by Lori Milner

If you struggle to fall asleep due to an overactive mind, or perhaps you fall asleep easily but wake up in the night with a mind full of racing thoughts, consider introducing the habit of journaling. Journaling is an incredible tool to get those circling thoughts out of your mind and trap them on the page so you can get out of your own way.

Journaling is equal to charging your internal battery. By the end of the day, your phone has way more apps open than you'd realised, and the battery drains in the background. It's the same with you carrying around all those looping thoughts on repeat, which eventually wears you down.

Julia Cameron, the author of The Artist's Way, says it beautifully:

"All that angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down in the morning stands between you and your creativity. Worrying about the job, the laundry, the funny knock in the car, the weird look in your lover's eye—this stuff eddies through our subconscious and muddies our days. Get it on the page."

How much should you write?

There is no set amount to journal, although Julia suggests we write three pages daily, which she refers to as Morning Pages. If you're new to journaling, one sentence on the page is better than thinking about writing three pages. Write a paragraph to start and then build up.

What should you write about?

Anything that is taking up headspace. Even if you don't know what to say, write that down.

If you have a courageous conversation taking up precious bandwidth, write about it. Share your true feelings, brainstorm possible scenarios, and anticipate how you could respond.

The alternative is imagining a worst-case scenario and bringing it into the present moment. Then you sit with that anxiety and fear for the next week until you have the chat. Inevitably, it's never what you anticipated, but did you need to go through those sleepless nights for nothing?

Journaling won't solve it for you, but it allows those mental conversations to remain silent in your mind because you have dealt with them on paper.

Journaling is even an incredibly creative tool for working through solutions for presentations or projects. My best ideas show up on the page when I least expect them. It's a way to play mental table tennis, but I'm returning the shots.

The two barriers to journaling.

Can you embrace solitude?

Imagine you meet a friend for coffee, and they arrive on their phone and spend the next hour ignoring you and carrying on with their own conversation. This is how we treat ourselves on any given day.

Journaling is an opportunity to have a much-needed check-in and conversation with yourself.

Can you give yourself permission to block out time just for you and face what's really going on inside? If you struggle with this, then all the more reason to write about it.

Don't wait to feel like it.

The second barrier is that you are waiting for a lightning bolt of inspiration to write. Julia says:

"We have this idea that we need to be in the mood to write. We don't. Morning pages will teach you that your mood doesn't matter. Some of the best creative work gets done on the days when you feel that everything you're doing is just plain junk. The morning pages will teach you to stop judging and just let yourself write. So, what if you're tired, crabby, distracted, or stressed? Your artist is a child, and it needs to be fed. Morning pages feed your artist child. So, write your morning pages."

When should you journal?

When people ask me about exercise and what they should do, my response is that the workout you will show up to is the one to do. It's the same with journalling; whenever you can realistically carve out space in your day when you should do it. Having said that…

The ideal time to journal is in the morning as part of a dedicated morning routine. Here's why, according to Dr Benjamin Hardy, author of Willpower Doesn't Work:

"Having a morning routine is important for a few key reasons:

· To reconnect deeply with yourself and your why

· To put yourself into a peak state such that you can achieve the dreams and vision you're seeking in your life

· To frame yourself for what you really want to do that day

· To live proactively, not reactively, so that you avoid self-sabotage

· Focus on the important stuff in your life rather than the urgent

The goal is to put yourself into a peak state so you can operate from that state in everything you do every single day. This is how you get out of survival mode and gain massive momentum in your life.

Momentum leads to confidence, which then leads to bigger and bigger dreams, better service, and value you can provide, and a more congruent life.

When you write your goals and dreams down first thing every morning, you deepen your own sense of belief and desire for your goals. If you don't believe you can achieve your goals, you won't.

If you don't really want to achieve a certain goal, it probably won't happen. So, every morning, you need to put yourself into a place where you're reminded of it, you believe it, and you want it badly. As a result, you'll work hard that day, and every day, to not be distracted nor derailed from what really matters to you."

What's the connection to sleep and anxiety?

You don't have clarity; you must generate it. The gift of clarity is serenity.

Sometimes, I don't even know what I'm thinking until I write it down. You may not reveal the solution to all your challenges, but simply confronting them and putting them in one place out of your mind allows you to choose where to place your focus.

If you allow all your thoughts to run rampant during the day and push down all your uncomfortable feelings, they have to show up somewhere, and it's typically when you want to sleep, or they wake you up begging you to listen to them.

Anxiety shows up when we are trying to control our external circumstances or control and predict the future. When you journal about your discomfort, there is certainty in the practice of naming it.

Perhaps writing down your worst-case scenario and making contingency plans on how to handle it can create a level of comfort. It allows you to explore your fears on paper and expose that even your worst-case scenario has a solution and a way forward. Perhaps it's confronting the fact that your biggest fears exist in your imagination rather than in reality.

Your journal is your sanctuary to be honest and real with yourself; you never have to share your writing with anyone. In fact, I completely advise against it.

Journaling is a bridge to your future self.

When people are disconnected from their future, they underperform. Journaling is an incredible tool for imagining your best future self and who you want to become. Its power is that it deletes the belief that your situation is permanent. If you can imagine an empowering future vision, you will regain your excitement and enthusiasm and be able to align your actions with this vision.

