I used to be someone who never kept a planner or journal regularly. I bought so many cute diaries over the years and never used them for more than a couple of months. Traditional methods of planning and journaling just didn't work for me, and I found myself wondering why I never achieved my goals or successfully built and maintained good habits. Instead, I had a notebook sporadically filled with bits of rants to help me process my emotions.
Despite being a classic overachiever, I always felt like whatever I did was never enough and I always fell short. However, after a horrendous breakup an ex gave me a list - I kid you not - a list - of reasons why I wasn't good enough for him. Something in me flipped. I knew deep down not one of the things he accused me of was true:
I was so angry I wrote a 'f*ck-you' list, stuck it on my wall and set out to prove to myself how wrong he was. They weren't small things: Getting a new job and earning more than him, having more friends than him, moving to an area he couldn’t afford, losing all the weight I’d packed on since he took it upon himself to control my diet because he was a ‘personal trainer’, and a bunch of other things.
In 4 months I had ticked off every single one. I credit this to my list and anger.
If you don't see it you don't achieve it, and if you don't have an underlying emotion serving as fuel you won't be feeding the fire that's been lit under your arse.
I recently discovered Tony Robbins who says that
Change does not happen until you find something you value more than your pain.
100% agreed. For myself, in this particular case, I valued proving to myself that my ex was a moron and I was not his stupid little list, far more than I valued feeling like my entire world had come crashing down around my ears like a Buster Keaton sketch with helpless little victim me standing in the rubble in the middle of it wondering what on earth just happened.
I proved to myself that I am capable of rising like a phoenix from the ashes and achieving monumental things in a short period of time. I can do anything I set my mind to, as long as my emotions are pushing me forward instead of holding me back and keeping me small.
I now fully believe that when we become emotionally invested in our goals and keep them in sight we naturally align ourselves with them and arrange our lives to support them. Working towards them doesn’t feel like such an uphill battle when it’s fuelled by more than simple willpower.
When I read Danielle Laporte's book 'The Desire Map' about 6 years ago, I started journalling in earnest and really planning out my goals beyond a list of bullet points stuck on my wall. For the first time in my life, I felt crystal clear on what I wanted. I cannot recommend this book enough if you are feeling a little lost in life, and it is the foundation of the digital planners I make.
About 7 years ago, I got into Bullet Journalling - mainly as a creative outlet, but I ended up actually really loving building mindfulness techniques into it, trying out habits, setting goals and building a structure to support tracking and achieving them.
I'm someone that really struggles with consistency and when it comes to journalling I fall off the wagon regularly, but one thing that has remained consistent is that when I do journal: When I record how I feel, when I practise gratitude, when I tick off a little box to say that no matter how small, I did something today that worked towards something I value, I feel better. If I get the little dopamine hit from colouring in a box that says '15 min tidy' - I actually do it and don't resent doing it as just another thing I'm nagging myself about.
According to Gretchen Rubin's book 'The Four Tendencies', I am a questioner/rebel, so I choose to see that little box is an invitation not a demand. I can choose to tick it or not by doing the thing or not. It's not like having an overbearing mother standing over me telling me I'm lazy and pathetic for not doing the simplest thing.
When I journal, and I fill in my moodboard for the day, my day seems to naturally align with the little vision I set myself for that day. It somehow seems effortless to tidy my room and eat healthily, because the visuals hitting my eyeballs somehow switches on something in my brain.
I have had bouts of depression since I was a teenager, and probably since childhood if I think about it, as a result of being bullied throughout my school experience, and criticised relentlessly by almost every adult around me, but as a kid I was labelled 'difficult' instead of 'sad, scared, hurt angry and lonely' and nobody once asked me why I was acting the way I did, and self-sabotaging and putting myself down constantly (my logic was if I could say the most hateful hurtful things about myself first, nothing anyone else could say about me would hurt. This is not a smart tactic).
Learning to deal with myself and drag myself out of black holes time and time again when I realised nobody apart from me can do it, I learned a bunch of techniques through trial and error that help me get my head back together. The positivity practises I built in my journal for myself have made a huge different to my mental health. I am better at recognising when it is slipping, and am able to refocus my thoughts before they begin to spiral.
