No doubt, journals are crucial. After I recorded the video Clarity in 2009 (mind the bad lighting for this one), I received some emails specifically about the journal part. Like I said in the video, I understood the importance of journals, but I wasn’t necessarily using it to its full potential. This article explains how I made transition, it’s pretty lengthy (2956 words), but it’s worth reading it. It took me almost 7 hours to finish it. If you don’t have the time to finish it now, feel free to print it out and take it for reading somewhere else.

I first began to journal with the Lifestyle Challenge that Ian Smith and I created almost a year ago. Later, I was reminded of it when I attended a seminar hosted by SUCCESS magazine (excellent event). I actually got a free ‘Jim Rohn Leadership’ journal there and I began to jot down thoughts, ideas, and emotions on it; but after a while, I grew less motivated to do handwriting. So I moved on to computer journal and I started my journal in a Word document, but still I lacked a bit of discipline in keeping up with it, although both forms DID help me bring more clear answers to the questions that before wandered in my head without answers, or sometimes, questions that I asked other people, yet their answer wouldn’t satisfy me. But when I really started getting the hang of it (you never get the hang of it the first time), I started asking questions in such a way that I would answer my own questions, either as I wrote, or later on in a sudden moment. (By the way, now I use Google documents, it is much easier to keep up with and it allows you to do an easy ‘Search’ function.) Read the whole story »