 Journaling of various kinds is all the rage these days on the internet, but there's one kind of journaling that has made the biggest difference in my life that frankly I haven't really seen anywhere else. So in this video here today I want to introduce you guys to this idea of what I call shadow work or god mode journaling. Hey guys Alex Hein here over at Modern Health Monk. Before we jump into this video on this shadow work journaling I've put together a free download for a free journaling worksheet. The journaling worksheet will help you figure out how to get your life together, how to figure out what you want, and how to really plot out the most inspiring path forward. So you can check it out, it's the first link right below this video. So I want to share the backstory here first behind this really really special playbook. About let's say four years ago at this point I went through an absolute self-destruction. I mean basically they would call out like a nervous breakdown right? So I'd been working crazy hours every single day probably about 80 hours a week and around that time I was in the third year of my medical program out of four and the cumulative work of first working with a full-time job while trying to build this channel and business and write my books and then going into this four-year medical program at the age of like 29 or 30 while also still trying to build this so that I basically didn't die in a lifetime of student debt. I was working 80 hours a week consistently after I'd been doing 60 or 70 for the prior four years. So after a while what happened was I mean I basically had like a full nervous breakdown which means that my stress levels were so high that eventually even if I stopped my work by six or seven I couldn't sleep at night right? I couldn't fall asleep, I couldn't stay asleep. I would only be able to sleep for about three continuous hours per night and if you've ever had that happen if you've ever slept only three hours per night for a week or two weeks for me it was on and off for about three months. At that point basically for lack of a better word I started developing symptoms of clinical anxiety and pretty severe clinical depression. I mean if you used the questionnaire that we gave to our own patients I would be diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Now it was clearly back in the day they called this you know nervous exhaustion right? You basically are working yourself into a depression effectively. I mean you basically caused such severe physiological dysfunction over a long enough period of time that now you don't even get to choose when your body shuts off and relaxes. So I go into this hell mode for about six months or a year and I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to get out of it because of how bad my health is. Lots of ER visits, lots of every kind of medical visit and eventually I was like you know I've got to create a playbook for when my life has gone to such a deep level of hell that I have to revisit the first principles and the foundation of life. Now for a lot of people that's religion and that's spirituality but for me I would say I tend to be someone who thinks of his own principles in life and I ended up coming up with this book of all of these sayings and books and quotes and passages that really speak to my soul and I decided to call it the master work or the god journal or whatever you want to call it because it's something that is the one thing like the bible right? For a lot of people the bible has the timeless truth and for me this is the timeless truth and wisdom and as long as I can remember this from an inner perspective this will get me back on the path that I want to live in my life. So this book became my bible for how to live going forward. So what do you actually put in here? You know for me one of the main things that I focused on is what are the things that speak to your soul about the way you should live your life? You know for example I have these quotes from Martha Beck the writer and she says things like the closer to your north star the more fun you should be having. You don't get ahead by pushing and investing tons of effort you get ahead by Wu Wei which is non-doing in the Dao De Jing which is also a better money maker and that success is highly aligned with the spiritual. Hints, signs and intuitions will help you find the path and realize your destiny. So listen. Things like that that really really speak to the soul. Other things are this little passage by some guy named Bashar where he says you do not need a reason why it's excitement that tells you that this is the next thing you need to do and when you can take action no further look around for the next thing you are the most excited about. Most importantly even if it does not feel connected the more you can trust this the more your life will be an explosion of synchronicity. So another one that was interesting was from the CEO of Pupri Susie Bates. She talks about basically multiple suicide attempts, multiple divorces, bankruptcies and then she decided to quit being an entrepreneur and dedicated her life to healing. The next business she built made her one of Forbes richest women in America and she talks about resonance and dissonance as her kind of life operating system. So I have this little drawing of resonance and what that feels like you know feeling creative flow feeling endless energy feeling life is for you feeling excited and vibrant and what dissonance feels like right you feel sluggish and you feel cerebral hell you're in your head you feel like you're in low energy or you feel tense or stressed not enough time so this little book became my operating system for the way to live my life going forward and because I have all of these little passages in here all of these little things that speak to me anytime I feel like I've gotten off of my path where I'm not feeling well or it's not working out or I'm stressed or I don't know if I'm ever going to succeed quote unquote I just come back to this little bible because it's filled with all of the things that I found that really speak to me on a soul level and I'll leave you one here by Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman the famous woman who freed lots of slaves this is from a book called the great work of your life in tales of dharma guidance shows up a lot in people's lives Harriet Tubman was widely believed to be directly guided by God and these stories are similar to Moses Jonah Saint Paul on the road to Damascus the call is a common manifestation in the stories of people who follow their dharma so this little booklet has been the key to success from an inner point of view from there the rest is just doing the work