How can you start journalling for goal setting and a positive mindset?

You can use journaling to help you stay on track with your goal setting, and maintain a positive mindset. With New Year looming, there will be tons of advice everywhere or ideas around setting goals, new years resolutions – Ultimately, journalling will help you develop better mental health and a deeper level of self-awareness.

If you’ve been the kind of person who either struggles with new years resolutions or makes a few because you feel like you ‘should’. Or you forget all about them – don’t worry about doing it ‘because it’s the new year’. Instead, take some time to reflect on what went well for you last year, and what you’d most like to get out of the year or even just the next 6 months.

You could even wait a while and just start journalling for goal setting when it feels right for you. The most important thing is that you start when you want a more positive mindset.

Goal-setting – Where to start?

Once you have a clear picture in your mind of what your ideal year would look like – the best version, if everything went your way – what would that look like? Picture what you would be doing, how you would feel, where would you be going? Who would you be with? What would you be like with a more positive mindset?

Break that down into smaller chunks – get really specific. This is important with journalling for goal setting. Use your journal to consider how will that happen, what will you do to work towards that? What are the steps you will take? How will you know when you’ve achieved that?

Don’t go TOO big that it’s unreasonable – you DON’T want to set yourself up for a failure. This happens quite a lot; especially with new years resolutions, which leads to disappointment and a lack of motivation. You want to start building momentum so that small achievements domino into bigger ones. That’s going to create that ‘feel-good’ energy and positive mindset that gives you the energy and determination to continue on towards your bigger goals.

If you’re still struggling with how to break your goals down – Download my free worksheet to guide you through making SMART goals here.

Once you’ve started using journalling for goal setting, you want to continue to develop your positive mindset.

3 tips for using your journal to build a positive mindset:

  1. Review what went well: This will train your mind to look for the positive – but you need to be consistent with it. (It doesn’t mean everything is perfect, it just helps to see that not everything is bad, and strengthens that mental muscle to look for the good!)
  2. Ask yourself what you would do differently: Unleashing the puzzle-solving part of your mind enables you to consider different perspectives and increases your ability to try different ways of solving problems in the future – so that you don’t fall at the same hurdles repeatedly
  3. Write down what you are proud of: Not only can you identify how you dealt with challenges, you’re reinforcing that positive mindset and building yourself up at the same time – increasing your self belief – which in turn is helpful for goal setting.

There are many positives to journalling, a quick search reveals how many articles talk about benefits of journalling. It doesn’t have to be a huge task. Your journal can be functional, and simple. You don’t need to write loads, it can be as simple as checking in with yourself in the morning or evening, having a quick look at the goals you have set yourself, ask yourself what you’ve done, or write down what is bothering you. Use it however you want to – find what works for you.

What to use?

If you’d like to give journalling for goal setting and a positive mindset a try but don’t know where to start, you can even use your phone notes app.
Prefer to have something physical? Try one of these:

  1. My Mindful Year : 2022 Mindful Journal with PromptsPicture of Journal being held in hands
  2. My Mood Journal : A daily or weekly journal promoting reflection, gratitude and better mental wellbeing
  3. My Bullet Journal : Blank Journal with pages for you to use as you wish.

 

 

 

 

 

If you’ve found this useful, and you’d like a help getting started, don’t forget to Download my free worksheet to guide you through making SMART goals here.