Dejon Brooks: How Journaling Helped Me Be More Calm, Mindful And Resilient
An Interview With Heidi Sander
Helps you solve problems. Often as I am listing out the problems and frustrations I am going through, I’m often able to find solutions to these problems just by writing them down in my journal. I’ve used this technique to consistently find solutions to hard problems within my personal life and business and it always comes through.
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 Dejon Brooks.
Dejon is the 20-year-old Founder, who put his life savings into starting up Trend Watchers. After reaching over 50 million people through his own social platforms, Dejon now helps thousands of content creators go viral by taking advantage of internet trends.
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?
Yeah sure thing! I grew up all over the place. I’ve lived in Florida, South Africa, Illinois, South Carolina, Georgia, Utah, and California. And yes my mom was in the Air Force so that explains why we moved so much!
I am the oldest of four and always tended to be independent. I just enjoyed doing things by myself. This had its pros and cons but for the most part, it worked out pretty well. I also was a bit socializer growing up. I never like being the center of attention but I always took the time to work my way around the room to introduce myself to everyone. This skill has played a huge role in my adult life.
As far as what I do now I currently run Trend Watchers. I created this software company that notifies content creators about trends at 19 years old with my own money. Ever since then I’ve been able to bootstrap it to the point where it’s been able to grow exponentially.
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’ve always enjoyed documenting things. Especially events that have happened within my own life. One of the first journals I’ve ever written was created in the fifth grade. In this journal, I kept track of the stuff me and my neighbor did every day. I eventually turned this journal into a book that we could go back and read to laugh about our favorite times together.
This experience sparked my interest in journaling. Fast forward to middle school I would play a lot of Roblox. Since I was homeschooled, I would often finish my work early during the day which would give me the time to do this.
There was this specific game on Roblox that I was super knowledgeable on and I was afraid of forgetting everything I knew about the game so I kept a video journal of everything I knew on YouTube.
After I finish creating this database of knowledge, I left the videos public on YouTube by accident and this ended up sparking my YouTube career. I was able to reach tens of millions of people with my videos.
Just by keeping a journal!
How did journaling help you heal, mentally, emotionally and spiritually?
To be honest, I hate journaling. It takes a lot of energy and discipline to sit down and write for a couple of minutes or hours. But I am willing to sacrifice a couple of hours to write because I know that what I am writing will bring me joy and fulfillment in the future. Here’s how journaling helped me heal mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
Mentally & Emotionally
Sometimes life sucks and I just feel like throwing in the towel and giving up. I also sometimes feel like there is absolutely no way to make things work. By having a journal to review previous experiences, it’s able to help me shift from a negative mindset to a positive mindset because I’ve been able to overcome other obstacles in the past.
Spiritually
Whenever I am doubting my faith or I’m going through a rough patch, I always go back in my journal of experiences where God has helped me make it through rough times. Having this ability to go back and review these events not only makes my faith stronger but gives me the faith and hope that tomorrow will be a better day even though today is crap.
Did journaling help you find more self-compassion and gratitude? Can you share a story about that?
One of my most favorite memories is when I was first building out Trend Watchers. I had just approached a bunch of investors which all told me no. They basically told me to go all-in on Trend Watchers with my life savings because I was too young. I did not have enough money to hire someone to design and build my vision for Trend Watchers so I made the goal to learn how to code and build the thing myself.
When I got home that evening I got my laptop and a notepad and went to YouTube and found a coding tutorial that was around 50 videos long. Each video was probably hours long but I was willing to put in the work to make my vision come true.
Long story short the first video was a video on UI/UX design. After watching 30 minutes of the video, I installed Adobe XD and ended up designing my entire vision for Trend Watchers in a few hours. (during the same day!).
After I had the images created, I connected them all with a software and sent it to a developer. We got started on developing the software a few days later. This method turned out being far cheaper because the developer knew exactly what I wanted with the images I created!
What seemed impossible a few days earlier turned into reality with faith, hope, and a positive mindset. Every time I think of this event it brings so much joy and fulfillment into my soul and makes me appreciate the struggle I went through.
What kind of content goes into your journal? For example, do you free-write, write poems, doodle?
As far as my journal, I just keep it strictly life experiences and the things I’ve learned throughout my day-to-day experiences. I tend to get a lot more fulfillment from doing this.
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?
Often things sound good in your head but after you write them down you’re able to see it from a new perspective. Sometimes this perspective will make sense and other times it won’t.
I can’t think of a specific example within my personal life but I know this has happened a few times within my business. For example, I’ll think of a revolutionary idea in my head. After writing it down on paper I would realize it wouldn’t work as planned but will often find another opportunity just by seeing it from that different perspective.
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?
Yes I actually do! Right now I journal on Instagram. After my post goes live I copy the LONG caption and insert it into a Google document with all my previous entries. After it is saved there I will next take that same text and add a call to action to it and send it to my email list for Trend Watchers. This allows me to get two birds with one stone.
Once I have enough content, I do plan on releasing a book of all the knowledge I’ve been able to accumulate while bootstrapping Trend Watchers. As of now I believe I have enough content to fill up 100 pages so I’m about halfway there!
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”?
Yeah absolutely! From my experience, I noticed there are lots of benefits to journaling. I’ll name a few of them below and will cover each point in detail.
1. A place to vent.
Growing up I was a destructive child. I would always take my excess energy and lash out on others objects or video games. After learning how to express my thoughts and feelings through journaling I’ve used this as a medium to calm myself down and find solutions to problems. Journaling also helped me not make any stupid decisions that could potentially change the course of my life.
2. Allows you to see the big picture.
Life is full of ups and downs and as we all know it is not always moving upwards. By keeping a journal of both the ups and downs it allows you to see the bigger picture. Having a knowledge of the bigger picture lets you know that everything will be worth it in the end. This also gives you the strength to pull through whatever you are going through.
3. Gives you hope.
Life is like a book. Literally. The past may have already been written but you can write your present and future today. Shaping the life you want to live tomorrow also gives you hope and the strength to pull through whatever hardships you may be going through today.
4. Helps you solve problems.
Often as I am listing out the problems and frustrations I am going through, I’m often able to find solutions to these problems just by writing them down in my journal. I’ve used this technique to consistently find solutions to hard problems within my personal life and business and it always comes through.
5. Brings fulfillment.
And last but not least is fulfillment. By reviewing previous entries within my journal (especially during hard times), I can remind myself of the breakthroughs I’ve been able to achieve after a super hard time. Not only does this bring fulfillment to my soul but it also gives me hope and strength to push through whatever hardships I’m going through today.
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?
I would create a movement that encourages people to meet one new person a day. After applying this rule to my personal life, literally all aspects of my life improved especially my social, dating, and my conversation skills. With digital trends such as the meta-verse, human interaction is slowly fading away. Human interaction is crucial for staying happy. I feel like implementing a movement where it encourages people to meet other people will help society exponentially.
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. :-)
To be honest I think grabbing lunch with Elon Musk would be interesting. He knows how to think outside the box and is an advocate for improving the environment through various innovations and inventions. I feel like having lunch with him will help me to see things from a higher point of view. It would inspire me to solve bigger problems for the benefit of society.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can follow my public journey on Instagram which is updated weekly https://www.instagram.com/dejon_brooks/
You can also check out my software startup Trend Watchers at https://trendwatchers.co
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued fulfillment and success with your writing!
