 Journaling seems to be pretty much all the rage these days but a lot of people think like I once thought that journaling is like this 16 year old girl in the high school musical movies where she's writing about her heartbreak and her feelings and they get turned off, right? I certainly was. But since then I've actually learned that journaling has many different methods, there are many different ways to do it and in this video I wanted to share a couple very useful ways that you can start journaling today. Hey guys, Alex Hein, author of the book on Habits, Master of the Day, so I've included down below this video a free journaling worksheet as well as an email series you'll get every week on how to use journaling to figure out what to do with your life and find the direction going forward. You can check it out, it's the first link below this video. The way I got into journaling was pretty much the way that a lot of people get into journaling. You're usually hitting rock bottom, you hate something about your life, you're confused about what to do next and you're feeling a lot of negative emotions internally. For me it was around 2012 where I'd just moved back from China which I thought I was going to move there and stay there for 10 years, become a monk, a mystic, a kung fu master and then come back when I was this ultimate sage badass. Now when that journey ended after just a year, I came home and I moved back home now in my mid 20s and now I'm like well what do I do with my life? I have no friends, I don't know what steps to do next, I feel embarrassed because I'm back with my parents and I feel confused and just all these negative emotions every single day and I felt afraid of making the wrong decision but unfortunately for me that just resulted in me making no decision. So that is the time in my life when I started journaling and that's probably maybe something that you're going through now especially everything that's happened this year but I wanted to share a few of the ways that I've used journaling since as well as my very very brief morning journaling routine. So at that time for me the number one use of journaling was to get my confused thoughts on paper and I still think that's one of the best ways to use journaling. If you have a lot going on in your head about a specific part of your life or this moment in your life write it all out but there's three other ways that I typically use journaling a lot. So the first way is journaling to systematically reach your goals. Now if you've done any kind of long-term goal that takes more than a month this is one of the best methods to stay on track. For me I've used journaling extensively in the process of building my business and trying to become a business owner. I didn't know anything about business. Every week I was discouraged for literally years and it never ended up being as big as I wanted it to be. So every week I would journal my frustrations, I would journal one thing I can improve on and I would remind myself of my vision and the path going forward what I really needed to do what I really needed to work on. The second thing you can use journaling for is just journal to generate ideas. So let's say for example your goal for this year is to lose weight or find like a loving relationship find your dream person. Well maybe you're someone who struggled with those two things prior in your life and you're like so where do I even begin looking for my dream person like what what do I do like walk around on the street and be that weirdo that's chatting up every stranger because they're lonely sit down and take time every day to come up with 10 ideas. How can I have more social interactions in my life this year? I'm gonna volunteer on the weekend I'm gonna get a cute puppy and go to the dog park I'm gonna spend more time in the evenings with people and not alone I'm gonna host a happy hour at my apartment every two weeks yada yada yada. So journaling to generate ideas has been a really really useful thing for me and the third thing is journaling to track your progress and not get discouraged. I've shared in my videos how I've had a lot of digestive problems and health problems unfortunately in my life even though I take good care of myself and for me journaling the healing process the healing journey has been so useful when you don't feel like you're making any progress you don't feel that well you're wondering when it's all gonna end you can use journaling to track your progress and remind yourself oh three months ago I was actually in a really bad spot even though I don't feel great now three months ago I was way worse so the things I've been doing have been working so keeping it almost as like a ship's charter log right like hey we're here we're here we're here we've almost made it and you're just incrementally tracking that progress journaling can be super useful for that so getting started I would recommend just find one journaling exercise that you can do daily that's simple that's related to your goals and what you want to do and then do that repeatedly predictably every single week or ideally every morning so for me for example in the mornings these days my morning routine is pretty simple but the journaling aspect of it is I just write down my intentions for the year and then I write down my main goals and then any ideas that come to me on how I can actually reach those goals you know for some days my morning routine is I'm tired as hell I don't feel that rested all right I didn't sleep well so a lot of it is just inventing the complaining and the frustrations and when is this going to happen and how is it all going to work out and then I just remind myself of my goals and intentions so some days it is like morning pages where I'm venting and complaining and other days it's just generating creative ideas now for me I start with the intentions for the year which if you've seen my previous video are sabbatical meaning rest my health fun and connection so I start with that as the banner at the top to remind myself this is the intention of this page what can I do what outcomes will come if I do these specific things daily and then I just write and if a new exciting idea comes to me that's what I'm putting down on that paper and that's what I'm finding a way to track in my day-to-day life and finally just like with any other ritual commit to a daily plan around it for me these days in 2021 my morning routine is very streamlined I do 20 minutes of qigong or exercise I journal for 20 minutes using this exact method this is what I want this year to look like am I on track is what I'm doing working what other new creative ideas do I have to do and then finally it's either listening to an audiobook while I go for a walk outside in some fresh air or it's reading a book that's growth oriented personal development oriented or something that just really gets my head focused in the right place and just by doing that journaling can be a really good focal point for my day to stay focused and consistent with my goals and my intentions the more crazy life gets the more you have to be disciplined about doing this so I hope that helps it's a super beginner really basic journaling routine that can help you again I've included a free journaling worksheet down below this video the first link you're also going to get a weekly email a journaling series on how to use journaling to kind of design your dream life so you can check it out right below this video and I have two related recent videos on this topic right over here