The Mindset Mentor - How to Journal

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

Journaling might be the most important self development routine you can create. In this episode, I am going to teach you exactly how to journal to get the most out of your time. Follow me on IG for more inspiration here: https://www.instagram.com/robdialjr/ If you live in the US/Canada and you want to receive motivational texts from me, text me now at 1-512-580-9305 or click here https://my.community.com/robdial Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you want to receive emails from me every single Monday morning with my intentions going into every single week, go to mondayemail.com right now. I'll send you a free email every Monday morning with my intentions going into every single week. Go to mondayemail.com right now. I'll send you a free email every Monday morning with my intentions going into the week so that you can see what I'm focusing on. So if you want to steal my intentions and focus on the same thing, you and I can work on the same intentions each week. So once again, it is mondayemail.com right now. Today, I'm going to be talking about what I feel might be one of the most

important routines that you can do for yourself every single day. This is important for yourself. This is important for everyone that you know. And this is important for your own personal development, but also your own spiritual development as well. Whatever spiritual development might mean for you, because it means something different, this is one of the most important routines that you can develop in yourself daily. I'm going to teach you how to journal. I'm going to teach you the simplest way to journal,

the way that I've discovered and the way that I never hear people talk about. And for years, I had heard, hey, you should journal, you should journal. And I did journal, but I did it wrong. And I used to think that it was kind of like I'd sit down and say, dear diary, today, I did it wrong. And I used to think that it was kind of like I'd sit down and say, dear diary, today I have this going on. And at the end of the day, I'd say, dear diary, this is what my day was like. And I'd treat it as if I was just kind of talking about what my life was like. And I didn't see much value from it. But the reason why was because I was doing it wrong. And I'm going to teach you the one way that I have found that provides the most value for me, but I've taught this to thousands of other people. And they seem to say it's the most valuable for them as well.

One day I was having this probably seven years ago, I was having a really hard day. I was inside of Zilker Park in Austin. I was inside of my hammock and I had my journal in front of me. I was like, man, I'm just feeling all these feelings. I don't know what's going on inside of me. I don't know why I feel this way. And so what I decided to do is I became really curious about what was going on inside of me. And so what I did was I just wrote down a bunch of questions of like, hey, why do I feel anxious right now? What is it that's causing all this anxiety?

And I just wrote, it was like 15 questions. I wrote down all of these questions. I'm like, hey, what do I want to know about myself? What do I want to know about how I feel? And then what I did was then I just answered those questions. And it turned into one of the most eye-opening experiences for me because I was able to actually figure out the right way, in my opinion, to journal and be able to work through what's going on in my head.

So let's talk about real quick why you want to journal and why this is important for you. And hopefully, I can sell you on the fact that you should be journaling every single day. The reason why it's important is because you've heard me say this before. You've been listening to the podcast long enough. When things are in your head, they're really hard to understand a lot of times. They can be really abstract. And what you're trying to do, if you think about your life, your life is very complex. You've got different situations for this person, this person. You've got your work.

You've got your relationships. You've got your personal development. You've got a spiritual. You've got all of these different complex things that are all happening at the exact same time. If you think about how complex your life actually is, it's one of the reasons why I stopped smoking weed years ago because every time I would start smoking weed,

I was like, holy shit, my life is so intense. There's so many things happening at one time. How do I get myself to keep going? It would get to be too much. I would get anxious about how much I actually had on my plate every single day. And so when you think about how complex your life is, it is really complex. And to be able to put all of it down on a piece of paper and to get it out of your head and on a piece of paper makes it much, much easier. Another reason why journaling is so important is because most people are actually visual people, visual learners. Researchers have found that no less than 65% of people are visual learners. At least 65% of you listening right now learn better

when you see something visually, like you can actually look at it. And so if you're trying to figure something out in your head, it's a lot harder to do it in your head than it is to do it on paper, especially if you're a visual learner. And so when you see something on paper, it makes it easier to comprehend. You can understand the complexities of it and you can usually start to work through whatever that problem is. I always talk about if I gave you a math problem and it was something like 254 times 439. Some of you math wizards out there, you might be able to just pull the answer up and be able to work through the answer immediately

