Mapping Out Your Journal Journey for Success

When you think about journaling, do you think of it as essentially keeping a diary that stores your daily reflection where you document your day-to-day life? Do you use one because you want to unpack each day, or to record your growth and goal progress? Or, have you avoided or never considered journaling because you don’t have time for it and you don’t feel a need for it? 

Journal journeys are just as unique as each person who uses one. Even if you have a guided journal, you could use it completely differently from someone you know, and the exact same as someone you don’t. Don’t worry about feeling like you need to have an expectation for yourself to journal every day or that you may be ‘doing it wrong.’ There’s no such thing!

If you want to grow, have a deeper connection with yourself, be able to decompress from the rest of your life or achieve goals that you set for yourself, journaling is a great place to start. But, it can be hard to know how to get started, which journaling approach is right for you, and even which journal to start with!

Guided journaling is a good place to start for both beginners and people who have specific intentions on what they want from their journal journey. Keep reading to find out which journal is most supportive of your personal journey and how to use your journal to fit your lifestyle and meet your goals.

You Need a Self-Love Journal If You…

How to Use a Self-Love Journal to Heal and Grow

So what does self-love have to do with normal journaling, and how could just a journal help you get more self-love? Well, that’s where guided journaling comes in. In Worthy: A Radical Self-Love Journal, you’re not opening a blank page every day and writing about how you felt about your body and logging your self-care. 

Every JMB Living Journal is your guide for your journey, and that’s the method that actually creates change. Each feature and prompt in Worthy is all part of your journal journey: every week begins with an introduction to the theme for that week, and each theme is one of the main pillars of self-love. 

Then, you’ll be guided to reflect on your current relationship with the theme, brainstorm ways to overcome your resistance and set your intentions for the week. 

As you fill out your daily pages with a prompt for gratitude, something you love about yourself or your life, you’ll also have blank lines for whatever you choose to use your journal for: writing about what happened that day, thoughts on how that theme is coming through in your life and how you’re doing with it or, even just a checklist of things you need to do throughout the day! 

That is the magic of the journey: whatever best serves you and your lifestyle, while you’re still being guided to overcome obstacles to self-love and make progress. 

On top of how challenging and introspective the weekly themes are, Worthy is also loaded with exercises and activities pertaining to some of our themes to really help you dive deep and create lasting insight onto your past experiences, current mindset and more that you can use to shift your inner monologue, heal from old wounds and begin to rediscover your authentic self.

If you choose to use your daily lines to journal, but don't know what to write about, we've got that covered for you too, with a collection of journal prompts that you can refer back whenever you need a little inspiration.

Regardless of how you choose to use the daily lines in Worthy, you’ll always have support and a guide that keeps you on track to overcoming the things holding you back, while creating progress toward what you are working for: lasting, radical self-love that changes how you feel about yourself and how you navigate life. 

This journal was created with so much intention, but it is also so healing of everything society has imparted on us about beauty standards, gender roles, limiting beliefs and our own past experiences that have discouraged us from being who we are and creating and accepting the love we deserve. 

When to Use a Seasonal Guided Journal

If you feel like you’re at a season of your life where self-love isn’t your main focus and the previous bulleted list doesn’t really resonate with you, a seasonal guided journal may be for you.

You could benefit from a seasonal guided journal if you:

• Feel like life is passing you by
• Want to be more present
• Seek to fully engage with the world and the joy of being alive
• Live with intention
• Desire balance between your life, responsibilities and moving towards your dreams
• Want to be a more active participant in your life
• Struggle to recognize the beauty in every day
• Have forgotten how to dream
• No longer have an action plan for your goals
• Need support in creating habits and routines that will help you achieve your goals
• Are looking for a lifestyle change for the better
• Feel stuck
• Want to improve your mental health
• Can’t recognize the possibility and opportunity that being alive creates
• Work to cultivate your personality and strengths
• Want to define and overcome your weaknesses

A seasonal guided journal does just that: guides you through each season in nature, while helping you fully embrace this season of your life. 

The weekly Mindful Moment Challenges in our seasonal guided journals introduce you to a theme that challenges you to be more present through a new perspective each week. These are usually related to the staple characteristics of that season, or inspire you to engage with an emotion or other specific concepts in life such as transformation, blossoming, darkness, anger, etc. 

Through these challenges and our features from wellness professionals, mindfulness practitioners and just a general collection of inspiring and wise people we find through the JMB Living Community, you’ll be connected to motivation and new perspectives that prompt you to embrace and find balance within these aspects of life. 

The daily prompts in these journals use psychology-backed methods and are structured to gently create a mindset shift that integrates daily, weekly and future intentions that guide you to the life you desire, while also using affirmations and a gratitude mindset to boost your progress and help you embrace daily life in the meantime. 

How to Use a Guided Journal for Your Goals and Lifestyle

To truly create progress and change with a seasonal guided journal, it’s best to be intentional in filling out your daily wellness tracker, be thoughtful and consistent when creating and looking at your vision board and really immerse yourself in the dreams pages. All of this will help you develop an action plan, while encouraging you to come back to your journal each day to record your progress, nail down those good habits and master the routine that is supportive of the life you are moving towards. 

It’s important that you go into journaling with a mindset that it is an act of self-care that you need to make time for, instead of an extra hobby or self-improvement tactic you are trying out. This will help you be more consistent with journaling, as well as enhance how you feel as you journal. When you acknowledge that journaling is good for your mental health and is a private space for you to come home to yourself every day, it becomes a good feeling that you seek out and mandate in your routine to stay in touch with yourself, while also prioritizing your hopes and goals. 

Suggestions on Curating Your Journal Journey

So, if you decide to begin your JMB Living Journal Journey, or are already on one, how do you choose between self-love and seasonal alignment? Well, first ask yourself these questions:

• During what time of year do you find it easiest to love yourself? When do you struggle with it the most? Depending on your answer, would you rather work on conquering self-love when you feel the most prepared and capable of it to help you through the time when it is difficult, or do you need that support when it is the most difficult?
• When do you struggle the most with being present in your life? Is it the holidays when you’re reminded of loss and overwhelmed with obligations? Is it during the summertime when you are always on the go and it becomes easy to lose track of what you want to do? Maybe, you feel like summer is the best time to focus on self-love because it’s your favorite season, and you want to be aligned with nature in fall to focus on your own transformation alongside the colors of the trees.
• What are you working towards in your life right now? If your answer is, “I don’t know,” a seasonal guided journal can help you find out. If your answer is “Nothing because I’m too busy or feel too depressed,” take a moment to ponder if it’s because you don’t prioritize yourself enough, or because you can’t seem to catch up with life’s demands. Then, you’ll have your answer.

But, what if creating the habit to journal every day is really hard for you and it doesn’t seem like something worth trying? Well, think back to the last habit you mastered. Was it easy? Was it worth it? Have you ever tried to start a habit that you’ve given up on that you still regret to this day?

The best you can do is your best, and the easiest thing in the world is just to start. If you miss a day, give yourself grace. If you don’t want to give yourself a chance to miss a day, read this blog and try things like setting an alarm after you decide what time of day you want your journaling routine to be or setting one of your wellness trackers to record how frequently you journal. It might not be easy at first, but it definitely doesn’t have to be hard, and you'll have the guided support and a community with you along the way.