You're listening to the Overthinkers Guide to Joy, episode five. This week, I'm going
to talk about another one of my favorite daily habits to manage my overthinking
brain, the power of journaling. Let's get started. Hey there,
you are listening to the Overthinkers Guide to Joy. This is a podcast for
overthinkers, overachievers, perfectionists, Type A, stressed out,
anxious people who just want to calm down and feel better. I'm your host,
certified life coach Jackie de Crinis.
Hey there and welcome back. Today we're going to be talking about one of my
favorite ways to manage my overthinking brain. So this is a little hack that I
recommend to almost every one of my clients. And it's really interesting how often
people will push back on this one. This is one that is seemingly very easy and yet
is hard to remember to do. But once you get the hang of it,
like everything I've recommended before this, you'll realize It's just a practice and
everything we do to manage our overthinking brains, to manage our stress, to manage
our anxiety, to manage our depression or sadness. And again, I'm not talking about
clinical or diagnosed anxiety or depression. I'm talking about just the feeling in
your body when you feel anxious or the feeling in your body and you feel sad and
it's getting in the way of your daily activities. Now, if it's a chronic problem,
as I said, that needs to be handled by a professional. But if we're talking about
situational or temporary sadness or anxiety or anxiousness, these are the things I
recommend to my clients to manage the feelings that show up when the situations or
circumstances arise that cause those unpleasant feelings. So here's one of my
favorites, it's journaling. Now I have been keeping journals my whole life.
When I was a little girl, a very popular gift to get when you were in the third
grade or fourth grade was a diary. And a diary usually was like, it was pink or
it was orange or it was yellow and it had flowers and it had a little lock with
a little key and it was just like so much fun. The idea that like now you finally
have the ability to learn to write or you're practicing your penmanship and you
could have your thoughts and write them down and they would be a secret and then
you would hide the key. And unless you had like a snoopy older brother like my
brother, nobody was reading your journal or your diary, but it was the idea that
you were keeping secrets that was just so much fun, right? So that habit of keeping
a diary was something that I carried with me for most of my life.
I kind of got rid of the one with the little lock and the flower vinyl cover,
but I started keeping notebooks, journals. And I think through most, there was one
period of my life where I didn't keep journals, I have a closet full of them. And
I wrote different things at different times. Sometimes it was a way to manage my
sadness. Sometimes it was a way to celebrate. Sometimes it was a way to get out
feelings that I didn't feel were appropriate to share with other people or secrets
people told me or secrets I had that I didn't want to tell other people. It didn't
really matter. It was really the practice of writing things down that gave me the
ability to move forward or to actually discover that I had made progress.
'Cause oftentimes I'll go back and I'll read the journals years later and I'll think
that was a problem. Wow, okay. And that's why I tell my clients,
keep a journal. So here's the pushback I often get though. What do I write about?
Okay, What do you write about? Well, if you listen to my four essential daily
habits to reduce your stress series, also known as home, then you know you have a
lot of tracking to do in your daily habits. So for example, if you're new to
drinking eight glasses of water a day, one of the best ways to ensure that you
will get that eight glasses of water a day is to track it, Write it down. That's
something that goes in your journal. I know, it sounds silly. Really, I'm gonna
write down how many glasses of water I drank today? Yes, you're going to unless
it's already a habit. Plus, the more accountable you are to writing it down,
the more likely you'll do it until it becomes a habit. And once it becomes a
habit, you don't have to write it down anymore. The other thing that's a fabulous
thing to track is what are you eating? Whether you're on a diet or whether you're
trying to eat more healthfully, or whether you're trying to follow my protocol of
protein at every meal, or eat more frequently so that you don't have your blood
sugar drop, journaling or tracking is a great thing to write down. Same with sleep.
