Journaling has completely changed my life.

It's created a daily habit for me, which if you know me, is a big deal.

It's helped me to release the thoughts in my head.

It's helped me to deal with problems.

It's a safe space where I can be myself.

Journaling is one of my favourite things to do each morning and today, I want to delve into what goes into my journal so maybe give you some inspiration to start one of your own.

Gratitude

I like to write a list of everything that I'm grateful for that day, but I also like to write why I'm grateful for it. Having a reason behind your gratitude makes it more relevant to your life, therefore making you think more about how it's impacted you as a human being. "I am grateful for wonderful friends because they always pep me up and keep me happy"

Affirmations

I write little affirmations about how I want to feel, but I write them in the present tense like I already have them to help me believe that much is true - they give me a positive energy for the day. I go into more detail about affirmations in this blog post. "I am enough, I am loved "

Florence Scovel Shinn

I like to write a little mantra based and inspired by the words of Florence Scovel Shinn: "What is mine by divine right shall be mine in its perfect way. I trust the universe completely". Florence shows us that self development isn't just a new modern fad, and that it's been around for years, and it's teachings are absolutely timeless and actually haven't changed much. I write this little inspired quote of mine, every single day to show trust in the process and that I'm happy to wait till the time is right for things to happen. 

Daily Wins

At the end of every day, I like to write about things that have gone well today even if it's only small. Even on the worst of days you can always find something to be positive about, you may find it trivial, but sometimes the smallest things are victories in your day - "I had a shower this morning, I got out of bed". The smallest of things for some people are the hardest, and it's important that you celebrate the small wins as much as the big ones.

Positive Lists

If I'm feeling especially low about a situation, then I try to create a list of ways that I can see it in a positive light - I will write at least 10 positive factors about my situation, and oftentimes, seeing something in a good light will help you to think about your situation in a different way as you're not focusing on why you are negative about everything. I talked about this in my post about dealing with stress at work.

Free Writing

Sometimes I just like to write about what's on my mind, whether that's how I've been feeling, what I've been doing, or anything that just pops up into my head at the time. There are no rules or regulations about how or what I write, I just do it. Sometimes I draw or decorate around my writings to help my creativity flow, but sometimes I just write solidly for a couple of pages, it all depends on my mood on that particular day. 

Negative/Positive

I have been journaling regularly for a couple of years now, and my journal has definitely evolved. I used to use it as a diary; writing about things that happened to me and how I felt about them. I found that through doing this, I had made my journal into a hive of negativity where I would just rant about how bad I felt, how x was awful for doing this to me and how I was just generally resentful towards most things in my life. Now, I'm not saying that I've stopped this completely, because it's completely natural to let things out in your journal, it's your safe space after all, but like the positive lists, I liked to analyse my situations once I'd got it out of my system and really think about how I could make it into a positive, or how I could use this "negative" to my advantage, or what lessons I could learn from it. I now turn my negatives into positives.

As aforementioned, my journal has evolved over time, and I'm sure this time next year it will have changed again, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. As human beings, we're forever changing and that's just a process of life. Do you journal? How do you do it?

I'm a big believer that whatever you put out into the world is what you will receive back - if you're negative towards everything, then you will only attract negative into your life and vice versa, positive attracts positive. 

I have been using affirmations in my journal as of late in order to gain some positive energy in my life. I see an affirmation as a way of proclaiming to the world what you want to be in a way that makes it seem as though you already have it - so instead of writing "I want" or "I will" you write "I have" or "I am" as if what you want is already in your possession. 

I am beautiful

I am successful

I am loved

By using these present tense words, it affirms to your higher self that you believe that you are what you say, and you will start to see positive changes in your life. However, using future tense words like "I want" shows that this is something that you lack, so by thinking of lack, lack is what you will receive. Can I say lack anymore in that sentence? You know when you write/say a word so much that it starts to lose all sense of meaning....yeah, that! 

I have to add that just because you're writing these affirmations everyday, it doesn't mean that it's going to magically happen for you. You need to put in the work for what you want to achieve at the same time - you could be writing the affirmations every day, but spending the rest of the day being a potato on the sofa watching Netflix, and that, my friend, is not going to get you anywhere no matter how hard you believe or write those affirmations. 

Personally, I like to be relatively realistic with my actionable affirmations. In an ideal world, I would absolutely love to become a morning person, but by writing "I am a morning person" as stated before, isn't going to magically turn me into a morning person - I find it extremely hard to get up in the morning due to my shift work and just generally feeling tired for the majority of the day. I've started using the affirmation, "I have the ability to be disciplined" because it's realistic and it's something that I can do. It's not forcing me to change but it's telling my higher self that if I choose to accomplish something that I am more than capable of doing it. Mental affirmations are a different story though and I believe that you should write pages and pages of how beautiful you are if it helps you to truly see how beautiful you really are if you lack that kind of confidence. 

As with everything that I write, I'm talking from my own personal experiences and ways of dealing with things, but everyone is different. Have you ever practised affirmations? What's worked for you? What hasn't?

You are loved

Never ever think otherwise about this fact. There are plenty of people in the world that love you deeply for a plethora of reasons and hate seeing you this way.

So it's been a hot minute since I last blogged, and this is going to sound like a cliché, but I never stopped thinking about you - I make this blog sound like an ex lover or something. Anyways, I digress, I was absent not because of lack of interest but lack of motivation.

I went back to my old routine of feeling sorry for myself, sitting around thinking about how I'm in a rut, thinking about how to get out of said rut, thinking about all the things I want to do, but still ultimately just sitting there not doing anything about it but thinking. Whilst writing this, I'm also trying not to overthink this too much as I just want to get something out there to get the ball rolling again.

It felt almost depressing how much I was overthinking everything and just being inside of my head for hours on end before having a "break" and heading to work. Work has always been a kind of release from myself, as I enjoy what I do so much, but it shouldn't be like that - I can't spend my free time just moping around when I have other passions and projects that I want to pursue. 

I heard a quote a couple of weeks ago that basically changed everything for me: motivation doesn't lead to action, action leads to motivation.

This quote, honestly, turned my whole mindset upside down. I was always under the impression that once I got the motivation to do something, everything would just suddenly fall into place, and I would be able to achieve everything I've always wanted to achieve. I was wrong. I came to realise that the complete opposite was true - I need to take the first steps to actually DO SOMETHING first. The inspiration and motivation comes from the doing rather than the thinking, as you've already established that you're capable of doing it. 

I've implemented things back into my life that I got out of the habit of doing: running, journaling and getting up earlier. I've limited it at the beginning so as to not overwhelm myself, but I've found that now I've done it a few times that I really wanna carry on and prove to myself that this wasn't a fluke. I'm in competition with myself to carry on, I want to prove to myself that I CAN do this and that I won't go back to my old ways like my subconscious always thinks that I will. In my mind, it's the norm for me to sit around feeling sorry for myself, but I don't want that to be my "normal" anymore, I want to create a new normal for myself doing things that I want to be doing. 

Motivation won't just strike you if you sit around waiting for it to come.