Your Joyful Order With Leslie Martinez

#73 The Transformative Journey of Journaling for Growth and Healing

• Leslie Martinez • Season 4 • Episode 73

Share episode

Send us a text

As I opened the pages of my childhood diary, I never imagined the sanctuary of lined paper would evolve into my greatest tool for healing and self-discovery. On today's podcast, I extend a heartfelt invitation to explore the practice of journaling. Embarking on this voyage reveals how chronicling our thoughts transcends mere record-keeping; it allows for profound reflection and emotional clarity. I share my own intimate journey through the written word, from a young girl finding solace to an adult using journaling as a roadmap for personal growth.

This isn't just about documenting the day-to-day; it's an exploration of gratitude, revisiting successes, and a strategic planning session all rolled into one. By introducing my custom journal that incorporates gratitude, goal-setting, and prayer, I provide a template for your daily musings that could very well be the catalyst for remarkable personal transformation.

We conclude our session by weighing the minimal risks against the boundless rewards of starting a journaling habit. A commitment to just 90 days of introspection can unveil insights that might otherwise remain unexplored. For those ready to embark on this journey, the show notes contain prompts and a workbook brimming with strategies to kickstart your path to self-discovery. So take up the pen and let this episode be the start of a more reflective, goal-oriented, and joy-filled you.

Connect with Leslie:

Follow on IG: @yourjoyfulorderstyle

Website: https://www.yourjoyfulorder.com/

Email: lmartinez@yourjoyfulorder.com
to schedule- Speaking Events, Interviews or Life Coaching Sessions

Shop my SOAP the Gospels Journal on Shopify:
https://shopjoyfulorder.com/

Listen to this Episode on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsXoAYIM2mfclNtYiaOzIUw

Shop my Journal (Gratitude, Goals & Prayer Journal) on Amazon:
https://a.co/d/09Djvaw

Book a FREE 30 Minute Discovery Coaching Call: https://tidycal.com/joyfulordermedia/30-minute-meeting

Speaker 1:

Hey everyone, I'm Leslie Martinez and you're listening to your Joyful Order podcast. Each week I will bring you joyful stories that will motivate and inspire you and, at the same time, bring order to your everyday life. Let's just say the show will be a mixture of preaching and teaching, with a kick of motivation from your girl here. Welcome to your Joyful Order podcast.

Speaker 2:

Hey friend, thanks for tuning in to this episode. If you are listening to this episode, that means that you are one of my peeps, because you want to start learning how to journal and you're probably thinking like, oh, journaling, let's see, I don't have time for that stuff. But really, really, truly, I promise you that this is a practice that will change your life, and I want to share with you today exactly why journaling can change your life, how you can start journaling, what you can journal about and just how to get into the process of starting to journal. Now, here are three ways that journaling can change your life. The first one is it allows you to reflect. It allows you to look back on your memories and look at it as like your own little diary, where you can look back and you can just be so thankful of the journey that you've been on. I have it's called one line day journal and it actually is a journal that takes you through five years. So every day you open, like, say, for instance, the day is April 1st. You open up to the day April 1st and there's five different boxes there for the for the past five years basically. So you just plug in the year and I started this in 2001. So I had 2001, two, three. I'm on my fourth. Right now I have one more year to fill. So it's really cool to look back at just what I wrote what I wrote. Pretty cool to see similarities and patterns of things that I have done the same time every year. Of course, there's things like birthdays and certain celebrations, but then there's some just like really random ordinary days, like Thursdays in January, where it happened to be the same day every year that I went and took the special hike on the special trail. So it's really cool just to look back at your memories and that's just one way that you can journal.

