Be your best self

Do you have goals you want to achieve? Do you need a way to keep track of your progress and hold you accountable? Do you need to work on your mindset to help you achieve your goals?  Do you want to live a life of meaning and abundance? Do you have emotions that have been holding you back?  Do you want to embrace a life of spirituality, truth and unconditional love?

Journaling can help you get there.

Why it is important to live your best life

Living a life that is aligned to your values and beliefs, that is driving us towards our goals and dreams can make us feel joy and fulfilment, even when times are tough (and they will be).

It is not a matter of feeling ecstatic happiness every day, that type of happiness comes from pleasure.  Pleasure comes from outside influences and is fleeting or transient.  It is that piece of chocolate or that shopping spree.  Being your best self is gaining a feeling of contentment and satisfaction with life – an inner joy.

Life can be challenging even if we are living in line with our values and beliefs, so we will not experience pleasure and happiness all the time, however understanding that we are striving towards something even if it can sometimes be a struggle will get us there.  So really understanding who we are and what we stand for will let us live our best life.

Why wouldn’t you want to feel contentment and satisfaction with your life.  Sometimes life can be hard, and sometimes even harder if we are living a life in line with our values and beliefs, however if we are living with purpose, ultimately, we will feel inner peace and joy.

Don’t wait to achieve your hopes and dreams – the things you hope to do some day!  Life is fleeting - start today.

How can Journaling help you live your best life?

Simply writing down your thoughts in your journal can help you in so many ways.  It lets you get your thoughts in order, creating a feeling of calm and relieving the symptoms of stress and anxiety. 

It keeps you focussed on the present.  Reflecting on your day or week and documenting your achievements and what you are grateful for is a powerful exercise.  Research has shown that gratitude is strongly associated with greater happiness. 

Journaling can also keep you focussed on your goals.  What is it that you want to achieve in life?  Writing down your goals gives you a greater chance of achieving them.  Your journal provides a level of accountability and allows you to track your progress.

If you are unsure of your purpose and what is truly important to you, journaling will take you on a trip of self-discovery to help you determine what that is.  As you write your thoughts patterns will emerge, making you more self-aware.  Reading back on your journal entries you will trigger memories and you will notice the things that have bought you joy and filled you with a sense of purpose.

Journaling tips to help you live your best life

Who are you and who do you want to be?

Spend some time answering the following questions:

• What is important to me? Write down the top 5 things that drive you (don’t write down the things you think you should, write down what truly drives you)
• If you discovered you only had a limited time on the planet what would you do? What type of legacy would you want to leave?  It doesn’t have to be mammoth, you don’t have to end world hunger, but how would you spend your time, what difference would you like to make.
• What does your perfect day look like? If you had to repeat the same thing day after day, what sort of day would bring you joy.

Focus on your goals

Write down your goals and then break them up into short-term achievable tasks.  Add them to your calendar in your journal.  Achieving these small tasks and ticking them off your to-do list will give you a sense of accomplishment and provide you with momentum and drive to keep going.

Take the time to review your achievements.  A fulfilled life is not necessarily ticking off all the goals but growing and learning through the process of trying to achieve those goals.

Feel your emotions

Too often in life we suppress our emotions.  It is important to really feel them and ride out the emotion.  The more we suppress our emotions the more likely we are to suffer from depression and anxiety.  We need to learn to feel our emotions fully and ride the full wave.

Your journal is a safe space to write down all your feelings without fear of judgement.  You can write or draw but it is important to let yourself feel.  No matter how positive your outlook on life is, you can never be 100% happy.  So let yourself have your emotions and use your journal to let them be.

Find and embrace your spirituality

Use your journal to find connection to your truth – whether that be god, the universe, a higher power or spiritual energy.  Whatever spirituality means to you.  Allow yourself to be open to the magic of life.

Take note of when you have felt part of something bigger than yourself.  It might be when you have gone for a walk in nature, the birth of your children, when you met your partner.  Write about these experiences, remembering them and putting them in the forefront of your mind will help you seek out more.

We tend to like to be in control, however sometimes life has different ideas.  Rather than thinking that life is happening to you, think it is happening for you.   Write about your experience in terms of what you can learn from this and what opportunities this opens up to you.  Become a seeker of wisdom rather than a victim.

Rewrite your story

We all have a story in our heads about who we are, who others are and how we believe the world works, however they are purely that - stories.  Use your journal to rewrite your stories, to challenge your beliefs and recognise when you are reverting to your old stories.

Repeating this exercise and replaying the new stories in your mind (or writing them in your journal) will create new neural pathways after a period and these new thoughts will become your story. 

Why wait? The best time is now – grab your journal and start living your best life.