and you're good to go. For the rest of us, you probably need to have pen and paper. And a lot of you could go old school multiplication like we were taught in grade school and you could figure it out what's 254 times 436 or 439 or whatever it is that I said, and you could figure it out with pen and paper. It's the exact same thing with trying to figure out what's going on in your head and trying to figure out your life and trying to figure out your feelings and trying to figure out

your emotions because all of those things are super complex. If you can't figure out a math problem in your head and it's easier to do on paper, it's much easier to take all of your complex feelings and emotions and things going on in your life and start to really figure them out and comprehend them with pen and paper. And that's the reason why I found that journaling works so well.

So let's dive into it. Let's talk about how to journal. It's so simple. I want to make this so simple for you that anybody listening right now can immediately do this today. What you do is you sit down with pen and paper and you just ask yourself a question and then you answer it. It's that simple. Now we're going to go much deeper into it, but it is literally that simple. If you take nothing else from this the next time, you know, a few minutes time speaking, you ask a question and you answer it.

So if you wake up and you feel happy, maybe you woke up and you feel amazing today and you want to feel this way every single day. You wake up and you ask yourself, why do I feel so happy? Why do I feel so happy today? And then you answer the question, why you feel so happy? You know, if you wake up and you don't feel happy today, you can ask yourself, why do I feel the way that I feel today?

What can I do to make myself happier today? What would make today a great day? And you ask yourself these questions and then just answer them. You know, if you wake up and you feel really anxious, a lot of people wake up and feel really anxious. A lot of times I feel anxious when I wake up in the morning. And the reason why is because usually what wakes humans up is cortisol. And cortisol is a stress hormone inside of your body. And when you have the highest amount of cortisol in your blood and your body is in the mornings. And so a lot of people feel anxious. And so maybe you wake up in the morning and you feel anxious.

And you sit there and you said, okay, I feel really anxious today. What is making me feel anxious? And then you answer that question. Am I worried about something? Am I scared about something? Is there some fear or limiting belief that's lingering in the background? And then you just answer the question. What is making me feel this way? And then I'll give you one of my favorites. If you don't know what to ask yourself, because so many people are like, do you have a list of questions to ask yourself? I don't.

I just ask myself whatever question seems to be on my mind that day. And one of my favorites is just the question, what do I want? And the beautiful thing about what do I want is it's very vague, but it could also go very, very narrow. So it could be very wide, but it could be also very narrow. So I'll give you a good idea of what I mean by that. If you say, what do I want? And that's it. What you want today is going to be different than what you want tomorrow and the next day and the next day. When you go wide, it might be like, what do I want?

I really want a cup of coffee right now. Okay, what do I love about coffee? And you can start asking yourself questions around it. So you could go wide or you could go really narrow as well. What do I want in my life? You start writing down all of the things that you want in your life. What do I want in my life? You start writing down all of the things that you want in your life. What do I want in my business? And you start writing down all of the things that you want in your business. What do I want in my love life? What do I want in my relationship with

my kids? What do I want in my bank account? You could ask yourself, what do I want in blank? And just find out all of these different parts of your life. And what happens is you start to notice, you start to become very clear on what it is that you actually want. It really drives me insane how many people I talk to and they're like, Rob, I want help. I'm trying to get this in my life. And I'm like, what do you want? They're like, I don't know. I'm like, well, fucking figure out what you want first, because you can't go for something that you can't see. because you can't go for something that you can't see. Like you can't hit a target that you can't see.

