Akai J Jackson : How Journaling Helped Me Be More Calm, Mindful And Resilient
An Interview With Heidi Sander
You get an opportunity to know yourself- Journaling helps you get to the deep-rooted causes and emotions. It helps broaden the spectrum of your emotional intelligence. You have the ability to see patterns, collect data, know and understand the things that make you happy, sad, angry, overwhelmed, etc. It’s incredible in a real-time tool that you can reflect on consistently to not only identify behaviors but to grow.
Journaling is a powerful tool to gain clarity and insight especially during challenging times of loss and uncertainty. Writing can cultivate a deeper connection with yourself and provide an outlet for calmness, resilience and mindfulness. When my mom passed on, I found writing to be cathartic. When I read through my journal years later, there were thoughts that I developed into poems, and others that simply provided a deeper insight into myself. In this series I’m speaking with people who use journaling to become more mindful and resilient.
As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Akai J. Jackson.
Akai J. Jackson; he’s the owner of IXL Today. A personal development agency that curates mindset shift programs that transform clients from existing to excelling in their physical, mental, and financial health.
Growth excites him! The common theme of his career has always been helping people evolve and grow into the best version of themselves. He started in the fitness industry, training everyone from the daily gym-goer to nationally recognized athletes. He learned early on that the most successful people had to break through self-limiting barriers through mindset shifts to succeed in excelling at their goals. Akai applied that same rule to everything and soon realized fitness just wasn’t enough for people to attain true health. He applied those same mindset shift principles to a more holistic definition of health involving mindfulness, physical, mental and financial health.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! We really appreciate the courage it takes to publicly share your story of healing. Before we start, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your background and your childhood backstory?
I’m originally from Annapolis Maryland and was raised by my grandmother and aunt respectively. I attended private school my entire life because my grandmother saw value in that and did everything she could to provide me with the best opportunity to be successful. That’s right you guessed it, a spoiled rotten mamas boy who wanted for nothing and never heard the word no. His father knew the world was not going to treat me as such, so was the reality check I needed to form the perfect sphere of hard work, structure, faith, and understanding what my purpose on planet earth was. Growing up I excelled in music as well as sports and earned an athletic scholarship to college. The dream of playing college basketball was cut short due to a devasting knee injury that I was not mentally tough enough or prepared enough to endure and come back from. I then drummed up enough courage to move to Orlando, FL sight unseen to pursue a career in music as a DJ and producer. I enrolled in the prestigious Full Sail University and obtained two degrees before my 21st birthday (Recording Arts & Entertainment Business). This all felt natural to me because this is all I’ve ever known, however; I felt unfulfilled and knew I was not doing anything that was changing lives or making a significant impact in people’s lives. I began to reflect back to when I felt the best about what he was doing with his life, which brought me back to working at a gym in high school and on my college campus and helping people lose weight and get in shape and most importantly feel better about themselves. It was then I realized I had it all wrong and began to pursue what I thought was going to just be a cool 9–5, little did I know he would find his calling and purpose in life. I spent seven years as a manager of the fastest-growing private health club in the industry at the time, three years as the Director of Personal Training Development and Education for Youfit Health Clubs and Retro Fitness respectively, as well as Strength and Conditioning Coach at the University of Central Florida for five years, all along knowing I was psychologically unemployable then entire time. I went out on my own full time in 2016 and has been in business for himself every since. I’ve worked with high profile high school, college, and professional athletes across multiple sports, became a published author, voted America’s Favorite Mindfulness Coach, a professional speaker, and touched the lives of many through second to none approach to helping people become the best version of themselves.
Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about journaling. Have you been writing in your journal for a long time or was there a challenging situation that prompted you to start journal writing? If you feel comfortable sharing the situation with us, it could help other readers.
I had actually gotten away from journaling for a long time until my grandmother passed away in 2020. I started journaling and was encouraged to do so by a counselor when I was in middle school. See from the outside looking in, my life looked great; private school, tons of friends, athletics, and school came easy, just a picture-perfect life. Internally I was a wreck and struggled with understanding the world around me. I suffered from abandonment, confusion, at times desperation and I clung to any and everything that gave me attention. I had large emotional holes that needed to be filled. Journaling helped me express those emotions to the best of my ability. It was an outward expression of my internal mess. I wanted to escape that pain, I wanted to express those emotions, I wanted to also know what it felt like to not have pain, journaling gave me that.
How did journaling help you heal, mentally, emotionally and spiritually?
Ever since I can remember journaling has always been a great spiritual experience for me. An outward expression of what I was internally feeling. The ability to see my thoughts and my emotions on paper gives me this incredible perspective on what I can and can’t control and over time it’s genuinely been able to help me build stronger faith, confidence, and the ability to regulate and communicate my emotions. Journaling was a place of peace, a safe place for me to be my true, authentic self with no judgment. I was able to get lost in thought, I could escape the world around me, and I could be FREE. All of this helped me gain confidence in myself because I knew exactly who I was, what emotional triggers I had, and fully understood why I am the way I am, which is what helped me heal.
Did journaling help you find more self-compassion and gratitude? Can you share a story about that?
