Why do I say happy day? That’s, anyway. Hi. It’s Sam. Tonight I actually want to talk about journaling. I was thinking I was pretty late into the journaling game. Journaling, I guess, it’s a journaling game. I was sort of was kind of to be honest, wankey, writing everything you thought about every day and a bit kind of in your head rather than doing. I’ve kind of done it sporadically over the years. This year, however, I have been 100% how I like to say, dedimicated, to the art of journaling.
I have these little books. You can even see by the title of that book, how bad my handwriting is. Don’t judge me. If you see there, it’s this Samantha Leith. Isn’t that Nice? So these are actually embossed journals that I had made a few years ago that I give all my clients and when I have events and things. They’re quite pretty inside and they come in red as well. You can buy them on my website if you care, if you want them.
I’ve pretty much done it. If you go through, you’d probably find a couple of days I haven’t done. Like when I was away in April, I hardly wrote in it at all. Otherwise, it’s like two pages of it every day. So there’s one book this year and another book this year on book two. How do I work out what I’m going to write about? Well, it’s proven that things seep in more when you write them down. Especially in these days when we’re all doing everything on technology. Typing it doesn’t do the same kind of thing. If you’re working with goals or there’s an app for everything, right? An app for everything, whether you want to track your period, go for a goal, know how much money you’re spending, get food, whatever you want. There’s an app for it.
I tried lots of productivity apps. I tried journaling apps and it just didn’t do it for me. It did not give me the same kind of control or even get the same emotion of what I was doing. What I do, pretty much I change it up sometimes when I’m working on something in particular. Pretty much every day I will write a bit about the day before. I then have a few lines I write that I say, I got this. I say, I’m brave, I’m happy. They’re two of the things I say every single day and I’m definitely braver than I’ve ever been in my life. Then I write five things that I’m really grateful for. These can be the, hang on, here’s a funny one. I find it so hard to read my handwriting. That’s the one downfall because my handwriting is shite.
Oh. I got great sleep. There you go.
Oh dear. No. Okay. We can’t read that page.
Hmm.
No. You don’t want to know any of that stuff. Oh. Here’s a good one. One of my gratitude things was, I’m feeling alive. That’s just nice.
Elodie comes home tomorrow. That’s one of them. It’s sunny and washing dried. Yes. I have the washing dried in my gratitude list for that day. Okay. So that’s a bit boring. Then I write my big dreams. Now, for the last couple months I’ve been messing around a little bit with how I do that. Sometimes I’ll like a list format of things, so my big dreams are blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I might list 10 points or five points. I’m pretty consistent with it. At the moment, I’m actually writing like long form. How it’s actually more how that big dream is feeling. So it’s more of a paragraph. So this day in particular started with, I could always picture this life and now I have it. I’m full of gratitude. I get to fly, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Again, you don’t need to know all that. I could share my goals, but you’ve got your own goals. This is not about my goals, this is about me maybe sharing something with you guys that would help you on your journey. I think journaling is really, really helping me.
Then I have a statement that I’m going to keep to myself because as I’ve said before, I think some dreams don’t share them, keep them, guard them like a precious jewel. Okay. But I write the same statement every single day. It’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 words everyday. It’s also the words that are on my screensaver background on my phone. Every time my phone rings, every time I pick it up, I see those words. It’s like, choo, jumps out at me. Then after I’ve written that, I then want my current goals. Again, they’re in the positive. They are in the affirmative. So I am, I have, like it’s in the bag, like totally done and dusted in the bag.
At the moment I’m working on some really short timeframes with a couple of goals. So I’m only writing things that I want to get in the bag in the next six months. So there’s a couple of different months target things and they’re just written. I use different colors when I’m writing. Oh. See you can all, just please don’t judge my bad handwriting. You know when Eliby was little and though she was learning how to write, I actually bought those how to write books. She would do it and I would sit and I bought a copy for myself and I used them to work at how to write better. So embarrassing. It’s just terrible. I’ve never been a go to hand writer.
Sometimes I get creative and I’ll draw pictures. Sometimes I’ll do a bigger dream thing. I might go a few years out of what I want to do. Sometimes I might’ve had a lot of crap happen in a day, being really emotional or being angry about something. All of those things that we as humans don’t necessarily know how to express very healthfully, actually verbally or physically can sometimes be a Godsend to get on paper. The other day in particular, I was really angry about a couple of things and all the windows broke on my car. I actually screamed really, really loudly and it felt really good. The mechanics probably just thought I was singing. It was no problem.
But the next morning I journaled all about that and got it all out and the anger just dissipated. There was no point in me getting angry with the other person. It was my reaction to a situation. I got it all out. Tis Gone. I can talk about it now with actually no emotion whatsoever.
All I want to say is this is really, I’m so late to the party. I’m 45. Actually, it’s never too late. Take that back Samantha Leith, it’s never too late. Honestly, this has been my first year of being totally dedicated with journaling. I really can say it’s made a massive difference and I can see that it’s now a practice that I will do forever. I won’t let it go now. So I do it first thing in the morning when my alarm goes off, I follow Mel Robbins, five, four, three, two, one. Not going back to sleep and hitting snooze button. Once in a blue moon, I’m like, oh no, I can’t get up. I meditate, I’ll get up and make my coffee, then I’ll sit at my desk. Or if it’s nice weather, I’ll sit outside. I have my three colored pens, my red, my black and my blue. The black one. I do my journaling. I probably take 10 to 15 minutes and then I’m done. I’ve put stuff to rest. I’m grateful. I’m focused.
Sometimes I write how I want to feel that day, but that’s not that common for me to actually do that. I’ll write lots of things across the side like, yes, you’ve got this or this or something better. Things like that. It’s a bit scrabbly. I’m going to keep these forever, I think. I think it will be interesting in a year’s time, two years time, 10 years time, whatever, to look back and think, okay, of all that stuff, what actually happened? How far did I go? Because some of that’s not even that important. So it’ll be interesting to see.
No excuses. There you go. My God, my handwriting. Is anyone out there a head running teacher? Can I hire you? Shocking. Funny Story. Totally off topic. I once got to a supermarket to buy the groceries for a dinner party I was having, this is back in the day before mobile phones. It was [inaudible 00:09:04] and I couldn’t read my shopping list. I had to go to a shop that I knew, saw the magazine that had the recipe I wanted for what I was cooking that night and rework out what I needed to buy on groceries because I couldn’t read my shopping list. Shocking. All that great education. So that’s what I want to leave you with today.
You’ve all been to a function or somewhere. There’s a piece of paper in your house. I challenge you get up tomorrow morning and just do those four things. A bit about the day before, how you’re feeling, etc. Five things you’re grateful for, your big dreams, a statement for your vision or your purpose, something that’s really heartfelt and don’t share it. Then your five current goals, just write it out every single day and awesome, you will feel fantabulous.
I also wanted to share this with you actually. If you haven’t, there’s great book by Jen Sinceri called, you’re a bad ass. She’s also got, why do I do it with the accent? You are a bad ass at making money. I’ve got her little desk calendar and this was today’s one. Okay. I just love it. Love it, love it, love it. You are a bad ass. Love Yourself and you will be invincible. Pretty awesome. Saturday and Sunday, July the 6th and 7th. Go out this weekend and be fricking invincible people and start journaling. It does make a difference. Bye.