Three Journal Exercises That Changed My Life
These three simple exercises are so much better than a to-do list
I haven’t always been a journal keeper. In fact, I was a chronic and incessant to-do lister for as long as I can remember.
In all my pursuits my to-do lists set the bar, and it was a game in my mind on how much of it I could get done without crumbling to the sheer exhaustion I felt every single day.
Like playing a dangerous game with burnout. The worst part? I knew it and wore it like a badge of honor.
But in all my stubborn determination, I always used to joke that hustling didn’t care how you felt. It was just the price of admission and I was paying for it in more ways than one.
In 2019 I had the best year in business I’d ever had. My photography business was thriving, I was hosting community events that impacted people, and I was building a community I was proud of while hosting a podcast that was quickly rising in popularity.
Every day still got up like clockwork to slave away, crossing things off the list like a mindless employee at a sweatshop all while plastering a smile on my face pretending like I wasn’t feeling nauseous from the amount of coffee I had to ingest to keep me upright and talking.
Then COVID came and everything in my business, all the momentum came to a screeching halt, and everything changed.
What goes on a to-do list in the middle of a global pandemic?
And when you don’t have the anchor of your daunting tasks list every day, what do you fill your time with, and when you’re not feeling “accomplished” getting all the things done…. where does your value then come from?
And when I tell you that this didn’t just feel like rock bottom for my business but coming to terms with my self-worth being derived from the productivity of hustle-culture in my life was a rude awakening. My mental health plummeted.
That’s where and when some of these journal practices were born. Out of the realization that my worth had more to do with what I was doing than who I liked being and the improvements in my life have been measurable and noteworthy.
My hope is that these help you shift into a different frame of mind as often as you need them to remind yourself there is more to life than just getting things done.
Exercise One:
The Functional Gratitude Practice
Define gratitude.
What is gratitude to you? How do you know when you feel gratitude?
What is it not? How do you know when you’re not feeling it?
How do you do it? How do you intentionally instigate and practice gratitude?
List 3 Things you felt grateful for in the last 24-48 hours.
*remember the key is to bring the intellectual idea of gratitude into something you notably and functionally feel.
The purpose of this exercise is to bring clarity to feelings, and specificity to how they feel for you as opposed to a generalization of the feeling.
Exercise Two:
Being Present Practice
Take 3 minutes to write about how your body feels.
i.e. What do your feet feel like on the ground, or in your shoes? What do your calves and shins feel like? Knees? Do you notice any pain as you travel your consciousness around your body?
After the full body scan, answer these questions.
What is one thing you saw in the last 24 hours that made you feel happy? What about it made you happy?
What is one thing you tasted in the last 24 hours that you enjoyed? What about it did you specifically enjoy?
What is one thing you touched or felt in the last 24 hours that you can describe the texture of? What did it feel like?
What was one thing you heard in the last 24 hours that made you excited or want to sing or move your body? What about it sparked that for you?
What is one thing you smelled in the last 48 hours that was so wonderful? What about it felt wonderful? Does this particular smell have significance?
This exercise aims to practice purposely bringing your awareness into your body.
Exercise Three:
Defining Self Exercise
Write 1-3 words that you think best describe you.
For each word clarify these three components:
What is it?
What isn’t it, how do you know when you’re not doing or being that?
How do you do it? Intentionally or unintentionally
What areas of your life do you express this quality, do you think it’s enough or too much? Does this have a positive or negative impact on your life?
The purpose of this exercise is to start bringing awareness to self, and who you know yourself to be.
Self-awareness and mindfulness are practices that can genuinely reorient your perspective on your life when exercised with consistency, these exercises are a great place to begin and begin again when the goal is to work the muscles we don’t typically use regularly.
Think of these exercises as doing bicep curls with 3-pound weights, you may not see immediate results but building the muscle memory of the bicep curl is part of the work too.
Hope this helps!
to the brave thing,
xx, Cait
💗 So much information thank you!