If you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep or getting enough sleep, track
it. In fact, journaling before time is one of the greatest ways to get all the
junk out of your head so that you can sleep more peacefully. Rather than watching
the nightly news, which is kind of full of sensationalism and terrifying headlines to
get you to watch the nightly news, or rather than scrolling social media, or rather
than doing work up until the time you go to sleep, if you take out your journal
and simply write down whatever's coming to your mind, what thoughts you have,
even if it's about work, even if it's just, oh, I wanna remember to do this
tomorrow or I've got this for my shopping list, it can be a to -do list, it can
be a shopping list, it can be a list of things you've accomplished during the day.
That's actually a great thing to end your day with, which is like, what did I
complete today? There's a funny meme on the internet that says, "I did five loads
of laundry today." That is enough. And I started to laugh because I think I did
five loads of laundry this morning. And I almost laid down and was like, "Yeah,
that's enough." If that's all you completed today was your laundry, put it in your
journal. You did something today. It's so easy for our brains to focus on what we
didn't do, what we didn't accomplish. And then we turn it against ourselves to be
like, oh, I'm not good enough. Oh, I don't complete things. Oh, I didn't get
through my whole to -do list today. Well, use your journal for what you did do or
what you want to do tomorrow. Or if you journal in the morning, which is also a
great way to start your day. Journal, what intentions you have for today? What do
you want to accomplish? Not like, you know, conquer the world. What's one thing you
want to accomplish today? Like this morning, I was journaling after I meditated. And
my goal was I need to record a podcast today. So that was how I set my intention
in my journal today. And tonight, if all goes well, hopefully I'll put I completed
an episode or two of my podcast today. And of course, five loads of laundry. So
journaling can literally be list -making. Things you wanna do, things you hope to do,
things you've done. Journaling can, again, be tracking. What have I drank? What have
I eaten? How much did I sleep? Track your meditation. If that's a new practice to
you and you need help staying accountable for that daily meditation, write it down.
If you meditated for five minutes, give yourself some credit, create your own report
card, put it in your journal. Journal about journaling. You can literally write in
your journal. Jackie made me write in this journal today, I have nothing to say,
but at least I journaled. I'll take that. We have on the average,
60 ,000 thoughts a day. You're gonna hear me say that a number of times 'cause it
bears repeating. 60 ,000 thoughts a day. A lot of them are really important and most
of them are just noise. But in order to sift through the noise, the triggers,
the aggravations, the annoyances, the irritations, the celebrations, the joys,
the accomplishments, we need to be able to process those 60 ,000. Now, do you need
to write them down? No. Do you need to even acknowledge all 60 ,000 thoughts?
Absolutely not. But the ones that are truly joyful, that bring you to a place where
you want to relish in that feeling, write it down, celebrate it. Or for those
thoughts that won't go away, like, ooh, I shouldn't have said that to my boss, ooh,
I think that email was a little hostile, ooh, I should apologize to my neighbor, or
Oh, I shouldn't have yelled at my kids for not putting their dishes in the sink,
whatever it is, those thoughts that are kind of nagging and either keeping you awake
or making you feel bad, write them down, process them through a journal so they
don't end up like squirrels in your head, which goes back to the main goal of this
podcast. So you can reduce the overthinking brain and find greater joy.
Journaling is the best way to navigate and to quell the overthinking brain.
So what's something else you can journal about? You can journal creative things.
You can doodle. Doodling is journaling. You can write a story.
You don't have to even write in prose. You can just simply write down words that
are coming up for you. Maybe there's a feeling you aspire to have. Maybe there's a
feeling you want to get rid of, like guilt or shame. Sometimes writing down a
feeling, good or bad, and the thoughts behind the feeling, good or bad,
can help process them, either get rid of them or get you closer to that goal.
The power of journaling is the doing. So again,
like everything I recommend, people will often say to me, "Well, I don't have time
to do that.