Speaker 2:

Another reason that journaling can change your life is it can allow you to actually take control of your thoughts and your mind your thoughts and your mind and journaling has. I mean, I wouldn't be doing this episode if I couldn't tell you how journaling has truly changed my life, and this is probably one of the biggest areas that journaling has changed my life. It has allowed me to take control of my thoughts and my mind. Now I've been journaling since I was a little girl. I literally had my own little diary that and I still have it today that I started when I was in the sixth grade and when I go back and read what, I laugh hilariously one at my style of writing and to the fact that, like, I couldn't spell certain words and how I wrote certain words. But when I was a little girl I grew up in an abusive home so there was really no outlet for me to express the emotions and the feelings that I was having. So I went to a journal and that was the only thing that I knew and I don't even know what led me to start journaling. Honestly, I just I really loved notebooks. I really loved you know Lisa Frank stuff Like I really loved notebooks. I really loved you know Lisa Frank stuff Like do you remember the Hello Kitty store? I absolutely love, like Sanrio surprises.

Speaker 2:

So my journal that I have, it actually is a um, karopi, uh, or I should call it diary from sixth grade. I have a Karopi diary that has a little lock on it with the key and I got that. I don't remember if it was a gift or if I bought it, but I got it and that's where I started writing in. I thought how cool to have a special little diary that I can lock up and I can express all of my thoughts and my emotions and everything of what I'm feeling. I would write down stuff that happened throughout the day and there's some stuff in there that I wrote of my emotions towards some of the abuse that I was undergoing in my home, and I wrote some pretty nasty stuff about my father because I had no other way of expressing what I felt. I couldn't tell it to him, I couldn't share it with my mom and I just felt like there was nobody else to express it to. So I went straight to the paper and I wrote it there, so taking control of your thoughts and emotions.

Speaker 2:

When you write your thoughts and your emotions down, it actually helps you to process what it is that you're going through. So it allows you to look at a bigger perspective. And then sometimes, when you write it down and you reread it, sometimes you start to think like, do I really feel like that? Is that really what happened? Am I being a little dramatic? Am I putting limiting beliefs on myself? Is that really what I think about myself? And it allows you to really process, maybe trauma that you've gone through, um, maybe certain you know experiences, um, it just really allows you to take hold and control of your thought patterns and your mind. If you struggle with anxiety, with stress, with worry, pen to paper, I kid you not. You put those thoughts into a journal and they are gone from that open loop mind in your brain that continues to just spiral and spiral. And when I initiated this practice of journaling my anxiety levels went down and I later on I will back that up with some research that I found also. But this is what? Just another one of the reasons why journaling can change your life.

Speaker 2:

The third reason why journaling can change your life is that it can really just change your approach to life. It can allow you to look into the future and what I'm going to do next is I'm going to help you to actually learn some ways on how to journal. So there's three different levels also that you can journal and each of these levels kind of go with each of these areas of looking back on your memories, taking control of your thoughts and minds and changing your approach of life. So the first, in how to journal, the first level is looking at how you can kind of just keep a daily prompt at the end of each day and ask yourself some just prompts that you can just write. So one of the things that you can do is ask yourself what was the most story worthy thing that happened to me today, what's worth telling a story about in your day. That's a great way that will allow you to kind of look back at your memories of what happened in your day. The one thing that I write down in my daily little prompt that I told you that I'm tracking like five years, is what brought me joy today. What was that one thing that just brought me joy today? That's another prompt you can also do, like what was I grateful for today? That'll spark some memories of things that took place that day that you can reflect on and look back on. You can just use it to share your day. You can just write whatever it is that you know happened that day, how you're feeling, maybe prayers. That's a way to kind of look back at your memories. Also thoughts, worries, stressors, all that you can, you know, just just write it out. But that is one day for you to kind of be able to look back on your memories and that's like the level one journaling that you can do that allows you to just keep hold of your memories and keep you know, keep track of them. Level two is that's where we start to really tune into those emotions and those thoughts.