I've had exactly two years of chronic pain and poor experiences with the NHS. Despite having intense dizziness, chronic back spasms, and heart palpitations from undiagnosed whiplash following a head injury, doctors ignored me for 5 months. They were unwilling to even look at me. Instead, I was prescribed travel sickness pills over the phone. Two trips to A&E with chest pains and a 10 hour wait each time only to be told 'you seem fine' led me to seek help on my own. I was diagnosed with severe whiplash by a physio I self-referred to, and the chest pains were diagnosed as slipping rib syndrome by an osteopath I paid for privately. I waited for a year for an appointment with a cardiologist and after being told my I have the heart of a 20 year old I slipped getting into the car and tore my sacrospinous ligament (SI joint) and couldn't sit or walk for a month. I still don't know what's wrong with my neck, but after waiting for 4 months for an appointment, I’ll get to see a physio and try to finally get a scan. Despite two years of chronic neck problems, I haven't had a single scan or X-ray on my neck.
This ordeal alone is enough to send anyone round the bend. Top it off with a light coating of global pandemic, a dash of economic shitstorm, and a sprinkle of looming threats of war, unemployment, and finding out that the ex I broke up with shortly before the pandemic is now married with a kid, while I've been stuck at home in bed for the best part of a year...Somehow, my mental health has been the one thing that hasn't fallen apart. I credit this to my journal.
I think it's no small coincidence that when my room becomes a tip, or I get overwhelmed, or I feel like a loser, or I don't exercise, or my diet goes to crap, or I don't go for a walk in nature for a month, or when the needle hasn't shifted on any of the projects I have in the works, it's because I haven't been journalling.
Journalling is the reason why I left London and a well paid career as a graphic designer to focus on building a simpler, more meaningful life. Journalling is the reason why this website and this blog post exists and why I make digital planners. It's the reason why I've taken my health more seriously, why I'm finally managing to sleep through the night again, it's the reason I'm more productive, work longer hours, and am less stressed and more happy (because I'm working for an awesome person now: me!).
Most importantly, journalling made me realise that the 'still small voice' in my head telling me I needed to be an actor wasn't a small voice at all - it had in fact been screaming at me for 20 years, but I locked it in a sound proof room and barricaded the door with 'shoulds' that I 'had' to do in order to be accepted. 'Shoulds' that made everyone else happy except for me. I'm happy to report that all those boxes have been burned, and there are only two boxes left. Both of them are 'must' boxes. 1. I must earn enough money to cover my tuition fees 2. I must earn enough money to cover living expenses, pay off my existing student loan, and pay all the boring shit like taxes, national insurance, pension blah blah. Those are my only musts and box 2 isn't standing in the way of the door.
Thanks to journalling, I know myself far better than I ever have before. I have been able to release a not insignificant amount of emotional baggage I've been lugging around for years, and finally begin to heal. I am better able to recognise what is me from what people have told me I am that I've blindly absorbed. By understanding why I am the way I am I have been able to undo decades of negative learned behaviours, and feel more comfortable with setting boundaries for what I will accept, how my time is used, and what behaviours towards me I no longer accept from others. I have far more courage, far less fear of failure, and far fewer fucks to give about what other people think of me.
I think it's fair to say that Journalling has had an enormous and profound effect on my life, for the better. The planners I sell on Etsy I originally made for myself because Bullet Journalling did my head in - it was the main reason why I didn't stick with journalling because the perfectionism and high maintainence nature of it meant that I didn't bother. I need journalling the most when I feel my worst and have the least energy and creative mojo. When I feel like that, absolutely zero percent of me has the inclination to get pens out and design a spread. No, I need something that's ready and waiting, and catered to me, that's pretty enough to make me want to use it, and that has all the things I need to get me back on my feet.
I think that the maintainence of bullet journals - not to mention the artistic skill social meta tells you you need - puts a lot of people off journalling. Another reason is that maybe people don't know what to write about, or how to write - that they feel that there's some kind of prescribed formula that needs to be followed, or they simply aren't aware that journalling has the power to be far more than 'Dear Diary, today I took the bus to town and met Kate for coffee at Beans'. Journalling can be a way of getting into your own head and unlocking things that you didn't know you had stored away in there, and helping you past mental blocks and emotional hurdles.
If you're new to journalling and don't really know where to start with the deeper stuff, I've written a couple of blog posts with journal prompts for the new and full moon to focus on shadow work and light work. Those posts explain those concepts, so I won't go into that here, but in my planners on my etsy shop, I have moon pages built in to give you the opportunity to sit with yourself and get to know you better.
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