So today I just wanted to build a little sit down and chat video, talking about how I started journaling because believe it or not, for the first, like okay, not like 21 years of my life, because I don't think I knew what journaling was when I was literally fresh out of the room for a long time in my life.

As long as I can remember, I always wanted to be somebody who journal because I thought it would be so cool to have a record of my life to look back on.

But it seemed like no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get it to be a habit that stuck until around three months ago.

And now journaling is one of my favorite activities.

I have filled up literally, like 150 pages of his journal.

In the past couple of months, I've been doing a lot.

It's been helping me a lot mentally, and it's something that I think has definitely made me a better person over the past couple of months, like you girls still a work in progress.

But I actually like making steps towards kind of like being at peace with my own thoughts and being able to self reflect Maur and really think about my priorities in life, which was something that I feel like before was lost in, like the hustle and bustle of my crazy day today.

Workaholic life.

So if you guys are like me and you have always wanted to journal what you're just not quite sure how to start or how to get motivated, this is the video for you.

Oh, let's let's jumping, kiddos.

Alrighty.

It's me again.

Back in the exact same chair.

Hello.

It's the same video.

Nice to meet you.

I'm actually so my first and most important, it is going to sound very they and it's a little hard to explain, but basically I think it's super important to set your intentions properly.

The main reason that I really failed to journal in the past was that my heart wasn't really in the right place.

I used to see journaling as more of this, like aesthetic, productive, aspirational lifestyle type of activity, like I didn't actually enjoy the process of thinking deeply about my life and writing it out.

What I wanted was like the identity of a tumbler girl who has her journal also is an excuse to buy more stationary.

That was a big reason for me, like I mostly just enjoyed buying journals and not actually writing in them.

Journaling is not about the goal of filling up a book.

It's not about the image of being this like artsy, productive person.

It is about the actual process of journaling.

So if you don't enjoy that, you're not ever gonna get yourself to do it, because why would you do something that you don't enjoy?

For much of my life, my priorities were very much just climbing the career ladder as fast as possible and having as much like quote unquote success as possible.

So I really never ended off prioritizing, journaling or any other type of like self care or self reflection or self exploration.

I don't know.

I just was so focused on school and success in a very traditional sense that anything else seemed like a waste of my time.

When we're younger.

A lot of us feel like too busy and too self assured to do that, but I think is as you grow up, you realize there's a lot more like death to your own, your own head in your own complex and your own personality, and it becomes very exciting to be able to discover those things.

So, yeah, now that I know what I want to get out of journaling, it is so much easier to actually sit down and do it because I have a real reason behind it.

And I feel like a genuinely something that benefits me.

And it's not just this kind of like aesthetic activity trying to force myself into another thing that really helped me get on this journal and kick was basically like the only times I've journal throughout my life earlier were when I was on plane, right?

And so I probably have, like, three journal entries before the past three months.

But a couple months ago, I was clearing out my computer, and I stumbled across this old journal entry from like, two years ago, and it was just like the most incredible thing to read I had never experienced before, like the joy of being able to look back at the thoughts of my past self and this time capsule of what my life was like and even like I was so sassy back then.

And I just loved it because I was so proud of this old version of me for, I don't know, like sticking it out for everything that was going on in my life then for still having this, like sense of humor about me, even though I was very confused and young in college.

And I still am confused, although not in college anymore.

That experience gave me a taste for the first time off.

This joy would feel later on in life when I can go back like 3 10 100 years from now.

If technology gets that good and read this journal and really just, like, rejoice in the nostalgia if you are a nostalgic person like me and you're looking for some motivation.

If you have ever journal in your life or you have even, like, written a poem, you jotted down some thoughts.

You made some art in the past.

Go back and look at it because it'll help you realize, like what, 10 years down the line, journaling now building for you and it will encourage you to like make that investment.

Now I know it's a really special feeling, and it's a feeling that I want to be able to repeat in the future, and I think that you guys will do so.

My second tip is to take the pressure off yourself.

Another reason that journaling never clicked with me an earlier age was because I had heard of hold these rules and I was trying to follow them while I journal.

But it actually made it a much worse experience for myself.

Like I had read a lot about turning things into a habit.

So you have to do it every single day.

So I would start a new notebook and I would tell myself, actually have to journal every single day for the next year.

And lo and behold, like three days into my years worth of journaling, I would fall off the wagon.

I would forget a day, and then I already felt like a failure.

I figured I already screwed it up.

So what is the point in continuing?

And then that journal would just sit at the bottom of my desk for, like all of my other journals.

If routine works for you, you could make it work, But what I have personally found works best for me is literally just journaling when I feel like it and when I feel the need to.

To me, it's like the difference between having an assignment to read a book in class and reading a book for Ledger.

One of them is much more exciting because I feel like when you give yourself assignment like journal every single day and right X number of pages, it becomes a dragon.

Just become something that you do to check off the box rather than really being able to enjoy the process and just do it for yourself.

Some weeks when I'm like in panic mode where I have a lot going on, I'm writing every single day because I feel like I have these thoughts that I have to process.

And then some weeks I'm just chilling.

I'm working.

I'm in my group.

I feel content with life and I, my journal a little less often because my head is less hectic and I feel the need to less.

Another thing I wish I knew, is that there are no rules when it comes to journaling whatsoever.

In terms of what you have to write.

I used to think a main purpose of journaling.

Waas have an incredibly detailed record of my life so that I could look back in 10 years and essentially read a biography of myself there some days where I do enjoy recounting the activities that occurred.

But more often than not, when I'm listing out every single thing that I did in a day, it's not exciting, and I literally get bored writing.

And that is something you want to avoid like the plague, because it's an activity for you.

And you should only write things that you feel like are revealing or exciting to write about or feel therapeutic to write about so you don't need to frickin like right what you had for lunch.