Speaker 2:

Like I shared earlier, I experienced a lot of trauma going up in my life. So some of the things in my journal are related to that, some of the things that happened. And even as I read them, like not a few months ago, I was reading through my one that I wrote in sixth grade and I was reading through there of something that I played in my head of how it happened and when I read it after so many years of what actually took place, I was like, well, I wrote it a lot different than how I had it played out in my mind and I think in my mind I kind of escalated it and made it seem a little more traumatic than what it really was. When I read sixth grade me, you know so what like 10, 11 year old me at that time in sixth grade, when I wrote what I had experienced in I was a little, you know, I was a little eased in knowing that, hey, my brain just escalated that a lot worse than what I think really took place. And that's where this journaling your thoughts and your feelings and you know traumatic experiences and all of that really comes into place because it really allows you to again review what it is that took place and have you assess the situation when you write it out and you read it to yourself. That's where you can tell yourself is this how it really happened? And sometimes things it's like oh wow, that's not really how it happened, like, oh wow, that's not really how it happened. Or maybe as you write it out, you don't realize how bad things really were.

Speaker 2:

This level two of journaling it is called expressive journaling and again, that's where you're writing your thoughts, your feelings, your you know all of that stuff. Now there was an actual study on expressive journaling that a university had did, and what they did is they allowed a certain amount of students to do expressive journaling, where they just basically wrote out their thoughts, emotions and all of this. And then they had another controlled group where they journaled all of their or they had prompt journaling, so they were given specific prompts of things that they had to journal. Well, get this, the group that did the expressive journaling, that just wrote whatever they wanted, whatever thoughts, emotions came into their head. They actually showed at the end of the study to show less levels of anxiety and stress. Their levels of stress and anxiety were much lower than that of the other group, who was guided along to do prompt journaling.

Speaker 2:

Now, expressive journaling actually helps you to process these traumas. It helps you to understand them and not keep them in your brain. Hence why journaling is a tool that therapists and psychologists use. If you didn't know that, you know now. If you knew it, then that means you maybe, you know, have gone to therapy or have been with a psychologist, maybe even a counselor. This is a very important tool that these doctors use to help you express your emotions and to help you process certain traumas and dramas in your life. There you go, let me clarify that Now, that is the level two of journaling is like just learning to take control of your thoughts and your emotions, and all of that. Now, the level three is allowing you to write about your future, and this is like is what will allow you to change your approach on life. So that level three journal is journaling, is allowing you to write about your next decisions and actions, and this is where you can train, this is where you can, you know, think of yourself in the future, like, where do I want to be in one year, where do I want to be in three years, where do I want to be in five, in 10 years? And you can start writing this down.

Speaker 2:

I heard a famous I forgot the guy's name. I was going to try to throw a credit, but I literally went blank right now and I can't think of the guy's name. However, there is this famous YouTube influencer guy, and one of the practices that he does is he actually records a video and he does like a journaling video and he talks to himself as so what he does is he asks questions to his 80 year old self. I know it's so weird, but when he explained how he did this, I thought this is the coolest thing. So what he does is he will ask a question like, for instance, you know what, what, what should I be focusing on right now, at 45 years old? And he will respond as his 85 year old self. So his 85 year old self comes and says the things you should be focusing right now at 45 years old is being fulfilled. Have you created a life in which you are happy about? Like, that's the stuff that he does, you know, and it's pretty cool to think about journaling in a way that can guide you into the future.

Speaker 2:

This is where this type of journaling, this is where you can drain some journal prompts for this can be like think of what if? What if I get married next year? What if I have kids? What kind of mom would I be? What kind of you know a father would I be? What would happen if I achieved that goal? What would it look like if I won a million dollars? Or if I worked and earned a million dollars? What would it look like if I a million dollars? What would it look like if I traveled the world? What would it look like if I opened that business that I've been wanting to start? These are all the things that you can do Like what if prompts. You can dream another prompt you can give yourself.

