Future Self Journaling: How to Redesign Yourself With a Simple Journal

Have you ever had a morning where you ever awakened and thought to yourself, “how on Earth did I end up with this negative life situation?”

You are not alone. Trust me; I’ve been there. This is when future self journaling comes to the rescue.

The shocking news is that you can become any person that you want to be.

You do so by developing awareness of your life and seeing your negative habits. Get ready to immediately get on the fast track for becoming the person that you’ve always dreamed of becoming.

What is Future Self Journaling?

Put simply; future self journaling is the art of gaining awareness of how your life is today and where you want to be.

Journaling is more than merely a pen and paper; it’s taking all of the chaotic data in our brains and organizing it on paper. It gives you clarity and perspective on the big picture of life.

By using a journal to become mindful of your life and rediscovering your purpose, you can then craft together with an action plan that you can use to move forward.

Why I Prefer Journaling Over Traditional Planners

Traditional planners work great for many people, but I think that a journal is the best route for overall productivity and happiness for folks like me.

Why? A journal is more than just planning. It’s also a tool for cultivating joy, gratitude, and so many other positive emotions.

Productivity happens to be an incredible byproduct that results from great emotional well being. When you focus on building gratitude and appreciation daily, taking action becomes a cinch and natural behavior.

The problem I had with a traditional cheap planner from a supermarket is that it only lists all the tasks and goals.

Planning is excellent, but isn’t it so much better to have a planner, gratitude journal, and habit tracker all in one? I believe so.

The Benefits of Future Self Journaling

Future self journaling benefits your life in so many ways. It improves your productivity and turns you into an action-taking machine, and provides a plethora of benefits for every area of your life. Here are just a few of them.

Clarity of Mind

Do you ever have so many ideas and thoughts that it causes confusion and makes it challenging to create a plan?

You’re not alone. All too often, so many of us conjure up so many plans and ideas for our lives that we never actually sit down and create a plan.

You may have an important goal that you want to achieve, but it feels overwhelming to even think about it.

What’s excellent about future self journaling is that you can break up any goal into small, easily manageable pieces.

When you see that even the most complex goals break down into a bunch of tiny little habits and actions, it becomes less daunting and more exciting.

You Stay On Track With Healthy Habits

We all have new habits that we want to create, but how many of us are checking in with ourselves so that we to them? My guess is not enough of us.

I know for myself that there have been many times where I was all in with creating a new habit, but then I suddenly realized several months later that I fell away from a healthy habit without realizing it.

This is because of a lack of self-awareness.

You may be all in with a healthy habit initially, but let’s face it, life gets busy.

It’s so easy to forget about a healthy habit that you once committed to integrating. Journaling helps you to discipline yourself and create the drive for achieving any positive habit.

Future self journaling gives you constant daily awareness of your daily habits.

It also becomes your accountability coach for staying on track. If you’re in the practice of writing down every time that you completed a habit for the day, you reward yourself and track the habit simultaneously.

You Train Yourself To Be Grateful

It’s very easy to wake up in the morning and immediately start being frustrated with the demands of the day.

It’s such a shame it is that so many of us have so much abundance to be grateful for in our lives, yet we’re still not appreciative. Journaling turns that around for you.

When you start your day off with strategic planning and gratitude, that becomes a winning formula that will help you succeed in every area of your life.

Gratitude, like anything else, is a habit and a journal is an easy way to train yourself to focus on the good.

How to Do Future Self Journaling

Future self journaling is a straightforward process, so don’t allow yourself to overcomplicate it.

I do highly recommend that you buy an excellent journal that inspires you.

I prefer a simple journal with some inspirational artwork on the cover. Whether you choose a simple leatherbound journal or one with crazy artwork, whatever inspires you is the best journal for you.

Design Your Journaling Template

Journaling is meant to be something fun, inspiring, and productive. There is no wrong way to journal unless you journal about everything you hate (I doubt you’d do that!).

I’ll provide some tips for you below for designing your template, but by all means, create it however you want.

Jot Down What You’re Grateful For

One of my favorite methods to begin a journal is to jot down what I’m grateful for on that day.

Your “gratitude list” doesn’t have to be a million things. I often like to challenge myself to come up with three things that I’m grateful for. With that said, there’s no limit on how much you can jot down to be grateful for.

QUICK TIP: One thing that I’ve found with gratitude journaling is that when you become grateful for the same things every day, you might be limiting yourself with gratitude.

For example, you can be grateful just for a raindrop or one specific plant! Be thankful for the same things, of course, but also stretch yourself to become grateful for something new every day or so.

Write down Your Goals

Journal is perhaps the best way to keep track of your goals. Reading and constantly reviewing your plan will motivate you and excite you to take daily actions towards their attainment.

After jotting down your goals in your journal, break them up into a simple action plan. This is a potent tool for productivity.

You can chunk down any goal, no matter how complex, into tiny bite-sized pieces. Because of this, NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE for you to achieve.

You become a productive, inspired machine that masters the habits for achieving any outcome.

Track Your Habits

A habit is a thing that can be easily lost and quickly gained. If you want to stay consistent with any given habit over the long term, you must track it.

Sticking with a healthy habit for life is possible without journaling, but why not exponentially increase the likelihood of sticking to it through journaling?

When you journal, jot down some habits that you want to master and integrate into your life.

WARNING: I highly suggest incorporating one to three habits at a time.

It’s easy to become overconfident that you can add 20 new healthy habits to your life, but then when the stresses of daily life come in, you’ll quickly get off track.

The power of changing one to three habits at a time has the potential to transform your entire life over the long term.

After all, no successful person completely redesigned their whole life overnight.

Nope; instead, they gradually changed their lives over the long term, and eventually, they began to reap the rewards of their successful habits (e.g., a ripped body).

Over to You!

Ready to transform your life and ditch negative behaviors once and for all? If you answered yes, you must get started with future self journaling today.

I don’t care who you are, whether you are the worst procrastinator of all time or 400 pounds overweight.

What your past looks like is irrelevant to the present moment. You can immediately implement one small, simple habit that triggers a domino effect that changes your life.

Drop a comment below and share with everyone how you will use a journal to make positive changes in your own life.