Since I started my personal development journey three years ago, hands down, journaling has become my favorite technique. There’s no right or wrong way when it comes to writing down your thoughts.
Putting some effort and hand-writing in your journal is a lot more beneficial to your brain. And since you put a little more energy into it, the positive feelings that come with it are much more likely to stick around, making manifestation easier and releasing stress.
Journaling doesn’t need to be used exclusively as a way of dumping your thoughts after a long and tiring day. Personally, I use journaling for a multitude of reasons:
- To calm down from some kind of worry, as a tool of manifestation for my dreams and goals
- To plan in advance my days – weeks- months and years setting an intention to them so that I can live life intentionally
- To boost creativity
- To brainstorm possible ideas of future businesses
- As a gratitude journal, as a way of shifting from a negative to positive thoughts
- For hacking my subconscious mind
It is a very effective way of installing new habits and shifting your identity to work toward being the best version of yourself.
I used to live in a total “freaking out mode” all the time. Since my early teenage years, my anxiety level was so high that I suffered from insomnia from the age 14 to late thirties. The chatter in my mind would never stop.
I spent a great part of my life drowned in negative thoughts and worries. Every time I got frustrated about something, my mind would immediately look for all the worst-case scenarios and I would end up crying my eyes out because I couldn’t control myself after imagining so many terrible stories…I have suffered from terrible stomach pain for years in a row as a result of a wreck in my nervous system.
After I found out about journaling and doing it along with the practice of yoga, all of these stress symptoms disappeared over the years.
Ok, so what the heck is future self journaling and how can we use it to get rid of anxiety, and in what ways can we practice it?
As Dr. Nicole Lepera from @the.holistic.psychologist explains in the video below, future self journaling is the practice of writing down and imagining a new future you. How do you want to be? What do you want to change in yourself? This is a way to carve out some time to give thought to that and put it on paper.
This is my favorite way of journaling. I not only write things down based on some prompts or questions but also take time to design my future reality a year from now.
I tend to focus on the feelings of “being that future me”, for instance, I would write something like:
- I am so happy and proud of myself now that …
- I am feeling so peaceful and calm living here in …
- I got way excited about …
- I am so thankful now that …
I visualize the days, weeks, and the whole year ahead and write down what’s happening in my life on that exact day, a year from today.
This way of writing is very helpful in giving me clarity of what steps to take today so that I can achieve this vision in the future and it boosts my confidence in making me go through all the infinite possibilities I have ahead of me.
This type of writing plays with our subconscious mind since it doesn’t know the difference between reality and imagination. We intentionally send a powerful message to our subconscious mind. Chances are that we will start little by little making decisions, acting, and showing up in a way that fully aligns with our true life vision.
We can use Future Journaling to set an intention to our perfect next day or defining our perfect week.
You can design your ideal day by writing down everything you want to happen in your day/week.
Start off by the way you would like your mornings to be.
What time do you really want to get up?
Are you going to dedicate some kind of “self-care time” in the mornings? Are you going to have a morning routine in which you dedicate time to journaling, meditation, working out, meal prep, or whatever makes you feel energized and ready for the day ahead?
Don’t worry about realistically having the time for doing it, just write down everything you truly want from your mornings, and eventually even without noticing, you are going to be dedicating time for doing those things.
Little by little you are going to experience that the decisions you take are adjusting your current life to the routine you wish to have and you are going to realize that you actually have the power to design your dream life and change your current situation to whatever makes you happier and more fulfilled.
