By Pete Cataldo
The simple practice of keeping a journal is a cheat code for self improvement. Here’s how I use my journal for personal growth so you can do the same.
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You spend most of the day consuming content.
From social media to slack messages to email newsletters (like this one), you are constantly bombarded with the thoughts and ideas of other people.
It doesn’t matter if that content is work or pleasure. You’re still reading, listening, and watching.
How often do you stop to actually sit with your own thoughts?
I’m talking about the ones that are not associated with a work project that you have to brainstorm before your next meeting.
Do you ever take time to critically analyze a concept, personal experience or a goal that you have in mind?
What if, instead of constantly searching for answers on YouTube or the “For You” page, you sat down with a pen and paper and crafted your own direction?
How about finally charting your own path rather than spending so much time looking elsewhere?
This is when you start feeling like you are actually living life.
You start making sense of things, seeing more things clearly and you develop your own thought processes around challenges.
You become your own thought leader.
This is the power of journaling.
And honestly, if there’s one mindful practice that I would recommend everyone do, it’s keeping a journal.
Look, I’ve done meditation, and still do.
Affirmations. Gratitude. Solitude. Deep breathing. All of them are effective.
But from a self-improvement perspective, I’m going to make the argument today that journaling is the one that wins over all of these practices.
And I’m going to show you how (and why) you should develop this practice to journal for personal growth.
Let’s get into it.
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I’ve been journaling for over 10 years
I actually still have all of those journals. Whenever I want, I can refer back to the first few days after my daughter was born and just reflect on my journey as a father.
Writing in a journal has been a catalyst for so much of my development, including the process of my reinvention over the past year while I shift into my mid-40s to Level UP my life.
Keeping a journal is something that has existed almost as long as humans have been reading and writing.
From Oprah to Marcus Aurelius and Einstein, Marie Curie to Leonardo Di Vinci and countless others, they all collected their thoughts by putting pen to paper.
Using a journal for personal growth is NOT like keeping a diary
There are so many different ways to journal. It can be incredibly overwhelming.
Do not overthink this.
At the most basic level, journaling is just having a process for collecting your thoughts about things.
It doesn’t have to be pen to paper, either (you can use a notebook app on your phone if that’s your thing).
And you don’t have to jot down emotions while shit-talking people.
It’s not a burn book.
Some folks turn to their journal as a planning guide and will use it to map out their processes.
You can even use the journal as a bit of a catch-all:
- Jotting down thoughts
- Sketching out images and pictures of nature
- Sharing inspirations or dreams that you’d like to remember and reflect on
You can use a journal for appreciation and gratitude.
List out the many things (both big and small) you are grateful for as a way to appreciate the many small wins throughout life. Doing so can provide more meaning and a deeper perspective.
This is a fantastic way to get started and can help with a boost in mental health.
But just understand that it doesn’t have to be a vision board or a gratitude ritual that’s designed to deliver non-stop hopium, either.
I think it’s important to write about experiences, wins and setbacks, too.
As Henry David Thoreau explained:
“The journal is a record of experience and growth, not a preserve of things well done or said.”
I just want you to do something
Even if it’s just writing down a sentence per day about your day, that’s totally fine.
But, if you’re ready to take this to the next level and journal for personal growth, it’s going to be a bit more than your standard approach to writing a few things on a page.
Instead, it can be a tool that grows into your own personal second brain, accountability partner and catalog of important processes and a record of events to make you … you.
Get raw and open about it.
The many benefits of using a journal for personal growth
Clarity. Direction. Accountability.
Starting a journal for personal growth is more about where you’re trying to go, what’s stopping you from getting there, how you plan to solve those obstacles along the way, the progress you’re making, how you feel about the progress being made, and what you can do to continue momentum or tweak the process to ensure more success.
And all of this leads to better creativity and more productivity.
Keeping a journal helps critically analyze problems and find solutions.
You become your own teacher. Science shows that the best way to learn something is to turn around and try to teach it to someone else.