So the good thing about these journaling questions and allowing yourself to go deeper to them is you actually start to figure out what it is that you want. What it is that you want in your life. What it is you want in your relationships and your relationship with your children and your love life and your bank account

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And this is what I don't ever hear people talking about as well. And this is what will really, really help you out. Go deeper with every answer that you have. One of the things that I found with people is that people, as much as we think we know ourselves, we don't know ourselves at all. And as you start journaling, you will start to learn about yourself things that you never knew. I remember one of my clients years ago,

like six years ago, when I used to do one-on-one coaching, he said, I thought I knew myself until I started working with you and then I realized I didn't know myself at all. And one of the reasons why was because one of his assignments was daily journaling to start to figure out who he is

and why he is the way that he is. And so the secret is to make sure it should go deeper because we are surface level. Like a lot of times, if you go out and have a conversation with someone, let's be real. It's just a surface level conversation most of the time. The problem with that is you're also usually very surface level with yourself and you don't even really go really deep into what it is that you need to work on for yourself. And so what you do is you ask yourself a question, you answer the question, and then you ask yourself another question about the answer that you just answered. So these start with who, what, why, when, where, and how. If you have pen and paper,

I'd write these down. Who, what, why, when, where, and how. You don't have to go through all six of these, but these will just give you an idea when you look at the answer of how the next question should start. Who, what, why, when, where, how. So let me give you just an example of how this would work for you. I'll give you a couple of examples to help you out. Let's say you wake up.

Man, you just feel so anxious today. Let's say it's the middle of the day and you still feel really anxious for the day. So it's not just the high levels of cortisol in your blood from waking up. You write down, why do I feel so anxious? Okay. Your answer could be, let's say, it's I'm anxious because I'm worried about the presentation that I have to give at work. Okay. So the level one question is, why do I feel anxious? Level one answer is, I'm worried about

the presentation I have to give at work today. So then level two question is now going to be a question about the level one answer. Okay. So level one answer once again was I'm worried about a presentation. I have to give it work today. Okay. So let me ask a deeper question around that. What can I do right now to lower my anxiety? There's your level two question. Starts with who, what, why, when, where, or how. What can I do right now to lower my anxiety? That's the level two question. Level two answer, you start writing it down. Okay, I can do my breathing exercise right now. And then right after I get done with my breathing exercise,

I'm going to take 15 minutes and I'm going to review my presentation and I'm going to read it out loud. And then if you can go deeper into your answer, go deeper into your answer. But that alone right now, you start off and look at what we just realized. Why do I feel anxious right now? Well, we've identified why you feel anxious. It's the presentation. What can we do to get rid of it? We can do a breathing exercise and we can take 15 minutes to review and read your presentation

out loud. That alone will lower the anxiety that you're feeling. You see the benefit of this? Let's say, let's go into another one. Let's say, you know, you're thinking about your love life a lot recently. Okay. What do I want in my love life is a question that you ask yourself. And let's say you're married. And the answer is, I want my spouse to respect me more. Maybe you don't feel like you're getting enough respect from your spouse. Okay. That was your level one question, level one answer. Level two question that goes deeper into that. Okay. Where does my spouse respect me and where do they seem to not be respecting me? Okay. And then you write it down. You know, he respects me around other people. Where does he not respect me? I

don't feel that he respects me with me growing into this new business venture. He's been kind of given a little bit of side jabs, making fun of the company that I'm joining or making fun of the company I'm trying to start or making fun of the products I'm trying to build or whatever it is. Maybe that's the answer. Okay. Next question. Let's go even deeper into it. Now let's go level three question. What can I do to get his respect in my business? Level three answer. I can have a conversation with him about how I feel and how I would like his respect in this business because it is so important to me. Okay, boom. Now we just have an idea from, it went from what do I want in my love life to now I've identified that I want more respect and I want respect from my

spouse on the new business that I'm starting. Boom. Look at that. We're literally solving our complex problems, pen and paper. It's so ridiculously easy, but it is so profound if you actually start to use this. And this is very much like a psychoanalyst will do. When you go see a psychoanalyst, a psychoanalyst will literally sit there and they are trained to ask you as many questions as possible, but give you as few statements as possible. So their job is to literally ask you questions

