack my room and I just finished laundry and some clothes were clean. Some were dirty and the whole place has turned upside down and the lights are off. You know, I opened the door. I'm overwhelmed. What's clean? What's dirty? I don't know. I can't see anything. Our job as coaches is to put the flashlight and show you, okay, here's the clean clothes. And journaling is like, all right, let's start hanging these up. Let's organize our closet. Oh, flashlight on the dirty clothes. Okay, let's start putting these in the hamper. I know I need to clean these. And that journaling process for you is a way to take this stream of thoughts that is just flooding you day in and day out and to recognize the important thoughts that we want to turn into beliefs, that we want to bring into our identity. And as you said with that prompt, the negative thoughts that we're telling ourselves day in and day out that might be creating a negative belief that's hindering our confidence, that's hindering our growth. But if we're not looking at any of these, we're hiding from them. We're closing the door the second we see that dirty room in the dark and we have no flashlight. Well, it's very hard to unpack, to get organized, to feel really confident in those moments where you got to get on stage and speak, you got to present in front of your peers. You have to ask your boss for a raise. And there are, apart from the flashlight aspect of the journaling process, there are two more processes that are very underrated in self development and that is self distancing and reflection. So self distancing is the question that the coach has asked you. We are usually very bad at solving our own troubles. But if a friend has exactly the same ones, we're like really good. And that is the idea of self distancing or a didactic framing of where if I don't, if I think of my own problems as belonging to someone else, I can ask much better questions. So if I don't get stuck up here in my little head, things get a lot better. And that's something that trilling allows us to do. And the other is, like you said, reflection afterwards, which is incredibly important because we talked about this in an X Factor Q&A session just this weekend, where we talked about difference between an intrinsic and an extrinsic property of an emotion. So I'm not to get too geeky here. But the idea is that say you are out there and your start for, it's a Saturday and your intention is to talk to a couple of strangers. And sometimes it goes, well, and sometimes you get rejected. Now you have certain emotions that certain physical sensations like the racing heart, the sweating hands, maybe you're trembling a little bit from the last rejection. That's the intrinsic properties. The extrinsic say, this is bad. I shouldn't be feeling like this. They hate me. I'm a horrible human being. Now the moment we ascribe those extrinsic properties, we've basically created a real shit show out of the entire Saturday. But take that reflection. So you're out there, you're talking to people for an hour, and then you sit down at a cafe, you order a coffee, you take out your journal, and you reflect on these experiences. And the extrinsic properties that you might put on them is like, that person was just really busy. They were, you know, they were running. I should have seen that they were busy, that they were chasing their dog. I should have seen that they were approached by like five people that wanted their signature, and that's why they didn't want to talk to me on top of everything else. And I was really friendly. I was respectful. I had a great compliment for them. And boom, you had the same emotions, the same sensations that for those that reflect on them might be turned into something that's a learning experience or a positive experience. And for others, just defaults to, you know, I screwed this up, I'm a loser, it's a shit show. The other way to describe it is your journal can be your therapist and your coach. And this is why. Because when you take a book and you write down what happened to you, you write down, you're saying the shit show that happened and everything that happened, what you're doing is you're giving yourself like a top perspective, like a 3D or 2D perspective of what's going on. You're not in the situation anymore. You're an observer. You're observing yourself. And as you said, it's easier for me to find the solution for something that I'm looking at than finding a solution when I'm in that shit show. And so the journal gives you that gift of writing down whatever it is that happened. And as you're doing that, you're looking at yourself, you're observing yourself and you're asking yourself, okay, this happened. But was it really as bad as I created it in my head? Because you know, we have, what is it, 20,000 thoughts a day or whatever, we're thinking so much. And is it 80% a negative? Something like that, yeah. Yeah, if not more. For you to catch that, you really have to find a space where you can look at it, observe it and say, well, this is a whole lot of crap that just went on in my face. What do I want to believe about myself? What do I want to believe about the situation? What can I do to solve it? And then you find yourself solving most of the problems that you had, which prevents you from having these, if it's a mental breakdown, if it's overloading of yourself, I would say