A few additional science-backed benefits to journaling:
Get creative with it, you can even draw and sketch.
Brainstorm new concepts and keep a log of the new ideas that pop up in your mind. You’ll have them all in one place to refer back to along the way.
You’ll have more self-awareness since you’ll be regularly chronicling your various thoughts, ideas and adventures.
When you finally unlock that ability to problem solve with your journal practice, you’ve now given yourself a troubleshooting guide:
You’ll be able to look back at a problem you solved from a few months (or even years) ago and confidently say you have a solution because you charted it in your journal and mapped out how you got around it.
It’s like having your own personal historical archive.
Write about the events that shape your life—it’s also a cool record for family members to look back on after you pass.
And unlike a diary, you aren’t getting terribly personal and wrapped in emotions that you might not want other loved ones to read.
How I use my journal for personal growth
I use my journal to argue a point.
Or to ramble about something until an idea clicks.
I think, draw lines, and write out lists and predict things.
If I’m going through an episode of anxiety, my journal acts as my second therapist. Writing down my thoughts can sometimes uncover topics to explore in more depth with my actual therapist.
If I need to warm up before writing, my journal entries can be a form of preparation for my daily writing sessions.
Go read “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron to learn about the incredible practice of morning pages as a powerful journaling routine.
My journal is a partner that I can bounce new concepts off and then I have a record of that conversation if I want to revisit it later.
It’s my personal review that I conduct for myself monthly, quarterly, and annually.
My journal acts as an accountability coach.
I can detail a specific goal. Come up with the behaviors and habits I need to achieve that goal. And then regularly check in with myself to make sure I’m taking the appropriate action steps.
I also go back to check my journal entries much more frequently now to review what I was thinking and planning and feeling about certain wins or setbacks.
How to get started using your journal for personal growth
Buy a notebook. Grab a pen.
Congratulations, you now have a journal. Time to start writing.
Keep the journals and label them. I like the idea of having one book for each year.
So grab a fresh notebook annually and label them with the year. Yes, even if you did not fill all of the pages of the notebook.
Doing it this way really gives you a catalog for your life.
You can look back knowing that in 2020, your sourdough bread starter process was your best friend to get through the pandemic.
You’re going to write about your goals, your anti-goals, reflections about things you achieved, and your setbacks or failures.
Write about your processes for systems and projects. Break down the learnings along the way of … well, everything, being sure to include your perspective throughout.
Like everything I recommend here on this website of awesome sauce, I want you to start small and start slow:
Give yourself one simple prompt that you can complete with 1-2 sentences.
I like the idea of calling this your “daily dispatch” by simply asking yourself this question as your prompt:
What did you accomplish today towards your goals?
Use your journal to test ideas
Jot down things you’re thinking about.
It doesn’t have to be perfect or fully baked out. The ideas don’t even have to evolve into a future project.
But, just getting it down on paper will help spur more creativity and you might end up running down a tangent to eventually finding that next big idea, thought, or emotion.
Take that new idea and use your journal to challenge it.
I’ll ask myself a few questions that I got from brain coach and writer Jim Kwik:
- How can I use this thought or idea?
- Why must I use this?
- When will I use this?
No more just letting a random thought pop in my head without documentation or practical exploration.
Some of my favorite prompts to journal for personal growth
Once you get comfortable with the daily dispatch approach and the ideas start flowing, you can really unlock the strategies for using that journal for self improvement.
Here are some worthwhile prompts that I’ve picked up from other experts, thought leaders and entrepreneurs over the years:
What would this look like if it were easy?
I got this one from Tim Ferriss. It’s a great way to start working through a complex problem that’s been tripping you up.
Because in many cases, it’s not really all that complex and you can simplify things to get to the solution.
Working it out through your journal is one way to figure that out.
What is my anti-vision?
You’ve got your goals.
But for many people, this isn’t enough to really drive that internal motivation to get moving.
Let me explain.
You want to lose 40 pounds. Well, that could take a year (sometimes longer).
