Creative Writing,  Lifestyle,  writing advice,  writing inspiration

Setting My Intentions Each Day by Journaling

A few months ago, I heard a podcast episode that pitched the product, the “Start Today Journal.” I started to shrug it off at first, because as much as I love writing, I haven’t had too much luck with journaling over the years. But as motivational speaker and entrepreneur Rachel Hollis began explaining the methodology behind this journal, I grew more interested.

What a lot of us fail at is having too many goals at one time, which can lead to overwhelm, causing us to beat ourselves up time and again when we don’t achieve any of them. Hollis developed a practice that focuses on writing down ten goals over and over. And here’s the kicker—you write down those goals as if they have already happened.

This practice starts you out by doing an exercise where you envision what you want your life to be like in ten years, down from the kind of home you live in to what kinds of vacations you take. Then you envision what types of dreams you need to achieve in order to accomplish that type of lifestyle.

I’ve been journaling with this method for almost three months, and my goals are starting to become so ingrained in my mind that I do things to work toward them without even putting much thought into it. I start out each day by writing down five things I’m grateful for, and these vary depending on the day. Then I write down the same ten goals, in the exact same order, and at the end, I write which one I’m going to achieve first. I do this with my first cup of coffee, so you can see that it isn’t a process that takes very much time out of your day. But it helps set the day on the right path.

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I’ve written things like what my annual income is (again, as if this has already happened), how much money my podcast is generating per month, that my kids went to college debt free, etc. At the very end of the page you write down which goal you achieved first. This changed for me after the first week, when I thought realistically about what goal I have the most probability of achieving first. My podcast is still in development, for example. So every day on that line, I write, “I’m an award-winning fiction and non-fiction writer.”

I didn’t realize it when I first ordered the journal, but each one has enough pages for 90 days worth of goal-setting and dreaming. This helps you flip back pretty easily and see what kind of progress you’ve made in a short amount of time. My husband was so encouraged by watching me use my journal that he already bought me a thick, lined blank journal with a cute cover that I can use for my next 90 days worth of goals. I’m ready to start 2020 off with a bang!

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