we as human beings, we are such emotional beings, we go through so much emotion. But unfortunately, we don't have a place to let that go. Or we don't give ourselves the gift of doing that. You know, sometimes you can be aware and you can be meditating or you can be doing something that or going to gym or whatever it is, you're still not dealing with emotions. But hey, you know, things like that. But you don't take the time to stop. And as AJ was saying, you have your clothes and your room is filled with stuff. And you're not taking time to download and sort it out and figure yourself out. And that's what journaling does. It takes, it makes you pause and figure things out and say, okay, I will deal with this now. I will deal with this later. You become your own therapist. And most I even had to ask therapists and psychologists, do you, do you ask your patients to journal? Is it a tool that you use? And they said, absolutely, because I'm not going to be with you every day. But you're with yourself. And if you can journal what is going on, then when we come back and what they find is when they come back in the sessions after they've done their journaling sessions, most of the stuff has already been dealt with. Now they're just observing what happened to you, but you sold it yourself. And I think so much of this is just valuing the one life that you have. It's so much easier to close that door and avoid it and put on Netflix or go play the video game and deal with cleaning your room. But then days go by, years go by and some of our clients come to us and say, man, I wish I would have dealt with this in my 20s. I wish I would have dealt with that anxiety monster in my 30s instead of letting it run my life. And what comes out of a lot of this work is especially for our analytical clients, very negative, self-critical thought. So they get to the journal and they can write 10, 12 things they did wrong that day. And that's why I love starting with, well, what are you grateful for? Even if, as Michael said, that was a complete shit show that Saturday night. Well, what are you grateful for on Sunday morning? Well, the fact that I had the freedom to go out on a Saturday in my 20s, I was working Saturdays. I had the ability to actually muster the confidence to go talk to those people, even though it didn't go well. And I'm grateful that I have a warm cup of coffee on this Sunday morning to look forward to. Even the smallest amount of gratitude starts to reframe that brain that's so powerful and with our reticule activating system dialing and honing in on the negative and honing in on the things that aren't working in our life and say, well, what is working? What is a positive? And how can I build some momentum off the positive instead of sit there and dwell in the self-criticism? And Amanda Knox had a really powerful tweet thread about this when she got her sentence for a crime she didn't commit. And she was going to be sitting in a jail cell knowing she didn't commit this crime. And that was going to be your life was going to be those four walls in the cell. And she looked at it and said, well, this is my life. I'm going to make the most of it. And journaling is that tool that allows you to make the most of the time you have. Today is the youngest you'll ever be. And if you can attack the journal and look at the journal as a tool to make the most of your life, it becomes far more impactful than this blinking cursor on a blank page that I don't want to commit to. I don't want to type. I don't want to write. Or I have to do it perfectly. And there is a way that it needs to be done. Because I think about perfectionists and imagine a perfectionist looking at a bullet journal. You know how they do them perfectly? What disaster is that? I mean, you're creating something that is just not is what I would, these are the points I would tell people how to start where you should start when it comes to journaling. First, get a book that you like looking at every day. It needs to look good, right? Second, get a list of prompts of questions that you can answer. Third, make sure as AJ says, start with your gratitude. Start focusing on the positive because where your energy goes, your energy flows. When you start with a positive thing, then the rest doesn't seem that bad. If you go straight to whatever crap that you're going through, you're going to go into this spiral where you're never going to get yourself out of it. Do that and then just release. Make mistakes, spell it wrong, cancel stuff. It doesn't matter because nobody is looking at it. It's yours. You can put stickers into it. You can draw. You can do whatever it is that you want because it's yours. Just hide it. Nobody finds it if you have people in your place. Just make it your space. Make it yours in whatever way you want to make it because it's your thoughts and it's your world. Explore. Use it as the space where you can push yourself. You can explore. You can find interesting things about yourself. Don't put pressure in believing that you have to do it on a daily basis. That's when it's going to work. That's a lot of crap. Do it when you say, okay, I'm doing it today. I didn't do it yesterday. Okay, I'll do it on Friday and it's no problem. And then what happens is you get used to sharing your feelings. You get used to finding the language because also that's another problem, as