From Paper Trails to Inner Peace
By Judy King
Journaling is an incredible self-love practice that allows you to operate from a deep place of awareness within. It's a simple practice of putting pen to paper and writing down your thoughts and feelings to understand them more clearly. It can be used as a way of declaring who you desire to be and calling in what you desire more of in your life.
It’s a must to prioritize ourselves, as women, mothers, business owners, caretakers, and make time to practice self-care. By bringing in your vision, your focus, and your awareness, and carving out this time for yourself every morning or evening, I guarantee you will notice a shift in your own energy and mental state.
Beginning your day with journaling allows you to create your day with intention, setting yourself up to show up in your power or locking in a vision for yourself that pulls you forward. It also gives you new perspectives for possible challenges you are facing, allowing you to peek into the future of where you are going and shifting into the energy of the desires you have for your day.
Journaling can also help uncover deeper thoughts that are going around in your head. What you might begin to notice are repeating patterns in your behavior that are not serving you or behaviors that are stopping you from growing to your full potential.
Ultimately, the end goal is for you to let go of old ways of being and lock in new, empowering beliefs, create new stories, and discover new behaviors and ways of being. These will support your creation of new futures and opportunities and will attract your deepest desires into reality. The other option is to continue letting your old way of being dominate you, stay stagnant, and remain uninspired and immersed in the problems of your life or reactive to those around you. Instead, I would encourage you to reclaim your power and become grounded. It is the simplest daily practice that can transform your world when done right. Consider it a sacred meeting with yourself.
Even if it's only five minutes a day before everyone else in the home wakes up, make the time by simply remembering this: “I'm as important as everyone else in my family and I deserve to take care of myself.”
Whether you have never journaled before, you’ve been journaling for a long time, or you only journal sometimes, wherever you are at, let’s take you to a new level. Remember, this is about shaping your day and setting yourself up for success by unlocking so many new levels of who you are.
Three types of journaling
1. Morning Pages (from the book “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron)
This is what is known as “stream-of-consciousness journaling”—a constant stream of writing with no rules: you simply put your pen to paper and write. It’s free-flowing writing in which you get out whatever wants to come out, with zero judgment and no analysis; just love and compassion.
It could come out as dot points or a constant stream. Just remember to empty out the tank and let it go; whatever is going on in your mind, get it out. This helps to get your imagination flowing, especially if done when you first wake up. And if nothing comes up, simply say, “I have nothing to say”, “I don’t know what to write”, or “What is obvious to me is a void”.
Allow it to be messy as this is what brings out the artist within. The main thing is that you give your artist brain a chance to take over. As Cameron says, “Embrace your flaws, stop being afraid of making mistakes. Your artistry brilliance depends on your capacity to take risks, go beyond the tag that has been used to define your art.” When you journal in this way, your imagination takes the lead while you follow.
2. Guided journaling
This is simply asking yourself powerful questions which open up a new perspective or a new belief. You could sit with one question for a few weeks or a month, or change it daily. As you write, allow what’s there to come through and encourage yourself to look at things differently and think differently.
Here are some of my clients’ most-loved questions:
If I was living in my full power, what would I do?
This can help you if you are feeling stuck, playing small, feeling afraid, or when you know you are elevating to a new level, as this question calls you forward to a new way of being.
If I was living in my full power and I [your answer to the first question], what else would I do / what would be next?
When you feel like you have fully answered the previous question, ask yourself again but this time go deeper. You will blow yourself away with what you find.
If I was fully being the next level version of myself, what would I be / do / have?
There is something about this question that makes us get real and be truly honest with ourselves. This then allows us to see the truth, showing us what needs to change or shift, and it calls us forward to completely step into our full power.
The answers are always within you. We tend to outsource our power; give it away to others unconsciously. When you are not deeply connected to yourself and your truth, this is the end result. So in essence, these questions and reflections will help you connect with yourself and the highest version of you. They help you notice how you are choosing to act, highlighting what decisions you’re making, and they allow you to easily access your innate wisdom or inner nudges—your intuition—and get it all out for you to see clearly.
What am I grateful for? (100 things)
Writing a hundred things you are grateful for can be such a powerful process. To do this, you will need to think outside the box, be specific, and expand your thinking, and thus, you will be deeply connected to the feeling of gratitude.
What do I appreciate or want to acknowledge about myself? (100 things)
My clients often get to number 50 and say, “I can’t think of any more,” and I tell them, “Yes you can—keep going”. Think about who you are as a woman, mother, friend, sister, daughter, lover, cousin, aunt, human being. There are so many reasons why you should be appreciated and acknowledged. Don't hold back, get specific, and remember how incredible you are!
If I knew I wouldn’t fail, what would I choose?
This is one of my favorite questions. It's powerful and potent. I also love to keep asking, “...and then what would I choose? And what else? Then what else?” This takes us deep into our imagination (where all things are created) and calls us forward into our power.
Pick a question and sit with it for a full day, for a week, a month, or longer. Play with whatever feels the most powerful for you that day.
3. Daily devotion declaration
This is also a great one to add to either 1 or 2.
Ultimately, this is future-self journaling. You write what you are calling in and want to set in place for yourself. When you begin to play for your next level, who you need to be in order to exist at that level, it helps when you tell yourself that every day. What happens is you start to realign yourself from within and start to become a match for your desires.
You can write statements which start with:
- I am
- I can’t wait
- I am excited about
- I love
Write in story form or make declarations in paragraphs or bullet points. As you write them, feel them within every single cell of your body to anchor it in!
Other prompts to consider are:
- Who do I need to be?
- What do I need to devote time to daily to be a match for who that person is?
- What is my standard for my health or fitness?
- What is my standard for my business, systems, team, support?
- Where am I spending my time and energy?
- How do I need to communicate?
- If I was being her now, I would…
Dedication and consistency
You could do this for a few days and see the benefits. However, true and sustainable change takes time, and so my recommendation is to commit to this for at least a month. Journaling is a beautiful self-care practice that is led by devotion to self, and to notice the internal and external shifts that happen in your world, you must give it time. If you want to get mentally fit, you need to be consistent and devote time and energy to your practice, just like you would when becoming physically fit. I would advise you to simply start and see how it feels, and to see what results show up for you. Remember this: consistency is key to all results.
Photos from Canva.
About the Author
Judy King, a disruptor of the status quo, passionately guides women to craft and live extraordinary lives. A champion of big dreams and having it all, Judy unleashes untapped potential through profound conversations and world-class coaching. Judy’s work is laser-focused on inspiring women to courageously declare what they want with no limits, fostering rock-solid belief and relentless pursuit of a life by design.