The carrot on the stick is way too far away.
It becomes demotivating and easy to lose sight of that bigger goal ahead.
So, in addition to breaking down goals into much smaller milestones, I like to flip the script.
What if you journaled an alternative universe where things did not go according to plan and you missed out on that goal?
Map out how shitty your health would be 10 years from now if you refused to eat healthy and exercise regularly.
We call this an anti-goal or an anti-vision and I wrote an entire newsletter article on how to make this work for you.
It’s a fantastic journaling prompt that can really reveal the true “why” behind a goal and help you understand the need to keep going.
What is working right now?
When was the last time you gave yourself a pat on the back for an accomplishment (big or small)?
Highlight the things that you are doing well.
This prompt gets you thinking in ways to help appreciate the smaller things.
It’s another sneaky way of keeping you motivated when things get a bit boring.
What is NOT working right now?
We can’t strive to grow if we don’t understand where we messed up.
This prompt will help you find solutions to avoid repeating those mistakes.
Get real intentional with this question and think about the obstacles you are facing.
You’ll discover small little steps that were missed that are avoidable for next time.
When you document those missteps and write about your solutions, you’ve created your own little FAQ for the future.
You’ll know how to navigate similar problems when they pop up because it’s been documented before.
It doesn’t even have to be this serious.
This prompt can help you realize that maybe you’re doing a little too much and there are some things in your life that you can automate, delegate or eliminate.
Where do I want to be in 10 years?
I like one year goals, especially for my fitness and nutrition students.
It gets you out of this bullshit idea that you can transform your entire body in 12 weeks because someone on a social media post did it.
Can that happen? Of course. Is that likely to happen? Sorry, but no.
However, while you overestimate what can be achieved in 12 weeks, we often underestimate what you can do in 12 months.
The same can be said for an entire decade.
What does a day look like for you 10 years from now?
What kind of work are you doing?
How’s your health?
Family?
Sit down and think about the lifestyle you’d like to design for yourself and what it would like 10 years from now.
Now you’ve got a destination to work towards.
Every single day, try to check off a box that gets you one step closer to that design.
You don’t have to be terribly specific like you’re creating a Vision Board (which is totally acceptable if that’s your thing) you just want a general idea.
So instead of, “I’m going to live in Park Slope, Brooklyn,” it’s more like, “I’m going to live in a walkable city with a bustling community and lots of shops and restaurants that I enjoy.”
Get creative with it.
What advice would I give someone in the same exact situation?
I got this prompt from Clark Kegley on YouTube who is an avid journal writer himself.
As humans, we can be pretty awesome at giving advice to someone, but when it comes to our own lives, we can’t see the obvious answer in front of us.
This prompt solves that problem.
We’ve all had that friend who was dating a disaster and we strategically offered the necessary guidance to help our friend get through that disaster.
But when we’re stuck in a dead end relationship, the obvious ain’t so obvious, right?
Our friends tell us to leave that train wreck of a partner, but we falter and can’t see it.
So flip this on its head: if you were able to step away from yourself, play the role of that friend, and give advice to get through something you’re struggling with, what would that advice look like?
The cheat code to LevelUP your life is to use your journal for personal growth
If you’re still feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of this info, just simplify it. Start with a sentence or two per day about what you’ve done, an observation, a thought, something you were grateful for.
As you build the habit, you’ll start flexing that creative muscle to start doing more with your journal practice.
Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress.
Just start.
See where your thoughts take you and have some fun with it.
I hope you enjoyed this newsletter.
As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.
If you’re interested in working with me to get a complete body transformation program that couples minimalist training with a personalized approach to nutrition, then you should check out my Lean4Life Coaching Program.
All of my students are encouraged to keep a journal and map out their many goals, obstacles and consistency with new healthy habits.
Not ready for all that yet? No worries.
Take what you’ve learned here and slowly apply it over the next month or two and let me know how it works out for you.
I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “journal for personal growth” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.
Until next time,
Pete