Michael was saying, finding the language of how you feel and you get used to that. You find the words. The thing is, if you're not looking for it, you're never going to find it. So you need to start somewhere and give yourself a break. And then after a while, you're like, you find yourself looking forward to writing stuff. You're like, that's the thing I'm going to be, I love to journal and that's the thing I'd love to be grateful for. And then you start using it as notes. I have like honestly six journals running at the same time, which is ridiculous, obviously, because I write so much. And one is a goals one, one is a creative one, one is this one, because I want to know how my book is going and exploring myself even after so many years of being in the person development journey, I still need to keep understanding who I am. It's a journey. It's never destination. And I have another one for my creativity. Where do I, where do I, my dream book, just having my dream life in the book where I go crazy and do whatever I want? And one with pictures where I can just stick whatever pictures I like, because it looked nice for me and write something under it. So you can be so creative and explore yourself through journaling. It's not just a, you know, an empty white page. What I love is that ability to then reflect back as well. So many of the social media apps we'll share with you on this day, six years ago or 12 years ago, Michael and you were eating schnitzel in Vienna. And you have this moment where you look back like, oh, I remember that. And that, oh, what a great experience. Your journal also provides that you can thumb through, you can pull journal number three out of the bookshelf and say, okay, in my 30s, like, these are my hopes and dreams. And these are my challenges. And wow, they're not my challenges anymore. They're my strengths. Like, wow, I've grown so much as a person from this opportunity you have to build that story for yourself. And it is something that's very personal. So I love that you brought up that point, the journal for you. Yes, it's a beautiful book, but it's not a beautiful book you're bringing to brunch on Sundays to share with your friends. It's not a beautiful book that you're saying, hey, grandma, read this. It's for you. It's that one safe space in your life for it to, you can fully express yourself. There's no right or wrong. There's no judgment associated with it. And the act of letting it flow and getting it out of your system creates more of an opportunity to organize yourself and to orient yourself around the things that really mattered to you, instead of the overwhelm of those 20,000 thoughts, 80% of which are beating ourselves up. And through this process, I think the more you know yourself, so the self-awareness piece that you say is so attractive in men, it's also a source of great confidence. The more you know yourself, the recognition of the challenges you faced, the things you've overcome, the thoughts that were beating you up that are no longer beating you up. That is the confidence to get in front of that room in Michael's living room and share a bit of yourself with no notes after a freak out in the bathroom. That ability to do the comfort zone challenge in Unstoppable and lay down on the street and stand back up and feel like, wow, I accomplished that. In those moments where things might be dark, things might not be what you had hoped or your dreams are further away than you thought, you can open up that journal and say, wow, I experienced this. I grew from this. This is challenges that I've met in the past and it could be that source of strength when life might be beating you up in that moment. Absolutely. What's interesting about human beings is one thing we need is progress. We need the progress as a human being. And that's why we get stuck. That's why we get depressed. That's why we go into a dark place because we do not feel like we're progressing. Now, as you said, when you write down your thoughts and you write down what you went through and you can go back and see it and you can reflect and see your progress, because before that, as you said, if you don't have something to show you, then you think you haven't done much. You really think everything was so small. I remember going through all these courses and stuff they would ask you. One of my coaches asked me, now write down all your accomplishments since you were born. The list was so long. I was like, oh my goodness, I did not realize I had done so much. I didn't realize. And oh my goodness, I forgot what I did when I was 12 or when I was six in or whatever. I forgot this stuff. And you see that you have progressed. And it's not that you've just been sitting this world doing nothing, but you need to see it. You need to get it out of you. Don't wait for someone to give you the pat on the back. Don't wait for somebody to give you the compliment. Do it for yourself. What I learned especially through my journey is I have to be my own cheerleader because nobody else is going to do it for me. I cannot expect people to do it for me. I need to be my own cheerleader first. I need to make myself feel better first. And I think during that for me, this process of understanding who I am, understanding what my authentic self actually looks like, which was a huge journey for me. And you know why this is another topic, but I