That's what's gonna matter to you 10 years from now.

I think what really matters is talking about events.

And like little vignettes in your life that are important, you literally don't even have to talk about your day at all.

You could just like stream of conscious right about your feelings or your emotions, or like one moment that happened the day.

Also, your writing does not have to be well worded or beautiful or cohesive.

You don't have to have transitions between your paragraphs as a three right and concentration in school.

This was a pressure that I felt for a while, because I do take pride in, like the craft of writing.

But you have to let go of that perfectionist tendency and realize that you're not writing for anybody but yourself.

You're not writing a school essay where you need your main idea and a piece, a statement and then like evidence to support it like there is no format, there are no rules.

The only person who's gonna be reading it is maybe you 10 years from now, and there's absolutely no pressure to write in any specific style.

Granted, I do like kind of throwing in jokes here in there, just like you told me to read.

Like my journal, I would say, is 75% free flowing thoughts for my current brain and then, like 25% me, just like talking to older me and trying to be a little bit entertaining for myself.

There is a balance to be struck.

An important choice when it comes to journaling is do you want to do it digitally or physically.

Digitally obviously has its advantages of being much faster because you could type faster than you can write.

It is easier to read if you want to look back on it, and it's also very easily searchable and editable.

So I have thought like, Oh, what if I want to start like this one boy's name I went out for like for it would be so hard to find in this, but it would be much easier to find in a digital document.

However, I do really prefer drilling in a physical notebook.

I feel like it is a much more meditative experience, and something feels really good about, like the physical processes, getting your thoughts out with your hand.

I don't know.

It's something so different than typing, and my favorite thing is that gives me an opportunity to get out my thoughts without feeling the pressure to go back and edit some.

Especially because I always always writing pen.

So once it's out there, it's out there.

Once it the sentence, I'm flowing with it, of course, here and there I'm gonna go back and cross out a word or two.

But if you, like generally look at a page like this has one word crossed out on it, and it's an entire two page spread.

I feel like if I'm typing on a computer, it's just so easy to go back and edit something that I'm going to after I write like a paragraph and like, Oh, the sentence could be better structured.

Let me go back and edit it to me that detracts from the actual exercise of journaling, which is to just get your thoughts out there and not worry about the technicalities.

Also, I don't know if it's just me, but a blank document with the little blinking line is intimidating to me.

But a blank page in a journal is incredibly inviting, like this is something I'm excited to fill up, And I think that just results from years and years of writing essays in school that I felt unprepared to right.

This is the exciting part of the video where we get to talk about stationary, which is like my favorite thing in the world, and this is also gonna be the easiest tip for us to, like, physically follow, which is to get yourself the right journal.

I am a strong believer that all the places and things in our lives carry sentiments with them.

If that makes sense, over time we develop associations with certain spaces, certain objects, and they could make us feel a certain way, like in my office, because I do a lot of work there.

I feel productive in my bedroom.

I feel really cozy and safe and intimate, just like I like to separate my office and where I sleep I think is so important to separate your planner from your journal.

I used to try to journal in the back of my planner, like in the last couple pages.

There's normally notes pages, and sometimes I would write a paragraph or two.

But it never got me that far because a planner feels like a place to be productive.

It doesn't feel like the right place to just, like, unleash your inner thoughts, because this reminds me of the stress of school and work, and this is just a nice little space for me to express my thoughts and nothing else.

My journal is an expanded classic hardcover plane page mole skin that is a mouthful but I will also link it below.

If you guys want to buy my exact journal and I use a G to gel pen in 0.38 this is the only pen that I have written with for like, five years.

It is so smooth.

It's really fine.

It just it looks beautiful on the page.

I would also highly recommended these and I will link them down below.

You so far have been so deprived.

You have not written with these because they are glorious.

But obviously everybody has different preferences when it comes to their stationery and what they feel comfortable writing in.

So I came up with some qualifiers for you guys to think about when you're finding your perfect journal.

The 1st 1 is the number of pages in your journal.

I got this expanded mole skin, which I believe is around 400 pages.

It's like twice the size of a regular mole skin.

And for me, that made a huge difference because when my notebook is too small, I feel like every page is too valuable, and I feel intimidated to actually write out like, four pages of my thoughts, because I realized that I'm using up so much of my notebook, So I want there to be enough pages, so I don't feel guilty for using them up.

I also know, for some people, this might be an incredibly intimidating number of pages to fill up.

And when you see this many blank pages, you just think, How the hell am I ever gonna do that?

It becomes intimidating.

You don't even want to start.

So it's all about finding that perfect balance.

Another thing to think about is your notebook size.

First of all, from a practical standpoint, you've got to think about the size of your notebook in relation to the size of your purse or your briefcase or backpack, especially if you're journaling while traveling or on the commute to work.

You want something that you can easily carry around with you.

This is around eight by five inches, which is a pretty standard journal size and my favorite size because, as you're writing, I think I can fit about like two paragraphs year, so it's about 10 sentences on a page which honestly fills up pretty quickly and makes me feel like I'm making progress as I'm writing That's the reason I never vied with really big journals or I could never finish up a composition book because they're just too large and al, I'm writing.

I've been writing for, like, 10 minutes, and I still haven't filled page up.

Then I feel like I'm not even making any progress.

So there's definitely something nice to being able to, like Flip the pages as you journal and feel like you're feeling something up.

This one's pretty obvious but nice feeling paper and something that won't bleed through to the other side when you press, when you press hard with your pen of choice.

I also much prefer a notebook that is traditionally bound rather than a spiral.

Because as you're writing on the side of the notebook, if you have a spiral like your hand is constantly gonna be on top of the spiral and it makes her really uncomfortable writing experience.