Speaker 2:

In this category, right here is what you call like a wheel of life. In this category, right here is what you call like a wheel of life. I like to call it a self inventory. I do it about once a month. I have a app I use what's called the growth date app, and this is an actual prompt. I get a notification at the end of every month and it tells me to do this journal prompt, and what it does is it gives you like you rate yourself in all the different areas of your life. You rate yourself from a one to 10, one being you suck at it and 10 being I'm killing it in this area right now. And the categories are like your business and career, your finances, your health, your relationships, your faith, your romance, personal growth and joy. Joy is like your fun things and stuff. So those are the main categories.

Speaker 2:

If there's other categories that you would like to include in that you can include, like maybe some of your pillars of life that are in there For me. My pillars are like family, faith and joy. So those all are right in there for me. So at the end of every month, what you do is you rate yourself Like where are you at with your business and career on a one to 10? And then you can take those ratings and do something about them. So if you're scoring yourself like you're sucking right now, you're not killing it in business and career. You're at like a one or a two. It's like okay, these are the areas that I need to work on. Right now You're not killing it in business and career. You're at like a one or two. It's like, okay, these are the areas that I need to work on right now. But if you're, if you're killing it, if like, hey, your joy is at like a level 10 right now because you're just, you know, doing so many amazing things right now and you're just living life right now, how can you journal about that? What can you write about that? So this is another great way of doing that level three journaling, of writing about, like decisions and actions that you need to make for your future self. So this gives you an assessment of things to write about and then it'll it'll allow you to create action plans behind that.

Speaker 2:

Also, another prompt that you can do in this is the whole looking ahead, like, what can I be celebrating in 12 months? What can I be celebrating in three years? What can I be celebrating in five and 10? And this going back of, like, who do I want to be? But asking yourself, what do I want to be celebrating? Do you want to be celebrating that new business? Do you want to be celebrating the new car that you save for? Do you want to be celebrating the new business? Do you want to be celebrating the new car that you saved for? Do you want to be celebrating the new house? Celebrating that you're debt-free, celebrating that you paid off your student loans? What is it that you want to be? Maybe you're celebrating your college graduation because you went back for your master's degree, or you got your undergrad, or you completed a mastermind class? Where do you want to be? Those are things that you can journal to celebrate, and when you journal these things, a lot of times it prompts you to take action. Also, it will allow you to to just move in the direction of where you need to go. Now, if you haven't heard, I'm telling you. Now I have a journal.

Speaker 2:

I created a journal because I truly believe in this practice. My journal starts off with a daily gratitude. It starts off with writing out 10 of your nearest and dearest goals and dreams, and then it has a spot for your prayer. And this journal practice is something that I kind of merge a bunch of other practices that I was doing just into one journal gratitude. I kid you not, that has been one of the biggest blessings in my life, because you approach your day differently when you are searching for things to be grateful for to write down every day. So, rather than you know, looking at your day of like what went wrong, like what you know, just like the mundane stuff that we tend to take for granted during the day, it allows you to kind of sit and reflect and think like what were the small things that I can be grateful for?

Speaker 2:

Writing out your goals and dreams. I think this is a big one and this is what has helped me to actually achieve a lot of my goals. Now in my journal I have 10 slots for you to write down five goals that you're working on and five goals that you want to be working on. So the five goals are for your present self, that you're currently working on, and then you list another five that you these are like dreams, like big goals that you're like. These goals scare me. I don't know how the crap I'm going to get there, but I'm going to keep writing them out because I want to eventually get there someday.

Speaker 2:

The five goals that you currently work on. The minute that you achieve one, you cross it off and guess what? The ones that you have on the like oh crap. List, the like big, big dreaming list. You bump one of those up into that category that you cleared, or you turn something small of that into like a goal. You know, maybe it's like launch you want to launch a business, but you don't know how. Well, maybe the first step to launching the business is just hey, I'm going to set a goal of, I just need to get my LLC or my business license, you know. So if you have that big, scary goal of launching a business, you have no idea or anything, just start taking little steps and turn that big dream into small little steps and that's where you start working on stuff. So that is how my journal works.