did not realize that I had masks that had created these blocks that protected or I thought was protecting me. But all they did was made me forget who I was. I was able to observe myself and recognize those masks because only then can you take them out. If you don't recognize them, if you don't see them, then they're just blocking you and they keep blocking you and they keep blocking your progress and understanding who you are. And through that journey, you slowly see that. You slowly get aware of yourself. And it has to be a small step by step process because sometimes it can be very scary removing a mask and seeing this person who you have not seen for a long time and you don't even recognize. And then you have to relearn this person. Do you have an example if you're willing to share off of a mask that you identified and how it felt to take it off? Being a mom, do you know how you can hide under that? And when it comes off is when they don't need you anymore. So who am I? What's happening now? Okay, I can't really identify with that one. No, I understand that. It's a tough one for me to fall off with. Yeah, but that's when they say sometimes when a woman gets into the age of, I don't know, 40 or something, you get through your crisis because people don't need you anymore. You've been doing and being the motherly nature that we have. We've been doing for others and when they don't need you anymore, then who are you? Or losing a job that you've been at for 10 years. And suddenly, especially during COVID time, it's gone. That's where I was every day. Who am I now? What am I about? Are those really my real friends? Or were they there because of the mask that I had? I know for me, people pleasing, nice guy, nice gal syndrome of taking action to serve others constantly without understanding what I truly wanted and sacrificing a bit of myself along the way. And then the resentment that slowly builds from that as you move yourself further off course, and you also are serving others in ways that they're not even asking for, but you think are helpful. This mask is so prevalent in so many members of our audience, whenever we talk about it in our newsletter or wherever we share it in our X-Factor, immediately everyone's hand shoots up. I know this feeling. But oftentimes it's hard to see that mask unless something traumatic happens. You can actually avoid the trauma by starting the journal now and work through it and discover the mask instead of waiting until you lose your job, your best friend moves away, your significant other breaks up with you. And now you're left in this moment of panic or trauma or just feeling completely lost. Journaling creates the space for you to start working through this now. Absolutely. I'm also a people pleaser. That I must say I'm one of the few or the many that that's all we did because you know why we did it, AJ? Because we did not want confrontation. We didn't want to confront or to look at things and have to deal with it. So we just made sure everything is fine. And the more that I was able to describe my friendships as I was writing it down or describe my relationships, I was like, okay, but did I say anything about it? Did I mention something? Was it really just their fault or did I add into this and reflect on that? People pleasing is a tricky thing. But the more you write about yourself, the more you know yourself, the more you see yourself, the more you are able to take whatever that is and change it because it's right there. It's right in front of you. You see it, you have it, you've grasped it. So now it's up to you. What do you want to change it? How do you want to change it? So I'm not a mom. So my kids won't move out. Haven't lost a job either. And in my mind, I'm like, I want to explore this possibility of finding my mask because I haven't really thought about this and it sounds intriguing. But I don't know where to start. Where, like, how do I identify? I can identify with the people pleasing masks for sure. But I'm really intrigued about churning about this and finding my masks. Where do I start? Your mask can be the easiest or the furthest thing. So it can be most of the things that you do consistently and every day. So it's recognizing where you are, what you're doing, your relationships, who you hang out with, and then asking yourself, if I wasn't here or if I was not in this situation or if I did not have this thing, what changes? What changes about me? If I am not a coach, if I am not awesome, if you're not awesome, I don't know if you're not a gamer, if you're not, if I'm not the tennis player, if I'm not the chef or cook or whatever it is, that's okay. So if I don't have that, what is there? Because it's something you identify with so much that you're doing and you're so used to it and it's a habit and you keep doing it. And if it stops. So those would be roles that I'm playing in my life, being the brother, the son, the coach, the neighbor, the insert blank. And what would I be if I weren't that? Okay, that sounds like an interesting journey to explore. Nothing is forever. And this is where we, when something is taken away from you, you feel it like a loss or you feel it like a, because the one thing you will always have is you. That's it. And that's what you need to work on and not the skill, honestly, even not the relationships. Because if you're good, then everything