Tell me if you’ve experienced anything like this in your professional career –

It’s way past your bedtime, you’ve been burning the candle at both ends and you just feel completely drained.  As you finally get ready to drift off into the coveted dreamland where you can finally relax — it hits you. Your brain reminds you about an important email that you need to remember to send, or you come up with a great idea or solution to a problem you’re having, or you stress about an interaction with a client/family member/friend/co-worker that you had recently.  All of these things, good or bad still put you in a slightly frantic state because you don’t want to forget it tomorrow, but you’re not going to do anything about it immediately — because, remember, you’re in your bed — resting “peacefully.”

What does this all mean?

Your brain’s memory card is maxed out.  It can be tough to function when thoughts are overflowing in your brain.  Whether you’re dealing with issues in your personal life or your professional life, it is extremely tiresome and taxing to hold it all inside.  It will start to drain your energy and, in some severe circumstances, cause physical ailments to your body.

In addition, it is very difficult to conjure the energy to be the best business owner or creative entrepreneur that you can be.  All business owners and entrepreneurs are creative. We use creativity to find ways to solve problems in our businesses on a day to day basis.  We are creative in the ways that we deal with our project management and our client management. We’ve used our creative brain to develop our products and services and by being in business for ourselves we’ve literally created something out of nothing.  

Being creative takes energy

Not just mental energy, but physical energy, too. So where do we get this energy if we always feel overextended and bursting at the seems?

We journal.  It may sound sophomoric – but a journal is the best antidote to stress problems, overwhelm and confidence issues.  

Let’s define what I mean when I talk about journaling.

Journaling is a physical way to let go of all of the bloated thoughts in your brain.  We’re not writing a diary — we’re not throwing ourselves a pity party either. We’re simply rolling up our sleeves, putting the pen to the paper and allowing ourselves to release all of the mental anguish that we’ve been storing that’s been causing us stress and sleepless nights.

Personally, I have a composition notebook as a journal.  I commit to writing one handwritten page a day [about 10 minutes].  I use daily prompts that I Google to make it an easier task — simply answer the question provided by the prompt.  I write entirely stream of consciousness and hold no weight to what I’m writing. The point is to let it flow. Let it out. Simply.  I actually never re-read any entries. For me, the purpose of the journal is to let go of bad things and set intentions for good things.

For you to get started journaling I really strongly recommend using prompts.  It eliminates procrastination by about 97%. When we got started, we used prompts from www.marcandangel.com for the first few months.  Marc and Angel are best selling authors and professional life & happiness coaches.  If you just head over to their blog and search “Journal Prompts” you’ll find plenty of content to get you started.

So, what are the creative benefits of journaling?

1. If you start your day with journaling then you will find that you’re automatically starting your day with creative momentum.
2. As you write each day, you’ll uncover things that will lead to thoughts and ideas which will help you be more creative.
3. It helps get your brain in shape – EXAMPLE: Running – At any time we can just run from here to there, but for most of us our distance and speed are limited by the shape our body is in.  If you start running daily [like a training regimen], it won’t take long before you can consistently run further and faster. So the more that you journal, the more sustained creative energy and momentum you’ll have in the long run.

Now picture yourself getting ready for bed after a day full of positive energy and momentum — yes, you’ll still have ups and downs, we all do, but now you know that if you just write it down, you can allow your conscious and subconscious to let go and, finally, you can go to your dreamland and relax.

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