Yes, journaling did help me find more self-compassion and gratitude. In fact, now, every one of my journal entries starts with gratitude. Earlier on throughout reflection, as things have happened in life, I found myself asking this one question first thing in the morning. “What if when I woke up this morning all I had was what I was grateful for the day before.” So every morning when I journal, it begins with the utmost thanks for as many thoughts and things I can think of. I remember being young, all I ever wanted to do was give back to my Grandmother somehow. I knew that I would never be able to repay her financially for everything she did and sacrificed for me, but I felt like if I could just DO good, be good, I wouldn’t be a disappointment to her and I could thank her by how I lived my life. I remember calling my grandmother once I got to college every couple of months in tears and telling her I felt like I was a terrible son and that I wasn’t doing enough or being enough to show her thanks. I apologized over and over again for my inadequacies. I was very hard on myself and never really gave myself any grace or compassion during this time and for the next 8 years or so. Journaling gave me the chance to reflect, the chance to see what and how I was feeling, the opportunity to look at my actions as well intrinsically and then do something with all of those emotions. Journaling gave me peace in a world of pain, it gave me strength in times of struggle and allowed me to see life lessons and messages within my own thoughts and emotions.
What kind of content goes into your journal? For example, do you free-write, write poems, doodle?
When I first started journaling it was riddled with pain, anger, animosity, confusion, frustration and was actually in the form of songs and poems. Now, more mature, refined, and a life full of structure, journaling I feel is the only chaotic thing I do. My journal entries are filled with stories, blurbs about what happened in the day, a wide range of emotions and thoughts, it’s a roller coaster of free writing. I start every journal with gratitude just a few things I am very grateful for, next it’s usually the first thought that comes to my mind and my words of affirmation, followed by my celebration of wins (one or two life victories from the last few days),
How did you gain a different perspective on life and your emotions while writing in your journal? Can you please share a story about what you mean?
I gained a tremendous amount of perspective on life and my emotions journaling. It is the only way I’ve found to be interrupted and alone with my thoughts and emotions. I think that it’s easy to get in a rut with life. Wake up at the same time every day, go to the same job or place every day, see the same people, and do the same thing every day, 10 steps forward and 10 steps back. Once I got back into journaling in 2013 I was in the worst space of my life up until that point. No job, no money, I was spiritually broken, no friends close by, emotionally broken into pieces. Journaling then brought out emotions that I had been wrestling with my entire life and questions that I needed answers to. I faced those emotions and got answers to those questions and in doing so became a published author. My pain became a platform for changing lives! The perspective that I gained was, being able to see that I could decide in advance how I was going to handle adverse or challenging situations. That I indeed had more control over my life than I realized. I was held captive by my thoughts, feelings, emotions and had made pain the fuel for everything in my life up until that point. I was afraid to get rid of that pain because I felt it made me who I was. Once I was able to journal, and deal with my emotions head-on… I became FREE from those emotions, no longer held captive by them!
In my own journal writing, I ended up creating poems from some of the ideas and one of them won an award. Do you have plans with your journal content?
With my journal content in written form no, I don’t have any plans. They do, however; serve as topics and content for motivational videos, reels, and professional speeches I have given.
Fantastic. Here is our main question. In my journaling program, I have found that journaling can help people to become more calm, mindful and resilient. Based on your experience and research, can you please share with our readers “five ways that journaling can help you to be more calm, mindful and resilient”?
Here are five ways journaling can help you be more calm, mindful, and resilient:
1.You get an opportunity to know yourself- Journaling helps you get to the deep-rooted causes and emotions. It helps broaden the spectrum of your emotional intelligence. You have the ability to see patterns, collect data, know and understand the things that make you happy, sad, angry, overwhelmed, etc. It’s incredible in a real-time tool that you can reflect on consistently to not only identify behaviors but to grow.
2. Clarity- Writing inherently forces you to identify, organize, and release your thoughts on paper. This simple act allows you to see your advances from entry to entry which you should see translate to your daily life in action and real-time.
3. Be Present- I think most people are well-rounded and have a grasp of their emotional compass. With that said I think we all function in past (this is how this used to make me feel or because this happened back then I act like this now), and also the future (next week I’ll do this, or we procrastinate which means some time in the future I will fulfill X, Y, Z). Journaling actually manifests itself in real-time. Your thoughts RIGHT NOW are being articulated into words on paper.
4. Affirm and Confirm- The very nature of journaling is getting in touch with yourself. What you say when you talk to yourself about yourself is important. It is also important for you to understand that you have permission to feel. Whatever you are feeling and wanting to express those feelings are yours and need to be validated and confirmed. Journaling gives you the opportunity to regulate those emotions and express those thoughts and emotions.
5. Growth- You grow immensely in spirituality, mindfulness, and emotions through journaling. There are so many ways and none of them are wrong when it comes to writing which means any way you care to express yourself you have the freedom to do so.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of peace to the greatest amount of people, what would that be?
If I could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of peace to the greatest amount of people that movement would be of self-love and self-help! People have to learn themselves, have to get in touch with themselves, they have to be willing to understand themselves, and journaling is a great step and place to do so.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them. :-)
If I could have a private breakfast or lunch with anyone in the world it would be Michael Jordan. I’m an 80’s baby and a basketball player, I grew up mimicking every move, had the shoes, wanted to go to UNC. I can’t tell you how many clutch game winners I practiced, “I want to be like Mike”. Growing up watching him and all of his success off the court as well, it’s the best of my former athletic career and my now business career! He has a competitive nature in the way he lives his life and that’s a quality I have as well. He is a pinnacle of success in multiple areas and I strive to be that and leave that type of impact and legacy on this earth!
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Readers can follow my work on
Instagram: @ixl_today & @akai.jadkson22
Facebook: I.X.L Today & Akai J. Jackson
I also have a blog on my website
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued fulfillment and success with your writing!