else will be good. But this is the thing though, Michael, when I'm in those masks, I've created routines, I've created habits, I've created relationships, I can create a whole life. And when one or two or three start breaking down, I have no idea who I am without those things. With a journal, when you get back and you start on asking yourself, what is important to me? What do I believe is true about me? And you get back into just you. And then after understanding that, you're going to create that and use that as a base to then make your decisions, to then create more relationships, to then make decisions about what it is that you want in your life. Because without that base, without understanding that part of your authentic self, everything else is an illusion. And it is a mask. If you understand that and those masks are taken off, it's not a problem. You can move on easily, because they don't make you you. All right. It also sounds like that helps tremendously with picking the right path as options are laid out in front of us. I find that one of the big mysteries or sources of misery in our day and age is that there's so many options out there, where 100 years ago, you were like a coal miner and they had two sheeps at home. And now you could be an author, you could be a model, you could be a film star, you could be a gardener, you could be a father, mother, but you could do all those things like, well, which ones do I pick? And then the fear of missing out because, oh, but I could have written a book, but I could have done, you know, invented the world's healthiest pasta and I could have done all of these things. But no, this is who I am. This is who I want to be. This is my authentic self. And these two options line up with where I see myself and the 99 million other things, they don't. They would be nice, but they're not primary. And another thing is, you know, we can talk about it and it's all serious, but it can also be fun, you know, because as I said, I have a book where I create my dreams. I just, you know, go wild because nobody has to see what's happening there. Have you ever done that? Have you ever just, you know, where do I see myself in three to five years? What are the possibilities? What could I do if I had all the money in the world? You know, really just, and it helps you understand and see how you see yourself and where you really want to go. I mean, we're not saying that's exactly what's going to happen to you, but that is still who you are. You have dreams, you have passions, you have things you could be excited about. Have you explored them and as you're writing about them, and this is a great thing about the brain, your brain starts thinking about things, it starts connecting things. And then suddenly you realize there was a poster about something you were thinking about and you could go and explore that or, you know, it's just making these little connections and making your life more interesting because you took time to explore and to have fun with yourself, you know, and understanding where that comes instead of waiting for somebody else to bring their ideas into you, instead of you doing it for yourself. AHA still objects my idea of a pink art of charm helicopter. So that is my dream. Keep that in your journal, Michael. Yeah, I guess that's where it's going to die. For our audience members who are ready to take that next step in journaling, where can they find your book? All my handles are Sherry Sambillion with my name on my website, on Instagram, on LinkedIn and Facebook. And all you need to do is go on my website, you'll find a click and you can order the journal on Amazon. It's ready for you. You can also get a free session after ordering the journal because as I said, it's important to understand why. What is your why? Why do you want to have this journal so that when you're looking at it and when you're seeing it, you're reminding yourself why it's important to you. You will only do what you feel is valuable. That is us human beings. We will not do anything else. We will only do what's important to us. And if you can create some kind of importance, at least to your journal, you're going to journal. I love that. Thank you so much for joining us. We love asking every guest what their X factor is. What do you think makes you unique and extraordinary? My X factor is connecting with people. I don't know why or how or whatever that is, but I have a way I'm able to just connect with the people around me. And my best friend says, I can't believe you had a conversation with a stranger and she starts telling you how she had cancer and she's telling you a whole life story. But you just met her. It's this thing. I connect with people. And I think that's what makes me also a good coach, because I'm able to really connect. And I had to understand that was my superpower, connecting with people. And then understanding how I can use that to help people. So I love that. I love connecting. It makes me feel like I'm giving you your space to be a better version of yourself. Well, thank you so much for connecting with Michael. This is a great discussion around journaling and it's excited me and so many of our audience members to actually just get started. So we really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. It was really nice having this conversation with you guys. Thank you. Thank you.