I don't have time to journal." And I always say, "If you have time to watch TV
and you have time to scroll social media and you have time to obsess about a
thought, you have time to journal. You don't have to turn it into becoming a
writer, a novelist, a journalist. You just have to take two minutes and jot down
your thoughts. I often say people should carry a notebook or even your phone because
there's all kinds of little note apps in your phone. If you have a thought that is
either productive or getting in the way of your productivity, get it out of your
head by writing it down. See what happens. Now, the most important rule in
journaling, I happen to think it's nice if you have a journal you like to write
in, although it's not necessary. You can also write on an app again or a scrap
piece of paper or post it. But ideally, a journal that you look forward to writing
in is great. A pen you look for or a pencil that you look forward to writing with
is ideal. But literally, it can be anything. If all you have is a broken crayon
and a scrap piece of paper or the back of a used envelope, write on that.
The idea is to create the habit of it. And you can also transfer it into your
journal later if That's something you want to do. But the only rule of journaling
is that there aren't any rules of journaling. The only rule of journaling is just
the doing. It's kind of like all those other habits I talked about. It's just a
practice. And the more you do it, the more you'll want to do it. And the more you
want to do it, the more useful it becomes. You'll start to see the benefits of it.
You'll start to see that it reduces your anxiety. It can sometimes even quell the
sadness if you're feeling overwhelmed by something. But write it down and don't worry
about if it's pretty. Don't worry about proper grammar. Don't worry about punctuation.
Don't worry about scratching things out. Don't worry about any of it. Just write.
Right? As fast as your hand can take you. Now, for those of you who it's truly
painful to write, you either are a terrible speller or words don't come easily to
you, or you're not even just really a fan of words, but you're still stuck with
lots of thoughts, right? Positive or negative doesn't matter. If they're getting in
your way, if those thoughts are creating a lot of emotion unwanted, then record.
If you have a smartphone, there's a voice memo app on, I think there's something
else on most smartphones. Record your thoughts. Just let 'em out.
Get 'em out of your head. You don't always need, and again,
I've already caveated this to death, If we're talking about truly diagnosed or
chronic depression or anxiety, yes, talking to a professional is absolutely paramount.
But if we're just talking about situational anxiety or sadness, depression,
just letting the words out, getting them out of your head and onto a recording or
into a journal or onto a piece of paper, That can be enough. That can alleviate
the stress in your brain and make you feel better. So journaling has extraordinary
powers. Whether you call it writing in your diary, whether you call it journaling,
whether you call it tracking if you're on a diet or you're trying to maintain an
exercise practice, a meditation practice, a better eating practice, whatever it is,
Journaling is the secret to getting it done. So I invite you to go buy,
find, borrow, unearth an old notebook, a new notebook,
something in your house or at the store or online and start journaling. You pick
the color, you pick the size, you pick the pen, you pick the pencil. Just have fun
with it and set a time. Do you want a journal in the morning and set intentions
for your day or do you want a journal in the evening and get out all the thoughts
before you lay down to rest at night and get a good night's sleep? Or is a
journal something you're going to carry with you during the day just to keep you
occupied or maybe when you're waiting for a meeting to start or maybe when you're
waiting in line to do something? You've got your journal more productive than
scrolling through social media. But I invite you to start journaling today. Go get
yourself a journal today and start writing down whatever you want, but do it every
day and see what happens. All right, that's the power of journaling.
I thank you for listening to this week's episode. I hope you'll come back for my
next episode, more tips, hacks, and all kinds of goodies, how to reduce your stress,
and your anxious overthinking brain. Have a great week and bye for now.
If you wanna learn more tips about managing your stress and how to manage your
overthinking brain, just go to my website and sign up for my weekly newsletter at
jackiedecrinis.com. That's J -A -C -K I E D E C R I N I S dot com.
You can also follow me on Instagram at Jackie de Crinis. Bye for now. Thank you for
listening to this episode of Overthinkers Guide to Joy. If you like what was offered
in today's episode, I would love you to leave a review and subscribe or follow
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