 There's no substitute for writing down your thoughts and getting them into a journal. There's a lot of different online apps that you can use but I personally love to use pen and paper. Today we're going to talk about four journals that I love and why I use them. Keep watching. Today it's Kyla Denigno. So today we're going to talk about four journals that I absolutely love and why I use them. Okay so journaling is something that's really important to me and even before I started calling it journaling I just loved writing. I love words. I had a professor who said to me that words are the currency of a lawyer and I felt that right. It hit me right in the heart. I was like man that is me. Words are the currency of a lawyer. I'll never forget when he said that to us and that's so relevant to me because for one words are everything right. You're listening to me speaking words right now. When you read a book you're reading words. As you're listening you're hearing words. Go into your words or everything. Words in different languages. Words that are written. Spoken words. Audio words through podcasts. Words are everything. I'm a big nerd. I love words. And I have a number of different online apps which allow me to journal which allow me to write. I remember way back in the day I had an account called Bolt.com and it was an online journal where you can write down your thoughts and write down kinds of stuff and way before even my space right. Proving how old I am but I love journals. I love writing. So these are four journals that I've used throughout my life and the different reasons I use them and why. So we're gonna start with one of the first journals that I've used to one of the journals I'm using right now okay. So first up it's wrapped in canvas. Huge huge book. There's an entry here from 2007. So I've been using this for a really long time and one thing that I love about journaling is that it doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't have to be flashy. This is wrapped in black canvas. There's nothing on the spine but it just looks like any other book without a dust cover on it. It's just here but it contains beautiful words I've written it because even as life moves on and I forget things your journal still has it right. And that's one of my favorite things about journals. One of the reasons why I steal journal to this day okay. So first one I'm a journal that I was writing in back in 2007. This is relevant because 2007 long time ago what was I even thinking about. I didn't go to law school until 2012. So this was five years before then. So it's a lot of a lot of good stuff that's in here. I wouldn't have been taking the LSAT yet. I probably wasn't thinking about which law school I wanted to go to so this owns a lot of good stuff. The next one is one line a day. This is a cute journal. It's a little tiny baby journal. It's actually called a memory book which is a type of journaling but the beauty of this is that there is literally enough space for you to write a little snippet of whatever was happening on that day. And the beautiful thing is is the years are blank so you can write down. I started this journal in 2019 right. So I can see here March 8th 2019 what was happening a school a law firm that I no longer work at. 2020 what was happening 2021 what was happening and then 2022 I can fill this in for today. So pretty cool that journaling does not have to be long it doesn't have to be drawn out. You just need to write down your thoughts get them on paper and it's nice to revisit them. You know if I'm coming in here to write down an entry and I happen to see what happened in the prior year a lot of times that'll be exciting to just take a look at but really I'm just trying to write down my thoughts, write down what's happening at the time and I'm not necessarily preserving it for any reason just preserving it because it feels good to get those thoughts out at the moment. So you know how you can have something happen in life and you gotta tell somebody you call your best friend she's not answering your text people they're not answering and then for me I'm like Kyla that's because this needs to be in your journal it probably is not meant for consumption with everyone. A lot of times when that happens I'll even go to Twitter and I'm trying to write it and I'm like this is four-year journal it's not for anybody else it's four-year journal right so beauty of the journal okay so then the next journal that I loved this one here and again nothing on the spine I guess it's yellow with little clouds on it little fuzzy polka dots this is a pregnancy journal I couldn't believe that there were pregnancy journals but there are so there aren't any dates but there are sections where you can write what month you're in what trimester you're in and then like the size of your baby if that's interesting to you but like here's a page where it says my cravings where it wants you to write down what you were craving at the time here's another page where it says I'm getting ready for you buy and then the section is blank for you to fill that in and I have a little girl she'll be two this summer and when I think about this journal every woman that I know they tell me they're pregnant I buy them this journal even if we've never discussed journaling because you have no idea what's happening when you're pregnant your body is doing all this stuff and growing you see your doctor but you still you don't know and there's so many things you think about there's so many women that have a lot of dreams when they're pregnant you have food aversions things you don't want to eat when you're pregnant you have things you can't sleep and you may just be up at night and you can write all that stuff down in your journal right and when I was pregnant I actually took on a whole new venture being pregnant made me really creative and really daring made me kind of fearless I started recording for my podcast when I was pregnant I put out the first episode when I was pregnant and Baby Girl got to hear my voice all the time when I was interviewing guests because I recorded seven episodes before I even got started with the podcast because seven was the scary number for podcasts and a lot of people quit before then so I wanted to be prepared so Baby Girl got to hear me talking all the time when I was interviewing guests and I know some of that is probably in here so pregnancy journal there are journals for specific things that you're going through and when I was pregnant in 2020 this this journal was relevant for me so now we're gonna talk about my current journal well two journals because I'm still writing in the one line a day journal but then this journal is called Becoming this journal complements the becoming book by Michelle Obama I read this book last year obsessed with it I'll make sure I do an episode about books written by lawyers which are incredible this one will definitely be on there Michelle Obama another person that I created my podcast for is someone who did not pass the bar exam the first time they took it they kept working at it eventually passed the bar exam became an incredible attorney also married an attorney great life right but she created a journal that is comp the compliments a lot of the themes that were mentioned in the book becoming so one of the prompts here describe your home today what do you love most about it when's the last time you wrote about your home how cool is that but maybe it'll be really relevant to you for you to write that down here's another one what do you want list 10 things that you want for yourself next to each of them list a simple step to make it happen how great is that I love this journal because I think that it's really thoughtful and it brings up a lot of things that I'm not thinking about throughout the day a lot of things that I wouldn't necessarily mention in my other journals so a prompted journal is another really good thing to use if you're new to journaling if you think it's silly to write down your thoughts if you're afraid someone will find it and oh my gosh I see all your words start with a prompted journal one that will ask you things like what was the best tv you saw as a kid what are you watching now when what right now I'm obsessed with inventing Anna and when I was a kid I remember watching The Fresh Prince but I would never I would never think to put those things together in a journal and who knows when I start writing about it what it will spark what it'll make me think of right already right now I'm thinking about when The Fresh Prince will come out and me and my best friend will be on the phone and we didn't talk at all when the show was on but then we would talk about the show during the commercials so we're sitting there watching it we're basically talking about it live as it's happening just sit on the phone watching it together probably hearing it through the phone from her tv and then on commercials oh my god did you see that you see what actually had on oh my goodness right so but I would never think to write about those things together and when I do fill out that entry it'll probably be a little bit different so there you have it four journals that I'm using right now and the importance of them a completely blank journal where you can just write down your words a little small snippet journal something like a memory book where you can write about what's happening right now something that's relevant to you it's really good for beginners because it just has a couple of lines a subject specific journal such as the pregnancy journal that I used and then a prompted journal where there are actual prompts where they try to guide you to what you're going to talk about for the day so if you never considered journaling you should consider journaling so just go out and grab a notebook right it's really good to get your thoughts out if you're using online app it's wonderful if you have the time and you enjoy putting pen to paper you should consider getting a physical journal that you can write in as well okay so I hope you enjoyed this I hope I inspired you to go journal and I will talk to you later Kyla de Nagao bye