Speaker 2:

And then, of course, you end with the prayer in your journaling, and I love to do this practice in the morning. I think it's so beneficial to start your day with gratitude, setting your goals and intentions, and prayer. So I write my prayers out because it allows me to focus on what I want to say, and I'm intentional in writing my prayers out. This journal and this practice has changed my life and I've shared it with you all a million times. So I really wanted to just give a little insight and give you some ideas and prompts on how you can start journaling, and it's not just about using my journal. You can get any notebook, any journal. You can go and you can look on Amazon and you will see there are tons of journals out there that have all kinds of different prompts that you can use. I just want to encourage you to start journaling because of the benefits alone that I shared with you of you know allowing you to look back on your memories, allowing you to actually take control of your thoughts and your minds, allow you to have that stress and anxiety levels brought down, allowing you to bring clarity to, maybe, past experiences, past dramas that have taken place in your life, and then also it'll allow you to change your approach on life. It'll allow you to have a big picture of where you want to go and move towards what God's calling in your life is.

Speaker 2:

Y'all they journaled in Bible times, like the Bible is one huge journal Like. I think God is telling us something in this. Like all the disciples, they journaled what they experienced with Jesus and what they taught. These books were written from prophets and disciples and people that walked among the greatest faith heroes of all time and told their story. They kept journals. The Bible we have that because people wrote what was happening. They wrote dreams and desires that were being put on their heart. They wrote dreams and desires that were being put on their heart. Like y'all, bible is one big journal when you think about it really, truly it's one big journal and it is it's God's like, it's God's gift to us of saying, hey, all the people that I spoke to that I showed up with, that I taught that. You know, here it is, here it is. They wrote my story, they journaled it. I, I, I told them to and here it is.

Speaker 2:

So what is God putting on your heart that needs to be written down?

Speaker 2:

What is that dream?

Speaker 2:

What is the desire? What are the thoughts that you have to get control of in your mind? I want to encourage you, friend. I'm not just doing this episode because I want you to buy my journal and because I love talking about journaling. This is a practice that will change your life. It has changed my life significantly. I am the person that I am today because of this practice. There are a few things that I can say have changed my life. Jesus is the first one, giving my life to the Lord. Journaling is probably the second one, and I just want you to capture the importance of what this can do for your life. I hope that this episode will maybe, you know, spark, spark little fire in your booty to go out and start journaling practice.

Speaker 2:

And you know what, at the end of the day, journaling isn't like. Everybody can't do this. Some people just really struggle with writing their words out doing this practice and I get it, I get it, it's not for everyone, but at least make an effort to try. Give yourself like a few months of just trying this practice. Give yourself 90 days, 90 days and see, hey, is this something that I really can do? And make it simple, you know you, you can take the approach of doing one of these different levels of journaling, of just journaling, you know, a one line a day kind of thing, something that brought you joy, just expressing your thoughts or emotions, or even just looking at your goals. You know, what can I, what can I be looking forward to my future self, figure out a way that'll work for you for the next 90 days and just see how it transforms your life. That's all I'm asking.

Speaker 2:

I think it's worth the shot. You really have nothing to lose there. There's nothing to lose here. You can say, oh well, time and this and this, you know what, if keeping it a journal for 90 days is really really going to make or break a lot of your time, I think you need to reevaluate life just a little bit. Just a little bit what's important to you?

Speaker 2:

Well, friend, I hope this episode again, I hope it encourages you and inspires you to go out and start journal practice If you want to. I hope this episode, again, I hope it encourages you and inspires you to go out and start journal practice. If you want to go deep with journaling, click the link in my show notes. I did a few little journal prompts for you in there and this will allow you to just really start the practice, because I really want to encourage you to just start. So I did a little workbook in there with some tips and tricks for journaling and I hope that it will be a motivating tool for you to use. Until next time, my friend, go chase joy.