Here are some journaling prompts from authors Beth Kempton and Dr Benjamin Hardy to help you not only create clarity but expand your thinking and guide you to create possibilities you wouldn't dare speak into existence:

Creating clarity

· Imagine if you get to the stage you aim for - what will that look like?

· What obstacles could prevent this, and what can you do about it?

· What do you need to know to get to this outcome?

· What would be your next goal after you achieve your current one?

· What would you like MORE of in your life?"

· "What would you like LESS of?"

· If you could change just ONE thing right now, what would it be?

· What kind of person will I have to become to achieve all I want?

Creating a compelling future vision

· What needs to be different by this time next year for me to thrive in my work?

· How would I like to describe myself a year from now?

· How would I like to describe my home a year from now?

· How would I like to describe my work life a year from now?

· How would I like to describe my finances a year from now?

· What would I like to have created a year from now?

· How would I like to describe my headspace a year from now?

· What are the future experiences I hope to create?

Creating my future self

· What is their day-to-day life like?

· What do they stand for?

· How much money do they make?

· What type of clothes do they wear?

· How do they interact with other people?

· How do they view their present and future?

· What is their purpose?

· Where do they live?

· Who are their friends?

· What skills and talents do they have?

· What time would they wake up?

· What would they do first thing in the morning?

· What is their body and health like?

· What would they do for personal fulfilment?

· What are their relationships like?

· What would their thoughts be as they go to sleep?

· What would they eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

· What would they talk about over dinner?

· Who are they enjoying their meals with?

Wisdom from my future self

· If your future best self—a version of you ten years older, who is even stronger, more capable, and more successful than you imagined yourself to be—showed up on your doorstep today and looked at your current circumstances, what courageous action would that future self advise you to take right away to change your life?

· How would your future self tell you to live?

· Write down all the future experiences you hope to create.

· List three courageous actions you could take today to move you towards your future self.

Acknowledging my wins

· What are my wins from the last 90 days?

· What are my desired wins for the next 90 days?

· What would my 20-year-old self say about my achievements?

· What did I believe three months ago that I no longer believe today?

· What do I say no to that I used to say yes to?

· Which things felt essential to me ten years ago that no longer matter to me now?

Here are more prompts from The Artists Way:

Tiny Changes:

List ten changes you'd like to make for yourself, from the significant to the small or vice versa ("get new sheets, so I have another set, go to China, paint my kitchen, dump my bitchy friend Alice").

Do it this way:

I would like to ___________________.

As the morning pages nudge us increasingly into the present, where we pay attention to our current lives, a small shift like a newly painted bathroom can yield a luxuriously large sense of self-care.

Cultivating character:

List five people you admire. Now, list five people you secretly admire.

What traits do these people have that you can cultivate further in yourself?

Wish list:

Because wishes are just wishes, they are allowed to be frivolous (and frequently should be taken very seriously). As quickly as you can, finish the following phrases.

I wish _________________________________.

Overcoming perfectionism:

Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough—that we should try again. No. We should not.

Risk question: What would I do if I didn't have to do it perfectly? ANSWER: A great deal more than I am.

Complete the following sentence. "If I didn't have to do it perfectly, I would try …"

Final thoughts.

If you're a seasoned journaler, I hope I have shared some new avenues to explore.

If you've never explored it and still feel cynical, I invite you to try it.

This is a buffet; look at everything and then choose one tasty dish to start with. You never know; you may land, going back for seconds and thirds.

Your worst case is that you have lost nothing, but your best case is that you have gained clarity, inner wisdom, and a tool that will help you become more focused, energised, and empowered.

I can tell you from my experience that I am calmer, more creative, and happier when I journal. Then, I get complacent and often stop the habit that creates this uplifted state.

When I get caught up in anxiety and restless nights, I realise what's missing.

Whether you want to connect with your feelings or brainstorm your next great idea, start.

Start with a gratitude list, and you'll be amazed at the shift in state because you are training yourself to focus on what you have, not what is missing.

When you fall asleep from a place of gratitude, you can only have better sleep and awake more content and energised.

Here's to getting to know yourself again,

Warm wishes,

Lori

Lori Milner is the engaging facilitator, thought leader and mentor known for her insightful approach to being a modern corporate woman. Her brainchild, the successful initiative Beyond the Dress, is the embodiment of her passion to empower women. Beyond the Dress has worked with South Africa’s leading corporates and empowered hundreds of women with valuable insight on how to bridge the gap between work and personal life. Clients include Siemens, Massmart, Alexander Forbes, Life Healthcare Group, RMB Private Bank and Unilever to name a few. Lori has co-authored Own Your Space: The Toolkit for the Working Woman in conjunction with Nadia Bilchik, CNN Editorial Producer. Own Your Space provides practical tools and insights gleaned from workshops held around the world and from interviews with some of South Africa’s most accomplished women to provide you with tried-and-tested techniques, tips and advice to help you boost your career, enhance your confidence and truly own your space on every level. Own Your Space is the ultimate ‘toolkit’ to unleash your true power. It’s for the woman who wants to take her career to new heights and who is ready to fulfil her true potential.

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