What Did I Do Before I Journaled?

Journaling is an awesome way to track your life and cement learnings

Journaling was one of those things I kept hearing about, but didn’t do. Write down my thoughts every day? Too much work. Five minute journal? I tried it, and it’s not even close, but good marketing guys.

Then one day a couple of years ago, Sheba Zaidi and Genevive Savundranayagam walked into my office to tell me about their Human Being Journal. It helps you write down your thoughts once a month, with lots of prompts and a little advice. I tried it, and I was hooked. So much so that I invested in their company, Mahara Mindfulness.

I’m almost through my second complete year of journaling now, and I love leafing through old entries, it’s amazing to see how much my thinking has changed, as well as circumstances. In some cases it’s amazing how much my circumstances haven’t changed, but my thinking has, like with the meltdown in my psychedelic investment portfolio that had me freaking out two years ago, but now I’m kind of chill about it despite the losses remaining.

This is called learning, and it’s even more powerful when you write it down.

I love documenting my life in this way, and it takes me anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours a month to complete it, including leafing through and smirking at old entries. I plan to eventually feed it all into an AI tool to help get recommendations on my life, but AI isn’t quite there yet. I’m sad that I don’t have this record of my thoughts from earlier in my life, but better late than never.

Journaling has also been great for integrating learning that has come from psychedelics and IFS therapy. I get just how powerful both of these tools are because I’ve got the proof written down every month.

I highly recommend this particular journal, but you should find one that works for you. In the case of Mahara Mindfulness, a percentage of all sales go to mental health organizations, and you’d be supporting a female-led BIPOC small business, both causes near and dear to me.

What did I do before I started journaling?

I have no idea, because I didn’t write it down.