and have you answer them. And for you to come up with your own answers, you can do this with yourself every single day for free and basically become your own psychoanalyst. And now here's the thing I want to definitely cover. This is super, super important, everybody. Some of you are already thinking this, and I know it is because I've worked with so many people over the years that do this type of stuff. Some of you have already thought, well, what if my boyfriend finds it? Or what if my girlfriend finds it? Or what if my husband finds it? What if my roommates find it? Oh my God, that would be so embarrassing for them

to know my deepest, darkest secrets, the things that I'm trying to work on. Okay, whatever it is that you're worried about, don't allow somebody finding your journal that you haven't even started yet, but will be starting. Don't allow that to be the reason why you don't go deep in your journal that you haven't even started yet, but will be starting, don't allow that to be the reason why you don't go deep in your journal. You can do many different things. You can hide it if you want to, or if it makes you feel better, after you've done a journaling session, you've gotten the deep, dark secrets of all of the things that you need to work on to make your life better and everything, you can literally rip up the journal entry if it makes you feel better. Just do not, not go deep with yourself. That is one of the things that you will do

is you will rob yourself from really understanding who you are, what you want, where you're going and what you're supposed to do in this world. If you don't go deep with your journaling session, you are only able to go as deep with other people as you are with yourself. And so if you feel like other people are very service level, it's probably because you're very service level with yourself.

You cannot go deeper with yourself. I'm sorry, you cannot go deeper with people than you allow yourself to go deep with yourself. So you have to understand that. Just whatever it is you got to do. If you've got to hide your journal, if you're afraid of your roommates finding it, throw it under your bed. Cut a hole in your bed and throw it in there. I don't give a shit what you do. Just make sure that you go deep with yourself. And then people always ask the question, how often should I journal? How long should it take?

Should I take two hours every single morning? Just do every morning for 10 minutes. That's it. If you want to do more, you can do more. And just ask yourself two to three questions and make yourself find the answers. That's it. And my favorite one to end with, and this will just, so many of you, if you start doing this, you'll notice your life improving

massively. All you have to do, end every single journaling session with what can I do to make today amazing? That's it. What can I do today to make today amazing? And you just start to look at your day and start to put things that make you happier into it. I've said this so many times in the podcast, but one of my friends was in a real deep depression and he was able to pull himself out of it. And this was years ago, but he was in a really, really deep depression.

He was fired from Facebook right before they went public, which means that he missed out on $180 million because he was fired. So he went into a deep depression. He pulled himself out of it. And this company started a new company. Eventually his company's doing over $10 million a year. He's crushing it. So it's awesome. But he was in a really deep depression. And one thing that he said is he would wake up every single morning and say, how can I make myself happier today? When he was

deep in his depression and he started listing out all of the things he could do each day and the things that he would do each day to make himself happier. And the phrase that he said that I'll never forget to the day I die is I will not let my depression or my happiness be left up to chance. So he was making a plan to figure out a way to make himself happier. And so if you just end all of your journaling sessions,

or if you just ask yourself that one question and journal it every single day, what can I do to make today amazing? So take 10 minutes every single day, two or three questions, one question, whatever it is, and then just end with what can I do to make today amazing? So take 10 minutes every single day, two or three questions, one question, whatever it is, and then just end with what can I do to make today amazing? So that is how you journal. It's very simple. You ask yourself a question, you answer it, and if you can go deeper into your answer, go deeper into your answer. But do this every single day and you will start to notice massive shifts in your life because of how aware you have become

as to why you are the way that you are and what it is that you're trying to build in your life because of how aware you have become as to why you are the way that you are and what it is you're trying to build in your life. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor, share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it. We don't have any massive corporation that is pushing this out and putting millions of dollars into Facebook ads. There's other people who have ESPN and they have Vox and they have all of these different companies that sponsor them and put their podcasts out there. This is literally just me sitting inside of my office recording this for you guys. So the only way that we grow is from you guys

sharing it. So if you would share it, I would greatly, greatly, greatly, greatly appreciate it. When you do share it on your Instagram stories, just tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.