- Coaching /

Anyone can benefit from journaling. Especially for entrepreneurs, journaling is one of the most underrated exercises you can do to enhance your productivity, improve your mood, and set clearer goals.
And yet, because of how most of us have been exposed to journaling, it gets a bad rap. The most common image that comes to mind when folks think about writing down their thoughts in a notebook is that of a child keeping a secret diary. It’s something juvenile and inconsequential. Another common experience with journaling comes from schooling. It’s not uncommon for students to be assigned to keep a journal as a part of their assignment, creating an association between journaling and tediousness.
For those of us on social media, there’s also the representation of journals as works of art. Scroll through relevant tags on Instagram or Pinterest, and you’ll see page upon page of images of multi-colored bullet journals and calligraphic handwriting.
Combining these mental images creates an unappetizing picture of the journaling process. As a result, most folks feel that their time could be better spent doing something else. They often feel that if they do dip their toes into journaling, it doesn’t live up to their expectations, so they abandon it.
Yet journaling is neither tedious nor juvenile, and its value is akin to investing in stocks. The more you do so consistently over a long period of time, the more you’ll see in returns down the road. Aside from paying to work with a life coach (which I heartily recommend), journaling is perhaps the best self-paced exercise you can do to reframe, interpret, and strategize for your goals and progress toward achieving them.
To help you get started, I wanted to put together this guide. In my opinion, the best thing that you can do when you’re journaling is to be present and reflect on your experiences and expectations at any given moment. Yet, reaching the point where you’re comfortable doing that can take some time. So, here’s a blueprint you can follow for 30 days to build those muscles and make journaling second nature for you. I’ll be framing most of these prompts as questions; powerful questions are crucial for developing better insight into your own values and goals.
Personally, I recommend using journaling as a way to start your day, but there’s no wrong time of day to do it. There is a single definitive rule that I recommend following throughout this process: write what comes to mind for you. It doesn’t matter if the thing that pops into your head doesn’t fit the prompt for the day that you’re on. Just go with it. Follow it to its logical conclusion and then come back to the prompt.
He/ Him/ His pronouns. Blake is a writer, gym addict, dog dad, researcher, and general life enthusiast. He's passionate about helping others reach their goals and live happier, more fulfilling lives.
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